HEH. Yet another reason to oppose gun control.

MORE ON EGYPT:

In addition to the unfair imprisonment of the liberal secular opposition figure Ayman Noor, the recent crackdown and arrests of protesters is yet another proof that the government has other enemies beside its traditional nemesis. These protesters who were demonstrating in support of two judges facing a disciplinary hearing came from different political persuasions, from Islamists to Marxists. Among them was Alaa Abdel Fatah, a prominent blogger and political activist.

My question to the Egyptian government is this: what crime did Alaa and the others who were arrested commit? Were they involved in the Dahab terrorist bombing? Was their peaceful demonstration in support of two judges whom they think were being unfairly targeted considered an attempt to undermine Egypt’s national security? And what crimes did the judges commit? Did they turn into criminals when they judged correctly and said that there were irregularities in last year’s parliamentary elections?

Frankly speaking, the Egypt regime has undergone a series of reform actions in the past year. Despite its shortcomings, the decision to amend the constitution to allow multiple candidates elections was a step in the right direction. We have been experiencing considerable press freedom for almost a year. Today several opposition papers directly attack the President and his family. It was unthinkable to do so in the past. Unfortunately, actions like the ones mentioned above make all these changes appear as if they were intended to be a décor aimed at convincing the West, and especially the United States, that the Egyptian regime is keen on reform. While the truth is, it would rather have political Islamists act as a “ghost” that scares the West than open up and face the possibility of allowing a secular alternative to blossom.

Read the whole thing.

I’M SUPPOSED TO BE ON HUGH HEWITT in a few minutes, with Kaus, and N.Z. Bear, talking about the speech. You can listen online here if you’re interested.

JOE MALCHOW LIKED THE SPEECH. “This is the best offer American sovereigntists—which is to say almost everyone, whether they realize it or not—will have for a long time.”

Jonah Goldberg: “My guess is he sounded pretty reasonable to most Americans not already deeply committed on the issue of immigration.”

Hugh Hewitt calls it “a good start.”

Mark Tapscott thinks it sounds familiar.

John Hinderaker thinks Bush blew it.

Ed Morrissey: “President Bush tried reaching for the center — a position he has occupied on this issue all along. He tried a one-from-column-A, two-from-column-B approach that probably will leave all sides more or less dissatisfied. His declaration that catch-and-release would end was the most welcome news in the entire speech. He delivered that well and sounded forceful and presidential, but most people will wonder why this practice didn’t end on September 12, 2001.”

IAN SCHWARTZ has Bush’s speech on video in case you missed it.

MY THOUGHTS SO FAR: Bush is right to stress assimilation. That should have been the cornerstone of the speech.

UPDATE: Reportedly, Lou Dobbs liked it.

Here’s liveblogging by Colin Pedicini.

ANOTHER UPDATE: My prediction: Over the next few weeks, lots of back-and-forth with Congress (this is an opening bid), ending with no guest worker program and with a slightly-less-open amnesty path to citizenship.

Sampling the punditry on TV, the reception isn’t too bad, considering.

FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, here’s the full text of Bush’s speech. Click “read more” to see it.

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HERE’S A BIG BLOG POST ROUNDUP on the immigration issue, from Pajamas Media.

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein has more thoughts. And Michelle Malkin is giving the speech a bad review before it’s even happened.

The Hotline Blog examines how this is already hurting the GOP House races. I think the White House’s biggest mistake has been in not taking the base seriously on this issue, and on a series of previous issues such as Harriet Miers and the Dubai Ports deal. (By “taking seriously” I don’t necessarily mean “doing what they want,” just responding straightforwardly and, yes, seriously.) This has caused a gradual decline in trust and affection that is now costing Bush dearly. And unnecessarily.

Bush should at least push the upside: People in droves are trying to get in to the country. So much for the Bush = Hitler thing!

NEO-NEOCON says it’s the end of the beginning. Shrinkwrapped has further thoughts.

UPDATE: There’s wisdom in this comment.

FROM THE RNC, some advance excerpts of Bush’s speech. Click “read more” to read them.

Plus (emailed from Frist’s office), Frist on a border fence.

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N.Z. BEAR HAS SET UP A SPECIAL PAGE pulling together bloggers’ comments on Bush’s immigration speech tonight.

I WAS LISTENING TO THE RADIO and heard Mary Cheney being interviewed about her new book. The interview turned on the contradiction of an “out” lesbian supporting the Bush campaign in light of its views on gay marriage — but that seems a bit odd to me, given that John Kerry made very clear that his views on gay marriage were the same as Bush’s: “‘I’m against gay marriage,’ he said. ‘Everybody knows that.'” Or, as Kerry said on another occasion: “The president and I have the same position, fundamentally, on gay marriage. We do. Same position.”

I haven’t read Mary Cheney’s book, but it seems to me that given the apparent identity of the Bush and Kerry positions, a gay person might just as readily support one as the other. Unless, of course, you think that Kerry was lying about his position, in which case one might plausibly choose honesty over pandering, I suppose.

A lot of people on the left seem to regard her as a traitor, though, judging by the Amazon reviews. Apparently if you’re gay, you’re only allowed to support Democrats, whatever they say about gay marriage.

UPDATE: David Boaz has some related thoughts, here and (with a Howard Dean angle) here.

MICKEY KAUS ON IMMIGRATION:

I thought the “end of the line” promise couldn’t possibly be real. It isn’t! … Senator McCain, the “straight talk” expert who has beaten the “end of the line” phrase into insensibility while defending his legalization bill, might profitably be asked to explain its highly deceptive and fictional aspects.

I think McCain’s too busy dissing the blogosphere to focus on this stuff.

CATHY SEIPP: “What did you do in the mommy wars?”

INDEED:

Bush and the Republican Congress have had a difficult time selling themselves to the public because their policies have not been appealing. They have adhered to a philosophy, big-government conservatism, that has finally alienated nearly everyone. The War on Terror delayed the effects of this alienation for several years, but ultimately the Bush administration’s errors and Congress’s addiction to big spending — which was based on this big-government conservative philosophy — alienated both those outside the party, first, and then a great proportion of Republicans themselves. . . .

The one positive element for Republicans at this point is that they are learning today, almost six months before the coming elections, that their philosophy has run its course. There is time for them to change.

They’d better get cracking. In a related post, Jim Geraghty has thoughts on why stay-at-home Republicans are wrong:

Trent “I’m tired of hearing about Porkbusters” Lott, Ted “Bridge to Nowhere” Stevens, John McCain, Arlen Specter, Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

Nice job, guys. Your effort to re-conservativize the Republican Party in Washington by staying home this year will have the effect of massacring the actual conservatives and empowering the moderates who you disdain. Perhaps we can call this counterproductive maneuver “RINO-plasty.”

But that’s okay, the staying-at-home-conservatives insist. The GOP will win back the House and Senate in 2008, establishing a true conservative majority.

Maybe. But as I mentioned, what kind of lengths do you think the Democrats will go to in order to keep power once they’ve got it? Does the “Fairness Doctrine” ring a bell? You think Pelosi and Reid wouldn’t try that tactic to hinder conservative talk radio? How about McCain-Feingold 2.0, with a particular focus on controlling “unregulated speech” on the Internet and blogs?

Think the MSM was cheerleading for Democrats in 2004? How much more fair and balanced do you think they’ll be when their task is to defend Democratic House and Senate majorities AND elect President Hillary Rodham Clinton? My guess is, they’ll make the CBS memo story look accurate and evenhanded by comparison.

Yes, the dissatisfied members of the base should probably be thinking about this. But shouldn’t the GOP leadership be showing a similar sense of urgency?

PLUGGING LEAKS: The real reason the press is upset about the phone-number-tracking story?

IN THE MAIL: Barry Werth’s 31 Days : The Crisis That Gave Us the Government We Have Today.

JOEL KOTKIN thinks high gas prices might actually be good for suburbia:

CNN recently published a study that suggested that the “best cities” in an oil crisis are those much-loved traditional cities such as San Francisco, New York, Boston and Chicago.

Yet in reality, these fears — or hopes — may well prove misplaced. Higher energy costs could make people look for work closer to home, which for most of them is the suburbs.

Perhaps the best way to test the thesis of higher energy prices constricting suburbia is to look at the experience of the 1970s. In that decade, Americans faced an even steeper price rise than that anticipated by almost anyone today. Worse, we were hopelessly unprepared for it, and far more jobs, particularly high-paying ones, were located in the urban core.

So what happened? People reacted, but not by jumping on mass transit in big numbers. In fact, transit use continued to decline from 6.4 percent of commuters to 5.3 percent between 1970 and 1980.

Nor did people move en masse to traditional older cities. In fact, the 1970s proved to be the only decade in the 20th century that overall urban population declined. Suburbanization proceeded apace, with jobs and people heading out to the hinterlands.

(Via NewsAlert). I’ve had some related thoughts here and especially here.

MURTHA GETS HECKLED: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

AYAN HIRSI ALI emigrating to the United States?

Hmm. Back in the 20th Century Europe lost a lot of smart people to religious persecution, and it’s never really recovered. You’d think they’d want to put a stop to that. Of course, there’s a backstory that goes beyond religious persecution.

UPDATE: Dave Weigel seems, strangely, to be almost pleased with Hirsi Ali’s problems. It’s one thing to agree, as Peaktalk does in the item linked above, that she deserves to resign. It’s another, however, to use that to dismiss the very genuine religious persecution she’s suffered with a passing comment.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dave Weigel emails:

I see how you could get the (mistaken) impression I was pleased with Hirsi Ali’s persecution. My pithiness obscured my point, which is that the extreme immigration solutions of Hirsi Ali’s party ended up mitigating her emigration, and that’s something immigration restrictionists in Europe should reflect on. But maybe I doomed myself by trying to pithy at all about this topic.

Anyway, I wanted to point out the small irony that the first person I could find gloating about Hirsi Ali could well be a distant relative.

Fair enough. Pithiness risks misinterpretation, as I know all too well.

ROGER SIMON is blogging from the Personal Democracy Forum.

DON SURBER: “In reading Sheryl Stolberg’s story in the New York Times today of a congressman’s addiction to painkillers, I see where she discussed the congressman’s painkiller addiction without mentioning a painkiller. A very famous person also is addicted to painkillers. The law pursued that famous person years. But when the congressman ran across the law, the police drove the congressman home and tucked him in bed.”

THE BELMONT CLUB LOOKS AT THE RULES OF WAR. I think reciprocity should be the rule.

IN RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS, those lake photos below were taken with my old Toshiba not the Nikon. I don’t think you can buy the Toshiba any more, and I think the quality on them is uneven, but this one produces good images even in large sizes. (In fact, a reader blew this picture up to 20×24 — I sent the original-size file — and says it turned out very well.) Megapixels, past a certain point, are mostly marketing. The Toshiba has an excellent Canon lens, and that makes a big difference. Keep that in mind when shopping for cameras yourself: Glass matters.

UPDATE: Reader John Marcoux emails: “Glad to see this camera tip. Instapundit has been notably deficient lately in consumer reports.”

I’ll try to do better!

SALLY SATEL has an oped on organ donation in the New York Times.

You can hear our podcast interview with Virginia Postrel, about her experience donating a kidney to Sally and her own thoughts on how to reform organ donation policy, here.