REUEL MARC GERECHT writes on the sloppy spooks at the CIA. Read the whole thing, which is yet more evidence that a lot of people there should be losing their jobs.

UPDATE: Related thoughts on the CIA, here.

ANOTHER LEAK PROBE is getting started. I think these may become a regular thing when classified information is published. Thank the New York Times!

IMANI PERRY:

Yesterday was the first time that I heard race or immigrant status mentioned on broadcast television with respect to the recent uprisings and protests ocurring in poor and working class suburbs across France. Finally! I thought to myself, and then wondered why it took almost two weeks for the elephant in the room to be mentioned, at least on U.S. television. (And even that was CNN international.)

There is something terribly wrong with the notion that it is impolite to reference race, an idea that seems to have a great deal of currency in the United States.

Read the whole thing.

DANIEL DREZNER LOOKS AT Rep. Sherrod Brown’s plagiarism problems.

On plagiarism generally, here’s a chapter from the ethics book I wrote with Peter Morgan, The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Society, a book that seems timely again. In that chapter, Joe Biden is defended. I suspect that the pithiest defense of Biden quoted there — “at worst, Biden purloined piffle” — applies to Brown, too.

MICKEY KAUS busts Joe Klein. I liked it better when Klein was lying about his own writings. . . .

HERE’S A NEW INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY BLOG by Raymond T. Nimmer.

AN ENERGY STORY that seems too good to be true.

And, apparently, is.

BILL ROGGIO: “This afternoon I conducted an interview with Colonel Stephen W. Davis, the Commander of Marine Regimental Combat Team – 2 currently operating in western Iraq and engaged in Operation Steel Curtain in the border town of Husaybah.” Read the whole thing.

INSTAPUNK FOCUSES on what’s really important: Sweeps Week and classic TV history, though a chilling lesson is drawn.

CONVERGENT THEMES: Reader Bruce Batista emails, in light of this story:

Prediction:

France — and the UN — will use the riots as an excuse to censor “hostile” bloggers and/or the internet in general.

They may try.

PATRICK BELTON IS RIOTBLOGGING FROM PARIS:

There is, in speaking with its people at its cafes and on its streetcorners, a sense of malaise these days in Paris, which I think you could probe further by juxtaposing the despair of the banlieu rioters with the stories of the increasing numbers of graduates of Paris’s leading business schools who go to Britain upon graduation, or those of postgraduate degree holders working as postmen. All have in their way given up on the French dream, a comfortable lifestyle sheltered by an extensive and humane welfare state. The Dalrympean take, I suppose, would be to say that in both cases it’s the unproductivity of the French economy that’s partially to blame, particularly after the massive explosion in the size of the state during the early Mitterand years. People who during their days at Science Po took easily for granted the superiority of the French model, with its educated technocracy and comfortable standards of living, now despair over it. . . .

The police presence of the French state is everywhere: if not in Clichy and Aulnay, then at very least along the Champs and by the Place de la Concorde. Last night I was surprised to count ten police cars by the Elysee metro station (in a row, to cite a song from the wrong side of the Channel), then by the American embassy two entire large buses of Gendarmerie (painted blue, no police light on top though, however cool though that might have been) and the odd plainclothes unit (they being the ones who look like cops in suits, rather than French people in suits.)

Read the whole thing, and stay tuned for more.

HERE’S A LINK to interviews with Robert Freitas, author of Nanomedicine.

JUDGMENT DAY: Here’s another roundup on the California elections.

A LOOK AT SEX AND CONTRACTS, over at the ContractsProf blog.

JOEL KOTKIN says that welfare states produce riots and terrorism, by trapping immigrants in a dirigiste economy with few opportunities.

I’ve always admired Kotkin for writing this contrarian book at the height of the Japan-will-conquer-us doomsaying of the early 1990s. Kotkin’s analysis there, arguing that U.S. adaptability would trump Japanese planning, has certainly been borne out by events.

STRATEGYPAGE on the latest campaign in Iraq:

Husaybah has long been a major transit point for terrorists coming in from Syria. For the last month, American smart bombs have acted on intelligence information to destroy safe houses and bomb workshops. The current offensive is to clean out the remaining terrorists, and turn the town over to the Iraqi police and civil authorities. Previously, there had been enough al Qaeda terrorists in the town to dominate the local government. The Sunni Arab population has been, over the last year, moving from pro-terrorist to pro-government. The foreign terrorists were cruel and arbitrary, insisting that civilians adhere to a strict version of Islam. The terrorists also became increasingly paranoid as they became aware of growing pro-government attitudes. This led to some violence against some local civilians. All this was a replay of the rise and fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan. There, the al Qaeda arrogance, and cruelty towards who were not Islamic enough, made the terrorists unpopular with civilians, and contributed to the rapid collapse of the Taliban government in October, 2001. . . .

If a Sunni Arab tribe wants to avoid a war in their backyard, they have to gather their own militiamen together and toss the local terrorists out. American and Iraqi troops can be made available to assist in these operations, and often do. But if the terrorists dominate a town or neighborhood, and the locals will not, or cannot, deal with the situation, then the troops come in. The al Qaeda groups have not got many places left to run, at least in Iraq. What makes the Syrians nervous is the possibility that al Qaeda will be driven out of Iraq, and will then try to operate from Syria. This could lead to American and Iraqi raids against these bases.

I think that we’ll see that soon. Bill Roggio has more.

CLIVE DAVIS HAS MORE ON THE FRENCH RIOTS, which he says are being overblown. I hope he’s right.

LIVEBLOGGING THE VIRGINIA ELECTIONS — over at Commonwealth Conservative. Meanwhile, Josh Trevino has a roundup post on the California elections.

ALAN ALDA for President?

LAWPROF BLOGS are busting out all over, according to this new census. Interestingly, the presence of blogging faculty seems to correlate with higher rankings.

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

A FRENCH INTIFADA, OR A FRENCH WATTS?

UPDATE: Lawprof Adrien Wing thinks the French need to think about changes in their legal system once this is over.

STEPHEN GREEN:

Four years into the Terror War, “What’s the most important element for victory?” is a question long overdue. It’s also a question our national leadership, nearly all of our intellectuals, and none of our mainstream media have yet to answer.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A related item from Arnold Kling: “I am skeptical of the Bush doctrine. However, I want to be clear from the outset that my purpose is not to endorse the main alternative, which is the Mush Doctrine.” Read the whole thing here, too. Especially, in both cases, if you work in the White House or the Pentagon.

CHUCK SIMMINS remembers an ordinary hero.

LOUISIANA PORK UPDATE:

Louisiana will spend $45 million on sports and livestock facilities and other new projects in spite of a looming deficit, frustrating some officials who say the frivolity reinforces the state’s history of political patronage.

“We’re in Washington with our hands out asking for $2 billion plus, and rather than holding on to the money to see what the needs are, they’re spending it on local projects financing goat shows and lawn-mower races,” says state Sen. Robert Barham, Oak Ridge Republican.

Supporters of the $4 million Morehouse Parish Equine Center say it will give a much-needed boost to the economy.

Perhaps it will provide a job for Michael Brown.

And I think Sen. Barham meant “$200 billion plus.”