HERE’S THE LATEST on Iranian exile Zahra Kamalfar. The Russian authorities seem to have tried a dirty trick, but it’s failed for the moment.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: “The only thing that surprises me even slightly about today’s political assassination in Beirut is that the victim was Pierre Gemayel, a Christian, rather than Fouad Seniora, a Sunni. All the assassination victims after Rafik Hariri, a Sunni, have been Christians. But the most heated sectarian tension right now is between Sunnis and Shias. The Christians aren’t in a fighting mood, but many say the Sunnis are.”

These Christians don’t seem so happy.

UPDATE: Why has the United States been so passive in the face of Syrian dirty tricks? Beats me.

TECH BLEG: Will the EVDO card that works in my laptop also work in a MacBook pro? This makes it seem as if it won’t.

A WHILE BACK, I MENTIONED NONIE DARWISH’S BOOK, Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror.

Now we learn she’s been disinvited from speaking at Brown University.

As Scott Johnson observes: “The boundaries of acceptable speech on university campuses continue to contract.”

MICHAEL SILENCE: “Is anybody live blogging Black Friday? If not, someone should.”

I think it’ll be a big year for online shopping; I’m guessing bricks-and-mortar sales will be only so-so.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: James Baker is the last guy we should listen to about Iraq.

VARIOUS PEOPLE ARE EMAILING ME, worred about the Watts Bar nuclear plant. It appears to have been a false alarm. Given that Watts Bar was closed for maintenance anyway, it pretty much had to be.

IN THE MAIL: Kay Hymowitz’s Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age.

A 100 FOOT DEEP INDOOR DIVE RESORT: My friend Doug Weinstein wants to build one of these in Knoxville as a tourist attraction. I like the idea.

ANOTHER LEBANESE MINISTER ASSASSINATED. Not surprisingly, Syria is thought to be involved. Pajamas Media has a roundup.

GAY MARRIAGE: Now legal in Israel.

HERE’S MORE on Knoxville’s pistol-packing, crime-stopping County Commissioner, and the sometimes lame reactions he’s provoked.

DON’T FORGET TO SEND IN YOUR POST FOR THE DIGITAL CAMERA CARNIVAL, which I’ll probably post tomorrow. Be sure to put “digital camera carnival” in the subject line.

VARIOUS PEOPLE have been searching for my post about this train set that I got my nephew for his birthday. Sorry that the new search setup is more cumbersome; we’ll see what we can do. Meanwhile, the full post is here. The train is still a hit.

EXTREME MORTMAN on the Iraq Study Group: “Not exactly spring chickens there. If I had to guess, I’d say Lawrence Eagleburger is the young whippersnapper.”

IF YOU’RE AN EDUCATION SECRETARY who appears on Jeopardy, you’d better do well. There’s a lot more downside than upside, which I guess makes this pretty brave . . . .

MORE ON THE NANCY PELOSI / JANE HARMAN FEUD, from The Los Angeles Times.

ANOTHER INSTA-POLL:

A FREE SPEECH VICTORY FOR BLOGS:

The blogosphere would not exist as we know it if people didn’t reprint and link to the words of others. But when those others say defamatory things, should bloggers be held legally accountable for spreading bad information?

The California Supreme Court says “no.” In a decision announced Monday, the court ruled that Internet service providers cannot be held liable for defamatory content posted by third parties.

The case itself isn’t about blogs, but it’s obviously applicable to blogs. I have to say that this outcome seems clearly right to me. The decision is here. More on the topic of blogs and Internet libel can be found here.

UPDATE: More from Eugene Volokh.

RYAN SAGER: Banned at Heritage.

Even Sager critic Ali Bubba is unhappy. This does seem to me to represent the Kos-ification of the right. There’s something about losing that makes people act like . . . losers.

UPDATE: A Heritage response: “Failure to invite a non-member to a members-only event is not an exercise in blackballing. Declining to host an event when an alternative venue is available is not blackballing.”

RALPH KINNEY BENNETT looks at the 50th anniversary of the Interstate highway system.

DEMOGRAPHICS AND DESTINY: SPENGLER WRITES THAT IRAN HAS ALREADY LOST: “One does not have to destroy an opponent’s military forces to defeat him. Russia collapsed without a single shot fired when Mikhail Gorbachev and his generals understood that they could not compete with Ronald Reagan’s United States. The Islamic world also has been defeated, by a globalized economy in which the US dominates the top, and China blocks entry at the bottom. As the most urbane people of Western Asia, the Persians grasped the hopelessness of circumstances quicker than their Arab neighbors. That is why they have ceased to bear children. Iran’s population today is concentrated at military age; by mid-century, today’s soldiers will be pensioners, and there will be no one to replace them.”

This is not, however, entirely good news, as M. Simon observes: “Jihad today is not the result of a vibrant Muslim culture. It is a sign of desperation. Just as the kamikaze attacks by the Japanese in WW2 were a sign of desperation.”

UPDATE: Alternate view here.

MORE ON THE EGYPTIAN BLOGGER CRACKDOWN: “Political and religious repression in Egypt is nothing new: last month they very quietly arrested a former Sheikh for converting to Christianty. Political intimidation of bloggers is also nothing new – last summer they arrested and tortured Alaa Abdel-Fatah for his political blogging.” But read the whole thing.

MORE ON ALCEE HASTINGS and the corruption scandal that led to his impeachment. “The entire Borders/Hastings issue would not be coming up now but for the fact that Hastings, who ran for and won a seat in Congress in 1992, is in line to become chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, one of the most sensitive posts on Capitol Hill. Republicans who would like to see Hastings passed over, and nervous Democrats who would like to see the same thing, are poring through old records of the impeachment, trying to reconstruct what happened in the case and how it might reflect on Hastings’s fitness for the chairmanship.”

In a word, badly.

DONALD SENSING LOOKS AT how much Democratic proposals for restoring the draft would cost to implement. Rather a lot, really.