I DONATED BLOOD TODAY, as part of the Blue/Orange blood drive competition with Kentucky. Tennessee had a lead of well over 100 pints, meaning that we’ve got a decent chance at winning something this weekend, anyway. . . .

Turnout was very good, and once again I was interested to see that the sex ratio — once skewed heavily toward women — seemed to have evened out. The blood folks said that was their impression, too. Best button: “Phlebotomists have bloody good ideas!”

The list of questions and exclusions seems to get longer every time I do this. As I’ve noted here before, I wonder if all these exclusions might not cost as many lives as they save. Since I’m one of the few people I know who’s eligible to give blood, I try to do it a couple of times a year, since it’s got to come from someplace.

UPDATE: Reader D. Norwood writes: “As the parent of 2 immune deficient children who are alive today because of regular infusions of a blood product (gamma globulin), I want to thank you for donating blood. You literally saved lives today and 2 of those lives are very precious to me.”

If you can donate, it’s good to do so. We take blood availability for granted but, like a lot of things that we take for granted, it’s only there because people do what’s necessary.

A RECORD DAY for the U.S. financial markets.

AZIZ POONAWALLA: “I am fascinated by the fascination we muslims tend to have for the Israeili Palestine conflict.”

IS THERE A CORRELATION BETWEEN TROOP NUMBERS AND VIOLENCE IN IRAQ? Bruce Rolston does some number-crunching.

IN THE MAIL, AN INTERESTING BOOK ON TRAFFIC: Ted Balaker and Sam Staley’s The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It. They argue that traffic congestion does much more harm than is generally appreciated, and that municipalities’ programs aimed at making traffic worse in order to encourage people to use mass transit are deeply mistaken. They also argue that fixing traffic problems is easier and cheaper than is popularly thought. I’ve read the first several chapters and it’s very interesting; I hope it gets a broad readership. Interesting tidbit: If you exclude New York, America has more telecommuters than mass-transit commuters.

I’ve had some related thoughts on this topic myself, here.

THERE ARE SOME SECTIONS OF KNOXVILLE THAT I WOULD NOT ADVISE YOU TO INVADE (CONT’D):

State Sen. Tim Burchett says he caught a group of youngsters during a break-in Wednesday, held them at gunpoint and fed them chocolate-chip cookies until Knox County sheriff’s deputies arrived. . . .

The state senator, who said he holds a conceal-carry permit, had a recently purchased 9 mm Glock pistol and a .25 automatic Keltec as a “backup,” according to his account. He said he brandished the larger pistol and told the youths to “put your hands up” and then to “put your hands behind your head.”

“One of them said, ‘Well, which one do you want – hands up or behind the head?’ and I said, ‘Either one’,” Burchett said.

He said they waited about 15 minutes “in the rain and mud” for deputies to arrive. During the period, he said, the youths began talking – one of them basically admitting to the break-in – and he gave them some of the cookies that a friend had given him earlier in the day.

Burchett said he understood from the deputies that one of the youths was 18 years old and the others were juveniles. He said he intends to press charges, fearing that if punishment is left to parents “they might take away the GameBoy for one afternoon.”

On the other hand, Knoxville’s anti-gun mayor, Bill Haslam, is facing a boycott of his family’s Pilot Oil Company by people unhappy with his support for Mike Bloomberg and the Joyce Foundation.

KAUSFILES: “If Harman loses her chair because she supported the war, shouldn’t Waxman lose his?”

ALPHECCA NOTES A NEW ORDINANCE that tries to establish universal gun ownership among citizens.

JULES CRITTENDEN ON MURTHA V. HOYER: “Sit back and enjoy.”

UPDATE: More comic relief.

JAMES CARVILLE: Dump Howard Dean for “Rumsfeldian Incompetence.”

Poor Howard. Like Rumsfeld he won a brilliant victory but now he’s getting chewed up in the ensuing internecine strife.

A CIRCULATION STRATEGY THAT JUST MIGHT SAVE THE NEW YORK TIMES: Have the Army force people to subscribe!

UPDATE: Alternatively, they could try addressing their diversity problem.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Laura Lee Donoho was on this story months ago.

BECAUSE IT’S ALL ABOUT BRINGING FRESH FACES AND INTEGRITY to the Democratic Party: “Netroots support for Rep. John Murtha (PA) over Rep. Steny Hoyer (MD) for majority leader continues to solidify and strengthen.”

Thank goodness the netroots are bringing in fresh blood, fresh faces, and new ideas. Otherwise we’d be stuck with a bunch of tired old Congressional hacks running things!

Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus parses Murtha’s Macacaesque effort to recast the meaning of the word “crap,” which is hindered by the fact that, unlike “Macaca,” the word “crap” has a clear meaning already. Yet the NYT hasn’t noticed.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from G.M. Roper.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “The new Congress’s ‘botched joke?'”

MY EARLIER TV POST generated this email from Jesse Londin:

I did some poking around too, last week finally took the plunge and went with this Philips 42″ plasma deal (to be installed on Thursday):

Link

For me it just had to be plasma. Some kind of fetish, I guess — I’ve always loved the word. Don’t know why. PLAAASMAA. (And I thank goodness Dr. Helen has as yet not noted any particular concerns about plasma-lovers or their behavior. ;) (Come to think of it, I would have thought of you as the plasma type, too.)

Now if I could only find SOME darn thing I care to watch…

Plasma sounds cool and Trekkish, I guess (“Activate plasma screens, Mr. Sulu!”), but my friend Doug Weinstein — much more of a videohead than me — favors LCDs for better color reproduction. And it looks like Jesse found at least one show worth watching today.

VARIOUS PEOPLE have written to ask how my brother-in-law is doing. He just completed his first post-chemo round of scans and turned up cancer-free. We’re happy about that, as you might imagine.

A LOOK AT THE PROPHETIC AUSTIN BAY: He’s a very smart guy. And, as I’ve noted before, he was more realistic than some.

SO WE HAD THESE HEARINGS ON IRAQ, and generals Abizaid and Zinni are arguing against timetables for withdrawal, which has been the Democrats’ main policy proposal.

Did the Democrats know beforehand that this is what the generals thought? If so, were they dishonest in not taking it into account? Maybe they were relying on this sort of thing to keep from having to do what the MoveOn crowd wants, but what they know is wrong?

Or did they not know, making them clueless? Neither one’s impressive. But since the big criticism of Rumsfeld, which led to his defenestration, was that he “didn’t listen to the generals,” what are the Democrats to do now that the generals have spoken?

As Dave Price notes, this is Bush’s Iraq trump card:

The bedrock political strength of Bush’s Iraq policy is that it rests on the advice of the military, in which public trust runs deep and wide, whatever they may think of the war itself or the decision to invade. Democrats may have no qualms about calling Bush incompetent, but witnessing how quickly they ran away from Kerry’s perceived knock on U.S. troops, it’s safe to assume they will be very wary about voicing similar opinions regarding the commanders on the ground in Iraq. That public view of the military as nearly sacrosanct is a major difference between now and Vietnam, and it puts the Dems in an awkward position when they advocate a position the military vehemently disagrees with.

Sure, Iraq hasn’t lived up to the naive predictions of some (“two to three months of a very strong military presence”), but as wiser heads noted, “Victory in that dark, intricate conflict remains years away. While the operational victory is extraordinary, strategic victory in the War on Terror requires focused and sustained military, political and economic efforts.” [Later: See this, too.]

Cut-and-run doesn’t fit this strategy, and it’s nice to see the Democrats being reminded of it. It’s too bad, though, that the media neglected this stuff — along with a lot of other things — before the elections, as part of their effort to deliver Evan Thomas’s 15 percent to the Democrats. Still, better late than never.

Plus, this seems right to me: “Our goal now must be to focus on projecting power on Iran, and preventing an open Al Qaeda base from establishing itself in Sunni Iraq. And we must protect Kurdistan.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

My son is a Marine and is scheduled to deploy to the sandbox this spring. His first time there, but not the first time the fundamentalists have tried to kill him while in uniform.

While going through SOI (School of Infantry) a couple of years ago, one of his sergeants told the class that this would take over 5 years to get the Iraqi army to the point of being able to defend the country. He also told them not to listen to what people predicted about getting out of Iraq quickly. These guys were going to take some time to build up a seasoned fighting force (meaning Non-Coms) This was not “US policy”, just the comments from someone who knew his job and what it was realistically going to take to complete the task. I knew then that it was questionable if we had the stomach for that long of a commitment.

In case you are curious, the Marines do.

I’m not surprised to hear that.

MORE: Questioning the timing.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION UPDATE:

As convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff reported to federal prison today, a source close to the investigation surrounding his activities told ABC News that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was one of the members of Congress Abramoff had allegedly implicated in his cooperation with federal prosecutors.

A spokesperson for Reid, elected yesterday as the Senate Majority Leader, said the senator had done nothing illegal or unethical. . . .

A source close to the investigation says Abramoff told prosecutors that more than $30,000 in campaign contributions to Reid from Abramoff’s clients “were no accident and were in fact requested by Reid.”

Abramoff has reportedly claimed the Nevada senator agreed to help him on matters related to Indian gambling.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that Reid wrote at least four letters helpful to the tribes that had contributed money to his campaign. . . .Sen. Reid has been an outspoken critic of the connections between Abramoff and Republican legislators.

In a speech earlier this year, Sen. Reid described it as “a program where the lobbyists paid and the Republican members of Congress played.”

Corruption, or constituent service? Stay tuned. At the very least, though, this looks like a Foleyesque level of hypocrisy.

MODEST PROGRESS IN PAKISTAN: “Pakistan’s national assembly has voted to amend the country’s strict Sharia laws on rape and adultery. Until now rape cases were dealt with in Sharia courts. Victims had to have four male witnesses to the crime – if not they faced prosecution for adultery. Now civil courts will be able to try rape cases, assuming the upper house and the president ratify the move.”

Of course, not everyone is happy: “Addressing parliament on Wednesday, the leader of the six-party MMA Islamic alliance, Maulana Fazlur Rahman, said the bill would ‘turn Pakistan into a free-sex zone’.”

Mr. Rahman is a barbarian. It’s nice to see civilization trying to assert itself.

UPDATE: An interesting response to the barbarians:

The answer is taking gender-based oppression into account in refuge claims. We could “rescue” every oppressed Afghan woman who wants asylum by simply opening our doors to all female refugees from Afghanistan, and any other regime that doesn’t afford full civil rights to women.

The message to patriarchal regimes: Keep this up, and we’ll take all your women and children. Heck, if you don’t knock off this tin-pot dictator shit, we’ll take all your scientists, all your engineers, all your doctors, and all your journalists–regardless of gender! Our gain, your loss.

I’m not sure that would work, but it’s worth a try. Maybe some private groups could help pick up travel expenses. I think they could live without the engineers, doctors, journalists, etc., but I’m pretty sure they’d miss the women.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION UPDATE:

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) told a group of Democratic moderates on Tuesday that an ethics and lobbying reform bill being pushed by party leaders was “total crap,” but said that he would work to enact the legislation because Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) supports it.

Meanwhile, another critique: “My objection to Murtha as a leader is based on an opinion I formed watching him on ‘Meet the Press’ back in June. I just don’t think he’s mentally with it at all. He was embarrassingly inarticulate and confused.”

Seems pithy in this case.

LEARNED NOTHING, FORGOTTEN NOTHING: Trent Lott is back in the Republican leadership.

UPDATE: Andrew Stuttaford has the same take.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ouch: “Suspect on racial issues and pork-friendly. Just the right man to help remake the party.”

Dean Barnett: “Is it just me, or is it becoming increasingly apparent that the Republicans and Democrats are determined to engage in a two year dumb-off?”

MORE: Did Santorum clinch it for Lott? If so, then good riddance, Rick.

STILL MORE: N.Z. Bear emails: “I’ll just say this about the so-called Minority Whip Mr. Lott. I’m getting damn tired of hearing from him. He’s been nothing but trouble since 2002…”

Heh.

SO I WATCHED THE HDTV BROADCAST FROM SPACE that I mentioned below. It was pretty good, but it was the images of Earth from space that were really captivating — they came across as IMAX-like — and they didn’t show enough of those. The stuff from the station interior was okay, be we’ve all seen people eat in zero gravity before and the demonstrations weren’t especially exciting just because they were HD. I would have rather had half an hour of pictures of Earth from low orbit, with only minimal talking-head involvement.

I wonder if you could make money with a cable channel that just showed pictures from a low-earth-orbit satellite in HD? It would certainly be cool — bringing the “Overview Effect” down to Earth — though I don’t think the technology’s really there for that yet. Speaking of which, there was an interesting communications delay — about three seconds — that must be due to digital latency; they explained it as speed-of-light, but the station would have to be on the Moon to produce a lag of that order, and I don’t think that even multiple satellite hops could account for it. The camera also seemed to develop an increasing number of stuck pixels as the broadcast went on, for some reason.

Worth watching, anyway, if this kind of thing interests you. It’ll be rerun tonight at 9 pm Eastern.

UPDATE: Several readers say that I’m channeling Al Gore. Well, I don’t think he had a commercial venture in mind, or HD, and I think he wanted the L₁ libration point instead of low-earth orbit. But I certainly agree with him about the power of images of the earth.

IN THE MAIL: (Actually, delivered by a colleague) Otis Stephens’ and Richard Glenn’s Unreasonable Searches and Seizures: Rights and Liberties Under the Law — plus a copy of the Encyclopedia of American Civil Rights and Liberties.

And, in sort-of-related news, the 9th Circuit, per Kozinski, upheld a six figure damage award against police for 4th Amendment violations. An excerpt from the opinion:

The facts are remarkable. Plaintiff, Susan Frunz, and her two guests were in Frunz’s home in Tacoma, Washington, when police surrounded the house, broke down the back door and entered. The police had no warrant and had not announced their presence. Frunz first became aware of them when an officer accosted her in the kitchen and pointed his gun, bringing the barrel within two inches of her forehead. The police ordered or slammed the occupants to the floor and cuffed their hands behind their backs—Frunz for about an hour, until she proved to their satisfaction that she owned the house, at which time they said “never mind” and left.

These no-knock raids are a pet peeve of mine, and I’m glad to see some hefty damage awards. In light of the facts, in fact, this seems quite minimal. Such “dynamic entries” should be limited to cases where there’s solid reason to believe that someone’s life may be in danger, which was clearly not the case here.

JOHN WIXTED LOOKS AT ECONOMICS AND FERTILITY IN EUROPE.

RALPH PETERS ON IRAQ: “With political correctness permeating our government and even the upper echelons of the military, we never tried the one technique that has a solid track record of defeating insurgents if applied consistently: the rigorous imposition of public order. That means killing the bad guys.”

ON THE EDGE IN LEBANON: Michael Totten has a podcast interview with Lebanese blogger Tony Badran about what’s been going on there, and what’s likely to happen next.