DOG BITES MAN: In The New Republic, Joshua Brook writes:

The war between Israel and Hezbollah has sparked widespread debate on the subject of proportionality. One might have hoped that the human rights community would take this opportunity to educate political leaders and the public on the international law of proportionality and how it applies to the current fighting. Indeed, some groups have done just that. But others have chosen to brazenly distort international law in their zeal to condemn Israel.

The basic rule of international law in some people’s minds seems to be that anything that the United States or Israel does is wrong. As I say, dog bites man.

UPDATE: Prof. Kenneth Anderson has more on proportionality and writes:

Legal scholars who want to focus on the UN Charter as the sole source of legal authority for the use of force – and hence see any armed action by a party as having to be ‘proportionate’ pending some (typically mythological) intervention by the Security Council – tend to underplay that the Charter does not remove the customary law of self-defense, which does not require a “proportionate” response once belligerency is underway.

These abuses of international law are drastically undermining its credibility. More here, here, and here.

As one blog commenter noted (I forget where I saw it), the difference is that Israel causes civilian casualties when it misses its targets, Hezbollah causes civilian casualties when it hits its targets.

JOHN KERRY VS. JOHN BOLTON.

JOHN PODHORETZ WONDERS if Israel is too nice to win.

This reminds me of Josh Marshall’s 2003 worry that we weren’t killing enough Iraqis and that this would come back to haunt us. I think they’re both probably wrong. I certainly hope so.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Bill Roggio.

And Jim Dunnigan looks at Hezbollah’s Iranian rocket force. I’m guessing that you can’t solve the Hezbollah problem without solving the Iranian problem.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing thinks that Israel is blowing it.

MORE: Josh Marshall now says I’m misrepresenting his column. Well, the post I link above contains a lengthy in-context quote, and observes: “Not that Josh wants people to die, he just thinks it has a valuable pedagogical function.” (Josh claims that I said he called for “the mass and indiscriminate killing of civilians at the outset of the Iraq War,” which is at least as much a misrepresentation of my post as he’s claiming for his; I don’t think that either Podhoretz or Marshall ever called for that).

I thought that was a fair reading of his column then, and I don’t believe he objected. Here’s another link to his original column, which I also linked along with the blockquote. You can decide for yourself whether I’ve misrepresented him, but it seems to me that it was a fair reading then, and that it’s a fair reading now. But if Josh meant something else by his language, he should say so. He links to other people who say that my reading of his language is wrong, so I guess he has disclaimed that meaning now, but I should note that those posts came after mine. So either I’ve been misreading him for three years (possible), or he is more worried about sounding bellicose now than he was in March of 2003. Your call, but I thought the latter, which is why I was tweaking him by bringing it up.

STILL MORE: Hmm. Marshall seems to have a problem making himself understood.

AND MORE: Dan Riehl thinks my reading of Marshall was excessively generous. “Marshall was invoking Nagasaki and Hiroshima as examples of how to win a war … and the hearts and minds which are left. But, as Reynolds duly noted, he was criticizing Bush’s plan, not necessarily advocating mass death.” Yes, Marshall — as I noted — wasn’t calling for more deaths, but rather expressing the worry that a war that didn’t involve massive casualties or damage wouldn’t have enough of a psychological effect to produce peace. That Marshall reads this as a claim that he was calling for more deaths is, well, not surprising since he applies similar misreading to my stuff.

HMM, this Sony gadget looks like a pretty good mobile blogging tool, complete with builtin camera — what the TREO promised but didn’t really deliver. But I wish it came with Verizon EVDO instead of Cingular. Anybody out there got one?

BREWERY NEWS: The secret is out. And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for that meddling Basil’s blog!

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ: All politics is local, even in Lebanon.

JAMES LILEKS: “Then you go outside and have a cigar with a cheerleader, which reminds you how things can change.”

AN ARMY OF DAVIDS REVIEW, at Albion’s Seedlings.

Kinda late to the game, but I’m certainly not complaining. Plus, nanotechnology in India.

EDUTOPIA: A podcast interview with Michael Schrage of the MIT Media Lab, at PoliticsCentral.

HEH: “During the recent Senate hearings on video game violence, one expert claimed that the ESRB underrated violent games. They went on to say that Pacman was 64% violent. To some, this means you shouldn’t play Pacman; to others, it highlights what’s wrong with Senate hearings.”

UPDATE: Freeman Hunt: “Awful! Plus, given the current epidemic of childhood obesity, is it really okay to show a heroic character who eats everywhere he travels and receives bonus points for consuming delicious fruits as large as his body? Good thing the Senate is working to protect us from this sort of villainy.”

AT IMAO, a call for an end to sock-puppetry is met with a chorus of approval from, er, all sorts of people.

WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE EXPLAIN TO COPS that they can’t arrest people for photographing them?

The family of Neftaly Cruz said police had no right to come onto their property and arrest their 21-year-old son simply because he was using his cell phone’s camera. They told their story to Harry Hairston and the NBC 10 Investigators. . . .

Cruz, 21, told the NBC 10 Investigators that police arrested him last Wednesday for taking a picture of police activity with his cell phone.

Police at the 35th district said they were in Cruz’s neighborhood that night arresting a drug dealer.

Cruz said that when he heard a commotion, he walked out of his back door with his cell phone to see what was happening. He said that when he saw the street lined with police cars, he decided to take a picture of the scene.

“I opened (the phone) and took a shot,” Cruz said.

Moments later, Cruz said he got the shock of his life when an officer came to his back yard gate.

“He opened the gate and took me by my right hand,” Cruz said.

Cruz said the officer threw him onto a police car, cuffed him and took him to jail.

I think we need civil rights legislation making this kind of arrest illegal. Treble damages, plus the right to civil forfeiture of any police property or equipment used in the arrest. Oh, and respondeat superior liability against supervisors.

Well, we do need something , even if it’s unlikely that we’ll get it. Though a law defending ordinary citizens’ right to take pictures in public places seems like it might be a good campaign issue.

UPDATE: At Spleenville, skepticism and a claim that I am excessively libertarian. Hmm.

PR EMAIL OF THE DAY: A link to the Dollywood Mystery Mine Rollercoaster website. “It’s like being swallowed by the jaws of a beast.”

AN UGLY GRAPH of the Los Angeles Times’ circulation over the past decades. Big Media is looking more and more like the Big Three automakers.

TOM MAGUIRE on The New York Times and Ned Lamont.

TIM CHAPMAN DECRIES left-right pigeonholing.

BELTWAY BLOGROLL looks at the Cynthia McKinney / Hank Johnson runoff blog-battle in Georgia.

AN AUTOMOTIVE X-PRIZE, “will invite teams from around the world to focus on a single goal: design, build and sell super-efficient cars that people want to buy.”

Bring it on! (Via Ben Stewart).

Related post from David Adesnik. And note these comments on hybrids from Autopia.

DISPROPORTIONATE RESPONSE at the United Nations.

Plus, Kofi’s claims unravel.

FACT-CHECKING from Eugene Volokh, and a surprising response.

UPDATE: Doug Weinstein consults a transcriptionist.

ERIC SCHEIE: “I am still confused. Unless Howard Dean is covertly suggesting that anti-Semitism is a White House talking point, something does not make sense.”

MICHAEL TOTTEN has a long and thoughtful, if somewhat depressing, post on Lebanon.

KATRINA UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal reports on what went wrong, and publishes a free chapter of Chris Cooper and Robert Block’s new book on the subject, Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security. All links are free to non-subscribers.

Cooper and Block’s reporting does seem to suggest that this column may have been right about the focus on terrorism and its effect on our ability to respond to natural disasters.

GOOD QUESTION: “Is anyone thinking about the next Hezbollah, and the one after that?”

A BAD CASE OF the Nasrallah blues.