YALE’S DIVERSITY PROBLEM: From the Yale Daily News:

When it comes to the “money primary,” Yale employees favor Democratic presidential candidates over their Republican rivals — by a margin of 45 to one.

Federal Election Commission filings from the first two quarters of the year show that University faculty and staff have given $44,500 to Democratic presidential candidates — most often to Sen. Barack Obama — and just $1,000 to Republicans. . . . Charles Lockwood, the chair of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and the only faculty member known to have contributed to Giuliani, joked that, “Most people in my department are slightly to the left of Joseph Stalin.”

For a university that’s supposed to prize diversity, this looks like a monoculture to me, though this is far from a complete picture, since most people don’t donate. Still, 45 to 1?

Other interesting tidbit:

Although she is an alumna of the school, Clinton has received no contributions from Yale Law School faculty, who have made donations to Bill Richardson and Obama. At Harvard, where he got his law degree, Obama has raised more than $100,000.

Why don’t the Yale Law faculty like Hillary?

A 9/11 REMINDER, from Bill Quick.

And, via the comments, this 9/11 memorial that was put up a few days afterward. I linked it before, but it’s moved since.

I didn’t observe the occasion by giving shooting lessons to a Marine as I did a couple of years ago. I just blogged. It’s not enough — nothing is — but it’s what I did on the original 9/11. Though this would be okay, I guess . . . .

UPDATE: Another photo here. And don’t miss this, from the indispensable Cox & Forkum. Or this.

More here.

BIN LADEN’S MISERABLE FAILURE:

Six years ago, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda weren’t just attempting to bring down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. They were trying to smash the American economy as well. Here is what bin Laden himself said about his goals and motivations back in December 2001: “If their economy is destroyed, they will be busy with their own affairs rather than enslaving the weak peoples. It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means.” And here is what al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said in September 2002: “We will also aim to continue, by the permission of Allah, the destruction of the American economy.”

No luck so far, despite bin Laden’s recent videotape ravings about our taxes and mortgage debt. Although the towers came down, the resilient American economy didn’t. Since September 11, the economy hasn’t suffered a single down quarter. In fact, it has notched 23 straight quarters of economic growth. (And despite the subprime mortgage crisis, this is likely to be the 24th straight quarter of growth.) Those numbers are especially amazing when you consider that when the terrorist attacks happened, the Internet stock bubble was in full implosion mode. The economy dipped in the third quarter of 2001 and was slightly negative in two of the previous four quarters. But it’s been nothing but growth since then. Overall, the American economy is, adjusting for inflation, $1.65 trillion bigger than it was six years ago. To put that gigantic number in some perspective, the U.S. economy has added the equivalent of five Saudi Arabias, eight Irans, 13 Pakistans, or 15 Egypts, depending on your preference. And while 9/11 did cause the stock market to plunge, the Dow is 37 percent higher than it was on Sept. 10, 2001, creating trillions of dollars of new wealth for Americans. What’s more, the unemployment rate is 4.6 percent today vs. 5.7 percent back then. Not bad at all.

Nope. But that really does put things in perspective. And special thanks to the Retail Support Brigade for its work in those dark days after 9/11. I credit Scott Norvell!

VIDEO: Petraeus on the consequences of withdrawal.

POPPING RONALD DWORKIN’S RHETORICAL BALLOON: “Hmmm. How can 4 Supreme Court justices be an unbreakable phalanx? Isn’t the phalanx broken by the mere whim of Anthony Kennedy? Some phalanx!”

A TERROR ARREST IN WISCONSIN: “Chief Severude says Hassan Mohamed Abdiaziz was stopped for speeding around 11:30 Tuesday morning. When officers ran his Minnesota driver’s license, they found the man was wanted on several outstanding felony warrants. Severude says Abdiaziz is wanted by the FBI, DEA, and several foreign agencies for terrorist activities.” Terrorists only dare venture into Wisconsin now because Ann Althouse is gone . . . .

UPDATE: This report says it was just drugs, not terrorism.

I’M NOT SURPRISED TO HEAR THIS: “Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista continue to significantly trail those of Windows XP during its early days, according to a soon-to-be-released report.”

LET ME KNOW HOW THIS WORKS OUT: “A couple from Sarasota, Florida named Markus and Angela are planning to sell their worldly possessions, buy a used van, live in it, and blog about it. They are currently shopping for the van.”

It’s based on the 4-hour workweek approach. Blogging certainly hasn’t given me a four-hour workweek, but I’m probably going about it all wrong. Maybe I should read the book!

THE PETRAEUS REPORT: Past, present, and future.

CELEBRATING FREEDOM with bacon! Mmm. Bacon.

UPDATE: Remembering 9/11 the only way they know how.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Thoughts on moral relativism. Personally, I prefer bacon.

SO I FINISHED JACK GOLDSMITH’S NEW BOOK, The Terror Presidency, and I think that it’s a very interesting and useful book. Now I see Amy Zegart blogging over at Volokh about her new book, Spying Blind, about intelligence failures in the post-Cold War era. (She lists her top 5 most depressing findings here.) And John McGinnis has posted a paper that tends to underscore Goldsmith’s analysis. Seems like we’ve got a convergence here, which makes sense — there’s now enough history to start some analysis, and it’s time to learn lessons for the benefit of the next administration, whoever that turns out to be.

HALO 3 HITS EBAY: Three weeks before its release.

THE THOMPSON CAMPAIGN goes nuclear on Romney.

UPDATE: Thompson’s also slamming Hillary over Norman Hsu.

NO BLOOD FOR OIL! “Thank goodness President Bush put the interests of America above those of Texas oilmen.” Heh.

FRED THOMPSON: Lobbyist for Libya? That’s not going to burnish his resume.

The counterargument — that lawyers often represent unpopular or even evil clients — doesn’t really fly here. We want unpopular or even evil people to have good representation in court. But does that principle extend to lobbying? I don’t think so.

UPDATE: My mistake. Going to the actual story it seems that Thompson was, in fact, working as a criminal defense lawyer — well, actually advising his law partner who was working on the defense — not as a lobbyist.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rob Port thinks I’ve been snookered.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Vandalism at the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial.

MORE SUPPORT FOR THE THEORY that anti-gun legislators assume that we all have the kind of poor self-control that they do.

MEMBERS OF CONGRESS GETTING P.A.I.D.: Another Murtha earmark goes to a nonprofit that has Congressional colleagues on the Board. And the recipient seems kind of bogus: “Despite claiming to represent millions of people, PAID’s own Web site has a tracking system that indicates it averages fewer than 10 hits a day. In August, the organization had 14 jobs listed on the site, all of them at two organizations: MountainTop Technologies, a local company that has received millions of dollars in earmarks from Murtha over the past decade; and Greater Alleghenies Blood Services, a local Red Cross center that takes blood donations at the John P. Murtha Donor Pavilion, named in honor of Murtha’s efforts to secure earmarks for the facility.”

THE ROMNEY CAMPAIGN disavows any connection to the phony Fred Thompson website mentioned earlier. And Stephen Smith of the Romney campaign emails:

The site has no direct affiliation to our campaign, and we had no knowledge of its development.

Once we received inquiries about the site, we discovered it was created by an individual who parked the site temporarily on the company server space of a firm whose financial partner is a consultant to the campaign-
Mr. Tompkins. Mr. Tompkins also had absolutely no knowledge about the development of the site or that it was temporarily parked on the firm’s server.

We informed this party that as a result of that server use, we were receiving inquires about the site. We made it clear that we did not approve of the site and asked for immediate action to make sure it was again in no way affiliated with the campaign.

The person responsible is not an employee of ours, but we took immediate action to make sure it was clear the site was not affiliated with the campaign.

It is also my understanding that the site was taken off-line by whoever administers it.

I’ve dealt with Stephen before, and I have no reason to doubt him, but there’s also no reason to doubt that this is an embarrassment for the Romney campaign.

MAURICE STRONG seems to have landed on his feet.

MORE HSU PUNS, and a look back to the glory days of Charlie Trie and Johnny Chung.

JONAH GOLDBERG ON 9/11 SIX YEARS LATER:

If I had said in late 2001, with bodies still being pulled from the wreckage, anthrax flying through the mail, pandemonium reigning at the airports, and bombs falling on Kabul, that by ‘07 leading Democrats would be ridiculing the idea of the war on terror as a bumper sticker, I’d have been thought mad. If I’d predicted that a third of Democrats would be telling pollsters that Bush knew in advance about 9/11, and that the eleventh of September would become an innocuous date for parental get-togethers to talk about potty-training strategies and phonics for preschoolers, people would have thought I was crazy. . . .

But it’s important to remember that from the outset, the media took it as their sworn duty to keep Americans from getting too riled up about 9/11. I wrote a column about it back in March of 2002. Back then the news networks especially saw it as imperative that we not let our outrage get out of hand. I can understand the sentiment, but it’s worth noting that such sentiments vanished entirely during hurricane Katrina. After 9/11, the press withheld objectively accurate and factual images from the public, lest the rubes get too riled up. After Katrina, the press endlessly recycled inaccurate and exaggerated information in order to keep everyone upset. The difference speaks volumes.

Indeed it does.

DAVID RUSIN: LOOKING BACK in anger.

THOUGHTS ON 9/11 from Greyhawk in Iraq.

MAJ. JOHN TAMMES: Never again.

Plus, some 9/11 video.