NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: There’s good news and bad news. First, the bad news:

Government officials in Germany have reported what appears to be the first health-related recall of a nanotechnology product, raising a potential public perception problem for the rapidly growing but still poorly understood field of science.

At least 77 people reported severe respiratory problems over a one-week period at the end of March — including six who were hospitalized with pulmonary edema, or fluid in the lungs — after using a “Magic Nano” bathroom cleansing product, according to the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment in Berlin.

Of course, read further down and you encounter this:

Michael Holman, an analyst at Lux Research in New York, which tracks the industry, said the spray may even be one of many products that lack engineered nanoparticles but claim to be “nano” for high-tech appeal. Even so, he said, “this is certainly a cautionary tale from a public perception standpoint.”

Well, yes. Of course, as I’ve noted before, the industry’s shortsighted PR policy is directly responsible for those perceptions.

On the other hand, here’s some good news:

Tiny particles of gold could soon be helping to spot viruses, bacteria and toxins used by bio-terrorists. Researchers in the UK have found that gold nanoparticles are very effective detectors of biological toxins.

The particles reveal the presence of poisons far faster than existing techniques which often involve shipping samples back to a lab.

Neither of these involves the kind of thing most of us mean when we talk about nanotechnology — nothing Drexlerian here. In the taxonomy I set out a while ago, the first example is “fake” nanotechnology, and the second is “simple” nanotechnology. We’re a long way from the “major” variety, much less the “spooky” stuff that the industry was afraid would scare people. Of course, by downplaying the more advanced nanotechnology, the industry just made public perceptions about the fake stuff more significant. They seem to be a bit smarter about that now, but unfortunately considerable damage has already been done.

AUSTIN BAY:

The sudden press flap over Scooter Libby’s alleged “revelation” that President Bush declassified intelligence information related to Iraq is silly but all too predictable. The entire flap relies on mixing terms and “misunderstanding by innuendo” — a technique of demagoguery, not journalism. The flap is yet more evidence that the national press is more interested in playing “gotcha” with the Bush Administration than reporting the news.

Presidents and vice-presidents can declassify information based on their own good (or bad) judgment. That is a privilege and responsibility of the office. Their authority is near-absolute. Disseminating unclassified information isn’t a crime — no matter the technique used. The information can be disseminated at a press conference, in a press release, in a speech, or — yes– via leak.

Reporters thrive on “leaks” because a leak usually means “scoop.” A leak can also mean “spin” but that’s an understood aspect of Washington’s political carnival. However, leaking properly declassified material isn’t a crime. Leaking classified material is illegal– and so is publishing classified material in a press release.

So what’s the story here? That someone who worked in the White House selectively passed properly declassified material to the press? That’s not a scandal; that’s Beltway business as usual. I’d love to hear that reported– it’s not news per se, but it would be refreshingly open and honest media analysis.

However, the breathless excitement with which MSNBC (during the 3 PM CDT hour) broke this story certainly suggested scandal. An hour later the mood had calmed a bit; even so a rather smug Chris Matthews asked his attorney guest why Scooter Libby would “finger the President?” Dick Sauber (Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper’s lawyer) responded that Libby was probably trying to cover for himself. That’s possible, and it’s reasonable, non-libelous speculation on Sauber’s part. But the bottom line is the president can declassify information. “Finger” is a push word, stoked with criminal innuendo —but Bush was not engaged in a criminal act. Questioning Bush’s judgment is perfectly appropriate, but accusation of crime or lies is unwarranted. (As it is, the information in question came from the National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE information didn’t have anything to do with the Plame case.) . . . CNN is exploring another angle: that the White House is “hypocritical” because it has come down hard on leaks. But a word is missing in this accusation: “unauthorized.”

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Arianna Huffington has a different slant.

THE IMMIGRATION COMPROMISE gets a bad review from Paul Mirengoff: “The proposal seems to conform to my concept of a bad immigration bill — it provides the certainty of benefits for illegal aliens with only the promise of future enforcement.”

UPDATE: Here’s Bill Frist’s blog post defending the compromise.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mickey Kaus sides with Mirengoff. My own, conflicted, take is here.

ANN ALTHOUSE:

People blog for lots of different reasons, and blogging is still burgeoning and developing. Don’t cave into nostalgia for a Golden Age, especially one that got its golden glow from the horror that was 9/11. Things were bound to change and shake around, and some bloggers that you liked then may put you off now. But there are always a million new bloggers, and blogging is a beautifully fruitful format. The great power of blogging is the way it releases the creativity of the individual mind.

I agree.

NEWS FROM MALI:

The Tuareg tribes are again in rebellion against the Mail government. One of Africa’s few real democracies, with more than a decade of orderly elections and presidential successions, Mali has about 12.3 million people, but is nearly twice the size of Texas, and sprawls across the Sahel and parts of the Sahara. Although most of the people are Moslems, religious radicalism does not seem to have put down any roots.

The desert regions of the far north of the country, up against the Algerian frontier, are not only the most thinly populated region, but also the least well-controlled by the central government. Banditry and feuds among the largely Tuareg Berber tribes are common in the north. In addition, the region seems to have attracted Islamist fundamentalists fleeing defeat in Algeria, who have reportedly set up base camps in order to regroup. This is causing concern not only in Mali, but also in Algeria and nearby Mauritania. All three countries have recently reached a number of agreements to promote greater security in the region, and these include rights of “hot pursuit” during operations against extremists.

They’re getting quiet U.S. assistance, too.

PLAME UPDATE: Tom Maguire has an update on the latest Libby disclosures. He’s got lots of links and quotes.

HERE’S THE WEBPAGE for MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, which I hear is getting a visit from the Chief of Staff of the Army today.

IN THE MAIL: Charles Glasser’s International Libel And Privacy Handbook: A Global Reference for Journalists, Publishers, Webmasters, And Lawyers. Glasser is media counsel for Bloomberg News.

OUCH: Average Joes 1, Sen. Grassley 0.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This would be pretty funny.

MORE: Rand Simberg wonders what Sen. Grassley plans to do about IRS personnel.

NASA TAKES an Army of Davids approach.

ZEYAD IS COMING TO AMERICA to study journalism. (I was one of his references, and have seldom recommended anyone as enthusiastically). In an auspicious start, he gets a profile (free link) in the Wall Street Journal.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: N.Z. Bear was on Hugh Hewitt last night, reporting all sorts of developments on the PorkBusters front, going well beyond Trent Lott’s public PorkBusters snit. The transcript and audio can be found here.

Here’s an excerpt:

HH: And that is a problem. Last question, N.Z. During the leadership vote that led to Majority Leader Boehner’s election, many promises were made about transparency to the internet community. Do you think they’ve been met and kept?

NZ: I would say at this point it’s safe to say that they have not been met. My hope is that we will see more progress on that in the coming months. But I certainly can’t say I’m impressed thus far at any particular progress in that direction. The only notable effort that really came out in terms of transparency that I have seen was again, Senator Coburn made a proposal that would have required a great deal of transparency, and set up a public database for Congressional funding, and it was shot down rather dramatically, I believe, a couple of days back.

We’ve been let down by the Congressional Republicans. Again.

Meanwhile, here’s a new oversight website set up by Sen. Coburn’s office to help track wasteful spending.

NASCAR has responded to NBC. They’re not happy. NBC has apparently already been trawling their ringers around racing fans without managing to produce any untoward events.

Thus, some advice for NBC: “if NBC wants to guarantee they get a negative reaction to their ‘plant’, all they need to do is put him in a Jeff Gordon t-shirt.”

UPDATE: Reader B.J. Bethel emails: “I’m more curious to see how two men in Hasidic dress would be treated at a mosque or ANSWER event. My guess is the NASCAR muslims would have an easier time.”

And Jim Treacher writes: “I just figured out why Couric is moving to CBS. She’s going undercover for Dateline!”

THERE’S A NEW MEL BROOKS DVD BOX SET out, and Mel Brooks is shilling even harder than I’ve done for An Army of Davids:

“I think people should buy 20 of them. Buy 20 and save a lot of them for Christmas presents. Who knows how many of these they make? They might be gone,” Brooks said, and not entirely in jest.

It’s not that Brooks, 79, who turned his 1968 film The Producers into a Broadway money machine, could be financially strapped. Profit isn’t the issue, he said.

“I want these movies to be seen. Nobody has seen The Twelve Chairs or Silent Movie,” he said, naming two of the hard-to-find titles in the boxed set out this week.

I cracked and ordered one, even though I’ve already got a couple of his movies.

MARY KATHARINE HAM: “If you ever wonder why Congress’ approval numbers are so low, look no further than this debate on 527 reform. The flagrant switcheroo (anyone know what the hand signal for that call?) by both parties is just totally transparent.”

Andy Roth has multiple posts, and is unhappy: “It was a tough fight, but we came up short.”

UPDATE: This seems right: “Legislators aren’t satisfied with their ability to control who votes for them through their partisan gerrymanders, but now want to control who says how much and when about their performance in office.”

I OFFER ADVICE TO TOM DELAY: I’m pretty sure he won’t follow it, though.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Hey, maybe it’s not just Trent Lott who’s getting tired: Apparently, Congressional earmark requests are down 37% this year.

I think we need to keep the pressure up.

Meanwhile, Tim Chapman reports that Senate Appropriators have been caught fudging the truth.

TIM CHAPMAN NOTES those pesky PorkBusters.

And Preston Taylor Holmes observes: “Well, Trent, if you and your GOP buddies walked the walk instead of just talking the ‘smaller government, fiscal restraint’ talk, you wouldn’t be having a fiscal colonoscopy.” Colonoscopies are good for you. They often get rid of problems that could be fatal later.

Blake Wylie thinks that Lott is anti-accountability.

Amusing cartoon here.

UPDATE: John Hawkins: “I keep hearing rumors that Trent Lott wants to be Senate Majority Leader again once Bill Frist leaves at the end of 2006. That would really send a great message to the voters, wouldn’t it?”

DECLINING NUMBERS of U.S. casualties, Iraqi casualties, civilian deaths, and bombings:

My point here is not that everything is peachy in Iraq. It isn’t. My point isn’t that the insurgency is in its last throes. It isn’t. My point here isn’t even to argue that we’re winning. I’m at best cautiously-pessimistic-to-neutral about how things are going there.

My only point is that, at the very least, people who complain that good news coming out of Iraq gets shuttered by the press aren’t crazy. I’m a regular denizen of the right-leaning blogosphere (though I spend about half my daily routine with left-leaning sites), and I was unequivicolly shocked when I saw this. Completely the opposite of what I’d expected. My non-scientific sample of three friends, all of whom are considerably more bullish about the prospects in Iraq than I am, revealed three people similarly surprised by these numbers. I’m guessing if I polled people on this site regarding the direction those numbers were going, and people didn’t answer strategically (eg figure I was up to something from the question words), no one would predict any of those numbers were on a downward trend, or were even flat.

Again, my point isn’t that we’re winning. My only point is that if the data you’ve received left you completely surprised by these numbers, what does that really say about the completeness of the data you’ve received?

The numbers come from Brookings.

UPDATE: The Commissar says that the Brookings numbers on Iraqi civilian deaths for March are much lower than those from other groups, and he thinks they’re incomplete.

JOHN HINDERAKER on Trent Lott’s remark that he’s tired of PorkBusters: “It is common, I think, for Senators to get tired of hearing from the voters, and they tire especially quickly of hearing from taxpayers.” Indeed.

NOW THE PLAGIARISM CHARGES are directed at Al Franken.

UPDATE: Reader David Mastio thinks the case against Franken isn’t very strong.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oh, he blogged it here. It’s best to include a link with your email when you do that.

ERIC UMANSKY on the New York Times web redesign: “I’m not really digging it.”

I find it more attractive at first glance, but less readable.

HARRY REID:

Reid’s bill . . . overhauls the nation’s immigration laws and calls for a massive scale-down of immigrants allowed into the country from approximately 800,000 to 300,000.

The bill also changes asylum laws to prevent phony asylum seekers. Reid said the U.S. open door policy is being abused at the expense of honest, working citizens.

“We are a country founded upon fairness and justice,” Reid said. “An individual in real threat of torture or long-term incarceration because of his or her political beliefs can still seek asylum. But this bill closes the door to those who want to abuse America’s inherent generosity and legal system.”

Reid’s bill also cracks down on illegal immigration. The 1990 census reported 3.3 million illegal aliens in America. Recent estimates indicate about 2.5 million immigrants illegally entered the United States last year.

“Our borders have overflowed with illegal immigrants placing tremendous burdens on our criminal justice system, schools and social programs,” Reid said. “The Immigration and Naturalization Service needs the ability to step up enforcement.

“Our federal wallet is stretched to the limit by illegal aliens getting welfare, food stamps, medical care and other benefits often without paying any taxes.

“Safeguards like welfare and free medical care are in place to boost Americans in need of short-term assistance. These programs were not meant to entice freeloaders and scam artists from around the world. “Even worse, Americans have seen heinous crimes committed by individuals who are here illegally,” Reid said.

But that was in 1993.

ELIOT COHEN: Yes, it’s anti-semitic.