LIBERTARIANS ON IRAQ: One of the more interesting and lively debates on Iraq I’ve read in a long time.

ADVICE TO LAW STUDENTS REDUX: Orin Kerr offers some additional good advice.

NOT OVER SOON: Iran says it will supply Hezbollah with surface-to-air missiles. “Iranian authorities conveyed a message to the Hezbollah leadership that their forces would continue to receive a steady supply of weapons systems.”

THE RETURN OF THE MORALS CLAUSE? Today’s Wall St. Journal has an interesting article about how studio execs are pining for the days of the morals clause, in which studios could sever contractual relationships with stars who got in trouble that might generate bad press for the studio. Tom Cruise’s general looney behavior, Lindsey Lohan’s antics, and, of course, Meshuggah Mel Gibson are all prominently mentioned.

ADVICE TO INCOMING FIRST-YEAR LAW STUDENTS: It’s just about time for classes to start. The first year students at Cumberland begin orientation a week from Monday. I remember my first year experience as being profoundly challenging and humbling. Thinking back over my first-year, first semester experience and seeing first-year students from the other side (this is my eighth year teaching), I have a few pieces of advice for the up-and-coming first-year law student.

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A GREAT REFERENCE FOR FIRST-YEAR LAW STUDENTS: Orin Kerr has posted an essay on “How to Read a Judicial Opinion.”

MORE GOOD ADVICE from LaShawn Barber on avoiding Blogosphere Scandal. Today’s installment, “Don’t Plagiarize.”

PEAK AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE. Readers of my blog know that two things I love are driving my car — an Audi TT Coupe — through a beautiful landscape and listening to my favorite radio show Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan. I just completed a drive from Madison, my home town, to San Jose and back, going out by a southern route that took me through Arches National Park…

… and returning by a northern route that included the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, the Big Horn Scenic Byway, and — yesterday — the Badlands. The Thursday morning rebroadcast of this week’s radio show began as I was entering that spookily ravaged landscape. The theme was the devil, and I was steering my car through swooping curves past eerie rocks like this:

On the radio, it was Robert Johnson, singing Me and the Devil Blues:

It must-a be that old evil spirit
so deep down in the ground.

HIS FAVORITE COLOR IS GREEN! He keeps Hershey’s Kisses in the office! It’s a new book about Chief Justice John Roberts by Lisa Tucker McElroy, author of “Meet My Grandmother: She’s a Supreme Court Justice.”

Roberts still takes his kids to school or camp, and during the school year works with them on homework assignments — including a styrofoam model of the planet Neptune with Josie, and a paper Thanksgiving turkey in a pirate’s outfit with Jack, who is deeply into pirates these days. One priceless photo in the book, from last Halloween, has Josie adjusting Groucho glasses on the chief justice’s face.

Come on, you know you want this book! I’ve got McElroy’s book on Grandma O’Connor on a shelf in my office, and I’ve seen lawprofs get rather excited about it.

IT’S ALL ABOUT INTENSE MOTIVATION. Amba reads an article in Scientific American about what it takes to become an expert — in chess, in brain surgery, in hunting. She writes:

And motivation operates in a feedback loop: the pleasure of difficult success feeds the drive for more such challenges and rewards. It’s easy to see that the reinforcing rewards are both internal — the aesthetic rush of solving a problem — and external: praise, status, opportunity.

Ah, but how to get started on that loop? Our ancestors had the easy start-up motivation of hunger, but we — or our children — could wander aimlessly through life, never feeling the initial motivation. Perhaps nothing is more valuable and mysterious than becoming interested in something in the first place.

DANIEL DREZNER points out that Jake Weisberg’s argument that we should replace sanctions with engagement has a tiny little hole in it:

The constructive engagement approach rests on an odd assumption — that the leaders of a rogue state are somehow unaware that they will become trapped in a web of economic interdependence. The truth is that applying constructive engagement against as a means to induce economic and political change tends not to work either. Put crudely, if a regime wants to stay in power at all costs, all of the economic openness in the world is not going to make much difference, because the government that wants to stay in power will simply apply strict controls over trade with the outside world. If the United States were to unilaterally and unconditionally lift all barriers to exchange with Cuba, the government in Havana would immediately erect a maze of regulations designed to limit Cuban trade with the United States.

SPEAKING OF BLOGS The Economist has a piece (not written by me) in this week’s print edition on economists who blog.

BELIEVE IT ONLY WHEN YOU SEE IT: Syria says it kinda sorta maybe, if it’s not too much trouble and if they get something juicy for doing it, just might consider playing a “constructive role” in pressuring Hezbollah to agree to a ceasefire on Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora’s terms.

LEBANESE BLOGGER Josey Wales fisks the useless minister of the interior.

A PEACEKEEPING DREAM TEAM: Mustafa at Beirut Spring says the international peacekeepers Lebanese can trust most would come from Canada, Brazil, and Japan.

IRAN RATCHETS UP THE BELLICOSITY. Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei: “The American regime can expect a resounding slap and a devastating fist-blow from the Muslim nation…”

LEE SMITH challenges the conventional wisdom that everyone in Lebanon loves Hezbollah now. “There are many Lebanese imagining, fantasizing, hoping against hope that Hezbollah will be wiped from the face of the earth.”

Lee is right. He and I both lived in Lebanon, and he lived there longer than I did. (He only left a few weeks ago.) Lebanon’s “support” for Hezbollah is nothing more than an attempt at national unity during a fight. It will evaporate the instant Israel leaves. It will remain, though, as long as Israel stays and throughout cease-fire talks.

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION: After long quiescence, inflation is making a comeback. Obviously, high oil prices are a big part of this. But there’s another part of the story: the entrance of China (and to a lesser extent India) into the global labour market has effectively held down prices in developed countries, even when those economies are running at full capacity. Economic bottlenecks and problems with the financial system in China are making it harder for China to effectively export deflation (deflation is the opposition of inflation), which means consumer prices may rise still further.

That, in turn, is forcing central banks to raise interest rates even when the economy isn’t that strong. Both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England did so today, and while the former was all-but-foreordained, the latter move was a big surprise to everyone. If you have a subscription to The Economist (and if you don’t, what are you waiting for?! We’re giving away four free trial issues right now), you can read about it here; that’s what I’ve been labouring on under the sweltering August sun*.

Why should I care? I hear you cry. Why, because in these days of global markets, we’re all as interconnected as characters in an MCI ad; when the European Central Bank sneezes, your stock portfolio catches cold. Plus, if we want to be able to take a break from buying all the tea, (and televisions, and turkey basters, and tricycles) in China, we need Europe to get off le divan and get some gosh-darn economic growth. Which is harder to do when the interest rate on Das MasterCard just went up another two points.

*Well, technically I am under it–it’s just that there’s a roof and some air conditioning between us.

WARNING FRESHMAN ABOUT MYSPACE, FACEBOOK: Colleges are apparently reminding freshmen to be careful about what they put up on the web. This strikes me as useful advice. The Wall St. Journal had a recent front page story about employers checking MySpace and Facebook to see what potential employees had written or posted.

I’VE LONG SAID that if the Palestinians had had a Gandhi, they would have had their own state years ago. Matthew Yglesias makes the point at more length:

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WHY DO SCHOLARSHIP?: The Empirical Legal Studies blog had an on-line discussion (which starts here) about Tennessee law professor (and my buddy) Ben Barton’s paper, which concludes, on the basis of data he painstakingly collected, that there is no correlation between teaching and scholarship. In other words, just because one is a prolific scholar, that doesn’t mean that person is a good teacher. Much of the discussion has centered on whether using student evaluations is a good proxy for measuring teaching effectiveness. I think that Ben makes a great case for using them. However, one of the most interesting questions raised by Ben’s paper is whether (assuming that his findings are true, or are largely true) the legal academy needs to come up with an independent justification for the production of scholarship. The ABA and the AALS require that law schools hire full-time teacher/scholars, and require that vast resources be devoted to facilitate the production of legal scholarship. (Query how much this focus on scholarship and the resources that need to be devoted to it push up the cost of legal education?) Before Ben’s study, my sense is that many scholars would have bet there was some relationship between good teaching and good scholarship. Now that he’s called that into question, should we be asking ourselves whether we need to justify scholarship on other grounds? Don’t misunderstand, I am all in favor of scholarship. I like writing and thinking about problems in the law and (I hope) advancing the discipline in my own modest way. But my interaction with alumni (among other groups) suggest that we in the academy treat the need for scholarship as self-evident when it is not necessarily apparent to others. Perhaps Ben’s paper could (among other things) begin a converstation on that topic as well.

DWS?: Joe Olson sends this article from the Times describing Preston, Lancashire’s attempt to ban “Drinking While Standing.”

WHEN BLOGGERS CAUSE TROUBLE for the candidate they support. You know those bloggers, with their daring, feisty ways. Sometimes when they’re trying to help, they hand ammunition to the other side. (Better hire a blog wrangler.) Then there’s the secondary effect, where bloggers criticize the bloggers who are politically aligned with the offending blogger, for not speaking out: “I only see righties that posted criticism of this weird use of blackface.” Meanwhile, Jane Hamsher apologizes, and it’s that sorry if you were offended form of apology with the extra oomph of implying that a lot of the offense was bogus and an immediate descent into justification for giving offense. Ah, bloggers and politics! Who knows what these free-swinging characters will do next? Do you even want them on your side? Do you even know how to figure out if you do?

THE MARY MATALIN/JAMES CARVILLE REALITY SHOW. Would you want them in your high school? I think it sounds like a cool show, and I’d be tempted to say yes, but I think the proper answer for school authorities is no. If you know anything about reality show editing, you know it’s not fair to the real individuals who produce the footage and who often don’t understand how they are providing the material for their own humiliation. If you don’t know what I’m talking about — or if you just want to see the greatest TV comedy of all time — get the DVD of “The Comeback” and see what happens to our darling (fictional) character Valerie Cherish.

GIVE HER SOME AIR! In New York City, where I am, an unexpected side effect of the heat and humidity–I can’t breathe. I have mild asthma, and the air quality must be some kind of bad, because the bottoms of my lungs have that burning soreness you get when you’ve had a bad cough, or decided to run a 5K after seven years on the couch. Which, incidentally, I had to sleep sitting up on last night so I could breathe easier.

Meanwhile, tempers are fraying. I saw two ladies nearly come to blows yesterday over the last iced mocha at the local deli.

One more day until it breaks. Must . . . stay . . . alive . . . one . . . more . . . day . . .