PATRICK RUFFINI SAYS the surge is working. Let’s hope. Plus this: “When things don’t go well in Iraq, we see the endless B-roll of chaos and carnage. When things are on the upswing, we tend to hear more about Anna Nicole Smith. ” Things must be going really well, then . . . .

VIRGINIA POSTREL WRITES on the Transparent Society and its clueless adult enemies.

JOHN SCALZI offers a look at the money side of writing science fiction.

THROWING AWAY THE KEY: Prof. Ellen Podgor looks at sentencing for White Collar crimes.

Podgor was also a guest on this podcast.

There’s a response, from Andrew Weissman and Joshua Block.

HELICOPTER SHOT DOWN BY INSURGENTS — DOZENS DEAD: In Iran.

BECLOWNING, once again. As usual, it’s self-inflicted.

But for a real blogfight, go here.

UPDATE: More restrained blogfighting here.

THE LATEST BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW IS UP, with Austin Bay talking about his new book.

THE POWERLINE GUYS now have another blog over at AOL.

XENI JARDIN POSTS A ROUNDUP on persecuted Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman.

INDEED: Bumper Stickers Are Not the Answer.

OPENING THE DOORS to the silos.

SUICIDE GOOGLEBOMBING: Heh.

THE NEW REPUBLIC goes biweekly. It seems to me that this could work, if they integrate the web content — for timeliness that a weekly can’t deliver anyway — while putting more longer pieces, of the kind that it’s a pain to read on the Web, in the magazine. But it’s certainly a huge gamble. I think that TNR, which has always had a contrarian approach that went beyond the usual partisan divide, is suffering because this is a time in which the partisan divide is very sharp, and people are placed under enormous pressure to fall on one side of the fence or the other, even when they don’t really agree with the bulk of either side. I suspect, however, that this is a temporary condition — sharp partisan divides generally blur — and that eventual blurring will probably help.

OVER AT MICKEY KAUS’S, an observation:

The truth is Hillary’s campaign has been a series of ill-considered moves. Obama panicked her into a way-too-early-announcement. The cause of the panic was fund-raising (poaching of presumed supporters), which is the least vulnerable aspect of her campaign. Basically, if she wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, she wins the nomination. The most she can spend in Iowa and New Hampshire is $20 million, every last dollar counted, including the surrounding states primary television advertising that will be seen in Iowa. So money is not her problem. Imagining that it was and therefore entering the race six-to-eight months before she needed to was a MAJOR mistake. Had she entered in August or September, the surge would have run its course successfully or not. The Iran issue would be that much further along. Pandemic flu would have hit or not hit. Etc. By announcing early, she brought into play a hundred unnecessary variables.

Read the whole thing, and scroll down for some more interesting thoughts. I think that starting the campaign early is a bad idea for a lot of reasons. Aside from considerations like the above, it draws much more heavily on the campaign’s most important capital, the candidate. Tired people make mistakes, and the earlier you start, the tireder you’re likely to be by the final stages when it really matters. Plus, with a two-year campaign, whoever gets elected will start off already exhausted. And I’m serious about this, not just joking. Being President, especially during difficult times like these, wears people out anyway, and it can only be worse if you start off tired from a two-year campaign.

HOMELAND SECURITY has been the Bush Administration’s biggest and most inexcusable national-security failure, but the Democrats don’t want to make an issue of it for some reason (because they’d have to criticize a big government program?). But here’s an alternative approach. Or at least a call for one. . . .

A PACK, NOT A HERD: “A tour bus of US senior citizens defended themselves against a group of alleged muggers, sending two of them fleeing and killing a third in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, Costa Rica police said on Thursday. One of the tourists – a retired member of the US military – put assailant Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of San Jose. “

NO STRINGS.

A SUBVERSIVE THOUGHT CASCADE.

ED MORRISSEY: “There’s nothing more predictive than a hot, breaking poll less than 90 weeks before an election.”

THE BOSTON GLOBE LOOKS AT SOCKPUPPETS, but Dean Barnett notes some errors and omissions in the account.

JAMES WATERTON REVIEWS the new documentary, Mine Your Own Business.

The review is good, and it sounds like the film is good, too. But unaccountably, he, like every other reviewer I’ve encountered, seems to have missed the Scooby Doo angle.

RAND SIMBERG HAS THOUGHTS on Rudy and abortion.

A LOOK AT UGANDA:

The country of Uganda plans to send about 1,500 troops to Somalia as part of an African Union peace-keeping force. The goal is to stabilize the weak government of Somalia, with the hope that the warlords will voluntarily disarm. Hopefully, Ugandan troops will be more successful in Somalia than they have in their own country.

For months now, Ugandan army troops have been garrisoned in the northeast part of the country under orders to disarm the local populace—pastoral, cattle-herding tribes known as the Karamojong. The army is attempting, and failing, to quash an uprising which was caused by prior attempt to disarm the same tribes.

But in its effort to “disarm,” the Ugandan army, supported by tanks and helicopter gunships, is burning down villages, sexually torturing men, raping women, and plundering what few possessions the tribespeople own. Tens of thousands of victims have been turned into refugees. Human rights scholar Ben Knighton has used the term “ethnocide” to describe the army’s campaign.

Read the whole thing.

WE’RE NUMBER FOUR: Go Vols!

EUGENE VOLOKH LOOKS AT loss of press freedoms in post-9/11 America.