REX HAMMOCK: “I feel a bit relieved that Henry Luce didn’t live to see the day when the magazine company he started was described as ‘a multi-media content company reaching consumers on every platform.’”

(Via Doc Searls).

MORE ON JOHN ASHCROFT, CIVIL LIBERTIES HERO: “In the Soviet Union, you had to be thrown into internal exile before you could be rehabilitated. In Red China, you were paraded around town with a dunce cap on your head. But to be redeemed in Washington, all you need to do is say ‘no’ to Alberto Gonzales.”

POTATOE: Heh. It’s all those layers of editors and fact-checkers who make it really special.

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN SMARTER IN 2003: Bush authorizes new covert action against Iran.

UPDATE: Reader Tom Brosz emails: “It would be even smarter if the usual bastards in the intelligence community could keep their goddamn mouths shut about it.” Let’s not ask for the impossible, now.

THOUGHTS ON BRITISH/RUSSIAN RELATIONS, from Perry DeHavilland.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on Europe’s growing maturity:

For five years we have been lectured that George Bush ruined the trans-Atlantic relationship. But now we see pro-American governments in both France and Germany, and a radical change in attitudes from Denmark to Holland to Italy. The truth is that the Europeans neither hated nor loved Bill Clinton, whom they on occasion privately seethed at for not exercising leadership, or George Bush who swaggered and talked tough to them during the lead-up to Iraq and seemed to them to be rudely unilateral. Instead, after getting their teen-age anger out, they are starting to see that the United States did not fabricate Islamic radicalism nor order them to let in and then not assimilate millions of now angry Muslims. . . .

So it is they, not us, that are returning to sobriety in matters of the trans-Atlantic relationship, and they are doing this not because of affection for George Bush, but despite their anxiety about him. And that is good news, since it suggests the warming exists apart from personalities, and reminds us that if the so-called and much deprecated “West” were ever to act in unison (the former British commonwealth, Japan, the US, and continental Europe), then radical Islam would simply have no chance against 8-900 million of the planet’s most productive, ingenious and democratic peoples. . . . If I were a European, Taiwanese, Saudi, or almost anyone else who habitually complains about American presumptuousness, I would worry that the American public is reverting to its (natural?) 1930s sort of isolationism. Tired of cheap anti-Americanism, the burden of global defense obligations, and the continual erosion of the dollar, they wish to pull in their horns and let others in multilateral fashion pick up the slack.

Read the whole thing.

A HELPFUL GUIDE TO ONLINE DATING, for men.

MICHAEL ARRINGTON: Silicon Valley could use a downturn about now. Well, that’ll get people talking.

AT ECOTOTALITY, AN ARGUMENT against banning incandescent bulbs. I’m a big fan of compact fluorescent bulbs, but legislation to ban incandescents is asinine, and its proponents are merely revealing themselves as ignorant trendhoppers.

AL GORE AND I HAVE A LOT IN COMMON, and here’s something else. I’ve managed to confine the mess to my office proper — even my study at home is fairly neat these days — but the desk they’re showing could be mine.

Some people would argue that this desk thing means we’re smarter. I’m certainly happy to be to be classed with Robert Fogel, who’s so smart he came up with the perfect solution: a second desk! That’s why he’s Nobel material and I’m not.

“RECORD EVERYTHING THEY DO:” It’s a good suggestion. Only I thought they were already doing that.

MURTHA LAUGHS at ethics charge.

ORIN KERR LOOKS AT CYBERSPACE JURISDICTION AND THE DORMANT COMMERCE CLAUSE: “Existing dormant commerce clause doctrine largely traces David’s policy concerns, as it looks at the effect of one state’s regulation on other states and considers the need for a single consistent regulatory scheme. If a state statute that regulates computer usage is read to have such broad extraterritorial scope, it may be invalided on dormant commerce clause grounds. See, e.g., American Libraries Ass’n. v. Pataki, 969 F.Supp. 160 (S.D.N.Y.1997).”

I agree, and in fact published this article in the Virginia Law Review back in 1996, setting out pretty much the same theory as the Pataki case.

CRUSHING OF DISSENT frustrated in California. In spite of the death threats!

CONGRESS VOTES TO IGNORE ITS ETHICS RULES: They’re not having much of a week. And it’s only Tuesday.

JOHN LEO looks at Knoxville’s Channon Christian / Christopher Newsom murders and comments on the politics of news. “Before long, more news consumers will conclude that even crime news is in effect being politicized. Is this any way to protect an industry in trouble?”

Plus, ironically the news folks’ desire not to give white supremacist types ammo winds up doing just that.

FIRED FOR GOSSIP: “‘It kind of sort of was, “Oh did you hear that too,”‘ said Michelle Bonsteel, Piper’s fired co-worker.”

“Yeah, I heard that too.” That kind of thing can get you into trouble.

THERE ARE TWO AMERICAS, and one of them is defending the other. Military recruiting stays strong.

THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: More on the Democrats’ broken promises of reform:

When Democrats took control of Congress last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., promised voters that her party would “drain the swamp” and “lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.” Four month later, Democrats are reflooding the swamp with earmarks and more. . . .

No wonder the former head of the Congressional Accountability Project called Pelosi’s first pick for House Majority Leader “a one-man wrecking crew” of congressional ethics. Rogers has since filed a formal complaint, but don’t expect the House to hurry to consider it. Pelosi is defending Murtha against Rogers and other critics.

Earmarks have so distorted the legislative process that repealing even the worst of them is becoming nearly impossible. Members of Congress who dare challenge these sacred cows are on notice from Pelosi and Murtha that they will meet a similar fate as Rogers and Tiahrt. Looks like that swamp won’t be going dry anytime soon.

Meet the new boss, yada yada.

Meanwhile, from Roll Call, Mollohan, Town Do Battle Over Earmark:

The driving force behind earmarks is the notion that constituents back home will embrace the arrival of federal largesse in their neighborhoods.

But a town in West Virginia is trying to undo an earmark by taking back land a local nonprofit bought with federal money provided in an earmark from Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.).

Mollohan has been under investigation amid allegations that he has channeled earmarks to friends and campaign contributors and that he has profited personally from federal land purchases near property he owns.

Mollohan has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any offense, but he stepped down from the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct last year when the investigation into his earmarks was revealed.

Since then, one of his earmarks has become a local battleground and appears likely to drag the Department of Commerce into a legal fight over land that Mollohan directed the agency to buy.

In February, Mollohan wrote to the Commerce Department warning that one of his earmarks was in jeopardy and suggesting “it appears that it is necessary for the Department to become a party to this case in order to protect its investment in the project and the property in issue.”

Mollohan was referring to an attempt by the town of Davis, W.Va., to condemn 6 acres of the portion of land that the Canaan Valley Institute bought in 2002 for $7 million, money that came from earmarks Mollohan had attached to the budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. . . .

Mollohan takes credit for creating the CVI, which since 1995 has studied watershed science and conservation in northern West Virginia, and he has provided a steady stream of earmarks to the organization to sustain it.

But the earmarks for the institute and other Mollohan-sponsored nonprofits have not been without controversy in the county, which has raised concerns about the increase in tax-exempt property. Davis Mayor Joe Drenning, who said he would not discuss the condemnation case because it is in litigation, said “probably 60 percent of the county is either no taxes or very little taxes” because it is either held by federal agencies or federally funded nonprofit groups such as the CVI.

Whatever this is, it doesn’t sound much like constituent service.

Then, of course, there’s always the business with the jets. So far, Pelosi’s record on reform is rather poor.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: “Oil Price ‘Gouging’: A Phantom Menace?”

RUMBLES: “Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, says his disagreement with the Democrats over the Iraq war won’t prevent him from working with his former party. For now.”

This probably explains why Russ Feingold is fuming impotently over at Kos’s.

DON’T BRING AN UNLOADED GUN TO A GUNFIGHT:

A robbery and crime spree aided by an unloaded gun came to a halt late Thursday when the gunman met more than his match: a gun with bullets.

Charles Parker Jr., 18, of Detroit was killed when a 53-year-old man pulled out a 9mm handgun and shot the teen, who was armed with an unloaded .22-caliber handgun.

Detroit police are calling it self-defense.

What else would you call it? And if you’ll read the whole story, you’ll see that the assailant had already been involved in carjacking attempts. Plus, I like this:

After the shooting, police questioned the 53-year-old man and released him, noting that he had a valid concealed weapons permit.

Then they gave him back his gun.

As they should have.

MY PIECE WITH ROB MERGES ON LIMITS TO THE PATENT AND COPYRIGHT POWER: It’s here, for those who are looking.

GREENHOUSE UPDATE: CNN looks at our high-flying Congress: