STEPHEN HAYES WRITES THAT THE CIA has waged a successful war against reform. Sadly, I think that war has been their top priority.

PHONE COMPANIES, THE NSA, AND PRIVACY: Here’s a roundup (free link) from the Wall Street Journal. Excerpt:

The three phone companies have been handing over phone numbers and calling information since shortly after September 11, 2001, while withholding names, addresses or other personal customer data, according to media reports. But it would be easy for the NSA to obtain that information by cross-checking the data with other readily available databases. The companies didn’t provide any information about the contents of the calls.

Read the whole thing. And yes, you can usually find out who’s behind a phone number by simply typing it into Google, and you’ll even get a map to their house, which seems like more of a privacy invasion to me.

UPDATE: Video from the NSA, over at Hot Air.

FLY-FISHING SITE THE ITINERANT ANGLER is now podcasting.

A GAO REPORT LOOKS AT illegal aliens arrested in the United States.

(Via Newsbeat1).

IT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN atrocity and self-defense, between resolution and fanaticism. That it’s being missed even by thoughtful observers goes some distance toward proving my point.

BUT THEY’RE NOT POWERFUL ENOUGH TO MAKE HIM SEEM NORMAL: “Powerful Hollywood friends of Tom Cruise rallied to his defence yesterday as a new poll suggested the actor’s odd behaviour recently may have cost him millions of dollars at the box office.”

Celebrity isn’t an entitlement.

PLEDGE WEEK AT PROTEIN WISDOM is almost over.

BUSH’S MONDAY IMMIGRATION SPEECH: Reader CJ Burch emails:

If “jobs Americans won’t do” is a central part of Bush’s address his approval ratings may be in the single digits Tuesday morning. I honestly do not understand where our political class has gotten the idea that calling the average american lazy and worthless is good political strategy. Do they truly think that little of us? Iraq has been a hard ( and in my opinion a worthwhile) job, should only illegals be allowed to that? Our previous leaders thought Americans could do anything they set their mind to. They asked big things of us and we did them, better than any other nation on earth has ever done them. These bozos think we can’t get off the couch to make our own freaking dinner. I’m beginning to think they despise us, I truly am. And I’ll be damned if I waste my vote on someone that thinks that little of me.

I’m hearing a lot of that kind of sentiment.

UPDATE: John Podhoretz: “There are really three immigration debates. There is the cultural debate, there is the economic debate, and there is the security debate. . . . The potential for self-destruction is terrifying. The potential for grave national harm is worse. Please, you guys, pull back from the edge.”

One problem is that the tin-eared approach of the White House has led to considerably more anger and polarization than would otherwise have occurred. Bush can start to overcome that process Monday, if he will. I’m not sure what will happen, though. John Hinderaker is expecting something major: “I’m pretty sure the President hasn’t booked prime time on Monday night to repeat what he’s said before. I think we’ll see a sharp course change that will gladden the hearts of conservatives, and, for that matter, Americans in general.”

MORE: I’m guessing it will take a lot to win Bill Quick over.

WILL FRANKLIN HAS THOUGHTS on majorities and the Republican base. He’s certainly right about this part: “It’s not the man in the Oval Office that matters. It’s the policies the man in the Oval Office is able to enact.” That cuts both ways, though.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS WAS ON HUGH HEWITT: Transcript and audio are here.

TOMORROW IS THE ANNIVERSARY of the Andijon massacre in Uzbekistan. Nathan Hamm has a roundup.

MICHAEL TOTTEN is reporting from Jaffa and Jerusalem: “There are more Arabs in Israel than there are in Beirut. One Israeli in five is an Arab.”

EUGENE VOLOKH LOOKS AT A TIME “When the idea of self-preservation was as jealously guarded from the young as the facts of sex had been in earlier ages.”

I think the view that it’s connected with a (somewhat degenerate) notion of holiness is right, too. Call it Christianity’s poison pill.

IS CALLING ANTI-YAHOO! PLAINTIFFS “EXTORTIONISTS” and charging them with a “shakedown” libel?

I’d say no, myself. All parties, however, should read this essential article before continuing.

MICKEY KAUS: “Robert Wright accuses me of enjoying it when Democrats get bad news. Well, here’s some! Despite the Democratic lock on both houses of the California state legislature–or maybe in part because of the Democratic lock–the Democratic percentage of the state’s registered voters has been steadily declining.”

ORIN KERR HAS THOUGHTS on the legality of the NSA monitoring project, to the extent that we understand it.

Meanwhile, ABC says it’s polling well: “Americans by nearly a 2-1 ratio call the surveillance of telephone records an acceptable way for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, expressing broad unconcern even if their own calling patterns are scrutinized.” It’ll be interesting to see if the Congressional complaints continue if other polls show similar results.

UPDATE: Mystery Pollster thinks that these numbers are pretty good.

Plus, a prediction here: “Watch for all the about-faces (that would be face two for two-faced politicos) over the weekend.”

THE U.N.C. “JEEP JIHADI” SPEAKS:

I was aiming to follow in the footsteps of one of my role-models, Muhammad Atta.

Ed Cone has much more.

THE BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW PODCAST IS UP, featuring Austin Bay, Tammy Bruce, Eric Umansky, and me.

JONAH GOLDBERG on that dumb handgun / testosterone study:

But all of this misses the point. A more insidious danger than guns is the rush to medicalize behavior. Let’s stipulate that handling a gun causes testosterone levels to rise. Let’s also concede that elevated testosterone levels are associated with aggression. So what? Does this tell us anything important or new? Science is learning how to measure all sorts of really interesting things, from the effects of porn on the male brain to the effects of porn on the male brain. Whoops. I guess that answers what those effects are. . . .

The important question is, “So what?” Prohibitionists were correct that alcohol affects the brain a heck of a lot more than handling a gun does. Do we need a new study to tell us that? And when it does, should we bring back Prohibition? So testosterone might jump when men tinker with guns. That no more means responsible men, including cops, can’t handle the rush than it means irresponsible men have an excuse when they kill people. The testosterone made me do it! The “NRA argument,” as Sullivan puts it, is unchanged.

Long before science conclusively “proves” that human beings are sinful and prone to temptation, we already know exactly that. Identifying the hormones and genes that make this so should not change our views. Science may study humans as mere biological organisms. But civilization and our constitutional order demand that we look at people as something more: as citizens responsible for their own actions first, and as testosterone machines a distant second.

One argument against porn, in fact, is that it stimulates aggression and hormones. Nonetheless, we protect it as speech. So guns are like porn, perhaps offering yet another reason why the ACLU should revisit its position on the Second Amendment.

Meanwhile, Dr. Wes Fisher thinks the study is sexist. It’s certainly true that suggestions that social policy should be driven by the way hormones affect women’s behavior are beyond the pale of acceptable discourse.

ORAL HISTORY from Iraq.

JOHN TAMMES offers news from Afghanistan that you probably haven’t heard.

UPDATE: Major Tammes used to be my photo-correspondent in Afghanistan. Now that he’s back, I’ve lacked for material, but check out this photo essay by Michael Yon, which sums up the situation in one brief passage of text: “Whereas in Iraq there is a large, educated class, Afghanistan seems to be locked into a world centuries passed. But they’ve got relatively modern weapons.”

Check out the whole thing, which as usual with Yon is excellent.

PATRICK HYNES says it’s not 1994.

MORE ON EGYPT: Big Pharaoh writes:

The Egyptian regime started to become a little bit more tolerant towards protests. I don’t know what is driving them crazy this time.The protests I attended were relatively large yet we were allowed to assemble and march on the streets. What changed that? Is the government so scared of the pro-reform judges?

Publius has much more. Meanwhile, on the Alaa front, don’t forget the automatic interactive petition.

Also, I seem to remember hearing that someone was planning a protest at the Egyptian embassy in Washington. Please let me know if that’s going to happen. And send photos!

Finally, Freeman Hunt notes that this is no Colbert moment: “Protesters in the US need to look at these protesters in Egypt. This is bravery. This is ‘patriotic dissent.'”

ARNOLD KLING:

This November, I am looking forward to seeing the Republicans lose control of Congress. I would say to the Republicans, as Oliver Cromwell reportedly said to the Rump Parliament, and as Leo Amery reprised during Neville Chamberlain’s final crisis as Prime Minister, “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

The whole oil-company-baiting, education-centralizing, entitlement-expanding, earmark-loving lot of them can be tossed out, as far as I’m concerned. Then we can start over.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi plans to use control of Congress to launch an investigation into the Bush Administration. For those of us who have not been drinking the Kos Kool-Aid, this seems like a questionable enterprise.

Read the whole thing. I realize that you go to elections with the parties you have, but can’t I get another choice, somehow?

JIM GERAGHTY HAS SOME COMMENTS in response to our Mehlman/Barone podcast:

By the way, put me down as one of those guys who cannot comprehend the argument that conservatives ought to sit out this election to “punish” the GOP so that they’ll “learn a lesson” and get better/more conservative in the future.

To advocates of this position, I must respectfully ask… are you out of your flippin’ mind?

By what logic does a constituency become more influential and powerful by becoming less active, and demonstrating less capability to turn out the vote and influence elections?

Read the whole thing. Of course, one could ask these questions of the GOP leadership, too. . . .

UPDATE: Here’s a contrary view from the D.C. Examiner:

Karl Rove reportedly has a plan to “stir up” the base to again save the Republicans’ electoral bacon, but conservatives won’t be satisfied this time around with more token efforts on issues like marriage and dire warnings that “the Democrats would be far worse.” Conservatives have heard that song before and know it never has a second verse.

Read the whole thing there, too.