IN THE MAIL: Mark Halperin and John Harris’s new book, The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008. I think the subject will be near and dear to a lot of people’s hearts.

REP. JIM OBERSTAR fails the pork test.

UPDATE: Here’s more on Oberstar, including video.

A REPORT ON THE NANOTECHNOLOGY DISCUSSION at the MIT Emerging Tech Conference:

The question put before the panel of five esteemed scientists speaking here is, essentially, “How much should we be worrying about the health consequences of the new nanosubstances we are rushing to develop.” And this question isn’t just academic. As Dr. Vicki Colvin, a Chemist from Rice University points out, the carbon nanomaterial c60 is already used in over-the-counter cosmetics, and is an important component in many fuel cells.

But what do such materials do to our cells? The answer is that no one is quite sure. Studies are showing that the basic physical properties of certain substances can change when you get to the nanoscale. The questions still outweigh the answers. Are we even dealing with new materials? Should they be reclassified? After all is engineered nano c60 a new material, or is it just plain old soot? It turns out that how you manufacture your materials—and how you treat and dispose of them, can dramatically change their effect on the human body and the environment.

As I mentioned, the presentation shows that at this point, there is a lot of research to be done, but it is also encouraging to see these concerns raised early in the life cycle of nanotechnology. After all, as one of the speakers here pointed out, it took years after mass production and deployment of technologies such as DDT and chlorofluorocarbons before we realized their detrimental side effects—side effects that ended up overshadowing the scientific benefits that those technologies provided. One of the panelists, Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, sees this as a unique time when we can build in toxicity research and oversight into the development process. And when you think about it, doing the responsible research early on will ensure the long-term viability of the entire nanotech field. All it takes is one health scare to turn the term “nano” from a new-economy buzz word into a technological pariah.

That’s right. I have some further thoughts on the topic here.

DARFUR UPDATE: Austin Bay writes that the sword is mightier than the pen:

The mounting death toll in Darfur tests Annan’s stirring words. But when it comes to ending genocide, words require swords. Fine words cannot protect the vulnerable from dedicated killers — that job demands soldiers. . . . Despite Annan’s fine words, outside of London and Washington such leadership is not in evidence. Until it appears, ‘the international community’ deserves to be shamed.

Read the whole thing.

OVER AT PUBLIUS, a look at Russia’s meddling in Georgia.

UNNECESSARY DIVISIONS OVER UNNECESSARY DIVISIONS: Eric Scheie — whose picture appears in the dictionary next to the word “decent” — writes: “The ‘blogostorm’ between Dean Esmay and Michelle Malkin has little to do with me personally, but everything to do with the national debate this country has been having since 9/11 when we were attacked by suicidal Saudi Salafists.”

SOME NICE WORDS FROM MICHAEL MALONE OF ABC NEWS:

Pajamas got off to a shaky start — stumbling just enough to satisfy those who had predicted it to fail but eventually finding its legs.

Now that the mainstream media have moved on to other stories, Pajamas is pulling in hundreds of thousands of readers each day, all drawn to its attractive mix of stories, viewpoints and, increasingly, videos.

Right now, especially on the big international stories, nobody covers events from more perspectives and with greater nuance than Pajamas Media.

I do think that the site has gotten much better, and it’s now doing the kinds of things I hoped for at its inception. Malone has also found “a vision for what a true, Web-based global news network should look like.”

A POLICE ACADEMY DEBACLE in Iraq. Kim Catrall and Steve Guttenberg were not involved, but the Army Corps of Engineers was.

ANOTHER “I TOLD YOU SO” on Lieberman.

MICKEY KAUS: “An old controversy, I know–but that’s why it’s so astonishing to find this casual, loaded distortion in the lede of an important story. Hernandez–or whatever anonymous Times editor decided to goose up his second graf–had to have known that the sentence was deceptive, no? Or if they didn’t know they didn’t care. … We’re a month away from an election! They’re manning the battle stations at the NYT. …”

DARFUR UPDATE: “The U.N. chief in Sudan said Thursday the government is unlikely to let U.N. peacekeepers in the country anytime soon, and the international community should instead push for the African Union force to remain in the war-torn region indefinitely. . . . A U.N. Security Council resolution calls for 20,000 peacekeepers to replace the ill-equipped and underfunded AU force that has done little to prevent escalating violence in Darfur. But Sudan’s president fiercely rejects the U.N. mission, and it can’t deploy without his consent.”

It seems a bit rich to ask permission of the genocidaires before sending in troops to stop a genocide.

SUDDENLY, CONGRESS IS DOING A LOT: “just moments ago, the Senate invoked cloture on the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by a vote of 71-28. Tomorrow the Senate will pass this legislation and send it to the President’s desk for his signature.”

THE DETAINEE TRIAL BILL has passed, in a form that seems to be pretty close to what the White House wanted, though I haven’t read the actual bill:

Earlier, the Senate narrowly rejected an amendment, sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), that would have allowed suspected terrorists to challenge their detention in federal court. Senators voted 51 to 48 against the amendment, which called for deleting from the bill a provision that rules out habeas corpus petitions for foreigners held in the war on terrorism. The writ of habeas corpus, which is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, allows people to challenge in court the legality of their detention, essentially meaning that they cannot be held indefinitely without charge or trial.

The issue was one of the most contentious in the bill, which authorizes the president “to establish military commissions for the trial of alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses. . . .” Under the rules in the bill, statements obtained from a detainee by torture would not be admissible as evidence, but information extracted using harsh interrogation methods that violate a ban on “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” would be allowed if they were obtained before the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 went into effect on Dec. 30 and if a judge found them to be reliable and in the interests of justice.

The proposed legislation would also set the parameters for interrogating terrorism suspects. It bars the president from authorizing any interrogation techniques that amount to war crimes, which it says include torture, murder, mutilation or maiming, rape, sexual abuse, serious bodily injury, hostage-taking, biological experiments and cruel or inhuman treatment. However, the president could “interpret the meaning and application” of Geneva Convention standards regarding less severe interrogation methods, the Associated Press reported.

Under a compromise reached last week with three recalcitrant Republican senators, the bill omits a provision sought by Bush that interpreted U.S. obligations under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Critics said that provision amounted to redefining a key part of the conventions and would put captured U.S. troops at risk if an enemy decided to do the same.

The last argument is silly, as we haven’t had an enemy that respected the Geneva Conventions in my lifetime, and aren’t likely to have one any time soon. And if our enemies’ disregard for the laws of war doesn’t justify us acting similarly, then it’s not clear why any behavior on our part would justify a departure from the Conventions on the part of some hypothetical future enemy.

As for the rest, I don’t understand the admissibility of evidence before December 30. It seems to me that it’s either wrong or it’s not, and that an arbitrary date doesn’t make wrong conduct right, or right conduct wrong.

I’ve seen some people calling this an abolition of habeas corpus, but as I understand it, habeas is suspended only with regard to non-citizens. This removes a key danger of abuse, since the potential politically-motivated abuses that are most worrisome involve U.S. citizens, not aliens. And Congress quite explicitly has the Constitutional power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, though whether this counts as a “suspension” of the writ is open for debate. Like Orin Kerr, I’m not an expert on habeas and thus don’t have a lot more to say about it.

At any rate, I can’t say I’m surprised that it worked out this way, as this is pretty consistent with polls I’ve seen on public attitudes. Congress has acted, and the political system seems pretty much in agreement, both between the legislative and executive branches, and between those branches and the electorate.

Meanwhile, the locus of criticism of the legislation, the Democratic opposition, and more can be found at Balkinization. Go there for lots of critiques and complaints.

UPDATE: Via TVC, I found this column by Jonathan Rauch. It’s a few days old, but I believe this analysis remains on-point:

The differences between the proposals were fairly important, but what was really momentous was their similarity. On several fundamental points, a consensus has taken shape.

First, torture should be legally off-limits, period, regardless of circumstances. Hardly anyone says otherwise.

Second, some kind of special and secret system for detaining and interrogating high-value terrorism suspects is justifiable and necessary. In a statement on September 6, Sen. Jay Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the Democratic vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said, “I support the continuation of a CIA detention and interrogation program, but it must be operated in a lawful manner.” No prominent Democrat, or Republican, was heard to disagree.

Finally, general agreement exists that the central purpose of a detention and interrogation system is to prevent terrorism, not to prevent torture. That point may sound trivial, but it is not: Many human-rights advocates believe that the foremost responsibility of any detention system is to treat detainees humanely. On Capitol Hill, both parties reject that view. In its way, this is a seminal decision.

Read the whole thing, which — as with all of Rauch’s work — is worth reading.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A.J. Strata thinks it’s a disaster for the Democrats. He’s not the only one. Read this, too.

MORE: According to an email published by Jonah Goldberg, the bill doesn’t just apply to aliens. That conflicts with the report above, and with my understanding, and with a piece I heard on NPR this morning. But if it’s true, it’s a major problem with the bill, one that increases the likelihood ofits being found unconstitutional, and one that would make me much more unhappy with the bill.

MORE STILL: Jonah has a followup indicating that the above is in error, and that the bill applies only to aliens.

That kind of yanks the rug out from under this post by Andrew Sullivan, too. But I think that we’re seeing the instantiation of what I warned him about nearly two years ago. (“I think the effort to turn this into an anti-Bush political issue is a serious mistake, and the most likely outcome will be, in essence, the ratification of torture (with today’s hype becoming tomorrow’s reality) and a political defeat for the Democrats.”) Meanwhile, his gratuitious slap at PorkBusters seems more peevishly jealous than anything else. But PorkBusters has worked because it is bipartisan, focuses on the goal rather than the bloggers pushing it, and tries to treat people (except, perhaps, occasionally Trent Lott) with some minimal courtesy, an approach that Andrew might consider emulating in his next crusade.

And here’s a post by Jack Balkin saying that the habeas-stripping procedures only apply to aliens, but that other provisions regarding unlawful combatants may apply to U.S. citizens. I tend to agree that to the extent this is true it is probably unconstitutional, though I haven’t studied this issue to nearly the extent that Jack has.

Plus, some useful thoughts from Eugene Volokh.

THE MORAL TESTIMONY OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM: Eugene Volokh comments on remarks by former Bush bioethics advisor Leon Kass: “This is poetry, it seems to me, not argument.”

And we’re not talking Yeats, either.

A.C. KLEINHEIDER thinks that I’m overly positive on Harold Ford, Jr.’s chances, and that the Ford family will cause him problems.

He may be right. I haven’t written about the Jake Ford / Steve Cohen race because Steve Cohen gave me great tickets to see John Fogerty’s first “comeback” concert when he opened the Centerfield tour in Memphis, and thus earned my undying loyalty. Hence, a conflict of interest.

Plus, the WSJ shows Corker up 5% now. It’s a close race, and it’ll probably stay one.

JOE LIEBERMAN ON AL GORE: “I can forgive, but I probably won’t forget.”

Meanwhile, Lieberman leads Lamont by ten points.

4000 AL QAEDA KILLED IN IRAQ. Good riddance.

MICHELLE MALKIN responds to Dean Esmay.

INDEED: “When you spend nine to 10 months calling each other names, and when the person best at that wins, you get a Congress just as we have — addicted to the kind of wedge-issue, name-calling politics that has people so fed up with the Congress.”

See this post from Tigerhawk, on the role of gerrymandering and safe seats in promoting nastiness, too.

“POLL SMOKING.”

MICHAEL SILENCE REMINDS THE NEW YORK TIMES that Tennessee is not actually a red state: “Polls and surveys have shown for 12 years now that independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats. . . . Harold Ford Jr. knows all this, and he’s playing it like a virtuoso violinist.”

IN THE MAIL: John Fund’s book, Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy.

My thoughts on the subject can be found here.

COOL STUFF BEING MADE: The folks at the National Association of Manufacturers have a series of posts on how things are made, along with video and photos from the shop floor. Given how divorced most people are from the process of actually making things these days, I think this is very cool. It should be a TV series! Er, I mean . . .

THOUGHTS ON ART, OPERA, AND ISLAMISTS:

Now that some Muslims have made it painfully obvious that religion-taunting is not an easy game anymore, abandoning it expresses fear, not respect for religion. And continuing to disrespect the religions that don’t lash back only highlights that cowardice. Poor transgressive rebel artists! How are they to shock the middle class anymore?

They may have to go back to actually doing work that’s, you know, good.

HAROLD FORD, JR. voted for the detainee bill.