SARKOZY vs. the Burka.

I’LL TELL DAD! Now that’s leadership: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is threatening to take President Bush to court if he issues a signing statement as a way of sidestepping a carefully crafted compromise Iraq war spending bill.”

I think the political question doctrine would apply anyway. As in “Don’t come running to me whenever you two get into a spat.”

TIME FOR ANOTHER BOOK: Susan Katz-Keating says that George Tenet should write another book on why he presided over the dismantling of the CIA’s human-intelligence assets.

ED DRISCOLL writes that 18 Doughty Street puts it all together: “18 Doughty Street appears to have been one of the first sites that has managed to really put all the pieces together to create an Internet-based virtual television network.”

OBAMA GETS The Glow. With, perhaps, a little help from Photoshop. And not the Condi Rice kind.

MORE RON PAUL POLL SPAMMING: Really, I don’t think this is helping him, and I doubt his campaign appreciates it.

OLD MEDIA VERSUS NEW:

“The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation,” Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said, referring to the Civil War American general George Custer who was defeated by Native Americans in a battle dubbed “Custer’s Last Stand”.

“They will lose this war if they go to war,” Parsons added, “The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”

Two points. First, doesn’t this phrasing sound like Baghdad Bob? And second, while Custer certainly lost the battle, the Sioux actually lost the war. That’s because they faced an opponent with better technology, more dynamism, and . . . oh, hell, you get the idea. It was a poor choice of metaphor.

FIVE YEARS ON: How significant is Padilla?

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF ISLAMIC RADICALISM: They just don’t seem to like women much, do they?

WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? “Blogging is a new kind of speech competition — a speech rat race. What?! Now we have to keep up with the Instapundits?!“

CATHY YOUNG: “Why is it still illegal to pay for sex?”

UPDATE: A thoughtful response, though I think I’m more persuaded by Cathy.

IF PUBLISHING LEAKS OF CLASSIFIED INFORMATION IS FREE SPEECH, then this is too, according to Verizon:

Essentially, the argument is that turning over truthful information to the government is free speech, and the EFF and ACLU can’t do anything about it. In fact, Verizon basically argues that the entire lawsuit is a giant SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit, and that the case is an attempt to deter the company from exercising its First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to government security services.

“Communicating facts to the government is protected petitioning activity,” says the response, even when the communication of those facts would normally be illegal or would violate a company’s owner promises to its customers. Verizon argues that, if the EFF and other groups have concerns about customer call records, the only proper remedy “is to impose restrictions on the government, not on the speaker’s right to communicate.”

This is audacious lawyering.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN Drive-In Movie Theater: “The setup is surprisingly simple.” There’s video.

ANDREW SULLIVAN ASKS: “If gun rights are civil rights, why would anyone feel the need to hide the fact that they own one?”

I think the short answer is that gun rights are about security, and we’d rather keep the criminals guessing. In addition, doubt about who owns guns generates what economists call “positive externalities,” meaning that if a substantial proportion of homeowners have guns, or if a nontrivial number of people out-and-about are carrying concealed guns, potential burglars or assailants have to allow for the possibility that a victim or someone in the neighborhood might be armed. That produces a deterrent effect that benefits even those who do not possess guns This is why, for example, we see fewer burglaries of occupied homes in the United States than in countries like Britain with strict gun controls — breaking into an occupied home is dangerous. Meanwhile, on a more personal level, those who are armed would prefer to have the advantage of surprise. I should also note that there’s a difference between owning guns (the “keep and bear” business) and carrying guns, which is what the whole CCW permit thing is about. That distinction is explained at some length here.

But I’ll turn the question around: If abortion is a civil right, why would anyone object to having a newspaper publish a searchable database of people who’ve had one?

I’m not ashamed! But some people might worry about prejudice from the “unenlightened and unsophisticated.”

UPDATE: Some further thoughts from Eugene Volokh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thoughts on gun bigotry, including a reference to this amusing Slate piece by Emily Yoffe, which I’d missed. Excerpt:

So anathema are guns among my friends that when one learned I was doing this piece, he opened his wallet, silently pulled out an NRA membership card, then (after I recovered from the sight) asked me not to spread it around lest his son be kicked out of nursery school.

Sheesh. And a bit more background here, from Dave Kopel.

DANCERS FOR DEMOCRACY: Now there’s a group I could get behind.

SO I SEE THIS HEADLINE and it reads “Rep. Poe Quotes Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard On House Floor.”

Big deal, I think: Everybody quotes Robert Byrd eventually. Then I find out it’s about quoting Nathan Bedford Forrest. Well, he knew more about military matters than Byrd, anyway. The whole stink is one of the most contrived in recent memory, which is saying a lot. Come on, guys. You can come up with better cheap shots than that.

UPDATE: Or maybe it’s just an effort to distract attention from Al Sharpton’s latest bigotry:

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE HAS A NEW BOOK OUT: The Complete Guide to Sarbanes-Oxley: Understanding How Sarbanes-Oxley Affects Your Business.

Via, er, Professor Bainbridge.

UPDATE: More on Sarbanes-Oxley here.

I ALWAYS HEARD THAT JOHN ASHCROFT WAS THE BIG THREAT TO PRIVACY, but now it looks as if the real threat may come from newspapers:

Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits. . . .

Wasn’t that the nefarious, 21st-century sort of snooping that the National Security Agency was doing without warrants on American citizens? Wasn’t that the whole subject of the prizewinning work in December 2005 by Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen?

And hadn’t the company’s chairman and publisher, Pinch Sulzberger, already trotted out Pulitzers earlier in the program?

Yes, yes, and yes. But Robinson was talking about money this time.

Oh, well, then. So long as it’s not about national security. (Via BOTW).

Meanwhile, some advice from Don Surber, though it’s specifically aimed at the Tennessean, which raised its own privacy concerns today: “The press is supposed to be the watchdog of the government, not a watchdog of the people.”

JOHN J. MILLER WRITES ON JOHN ONDRASIK AND FIVE FOR FIGHTING: You can also hear our podcast interview with Ondrasik here.

ROBERT MCCHESNEY AND I HAVE MORE ON THE FUTURE OF MEDIA, in today’s Los Angeles Times.

ANNE APPLEBAUM BIDS FAREWELL TO JACQUES CHIRAC:

But try, if you can, to leave Iraq aside: Chirac’s more important diplomatic legacy lies elsewhere.

Ponder closely, for example, what Chirac has had to say about Africa, where his country has enormous influence, in many places far outweighing ours. During a visit to the Ivory Coast, Chirac once called “multi-partyism” a “kind of luxury,” which his host, president-for-life Félix Houphouet-Boigny, could clearly not afford. During a visit to Tunisia, he proclaimed that, since “the most important human rights are the rights to be fed, to have health, to be educated, and to be housed,” Tunisia’s human rights record is “very advanced”—never mind the police who beat up dissidents. “Africa is not ready for democracy,” he told a group of African leaders in the early 1990s. . . .

On Saddam Hussein: “You are my personal friend. Let me assure you of my esteem, consideration, and bond.”

On Eastern Europe supporting the United States in the United Nations: “It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well-brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to shut up.”

On Iran’s nuclear program: “Having one or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that’s not very dangerous.” Theoretically, Chirac was supposed to be negotiating with Iran to give up its nuclear program at the time.

On hearing a French businessman address a European summit in English, “deeply shocked,” he stormed out of the room.

As I say, it’s a very important legacy: One of consistent scorn for the Anglo-American world in general and the English language in particular, of suspicion of Central Europe and profound disinterest in the wave of democratic transformation that swept the world in the 1980s and 1990s, of preference for the Arab and African dictators who had been, and remained, clients of France. In his later years, Chirac constantly searched, in almost all international conflicts, for novel ways of opposing the United States. All along, he did his best to protect France from the rapidly changing global economy.

He did enormous damage, much of it to France.

UPDATE: Yeah, I’m milking that protest photo for all its worth. Hey, soon it’ll be obsolete.

THE D.C. CIRCUIT HAS REFUSED TO REHEAR Parker v. District of Columbia, in which a panel struck down the D.C. gun ban law on Second Amendment grounds. Eugene Volokh has much more, and sees the chance of a Supreme Court cert. grant as “well over 50%.”

HERE’S MORE ON THOSE TERROR ARRESTS IN NEW JERSEY: This sounds like it was pretty serious, though early reports on this sort of thing are always iffy.

UPDATE: Affidavits at The Smoking Gun.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I assume that these are “Dangerous Terrorists,” as opposed to those not-so-dangerous terrorists whom the DoJ will allow to own guns.

And here’s a big Fort Dix roundup from Pajamas Media.

MORE: Jules Crittenden would rather distinguish between bozos and non-bozos: “It’s the smart jihadis I’m more worried about. Not bozos like these. You’d almost think these were the ones they wanted us to catch.” Actually, there’s a high bozo contingent in Al Qaeda. They make up for the fact that they’re not especially bright by being persistent and willing to learn from their mistakes.

IN RESPONSE TO COMPLAINTS, The Tennessean has taken down its list of Tennessee concealed-weapon permit holders. I agree with Blake Wylie: “Bravo to the Tennessean. They should have done some research and put some thought into it *before* putting it online, but I’m glad they did the right thing in the end.”

UPDATE: A.C. Kleinheider observes:

Whether the Tennessean did this out of an editorial anti-gun fervor, a pitch at boosting their web hits, or a simple exercise in public records, the result will be the same. The legislature will be overloaded with demands from gun owners to close these records.

Because, in the end, the Tennessean didn’t do anything wrong here. Sure, it was in bad taste and ultimately destructive.

But these are, in fact, public records. The jokers over a 1100 Broadway simply made them easily accessible — as all public information will eventually be.

This little episode should be lesson to all of us. I am just afraid that we won’t learn it. When the Tennessean eventually shuts this database down and/or the legislature closes these records, screeds will be written on the power of the gun community and, indeed, kudos will be due. But the important lesson to learn is the one about privacy and open records.

And also: “Whether the Tennessean publishes the database or not is not the problem. The problem is that the database exists in the first place. Certainly, it was in bad taste for the Tennessean to publish this info. No gun owner wants the criminals to know who has firearms and the ability to carry them legally. . . . You see, whether the Tennessean publishes the names on the list is not the tragedy. The tragedy is that the list exists at all.” He thinks we should have Vermont style carry, with no permit required.

I’m also already hearing proposals that Tennessee’s law be amended to protect against this kind of disclosure. I believe Minnesota’s law provides such protections.

MICHAEL BARONE on the realignment of America: “It has become a commonplace to say that population has been flowing from the Snow Belt to the Sun Belt, from an industrially ailing East and Midwest to an economically vibrant West and South. But the actual picture of recent growth, as measured by the 2000 Census and the census estimates for 2006, is more complicated. Recently I looked at the census estimates for 50 metropolitan areas with more than one million people in 2006, where 54% of Americans live. . . . What I found is that you can separate them into four different categories, with different degrees and different sources of population growth or decline. And I found some interesting surprises.”