STRATEGYPAGE:

The US now has approximately 950 Border Patrol agents stationed on the 5,525-mile long US-Canadian border. The 1,950 mile-long US-Mexico border has 10,300 agents. In 2005 the Canadian border had approximately 1000 agents and the Mexican border 9,600. The increased number of agents and troops along the Mexican border makes a difference, but the net result is just to make people smugglers richer. As more areas of the border become well guarded, smugglers charge more to get people in via more remote areas. The greed, and often callousness, of the smugglers has helped change Mexican public opinion towards the illegal migrants. More and more Mexicans are looking at the exodus as a sign of Mexican failure. Why must Mexicans move north of the border to find economic success? Why not in Mexico?

Good question. As I’ve noted before, it’s a question that Mexican Presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been asking, too, and he’s gone up in the polls since he started asking it.

I HOPE THAT JESSE WALKER’S ANALYSIS REMAINS TRUE:

A few sporadic crimes, none of them inspiring a wave of copycats; a campaign whose body count over several years could be dwarfed by just one night of gang warfare; a would-be soldier who’s willing to slay one man then turn himself in—this isn’t a sequel to 9/11, it’s a short-lived spinoff that never made it past the pilot. These attacks are so rare, they if anything highlight how unwilling American Muslims are to kill for Allah. If this country were swimming with volunteer fifth-columnists, we would have seen a lot more mayhem by now.

It hardly matters whether isolated murderers are driven by their interpretation of the Koran, by some deficiency in their brains, or by any other explanation for their deeds. You can deal with them the way you deal with any other solitary criminals. There is real danger in an organized network of terrorists, and there is real danger in a substantial subculture willing to engage in unorganized terror. But attacks like the hit-and-run in North Carolina, the airport shootings in L.A., and this maybe-Muslim murder fit neither category. Bloody and evil as they are, their chief effect is to make jihad seem mundane.

At the moment, I think he’s probably right. And, as I’ve mentioned before, I think that it’s a good reason for the FBI not to be indiscriminate in its pursuit of potential terrorists in the United States, since that may do more harm than good.

U.S. SOLDIERS TORTURED BEFORE DEATH: And yet Guantanamo will get more ink. And, again, the argument is that it’s a man-bites-dog story when Al Qaeda tortures — but that’s belied by the moral equivalence that we keep seeing in the coverage.

UPDATE: Okay, the above doesn’t really capture what I think, and at the moment I’m at a loss to phrase it better. I’m quite upset by the events, obviously, but I feel that too many people in the coverage are trying to make hay out of it, and, after a few minutes, looking at my post it seems like I did the same thing. I don’t want to take it down, though, since I don’t generally do that. I’ll try to come up with something more coherent later, but I do think that claims that Al Qaeda is torturing our soldiers because of some policy-manual for Guantanamo are implausible, to say the least.

I guess I should have followed Dan Riehl’s advice and stayed silent, though I hadn’t actually read Sullivan’s post when I wrote the initial entry.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A better post than mine, at Gay Patriot.

STILL MORE on the Craigslist / Cox Cable imbroglio.

OINK: The Sunlight Foundation looks at Jim Moran’s earmarks.

SHOCKING WAR NEWS:

Officials said the suspected senior al Qaeda in Iraq member captured in yesterday’s raid is known to be involved in facilitating foreign terrorists throughout central Iraq, and is suspected of having ties to previous attacks on coalition and Iraqi forces. Troops found an AK-47 with several magazines of ammunition and destroyed them all on site.

Several women and children were present at the raid sites, officials said. None was harmed, and all were returned to their homes once the troops ensured the area was secure, they added.

Yes, I know — it’s a “dog bites man” story. But that’s the point, isn’t it?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Here’s a look at comprehensive budget process reform, from Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation.

I hope that this gets a lot of attention, but given the behavior of Dennis Hastert, Jerry Lewis, et al., it’s hard for me to believe that we’ll see reform in this Congress, even though the failure to enact such reform is likely to be very damaging to the Republicans.

Meanwhile, N.Z. Bear has dramatically enhanced the news-aggegation aspects of the PorkBusters website, and it’s filling up with pork-related news.

And the Sunlight Foundation is looking for volunteers to investigate Congress.

CHRISTINE ROSEN has published something of a hatchet job about me and An Army of Davids in The New Republic. You can tell it’s a hatchet job quite early, as she writes:

Before he emerged as the “InstaPundit,” he was just a law professor at the University of Tennessee, writing on administrative law and the Second Amendment for publications like Law and Policy in International Business and Jurimetrics.

And publications like The Columbia Law Review, but that wouldn’t fit her put-down-a-plow-and-picked-up-a-laptop storyline. As for the rest, it’s a bit hard to discern a storyline beyond her dislike of InstaPundit, me, and the prospect — which I don’t actually advance in the book, and have quite explicitly disclaimed on InstaPundit — that professional journalists and pundits will be replaced by amateurs.

Still, the amateurs are looking pretty good these days and, as Rosen’s piece demonstrates, the professionals aren’t exactly overwhelming us with their fairness and care. And there’s no such thing as bad book publicity! Get your copy today!

UPDATE: Dave Price notes that the piece — as is seemingly required for old-media attacks on the blogosphere — contains the usual self-refutational errors, one of which comes in the form of inability to follow a hyperlink. There seems to be a lot of that going around these days . . . .

THE NOTE: “Could it be that the Democrats’ inability to come up with a consensus ‘anti-war’ position is more of a midterm problem for them than HarrietMiersDubaideficits -Katrinaearmarksimmigrationgasprices is for the Republicans? After all the private meetings (including just endless ones in the Senate caucus), Democrats remain united in their disunity, defensiveness, and distraction.”

UPDATE: It’s a Murtha-o-Rama over at Hot Air. Grampa Simpson makes an appearance.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Marc Cooper says the Democrats are hedging their bets after the fashion of loser gamblers.

I’M READING CHARLES STROSS’S NEW NOVEL, Glasshouse, and enjoying it very much. I think he didn’t try quite as hard as he did with Accelerando, which is good because there, even though that was a good book, it felt like he was trying a bit too hard. The Amazon blurb says that this is set in “the same far-future universe” as Accelerando, and I guess that’s right, but the two books are pretty much freestanding; you certainly don’t need to have read Accelerando to follow the story in Glasshouse.

IMPRISONED EGYPTIAN BLOGGER ALAA has been freed. That’s terrific news, though it doesn’t get the Mubarak regime off the hook.

UPDATE: Oops, not quite. Sandmonkey emails: “Just spoke to Manal again. He will not be released today. Probably by tomorrow night or after tomorrow morning. The reason? Paperwork! They will take him to every place he was taken to while arrested (the Police precinct, the state prosecutor, the initial holding prison, etc…) to finish up paper work in regards to him. But at least now he is getting out, which is still awesome news. Thanks for all of you who helped, who signed the petition, who google-bombed, or even put that banner up. Thank you so much!”

BARCEPUNDIT reports on the Catalonian autonomy vote. And Austin Bay has further thoughts.

DAVID BERNSTEIN was at the Civil Rights Commission hearing on ABA “diversity” policy and posts a report.

MICKEY KAUS notes more revisionist history from Paul Krugman — only this time it’s not about the war.

Plus, “A stunningly cynical move by Senate Democrats.” But that one, unsurprisingly, is about the war.

And, on BloggingHeads TV, Mickey Kaus and Robert Wright debate “Kos-ola.” I continue to be unimpressed with the Kos scandals, which to me just look like politics as usual. I do note, though, that if I had similar connections to Republican politicians, the Kos crowd would probably be calling me a sellout . . . .

James Joyner, meanwhile, thinks I’m wrong to downplay this, makes an interesting distinction between blogs like InstaPundit and blog communities like Kos, and notes debate on the left. Bill Ardolino, on the other hand, offers a Kos defense of sorts: “For as much rightful criticism as that distasteful being receives, backing Mark Warner is one of the few smart political moves I’ve seen him make.”

UPDATE: Jon Henke has more on Krugman’s duplicity.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Geraghty has a comprehensive Kos-Armstrong timeline. I still don’t think it’s a smoking gun, but he’s right that this may dilute the trustworthiness of the Kos “brand” with some of his readers. But that’s the blogosphere — people who don’t like him will go elsewhere, and they get to make up their own minds.

And there’s this criticism from the left, which doesn’t rely on scandal for its point:

In political terms the blogosphere is like white noise, insistent and meaningless, like the wash of Pacific surf I can hear most days. But MoveOn.Org and Daily Kos have been hailed as the emergent form of modern politics, the target of excited articles in the New York Review of Books.

Beyond raising money swiftly handed over to the gratified veterans of the election industry both MoveOn and Daily Kos have had zero political effect, except as a demobilizing force.

Hmm. Who to root for in this battle?

MORE ON THE COX/CRAIGSLIST ISSUE, from Craig Newmark.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Robert Novak looks at Jerry Lewis and Dennis Hastert and observes:

Earmarks increasingly are the source of corruption and ethical transgressions on both sides of the aisle in Congress. Yet, the cardinals defend the practice. They argue constituents want pork, not reform.

The authentic prevailing congressional attitude toward reform was expressed by a Democrat who often is less discreet than his colleagues. The Sun Gazette newspaper in northern Virginia reported that Rep. Jim Moran told a party dinner June 9 in his district: “When I become [a House Appropriations subcommittee] chairman, I’m going to earmark the s— out of it.”

Appropriators stalk the House taking names of colleagues who dare disrupt logrolling. Every time, however, a coterie votes against pork. Their ranks include conservative reformers Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Mike Pence of Indiana, John Shadegg of Arizona and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. They can kiss goodbye goodies for their districts.

At Charlie Palmer’s restaurant on Wednesday, assembled GOP campaign contributors cheered as John Boehner was introduced as the majority leader who never has sponsored an earmark. Later that day, Boehner voted against each of Flake’s attempted earmark removals. In the House, one conservative reformer said to another seated beside him: “With this leadership, we never will get rid of earmarks.”

Despite some good talk by Boehner, I think that’s right. His actions haven’t lived up to the talk.

JOEL SHEPHERD HAS more on Sabine Herold. Publius has more, too.

UPDATE: Claire Berlinski emails:

Speaking of good-looking right-wing Frenchwomen running for office, do note the most unexpected — but not unwelcome — things coming out of the mouth of Ségolène Royal, who happens to be the top Socialist contender for next year’s presidential race. She’s dabbling in what her kind used to call Right-deviationism — no doubt in an effort to steal the ground right out from underneath Sarkozy’s feet; and her gambit may very well work, especially since she’s so much better-looking than Sarko. She’s recently revealed herself, for example, as being only slightly to the left of Le Pen on law-and-order. Suburbs in flames? Zero tolerance. “We need a return to the heavy hand.” French teenagers burning cars? Straight into the military with you, mes potes; it will help you “get to know … [your] good fortune to live in France.” Troublemakers go to reform schools at the first infraction, and if your kids get out of hand, we cut off your welfare payments, capisce? Immigration quotas? Yes, what an interesting idea. Traditional family values? All for them. Oh, and that 35-hour work week? Scrap it. So suddenly, she’s shot straight to the top of the polls, sending an arctic chill into the Sarkozy camp. Of course her comrades on the Left are getting their bowels all in an uproar; particularly exercised, evidently, is her consort and father of her four children, party leader François Hollande. Wouldn’t want to be joining them at the family dinner table any time soon.

Definitely someone to put on the “wait and watch” list.

France is overdue for an upheaval. Let’s hope it’s a constructive one. More here.

PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION UPDATE: “The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would expand its review of a federal law banning some abortion procedures by deciding a California case on whether the law was too vague and imposed a burden on women.”

Of course, there’s an argument that the Act is outside Congress’s commerce powers, though that’s unlikely to fly with the Court after the Raich decision.

WAR CRIME ROWBACK: At the end of a Haditha update, the Los Angeles Times notes:

The American Civil Liberties Union on Friday released a heavily redacted version of a military report on detainee abuses by special operations forces in Iraq. The report concludes that a series of sensational allegations by detainees could not be substantiated.

The report, compiled by Army Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica, was completed last year, but a declassified version was not prepared until this month. It says some of the minor accusations — such as that detainees were fed only bread and water for more than two weeks — had merit. But it found there was no evidence for most of the more controversial allegations.

(Via Dan Riehl). Plus, Human Rights Watch backs down on Gaza. Full story here:

While sticking to its demand for the establishment of an independent inquiry into a blast on a Gaza beach 10 days ago that killed seven Palestinian civilians, the Human Rights Watch conceded Monday night for the first time since the incident that it could not contradict the IDF’s exonerating findings.

How much attention will these statements get, compared to the original charges?

A PACEMAKER MADE FROM LIVING CELLS:

Cowan’s team, including first author Yeong-Hoon Choi in Children’s Department of Cardiac Surgery, obtained skeletal muscle from rats and isolated muscle precursor cells called myoblasts. They “seeded” the myoblasts onto a flexible scaffolding material made of collagen, creating a 3-dimensional bit of living tissue that could be surgically implanted in the heart.

The cells distributed themselves evenly in the tissue and oriented themselves in the same direction. Tested in the laboratory, the engineered tissue started beating when stimulated electrically, and its muscle cells produced proteins called connexins that channel ions from cell to cell, connecting the cells electrically.

When the engineered tissue was implanted into rats, between the right atrium and right ventricle, the implanted cells integrated with the surrounding heart tissue and electrically coupled to neighboring heart cells. Optical mapping of the heart showed that in nearly a third of the hearts, the engineered tissue had established an electrical conduction pathway, which disappeared when the implants were destroyed. The implants remained functional through the animals’ lifespan (about 3 years).

This is cool, though it’s more a pacemaker-substitute than a pacemaker, I think. (Via Slashdot).

UPDATE: Reader Chuck Pelto emails to note that the above is actually better than a pacemaker, since it fixes the problem. He also asks how Don Ho is doing after his Thai stem-cell operation. Pretty well, according to this report:

In December, Ho flew to Thailand for treatment of a deteriorating heart muscle and abnormal heart rhythm. The operation was described as a last resort for the entertainer after doctors here said there was nothing more that could be done to treat him.

Ho was back in January doing two shows a week at the Ohana Waikiki Beachcomber Hotel.

The experimental stem cell procedure costs between $25,000 and $30,000, but has not been approved in the United States and isn’t covered by insurance. . . .

Since last May, the Bangkok doctors have performed the procedure on 54 patients, mostly Americans.

“There is some light for the people who don’t have any other option left and have severe end-stage heart failure,” said Arom, who worked more than 30 years on the Mainland.

The main concern of American doctors is whether stem cells survive and actually contribute to improved heart performance.

While the procedure has been proved to work on rats, no one knows its effect on humans, said Livingston Wong, who retired from well-known transplant practice Surgical Associates in Honolulu.

I guess we’ll find out. I’d like to see this get more rigorous evaluation, and I certainly hope it turns out to work as well as advertised. Note that these are autologous stem cells, not embryonic stem cells — it’s done overseas because normal U.S. regulatory barriers are too high, not because of any stem-cell-specific ban.

AL GORE WON’T ENDORSE JOE LIEBERMAN. Comment: “I guess Lieberman would have been good enough to run the government if something bad happened to Gore. But he’s not obviously the best qualified to be the junior senator from Connecticut, even though he had the same job when Gore tapped him in 2000.”

DANIEL DREZNER names his favorite international organization: “This, by the way, is why I love the IWC — it’s not that there isn’t vote-buying in other venues (including the UN Security Council), it’s just that the bribery at the IWC is so wonderfully blatant.”

ANTISEMITISM becomes anti-Ghanaism at the World Cup.

IN LIGHT OF MY PORKBUSTERS POST BELOW, here’s a roundup on Jim Moran’s checkered past.

THE NATIONAL JOURNAL polls insiders on how much impact the netroots will have on the 2006 elections.