AS MAX BOOT HAS POINTED OUT, THE IRANIANS ARE NOT OUR FRIENDS:

U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. “There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval,” says a senior official.

What I continue to be puzzled by is why the Bush Administration has taken such a low-key attitude toward Iran when its role in fomenting problems in Iraq — and its unrelenting hostility to the United States — has been obvious for years. I had assumed that a key reason for invading Iraq in the first place was to let us put pressure on the mullahs, something that we don’t seem to have even tried to do.

TPM MUCKRAKER REPORTS:

The leadership ambitions of two senior Democrats have already been deep-sixed for their murky ethics histories. Here’s a third Democrat heading for a powerful post whom folks may want to keep an eye on.

Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) is under investigation by the FBI. And he’s set to assume a top post which would put him in control of the FBI’s budget. Neat trick, eh?

The FBI’s probing Mollohan for possible violations of the law arising from his sprawling network of favors and money which connects him to good friends via questionable charities, alarmingly successful real estate ventures, and hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarked funds.

The investigation appears to be active and ongoing. We’re told that the Feds continue to gather information on the guy. Yet the Democrats look poised to make Mollohan the chairman of the panel which controls the purse strings for the entire Justice Department — including the FBI.

Seems like a bad move to me.

ANOTHER RUSSIAN POISONING? “Yegor Gaidar, former Russian architect of Russia’s market reforms as acting Prime Minister for Boris Yelstin, is being treated in a Moscow hospital after coming close to death with a mystery ailment during a visit to Dublin.” Doctors think he was poisoned.

Plus, radioactive planes.

YES, BLOGGING HAS BEEN LIGHT: Today is root canal day. Recovering OK but not blogging much for a bit.

Meanwhile, note that Stephen Hawking is once again calling for space colonization:

Humans must colonize planets in other solar systems traveling there using “Star Trek”-style propulsion or face extinction, renowned British cosmologist Stephen Hawking said on Thursday.

Referring to complex theories and the speed of light, Hawking, the wheel-chair bound Cambridge University physicist, told BBC radio that theoretical advances could revolutionize the velocity of space travel and make such colonies possible.

“Sooner or later disasters such as an asteroid collision or a nuclear war could wipe us all out,” said Professor Hawking, who was crippled by a muscle disease at the age of 21 and who speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer.

“But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe,” said Hawking, who was due to receive the world’s oldest award for scientific achievement, the Copley medal, from Britain’s Royal Society on Thursday.

Bring it on.

BILL ROGGIO WILL BE EMBEDDING IN IRAQ AGAIN shortly, and has some interesting things to report on how the credentialling process works for bloggers. Plus a PayPal button if you’d like to support his work.

IN THE MAIL: Eric Flint’s new alt-history novel, 1824: The Arkansas War. It’s the second installment to his alternate history where the War of 1812 went differently. I’m enjoying Sam Houston’s prominent role — since Sam was a Maryvillian, like me, I heard a lot about him when I was younger. Though I don’t remember hearing much talk about his fondness for whiskey and large knives. . . .

A CONVERSATION with Bjorn Lomborg.

FROM CATHY SEIPP: Kramerology 101.

MAX BOOT: Iran and Syria aren’t our friends. (“Hard to believe, but those who advocate negotiations under such circumstances are known as ‘realists.’ A real realist would realize that Syria and Iran are only likely to accommodate the U.S. when they’re afraid of us.”) It’s a sad comment that our foreign policy establishment needs to be reminded of this, but . . . .

LOTS OF COVERAGE from the L.A. Auto Show.

I WONDER WHAT THEY’RE HIDING?

Tony Blair is under increasing pressure to halt a three-year-old corruption inquiry and avoid losing a £10 billion extension to an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

The news comes after Saudi Arabia suspended negotiations on the 20-year-old Al-Yamamah deal after Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigators tried to access some of the Saudi royal family’s bank accounts in Switzerland.

Thousands of jobs in Britain and Saudi Arabia would be at risk if the Saudis dropped an order for 72 Typhoon jets and, instead, signed a contract with the French for up to 36 rival Rafales. . . . The deal, which was signed off by Britain and Saudi Arabia in August, has been brought to the brink after the SFO asked to access bank accounts in Switzerland.

Something pretty embarrassing, I’d guess. I wonder where that money was going?

I’VE SUDDENLY GOTTEN A LOT OF DONATIONS LATELY, which I appreciate — if you donated through PayPal I’ve thanked you; if you donated through Amazon I don’t know who you are unless you click the button that keeps it from being anonymous — and I’ve also gotten some emails asking if I’m depressed or something. Is that why people are donating?

I’m not depressed. I am, however, extremely busy. In the last couple of weeks I’ve turned around two articles to law reviews, done revisions for the paperback edition of An Army of Davids — coming out in January, I’m told — read and commented on a bunch of student paper rough drafts for my space law seminar, and my Administrative Law class’s comments on proposed regulations (as usual, actually filed with the agency in question) and finished up my Popular Mechanics column, as well as the usual stuff I do all the time. That may have made my blogging seem a bit more sparse, or detached, or something. But life’s actually pretty good, aside from being busy.

STILL MORE ON ALCEE HASTINGS and the Democratic leadership. I think they’ve made a good decision.

AFTER A LONG ABSENCE, Beldar has returned.

MORE RACIST REMARKS captured by YouTube.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, “JAMIL HUSSEIN,” AND “GEORGE HARLEIGH”:

What this means is that you don’t have to be real to be right.

Much less to be quoted!

And don’t miss Austin Bay’s column.

UPDATE: Further thoughts — worth reading as always — from The Mudville Gazette.

MORE ON POLICE MILITARIZATION, in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed. An emphasis on “officer safety” and paramilitary training pervades today’s policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn’t shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed. Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances. Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed.

Yes, police work is dangerous, and the police see a lot of violence. On the other hand, 51 officers were slain in the line of duty last year, out of some 700,000 to 800,000 American cops. That is far fewer than the police fatalities occurring when I patrolled New York’s highest crime precincts, when the total number of cops in the country was half that of today. Each of these police deaths and numerous other police injuries is a tragedy and we owe support to those who protect us. On the other hand, this isn’t Iraq. The need to give our officers what they require to protect themselves and us has to be balanced against the fact that the fundamental duty of the police is to protect human life and that law officers are only justified in taking a life as a last resort.

Read the whole thing — the link should work for a week.

UPDATE: Reader Gary Cameron emails:

I think it’s important to separate issues that involve the safety of individual cops from the so-called “police militarization” controversy.

Joseph McNamara, as a former cop speaking out against the recent NYPD shooting in the WSJ piece, is the police equivalent of those former Bush officials turned media darlings who turn on the administration after they leave office. His credibility with the MSM media stems solely from the fact that he once worked as a cop, as well as his willingness to speak out against pretty much anything rank and file police officers believe in, which he has done ever since his very short and controversial term as San Jose police chief. This is not to say that the opinions of most police officers (or the NYPD shooting, for that matter) are necessarily ‘right’, just that McNamara has no more credibility or insight on these issues than anyone else.

I think the following quote from his piece is very telling:

>>Police in large cities formerly carried revolvers holding six .38-caliber rounds. Nowadays, police carry semi-automatic pistols with 16 high-caliber rounds, shotguns and military assault rifles, weapons once relegated to SWAT teams facing extraordinary circumstances.<< Back in 1985, while a street cop in Vancouver, BC, I ended up firing all six of my .38 rounds at point blank range into the 10-ring of a mentally-disturbed gentleman. He had stabbed me in the side after stabbing a young man in the stomach, just missing the baby he was carrying. Nothing happened. He didn't stop trying to kill me until another member also shot him. Police officers carry "high-caliber" semi-automatics nowadays because they should have access to the best tools possible when they are really needed. Trust me on this: even the most routine call is an "extraordinary circumstance" to a cop in trouble.

I have no objection to high-capacity handguns. I do think, though, that McNamara is right about the psychological change that’s gone on. (Kind of like the change in Hill Street Blues, where the catchphrase went from “Let’s be careful out there,” to “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us.”) I think that’s a bad psychology for police.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Sven Swenson emails:

Col. Jeff Cooper long maintained that most police officers do not have the training and discipline to be trusted with more firepower than is provided by a 6-shot revolver. He reasoned from long observation that high capacity handguns, assault rifles & such encourage “spraying & praying”, which endangers bystanders. It’s a psychological thing. The man with a singleshot is going to make his one shot count. Under stress, the guy with a belt-full of 20-round mags is likely going to fill the air with lead to little effect.

The recent shooting in Queens is a case in point: The officers fired 50 or so rounds and only hit *the car* 21 times, much less its occupants. That’s spraying and praying, and ought to be considered reckless endangerment, no matter how evil the guys they’re trying to take down.(Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame the police, I blame the people who issue them such high firepower weapons but *never* give them enough money and time for training.)

Pax your correspondent who relates putting 6 .38s “into the 10-ring”, it might be worthwhile to remember that it takes about 12 seconds for a person to lose consciousness once their blood pressure drops to zero. His heart may be completely gone, he’s effectively dead, he just doesn’t know it yet. I’m sure that’s a very looong 12 seconds when someone is stabbing you, but 6 .45 acp hydrashocks to the heart might not have done any better.

That and the possibility that your target is wearing a ballistic vest or totally wakked on drugs led the Colonel to advocate the “Mozambique” even with a .45: One or two shots center mass immediately followed by a shot to the head. If you shoot the guy between the eyes and he keeps coming, then you can complain to me about your ineffective .38.

Sounds like a zombie. They’re everywhere these days! As I recall, by Hollywood convention only shotguns work against zombies and other evil powers.

BILL ROGGIO WRITES on Anbar and The Washington Post.

AHMADINEJAD SENT A LETTER TO THE UNITED STATES: Daniel Drezner writes back.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

Our current crisis is not yet a catastrophe, but a real loss of confidence of the spirit. The hard-won effort of the Western Enlightenment of some 2,500 years that, along with Judeo-Christian benevolence, is the foundation of our material progress, common decency, and scientific excellence, is at risk in this new millennium.

But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.

No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization–never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty–we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East.

What would a beleaguered Socrates, a Galileo, a Descartes, or Locke believe, for example, of the moral paralysis in Europe? Was all their bold and courageous thinking–won at such a great personal cost–to allow their successors a cheap surrender to religious fanaticism and the megaphones of state-sponsored fascism?

Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today’s Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats–and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in “liberal” Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge–although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.

And we need not only speak of threats to free speech, but also the tangible rewards from a terrified West to the agents of such repression.

Read the whole thing.

I guess it’s more of that Gramscian damage that Eric S. Raymond was talking about.

PATTERICO ACCUSES ME OF FAIR-WEATHER FEDERALISM for supporting Congressional legislation to rein in no-knock drug raids.

That’s silly. Congress clearly has the power to pass laws, under Section 5 of the 14th Amendment, to prevent states depriving citizens of life, liberty or property without due process of law. When cops bust down your door and shoot you without — very — good reason for being there, that’s a deprivation of liberty and property, and often life, without due process, the very kind of thing Congress was empowered to address. So unless Patterico thinks that the 14th Amendment is itself an improper impediment to federalism, I don’t see the problem here. What’s more, the no-knock problem stems from federal policies — the “war on drugs” and the free distribution of military equipment to local SWAT teams — and thus further justifies a federal corrective. Under federalism, one role of the federal government is to protect citizens’ rights against unconstitutional encroachment by the states. That’s what the 14th Amendment is about. And the doctrines of official immunity that make lawsuits difficult in such cases are found nowhere in the Constitution, but are the creation of activist judges, reading their policy preferences into the law. They are worthy of no particular deference.

UPDATE: I see that Patterico has updated to say that he doesn’t think the immunity-stripping violates federalism, which makes me wonder what our disagreement really is. At any rate, Ilya Somin has some further thoughts on how this problem was mostly federal in creation anyway.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In a later update, Patterico says that I’m inconsistent on federalism in light of my Schiavo comments here:

After talking about small government and the rule of law, Republicans overwhelmingly supported a piece of legislation intended to influence a single case, that of Terri Schiavo. As former Solicitor General Charles Fried observes:

” In their intervention in the Terri Schiavo matter, Republicans in Congress and President Bush have, in a few brief legislative clauses, embraced the kind of free-floating judicial activism, disregard for orderly procedure and contempt for the integrity of state processes that they quite rightly have denounced and sought to discipline for decades.”

I think he’s right. As with Bill Hobbs, quoted below, I don’t have an opinion on what should happen to Terry Schiavo — though given the rather large numbers of judges who have looked at this case over the years I’d be especially reluctant to interfere. Can they all be deranged advocates of a “culture of death?” But regardless of the merits, Congress’s involvement in this case seems quite “unconservative” to me, at least if one believes in rules of general application. Florida has a general law, and it’s been followed. That people don’t like the result isn’t a reason for unprecedented Congressional action, unless results are all that matter.

Reading that entire post, it seems to me that my predictions of Republican problems ahead have certainly been borne out in spades, but it wasn’t really a federalism argument as such. (In fact, in an earlier post — scroll down from that link above — I noted that the bill wasn’t necessarily unconstitutional, just a bad idea.) Nonetheless, I think that the kind of legislation I’ve suggested — stripping officers of official immunity in no-knock cases, where we’ve seen that there’s a pattern of misconduct and that state remedies have proven inadequate — is at the very core of Congress’s 14th Amendment powers. On the other hand, the Schiavo intervention seems much farther from that mold.

At any rate, doesn’t this go both ways? That is, isn’t Patterico inconsistent to have supported the Schiavo legislation while regarding Congressional legislation over no-knock raids as posing troubling federalism problems?

It seems however, that the actual remedy that I’ve proposed raises no problems in his mind, so this entire disagreement is fairly abstract. I have great respect for his abilities as a blogger, but I remain convinced that no-knock raids should be limited to very narrow circumstances, and that officers — and government agencies, for that matter — who engage in them should not be able to hide behind doctrines of official immunity that themselves have little warrant in the Constitution.

ARNOLD KLING LOOKS AT entrepreneurship and marriage.

IN THE MAIL: James Swanson and Daniel Weinberg’s new book, Lincoln’s Assassins: Their Trial and Execution.

It’s a coffee-table book (Helen pronounced it “gorgeous” with all the photos, woodcuts, etc.) that follows up Swanson’s earlier book, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. We did a podcast interview with Swanson a while back — you can listen to it right here.

LOOKS LIKE BILL FRIST WON’T BE RUNNING in 2008. I agree with A.C. Kleinheider that it’s a good move: “Frist is not over politically — not by any means. But to trudge through this campaign just because it had been planned for so long would have been idiocy. Frist is smart. He read the tea leaves and saw that the presidency wasn’t in the cards. Now, he will have the time to regroup and retool his image.”

CHESTER ON IRAQ: “Go native.”