MICKEY KAUS has questions for Paul Krugman.

THINKING ABOUT IRAN: I wish we didn’t have to. I suspect the Iranians will, too, before it’s over.

ABORTION BILLS ARE BUSTING OUT ALL OVER: With legislation in South Dakota, and, according to this report, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina and Kentucky, the issue is heating up. I can’t decide if that’s good or bad.

Bad: I’m against these bills. I don’t think abortion ought to be illegal. I think that outlawing abortion (not “late term” or “partial-birth” abortion, which is a relatively minor issue except for its symbolism, and which could be regulated under Roe anyway, but abortion in general) is a bad idea. While it’s possible that such laws would reduce the number of abortions, I suspect that there would be substantial black markets, noncompliance, civil disobedience, and other side effects — something not as far-reaching, perhaps, but in many ways like the destructive consequences of banning guns. One advantage — you can go to another state to have an abortion, but you can’t legally go to another state to buy a gun. That may cut down on the black-market angle, unless a lot of states enact bans, which I doubt. As the South Dakota story above notes, that’s nearly the situation in some states already, on a de facto basis.

Good: On the other hand, I think the abortion issue is “stuck,” and would probably have reached a better, or at least less painful, resolution via legislative processes if Roe v. Wade hadn’t shunted the issue aside. That resolution would probably look more like what we see in Europe — abortion available, but less freely than in the U.S. — and the political pathology associated with abortion polarization would have been avoided. I also suspect that the absolutist slogans on both sides today come from the “stuckness” created by Roe. That sort of thing is easy when the sloganeers know there’s no real chance of their slogans being enacted into law in a fashion that would require them to take responsibility. The democratic process might well discharge the tensions built up over the past three-plus decades.

Horserace point: I’m pretty sure that this development will actually be bad for the Republicans. When the topic is defense, the Democrats lose. When it’s sex, the Republicans lose. And the abortion debate will, I think, turn into a sex debate before it’s over. (I suspect that Missouri Governor Matt Blunt agrees — but pro-choicers may not benefit from a major public debate either).

Advice for the GOP: Try to convince the media that you want to see American abortion law look “more European.”

Advice for the Democrats: Don’t act like you’re ashamed of abortion. Don’t talk about a “woman’s right to choose” without saying what she’s choosing. You can’t win on a policy you’re ashamed of.

Of course, maybe I’m just “pro-death” like Scott Adams, which would probably make taking my advice a terrible mistake. I mean, more than usual. . . .

UPDATE: Stephen Waters writes: “The real issue isn’t abortion, but how do you take care of unwanted children.” This is actually one place where I’ll give the pro-lifers credit. Back when I did pro-choice stuff in college, I challenged them to support, rather than condemn, unwed mothers, and I think they’re actually much better about that. Indeed, I know of several teen moms (one who used to live right across the street from me) who were treated quite supportively by very conservative religious folks who saw that as part of their pro-life duty.

Of course, one reason they honor the choice to have a child rather than an abortion may be because it is a choice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s somebody recommending the German model.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE CATS goes mainstream.

LIVEBLOGGING the Oscars at Pajamas Media, LiveMocking the Oscars at Mr. Sun. Okay, actually I expect a lot of mocking in both places. And rightly so. [Fish in a barrel — Ed. Your point?]

UPDATE: It’s mockery all around.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Treacher joins in the fun, and when he mocks, he mocks. And there’s more from Ed Morrissey.

Amusing George Clooney graphic here.

As for this red-carpet photo, all I can say is “Ew.”

MORE: Another bad review for George Clooney.

GOD LIED, people died?

ANN ALTHOUSE: “In other words, Spielberg is totally bullshitting. It’s not about Bush, it’s about Clinton.”

CENTCOM is podcasting.

BAD PRESS FOR RALPH REED: “Ralph Reed has said he didn’t know it until last year, but emails suggest he was informed that eLot — a firm then in the online lottery business — was behind his effort to fend off a ban against internet gambling in 2000. . . . Reed, a lifelong opponent of gambling, said last year that he did not know in 2000 he was actually working on behalf of eLottery.”

(Via the Hotline Blog).

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE:

In a recent press briefing General George Casey (the commander of Multinational Forces in Iraq) countered virtually every inflated claim made by the media regarding Iraq’s recent “civil war” in the wake of the Shrine bombing in Samarra. But there are significant disconnects between what Gen Casey said and how his words are reported. . . .

The media is free to dispute the General’s claims – that’s expected of them. But in this case they aren’t, they are simply using his words selectively in a manner that supports their own previously published fictions. There’s no law that says U.S. media outlets are required to report accurately or completely on comments made by military or government officials. Likewise there are no requirements for media outlets to acknowledge that they are printing unverified claims made by “other parties” in the war as confirmed “news” – as was the case in the aftermath of the Shrine bombing (See here and here). But consumers of those reports should be aware of their flaws.

The press had better hope we win this war, because if we don’t, a lot of people will blame the media.

UPDATE: Ralph Peters: Dude, Where’s My Civil War?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lest we recapitulate a discussion that’s happened already, read this post, in which I expanded on the above at considerably more length. Also this post, this post, and this rather disturbing post.

MORE: Pierce Wetter looks at the Brookings Institution data on Iraq and observes some interesting things:

In February, US soldiers killed in action or wounded has gone down for the 4th straight month in a row

Number of Iraqi Policemen killed dropped in February:

As did the number of civilians killed.

See the entire post, which has many interesting graphs. It’s certainly something that’s not appearing in the news much.

MORE: Matt Sherman writes on civil-warmongering.

Brian Dunn has related thoughts. And Power Line is looking at sources.

MORE STILL: Don Surber (an actual member of the press!) writes:

Anyone remember the white phosphorus equals chemical warfare crap? How about Giuliana Sgrena’s claim that the U.S. deliberately opened fire on her after she was released by her “kidnappers”? Time after time, the press has gone ahead with major reports that have not been properly vetted. The latest is this complete withdrawal in 2007 story. Reuters didn’t even bother asking anyone at teh Pentagon or MOD about it.

That is not journalism. That is propaganda. That is deliberately misinforming people. Two sides to the story, people, two sides. Pentagon came out later and said it is untrue. As usual. Just like the pullout by June 2004 (for the U.S. election) story.

Yes, I’ve gotten some email of the “you only want happy news” variety, which proves that those people didn’t read the posts I indicated above. I just want the press to avoid false information that damages the war effort. Is that asking too much?

Apparently. Others write that if we lose the war it won’t be the press’s fault, but the fault of Chimpy McHitlerburton. Well, maybe. But even so, that won’t change the fact that a press that looks in many ways as if it’s rooting for defeat won’t make an appealing scapegoat for a lot of people. Given the press’s concern for how it’s perceived in various communities, you’d think it would care enough to avoid being perceived as unpatriotic by the patriotic-American community. Yet the exquisite sensitivity that we see in other settings is not so apparent here.

VIRGINIA POSTREL is donating a kidney, but notes that — unless people like Leon Kass get their way — this will be an obsolete procedure in the not too distant future.

UPDATE: Various readers email about embryonic stem cells vs. adult stem cells, etc. Kass, however, seems negative on the notion of extending life in general, as noted here.

MORE ON bloggers and PR people.

And here’s an interesting look at Congressional press secretaries and blogs.

I have an earlier, related post here.

UPDATE: More here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A report from the medical profession.

MUSLIMS AGAINST TERROR: Gateway Pundit has a roundup, and pictures, from a massive antiterror protest in Bahrain.

I’M NOT SURPRISED AT THIS DEVELOPMENT: “The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources.”

Members of the press are, for the most part, appalled. But having made a big deal of leaks and their alleged harm to National Security in the Plame case, they’re in a poor position to complain. Bill Keller’s outrage is particularly out of place, and his suggestion that the Bush Administration is “declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad” is just a political sound-bite, and not a particularly good one. There’s not even a right of journalists to protect leakers under the U.S. Constitution, despite journalists’ representations, and doing so has hardly been a slogan on the war on terror. The tendency of the press to conflate its own desire for guild-like special privileges with the protections of the First Amendment is one of the reasons for its decline in trust and popularity.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Roger Simon.

FIREDAVIDGREGORY.COM is a new website devoted to ending the White House reporting career of David Gregory. Call me crazy, but I’ll bet that Karl Rove is hoping they don’t succeed. (Via Robert Bluey).

ARMY OF DAVIDS UPDATE: Today there’s a review in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Excerpt:

Reynolds’ highly informative book – a must-read if you want to have some idea of the direction things are taking – is about a lot more than the effect of blogging on Big Media. Its theme is “the triumph of personal technology over mass technology,” which is a trend Reynolds believes is only “going to strengthen over the coming decades.”. . .

Reynolds covers a lot of territory in this little book, from being able to have a state-of-the-art recording studio in your home for about $1,000 to “electronic privateering” in the war on terror, to video games’ potential as teaching devices (likely to discombobulate teachers the way blogs have journalists). Reynolds knows how to pack a lot of information into a relatively small space and provides clear and concise explanations of such things as “horizontal knowledge” – “communication among individuals who may not know each other, but who are loosely coordinated by their involvement in something, or someone, of mutual interest.”

As a professed “transhumanist,” Reynolds waxes enthusiastic on nanotechnology, planetary colonization, and “Scientifically Engineered Negligible Senescence.” But, like Ray Kurzweil – author of The Singularity Is Near, last year’s big futurist book – Reynolds is well aware of the dangers that technological change can pose and favors taking reasonable steps to prevent such things as a terrorist-generated plague from happening.

There’s an accompanying podcast interview, too.

UPDATE: And here’s another blog review.

ED MORRISSEY is trying to organize a blogswarm to evaluate recent claims about Guantanamo internees.

AUSTIN BAY writes on ending information isolation.

ED DRISCOLL INTERVIEWS EVAN COYNE MALONEY, on DIY video.

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH says we should stand up to the creeping tyranny of the group, whether we’re talking animal-rights fanatics or Islamic terrorists:

Human lives are saved by medicines developed as a result of tests on animals; no comparable good is achieved by the republication of cartoons of the prophet. But the mechanism of intimidation is very similar, including the fact that it works across frontiers and is therefore hard to tackle by national laws or law enforcement agencies.

If the intimidators succeed, then the lesson for any group that strongly believes in anything is: shout more loudly, be more extreme, threaten violence, and you will get your way. Frightened firms, newspapers or universities will cave in, as will softbellied democratic states, where politicians scrabble to keep the votes of diverse constituencies. But in our increasingly mixed-up, multicultural world, there are so many groups that care so strongly about so many different things, from fruitarians to anti-abortionists and from Jehovah’s Witnesses to Kurdish nationalists. Aggregate all their taboos and you have a vast herd of sacred cows. Let the frightened nanny state enshrine all those taboos in new laws or bureaucratic prohibitions, and you have a drastic loss of freedom. That, I think, is what is happening to us, issue by issue.

Expecting politicians to protect free speech is probably expecting too much. It’s up to us.

GOOD NEWS:

Canada has been showered with attention for its oil sands — deposits of thick, sludgy crude in remote parts of northern Alberta — but until now most of that oil has flowed only as far south as Chicago.

This week, crude spun out of Canada’s oil sands came all the way to this flat Oklahoma prairie town that’s known as the oil pipeline capital of the world.

Enbridge, a Calgary-based oil delivery and storage company, opened the taps to its Spearhead Pipeline, a 650-mile stretch of steel from Chicago to Cushing, and the first western Canada crude sloshed into the company’s mammoth Cushing terminal early Thursday.

For years the pipe, which used to be owned by BP, carried Gulf of Mexico crude to northern markets that needed the oil. But as the Gulf slowly but surely plays out, and Canada’s oil sands production picks up steam, the crude is flowing in a different direction.

It’s a sign of the times. Canada, which is already the biggest exporter of oil to the U.S., outranking Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, will likely double its oil production in the next decade, thanks to production from the oil sands.

Bring it on.

WHILE I’LL BE WORKING HARD to promote the book next week, apparently someone else will be relaxing on the beaches of Southern California, to judge by this sighting report and photo from N.Z. Bear.

The closest I’ll get to the beaches of Southern California is being on Tammy Bruce’s show starting at 8 Eastern tonight.

NO, I WON’T be watching the Oscars.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: The Kenyan government attacks a TV station. BareKnucklePolitics has the video.