I HAVEN’T WATCHED THE 1/2 HOUR NEWS HOUR, and it got critically panned. But apparently the ratings were terrific. (Via Kaus). The real question, of course, is how many of those viewers stick around.

BRIAN DOHERTY: The life and times of Milton Friedman.

HEH: “Raceless Female Raped by Raceless Male at a Party Hosted By a Raceless Fraternity in the Same City Where Rich White Boys Raped A Poor Black Stripper.” The press knows how to avoid giving the wrong impression when it wants to . . . .

OBSERVATIONS ON WAR, DEATH, AND POLITICS.

FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT! Arianna Huffington has more. And here’s a roundup.

MORE BECLOWNING, from David Ignatius.

THE CHICAGO SPORTS REVIEW INTERVIEWS K.C. JOHNSON about the Duke (non) rape case.

UPDATE: The link above is to a PDF version. Here’s the Web version, which you’ll probably find easier to read. Excerpt: “You say to yourself, if I’m a supposed right wing nut, then 90 percent of the people in this country are too. . . . Put it this way: before this case started I had never seen defending civil liberties as a right wing position.” It all depends on whose civil liberties, K.C. Plus this: “I think it’s disappointing to me the sort of role I’ve played in this case to the extent that it wasn’t played by professors at Duke.”

BILL RICHARDSON’S SPACE POLICY has Rand Simberg excited.

DO PROFESSORS BELONG IN THE GREENHOUSE ROGUES’ GALLERY?

I’m still a carbon-emissions nightmare, because last year I flew almost 50,000 miles, 40,000 of them for work. According to this carbon calculator (the only one I could find that lets you simply enter a total number of air miles), that means I produced 18.4 tons of CO2 by jet travel for my job. The site for An Inconvenient Truth says that the national average is 7.5 tons a year, so with work-related flying alone (i.e., irrespective of taxis, trains, and so forth, let alone my entire personal production of CO2), I’ve produced about two and a half times the ordinary American’s exhalations. No matter how much I also pedal and plant, I’m a global warmer.

Nor am I alone, or even the worst offender. Almost since the beginning of air travel’s commercial availability, academics have been leaving on jet planes.

Since I gave my presentation at the Harvard bloggers’ conference by video, I’m going to demand extra eco-smugness points.

THE EDWARDS CAMPAIGN DENIES that Edwards called Israel a threat to world security. But Peter Bart is standing by his report. Is there video somewhere? (Via John Tabin).

PAYING ATTENTION to Bill Richardson. I like the space part.

BUZZ ALDRIN ON RETURNING TO THE MOON: “On my last trip to the moon I didn’t get to stay the whole day and had to share my accommodations with another man. If I could go back, I would expect not only a larger room, but a longer moment to gaze at the stars and the cloudy blue ball that should only be mankind’s starter home.”

I HAVE A RESPONSE TO PAUL CAMPOS IN TODAY’S ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS: The opening sentence: “Paul Campos has beclowned himself.”

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein comments.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Beclowned” is the word of the year, so far. Which has Tim Blair gloating.

MORE: I see that at least one commenter at the RMN is calling for Campos to be fired. That rather misses the point of my column. Yes, he wrote a silly, uninformed, hysterical, and rather thuggish column. But the solution to bad speech is more speech, not suppression. That Campos hasn’t learned that reflects poorly on him, but I don’t think firing is the solution.

STILL MORE: Linda Seebach from the Rocky Mountain News emails:

You’re used to this, no doubt, but I thought you might be interested to learn that a few minutes ago the number of comments on your piece exceeded the total of all comments posted to the preceding 76 Speakout entries since we started accepting comments Jan. 23. I think I said in one of the first messages I sent you that I thought your blog had a bigger reach than the Rocky, and more engaged readers; well, there you have it.

Maybe that means I should open up comments. Or, maybe not. . . .

MORE STILL: Reader Julian Biggs emails: “Ok, maybe he shouldn’t be fired, but perhaps the keys to his very small car should be taken away.” That’s fair. Actually, when he’s not obsessing about me, or the war, Campos can be okay. I’ve enjoyed his columns in the past, which is why I’ve been taken aback by his increasing hysteria and hostility in recent months.

And nobody seems to want me to open comments. Typical is this email from Daniel Jenkins: “If you are seriously considering opening comments, please don’t. Comment threads almost always turn into grade school back and forths. I really like your current practice of posting reader emails you find insightful. ”

No, I’m not serious. Comments are nice, but past a certain traffic level they tend to devolve rapidly. And I’m way past that traffic level.

FINALLY: Campos has responded over at Glenn Greenwald’s. Being kind of busy, and bearing in mind the mud/pig/wrestling rule, I think I’ll just point to Dan Riehl’s treatment, and note that Campos doesn’t seem to understand the difference between an executive order and a statute, or the point of my Libya example. Neither surprises me. And I liked this comment. Heh.

IN THE MAIL: Zachary Karabell’s Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence. From the blurb:

Historians have so often focused on religious conflict–crusades, jihads, pogroms–that Karabell fears many readers have forgotten how often the devout have lived in peace with those of different faiths. To dispel this unfortunate forgetfulness, he develops a wide-ranging narrative highlighting epochs of interfaith toleration and cooperation. Readers visit, for instance, ninth-century Baghdad, where a Muslim caliph invited Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist theologians to compare beliefs; later, the tour moves on to thirteenth-century Toledo, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians collaborated in translating important classical texts; and, still later, Karabell turns to mid-twentieth-century Beirut, where disparate religions hammered out a national pact for sharing governance. Karabell concedes that some regimes have pursued ecumenical harmony merely to secure economic and political advantage, but he insists that such harmony actually reflects peace-fostering doctrines central to all of the Abrahamic faiths. Applying such doctrines, Karabell concedes, has grown more difficult in a modern world transformed by the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism.

I noted way back in the early days of InstaPundit that many people have a simplistic view of Islam — one fostered, ironically, by the fundamentalists, who want everyone to think that they’re the true and only face of Islam. This book looks as if it might be a useful corrective, though of course the people who really need to be persuaded are unlikely to read it.

NORM GERAS PUBLISHES An open letter by a group of Iranian academics, writers, and artists regarding the Tehran Conference on Holocaust Denial.

HOWARD KURTZ on the Sirius / XM merger:

The reason these two companies have 13 million subscribers willing to cough up $12.95 a month for something we all grew up thinking should be free is that commercial radio has self-destructed. . . . Really, can you think of an industry (okay, maybe American automakers) that has frittered away such huge advantages and sent its customers scrambling for alternatives?

True. Like podcasting!

MAX BOOT: Iraq as Yugoslavia.

REP. CAROLYN MCCARTHY (D-NY) has introduced a new, farther-reaching assault weapons ban.

WILLIAM BEUTLER REPORTS on a security hole at ActBlue that may have compromised donor information. These things happen all the time, though they really shouldn’t.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE is going green.

A LEGAL HISTORY LESSON, for Brad DeLong.

A BLOGGING BLACKLIST: I wonder who Alterman would nominate?

UPDATE: Best line in the comments so far: “Nobody expects the Blogger Inquisition!”

LOADS OF LIBBY TRIAL STUFF, from Tom Maguire.

THE FAA BACKS DOWN from its “collective rights” interpretation of the Second Amendment.

THOUGHTS ON blogging and perspective.