“I WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE 9/11 OPERATION, FROM A TO Z.” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confesses.

In a rambling statement, Mr. Mohammed, a chief aide to Osama bin Laden, said his actions were part of a military campaign. “I’m not happy that 3,000 been killed in America,” he said in broken English. “I feel sorry even. I don’t like to kill children and the kids.”

He added, “The language of war is victims.”…

His actions, he said, were like those of other revolutionaries. Had the British arrested George Washington during the Revolutionary War, Mr. Mohammed said, “for sure they would consider him enemy combatant.”

One Number To Ring Them All, One Number To Find Them: This sounds like a force for great evil, or great good:

Its motto, “One number for life,” pretty much says it all. At GrandCentral.com, you choose a new, single, unified phone number (more on this in a moment). You hand it out to everyone you know, instructing them to delete all your old numbers [home, cell, office] from their Rolodexes.

From now on, whenever somebody dials your new uninumber, all of your phones ring simultaneously, like something out of “The Lawnmower Man.”

No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers in turn. No longer does it matter if you’re home, at work or on the road. Your new GrandCentral phone number will find you.

Yike.

It Didn’t Seem Like A Trick Question: Andrew Sullivan flags Hillary Clinton caught without her focus groups – we are excerpting Jake Tapper of ABC News, who asked Sen. Clinton whether homosexuality was immoral:

“Well I’m going to leave that to others to conclude,” she said. “I’m very proud of the gays and lesbians I know who perform work that is essential to our country, who want to serve their country and I want make sure they can.”

No Profiles in Courage there. As a benchmark, here is George Bush from a July 2003 press conference:

Q Thank you, sir. Mr. President, many of your supporters believe that homosexuality is immoral. They believe that it’s been given too much acceptance in policy terms and culturally. As someone who’s spoken out in strongly moral terms, what’s your view on homosexuality?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I am mindful that we’re all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor’s eye when they got a log in their own. I think it’s very important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts, to be a welcoming country. On the other hand, that does not mean that somebody like me needs to compromise on an issue such as marriage. And that’s really where the issue is heading here in Washington, and that is the definition of marriage.

“We’re all sinners” is not exactly a rejection of the notion that homosexuality is immoral, sooo… let’s say that Hillary managed to get to the left of George Bush on this issue. Barely.

MORE: Reader BD imagines the follow-up Q&A:

Senator Clinton, should we increase taxes? Well, I’m going to leave that for others to decide.

Senator Clinton, should we combat global warming? Well I’m going to leave that for others to decide.

Senator Clinton, should we pull the troops out of Iraq or leave them in? Well, I’m going to leave that for others to decide.

UPDATE: Per Newsday, Barack Obama also waltzed around this question. Interestingly, Mr.Obama also thinks that John Edwards is “kind of cute”. [No news on Edwards, but Sen. Obama has finally decided that gay is OK.]

UNRELENTING: Having had a chance to huddle with her friends and consultants, Sen. Clinton is no longer leaving this issue for others to decide::

I disagree with General Pace completely. I do not think homosexuality is immoral.

Zogby Poll On Media Bias:

The vast majority of American voters believe media bias is alive and well – 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides, a recent IPDI/Zogby Interactive poll shows.

…Nearly two-thirds of those online respondents who detected bias in the media (64%) said the media leans left, while slightly more than a quarter of respondents (28%) said they see a conservative bias on their TV sets and in their column inches.

…While 97% of Republicans surveyed said the media are liberal, two-thirds of political independents feel the same, but fewer than one in four independents (23%) said they saw a conservative bias. Democrats, while much more likely to perceive a conservative bias than other groups, were not nearly as sure the media was against them as were the Republicans. While Republicans were unified in their perception of a left-wing media, just two-thirds of Democrats were certain the media skewed right – and 17% said the bias favored the left.

17% of Dems say the media tilts left? Those respondents have no message discipline at all.

Stand Back, Socrates: We unify the key stories of the day with just one question: Will Gonzaga outlast Gonzales?

YOUR ECONOMIST POST FOR THE DAY Sorry to inundate you with Economist bloggery, but we’re having a great week. From Democracy in America, our politics blog:

It’s now official: either taste-makers and pundits in New York and Washington are colossally wrong, or the polls are. Either Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are going to prove that it’s still the voters who get to vote, stupid, or these two are going to go down like lead zeppelins soon. But I, for one, am not going to accept for much longer that Republicans don’t know enough about Mr Giuliani (have you heard he’s pro-choice and had gay roommates?) to dump him, or that Democrats don’t yet know enough about Barack Obama (have you heard how charismatic he is?) to dump Ms Clinton. Both of those stories have been written over and over; the secret is pretty well out.

No Paranoia Left Behind: Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias are slugging it out – do conservatives support the 100% proficiency goal of No Child Left Behind as part of a secret scheme to deem every public school in America a failure? Kevin says yes, Matt says no, Kevin says maybe, Matt still says no…

Well. The vast right wing conspiracy is apparently back and better than ever (ouyay owknay erewhay otay eetmay, ightray?), but I don’t think we are quite this sly. My guess – Republicans are figuring that if NCLB is going to be amended to become “Some Children Left Behind”, we can defer that PR puzzle to President Obama. Of course, an obvious step would be to keep the 100% proficiency goal but extend the deadline from 2014 to, say, 2020.

Whoever succeeds Bush will no doubt have plenty of opportunities to identify inherited but unrealistic goals.

ON GLOBAL WARMING Let me clarify a little my position. I think there are a lot of questions about global warming: how much, and what, should be done. However, I regard two questions as basically no longer worth debating, at least by people with my level of science education:

1) Is AGW happening?
2) Should we do something about it?

The first is a technical question that seems to be largely settled; when you’ve convinced Ron Bailey it’s happening, you’ve convinced me. The second is a moral question that seems obvious: should I drive a huge, empty car many miles when doing so will help flood Bangladesh, merely because the comfy leather seats are right here where I can see them, and the dead future Bangladeshis aren’t? . . . this is a question that seemingly only has one right answer. I say this as one who is conscious that I could use less electricity, and should, and am trying to but not as hard as morality should require. But I digress.

Unfortunately, I think that politics renders the questions that are worth arguing, pointless; we won’t find a political solution to the problem because . . . mmmmmm, leather seats. I’m hoping instead for a technological breakthrough that renders the question largely moot. Meanwhile, I’m buying real estate in the Canadian hinterlands.

OVER AT CATO UNBOUND Brian Doherty—a highly amusing dinner companion as well as a brilliant writer—asks: “Did this libertarian movement . . . actually accomplish anything of unquestionable significance?”

Tyler Cowen* answers “Yes: Bigger government.”

You know what to do: read the whole thing.

* Also a highly amusing dinner companion, even though he recently declared that I am not a “real adult”.

TIM WORSTALL: Obama is so black . . . Black Irish, that is. Although he uses the phrase differently from my family. We say we’re Black Irish because we have dark hair and light eyes (and, of course, skin so white that epileptics have trouble being in the same room with me.) Mr Worstall, being a Limey, uses it incorrectly to mean an Irish person who is also a Protestant, when the correct term for that is “[Censored] Orange bastard”.

However, in this case, both uses apply. Does this mean Ted Kennedy will be stumping for him?

Update TIm Worstall emails:

I err, do have an Irish passport (as well as the UK) and am Catholic (nominally) myself.

Don’t you see that’s even worse?! You’re consorting with The Enemy! How could you have anything to do with the British?

TALK BACK Incidentally, I’ve opened up a comment thread at my own site for those who would like to chat about anything I’ve said here.

I DON’T KNOW THAT THIS IS AIMED AT ME, because frankly I doubt that Henry Farrell spends very much of his time thinking about me. But this certainly echoes an argument that he made to me in our Bloggingheads.tv debate:

Even so, his call for a pragmatic libertarianism seems on target to me (I’d vastly prefer a political debate in which smart libertarians acknowledged that global warming was a major problem in need of a political solution, and contributed insights from their own perspective, to a debate in which many libertarians either minimize the problem or suggest that no real political solution is possible).

I am very, very pessimistic that a political solution will be found to global warming. The costs of abatement are very high, and immediate, while the costs of the warming are diffuse, slow to occur, and will fall heavily on people who are not causing the problem: either people in poor countries like Bangladesh or any number of African states whose countries will become largely uninhabitable; or people, rich and poor alike, who are not yet born.

Most of the people with whom I have debated the matter, including, I felt, Henry, have treated my opinion as if it were an instrumental belief aimed at avoiding action. I’m in favour of action. I think America needs a whopping big carbon tax (and am braced for the flood of mail I know this declaration will trigger.) I would be happy to see a global cap-and-trade scheme. Changing someone else’s climate with your fuel consumption seems to me to be a classic violation of libertarian ideas about property and liberty, making a strong case for abatement measures. I don’t know what level of abatement I favour–I haven’t studied the matter closely enough. But it seems clear to me that some action is warranted.

But just because I think some action should be taken doesn’t mean that I think it will. Henry is saying, in effect: “We have a big problem. Why don’t you help me find a government solution?” That’s like my friend saying “I lost my car keys in Texas. Why won’t you help me search my house for them?” Answer: for the same reason I won’t help you search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I don’t think a government solution can be achieved. I mean, I can sit around and paint a very pretty picture of what it would look like, who would run it, and how we would control for the various informational and incentive problems that are bound to crop up . . . but this would be sort of pointless, because I think the chances of any such programme ever being enacted are vanishingly small. Name one government programme, in a democracy, for anything other than a war (on people, I mean, not ideas or natural conditions), that has ever forced the entire citizenry to do something as painful and inconvient as cut their energy usage by 20-50%. If you can do so, I will reconsider my stance. I note that Britain is in the early stages of just such a plan, and if it works, I will eat my words with a glad smile*. Until then . . . I feel Brink Lindsay’s proposed Liberaltarian alliance is not going to go far if the liberal half demands that we pretend to believe in the impossible as a condition of entry.

* Easy for me to promise, since I don’t have to pay up until 2050.

HE MAY NOT have captured Glenn’s heart, but I’m still quite fond of him, and not just because he gets all the robot questions at pub trivia. Happy 28th birthday to Julian Sanchez.

“I LOVE THE SASQUATCH.” Me too!

UPDATE: Sasquatch phylogenetics. Via Metafilter.

No, THIS is Scrutiny: The NY Times front-pages, evidently without irony, an article about CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) titled “Scrutiny Increases for a Group Advocating for Muslims in U.S.“.

However, the Times notion of scrutiny does not satisfy Captain Ed or Karl of protein wisdom.

Pardon Us For Not Getting Up: Patrick Sullivan on the passing of a man who changed the backside of America.

JUST SAY NO to the idea that the (second) state song is about drugs. “Rocky Mountain High” — it’s not about drugs!

“We could be talking about guys who’ve been fishing all day, or kids pigging out on s’mores, with the chocolate,” Senator Hagedorn said, referring to other endorphin-producing activities. “If I thought there was anything in that song about the use of drugs or encouraging the use of drugs, I would never have run the resolution.”

We’re high on life, man.

“Be More Than You Can Be”: A very cool article about military applications for “The Glove“, by way of Hot Air. More here, but can I get one on Amazon? Well, here is the company’s home site.

Million dollar idea du jour – why don’t I see these in every health club in America?

UPDATE: Similar very cool stuff in the Danger Room.

THE YOO-DE MAN THESIS. Brainiest witticism of the day, from Sasha Volokh.

“OF COURSE WE ARE ALL POLITICAL HACKS!” Orin Kerr answers the question: “Why haven’t we written about the US Attorneys’ story?”

CAMILLE PAGLIA ON ANN COULTER:

John Edwards got publicity for the wrong reason two weeks ago when Ann Coulter bizarrely called him a "faggot" at the Conservative Political Action Conference…. [S]atirists who play on gender themes need some whiff of self-knowledge, or they look ridiculous. Is Coulter truly oblivious to her gender weirdness? It’s no coincidence that words like "tranny" and "transvestite" clog the anti-Coulter blogs.

Coulter is a smart woman with formidable energy, and whether liberals like it or not, she is a high-profile feminist role model in her appetite for aggressive debate. But Coulter seems to be regressing rather than growing intellectually and sharpening her analytic skills. She evidently leaves no room in her life for study and reflection. I take books seriously (which is why I left the scene for five years to write "Break, Blow, Burn") and thus hold against Coulter the part she has played in the debasement of that medium.

If only Coulter were more like Paglia, Paglia would like her better.

“MARRIAGE IS A UNION BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN,” says the highest court in France.

“THE MEA CULPA CAME…” The NYT puts those words right after the Alberto Gonzales line: “I acknowledge that mistakes were made here.” Since when is the notoriously evasive “mistakes were made” a confession of personal guilt? Let’s not define “mea culpa” downward.

Eight Men Out: Patterico defends the Bush Administration and wonders about the LA Times coverage of the emails related to the fired US attorneys.

But from the other side, the Anonymous Liberal discusses “The Email That May Take Down Alberto Gonzales“.

MORE: “Randomized hackery” from Orin Kerr? Does that make him the Stochastic Hack? (h/t AA).

And let’s keep ‘Hilzoy‘ in the mix; the link to this Feb 2007 Congressional Research Study on the history of fired US attorneys is helpful.

You Might Say He Found A Key For Every Door – John Denver is honored in Colorado.