DANIEL SCHORR IS BEMOANING the rise of Internet journalism. (Click here for audio.) Oddly his chief example is a case where Internet journalism got the story right.

UPDATE: Brian Carnell writes that Daniel Schorr should know something first-hand about scandalous yellow journalism — though in the case in question, Schorr didn’t have it right.

MARK KLEIMAN has a post on the Second Amendment in which he argues essentially that (1) the Second Amendment should probably be read to protect only military guns; which means (2) rifles rather than handguns. This actually isn’t all that far from my position, which you can read here. (A much shorter explication can be found in this piece.) And if you follow this link and click on #3, “Original Meanings,” you can hear me (and see me in streaming video) say somewhere that the purposes of the Second Amendment would be largely satisfied by universal ownership of bolt-action 1898 Mausers, though my views on what the Second Amendment actually protects are somewhat more expansive.

Kleiman is on solid ground in suggesting that there isn’t, under this view, a Second Amendment right to carry concealed handguns, and — as the two articles linked above illustrate — state case law, even when very protective of the right to arms, tends to support that position. In Tennessee (where a court, ironically enough, recently stressed that the enumerated fundamental right to bear arms is so strong that it’s on a par with the unenumerated right of privacy, which in Tennessee protects abortion independently of federal law) the legislature has the right to regulate the carrying of arms, but keeping and bearing them — including such incidentals as buying and selling guns and ammunition, taking them for repair and target practice, etc. — are fundamental rights beyond ordinary regulation.

However, in interpreting the Tennessee right to arms — which both Tennessee courts and, interestingly, the United States Supreme Court, say is essentially synonymous with the Second Amendment — Tennessee courts have not gone as far as Kleiman where handguns are concerned. Instead, they distinguish between weapons suitable only for crime (like derringers, etc.) and handguns that are military in character, such as revolvers and automatic pistols. The latter are held protected.

UPDATE: I just went back to Kleiman’s page and he’s posted an update with a link to a long post by Dwight Meredith (whose blog I hadn’t seen before) arguing that: “The best thing that could happen to gun control advocates is for the NRA to win the debate over whether or not the Second Amendment provides an individual right to keep and bear arms. Irony can be sweet.”

Well, I’ve been making this point for some time (I think the first place was in an L.A. Times oped in 1994, but I’m not sure and it doesn’t seem to be on Google (or, to be more accurate, if it’s there it’s buried under so many other links that I can’t find it). But this piece of mine from Legal Affairs makes the point similarly:

The gun issue is divisive in American politics largely because it is falsely treated as an all-or-nothing choice: Either homicidal maniacs will carry howitzers on Main Street, or jackbooted government thugs will confiscate revolvers at midnight. As the Emerson decision shows, however, the individual-right theory allows for neither of these extremes.

The right does bar efforts to disarm Americans as a whole and create a British-style society in which guns are limited to the military and police. But it wouldn’t stop the government from passing laws to protect the safety of Americans. Regulations aimed at prohibiting criminals and people with histories of violence from owning guns will face no problems under the individual-right theory. If that view were generally adopted by the courts, a lot of political wrangling would come to an end. Gun owners confident that their rights would be protected would be less likely to oppose minor gun control as a step down a slippery slope.

Having said this, the above doesn’t make it paranoid or foolish for gun-rights activists to oppose regulations that the Second Amendment might permit — any more than it’s paranoid or foolish for First Amendment advocates to oppose regulations that the First Amendment permits, but that they see as a step down the slippery slope. And, in both cases, such opposition may be justified by reference to the relevant amendment and the interests it protects even if its letter might not reach the conduct in question. (For a lengthy and erudite explanation of why such behavior is appropriate in both cases, see this article on “slippery slopes” in general by Eugene Volokh. You might also read this article on slippery slopes and gun regulation in specific, by Dave Kopel and Joseph Olson.)

Well, there you are. More than you probably wanted to know. (Later: But just in case it’s not, here’s a link to an article that discusses the Tennessee cases at more length.)

UPDATE: My Mauser remark is about 1:14 into the video, which is about 1:20 long, though for context you may want to go a couple of minutes earlier than that.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Clayton Cramer weighs in on the handgun issue. And reader Richard Riley writes:

I’m as pro-gun as you can get – NRA life member, instructor, CCW in Orange County, CA. But I absolutely agree with you. The second amendment is military weapons, not dirks and daggars and derringers. Citizens carrying concealed are good policy and help society, but so are lots of things not covered by the Constitution.

I think most gun owners would be happy with all kinds of reasonable restrictions, so long as they knew that those restrictions weren’t the next slice of salami. But, I think most gun control advocates ARE using the incremental approach. All the laws they wanted 20 years ago are on the books in California now – long waiting periods, education and tests, trigger locks, banning “unsafe” guns and “assault” weapons, universal registration. Yet they want more, and more. In their own literature they say they’ll go after guns category by category till we live in an unarmed utopia.

Yes. It’s rational to fear the slippery slope when people are consciously pursuing a strategy of incrementalism in depriving you of your rights.

UPDATE: Toren Smith has more.

JOE USER asks why so many blogs are pro-war.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Orrin Judd writes that if the anti-war folks have lost Eleanor Clift, they’ve lost the nation.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Sabertooth Journal is fact-checking Eleanor Clift.

REID STOTT SAYS that The New York Times has gotten America’s mood right. No, really, that’s what he says.

EUGENE VOLOKH SAYS THE REPUBLICANS LOOK TO BE shooting themselves in the foot over New Jersey. He’s probably right about this. Legally, they may have a case, though — as I said on Hugh Hewitt’s show last week — I’d be very surprised if the Supreme Court heard it. Politically, though. . . .

STEFAN SHARKANSKY WONDERS if the Portland Al Qaeda cell was composed of people who are “desperate and oppressed.”

VEGARD VALBERG HAS some fearless predictions. And they’re about the future!

STEVEN DEN BESTE has a detailed essay on the European vs. the American experience with cell phone standards — and says that the American approach has turned out to work better.

ROBERT GENE BAKER OF NORTH CAROLINA is in custody, but not a suspect. Meanwhile, Kim du Toit has advice for the Maryland cops.

CONDI IN 2004?

I WAS GOING TO BLOG ABOUT THIS, BUT NOW I DON’T HAVE TO. SKBubba responds to a piece in my local paper in which a UT instructor compares increased surveillance of foreign students to Nazi efforts to round up the Jews.

PARIS STABBING UPDATE: Reader George Beckwith forwards this story, in which it is noted that the stabber was: “a 39-year-old practising Muslim born near Paris, who told interrogators he acted ‘out of animosity towards politicians and homosexuals.'” The headline, of course, mentions only that the Mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, was stabbed by a “homophobe.” Most stories seem to be omitting all of this information.

One can, of course, be a homophobe and — especially — a hater of politicians without being a Muslim, but there do seem to be rather extensive efforts to downplay any Islamic connections. Beckwith adds:

Most of the elite media and nearly all governments are concealing the extent and nature of Islamist terrorism, because they are terrified of public reaction. The FBI treatment of the Egyptian who killed the Jews at LAX is a prime example. This is certain to fail in the information age, destroying the believability of governments the dominant media alike.

Yes, I think that efforts to gloss over this sort of thing are as likely to feed prejudice as to reduce it — and the lost credibility that results will make it far harder to contain any backlashes that appear.

JIM BENNETT WRITES that the United Nations is an idea whose time has gone.

THE SUPREME COURT TERM STARTS TOMORROW, and there’s a cool Jurist roundup-of-the-roundups for those who are interested.

DAVID WARREN LOOKS AT THE REALITY OF MULTILATERALISM:

The first thing to know is that none of the five governments are in any doubt that the U.S. intends to change the regime of Saddam Hussein. And neither Paris, nor Moscow, nor Beijing is in a position to stop it, through the U.N. or otherwise. The question from each is, “At what price will we allow the Americans to escape from the appearance of unilateralism?”

Quite a few interesting observations follow.

I, AHEM, WON’T BE PARTICIPATING — but for those who feel otherwise than I do, there’s an antiwar blogburst scheduled for tomorrow.

Here’s one post that’s up early. And here’s some sound advice for participants.

I FOUND THIS POST BY ATRIOS on nastiness in the blogosphere almost compelling. Until I read this post by Atrios telling William Saletan to “suck it.” Twice.

DEMOCRATS WHO OPPOSED WAR IN 1991 ARE LINING UP BEHIND BUSH TODAY, according to this article in the Washington Post.

I guess this answers Tom Friedman’s question.

JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN writes in the Boston Globe that an attack on Iraq would satisfy the demands of just war theory:

There are many puzzling features to the current debate. We hear a lot, and rightly, about not going it alone. But in fact we are not. The Bush administration is seeking congressional authorization (”legitimate authority,” as the just war tradition calls it) to use US military might. It is urging the Security Council to adopt a strong resolution that basically calls upon the Iraqi regime to abide by all the other resolutions the UN has passed and Iraq has ignored.

When critics bemoan the current administration’s alleged unilateralism, they seem to be operating under a peculiar double standard. The United States, working around the clock to secure support for the preventive use of force to disarm the Iraqi regime, is accused of egregious unilateralism. But a state -Iraq – that has behaved and continues to behave unilaterally in defiance of the international community’s various and repeated resolutions is let off the hook. Why? . . .

Justice falls by the wayside in such preachments. The Iraqi victims of Saddam Hussein are not considered worthy of serious consideration. But just war theory demands that we consider them, as well as Saddam’s potential victims outside Iraq.

Worth reading in its entirety.

RICHARD POE responds to questions about why the Blogosphere tilts rightward. His commentary on the Crabtree piece in the New Statesman is worth excerpting:

Take Crabtree’s own article. Crabtree violated blog etiquette by failing to link to the “right-wing” blogs he condemned. But his conservative rivals did the opposite. They gleefully linked to Crabtree’s Bolshevik rant, the better to ridicule it.

Each “right-wing” blogger courteously provided links, not only to Crabtree’s piece, but to the blog where he found Crabtree’s piece. Thus bloggers can backtrack through a chain of commentary from one blog to the next, and comment on each others’ comments. A hot debate can girdle the globe within hours.

Instead of suppressing Crabtree, conservative bloggers helped publicize him. Not that it will do him any good. Only a handful of fellow leftists will take Crabtree’s polemic seriously. The rest of us will roll on the floor, convulsed by paroxysms of side-splitting, rib-cracking – and, to borrow a phrase from Samizdata.net – “pant-wetting” laughter.

I think that’s the part that really hurts, though “Bolshevik rant” may be a bit of an overstatement. And I think the blogosphere is less rightist than anti-idiotarian, though where the New Statesman is concerned the distinction may be of little consequence.

UPDATE: Paul Musgrave doesn’t like Poe’s piece much. My favorite bit of Paul’s post, though, is this link to the Tom Tomorrow cartoon on blogging that people were talking about last week. I will note, though, that unlike Crabtree, Musgrave links to the object of his criticism.

COWERING IN MARYLAND: Reader Tod Weinberg reports from Frederick:

Frederick, Maryland, fifteen miles from Montgomery County, held its annual In The Streets festival yesterday. 20,000 men, women, and children came to the blocked off center of the city for music, food and fun. Good time had by all. No cowering.

Good.

A FRENCH TANKER was attacked off Yemen, today, in U.S.S. Cole fashion. Yemen is a problem that needs to be sorted out.

UPDATE: This BBC story says that Yemen denies that it was an act of sabotage, though the French say it was a boat full of explosives. I think Yemen doesn’t want to be viewed as a problem in need of sorting out. Too bad, guys. Nothing you guys couldn’t sort out yourselves, of course. . . .

THE COSTS OF COALITION: Matt Welch has a column in the National Post. He’s also got a long blog post on Saudi apologist Wyche Fowler.

THOSE VIOLENT EUROPEANS: “Attacker Stabs, Injures Paris Mayor.” No information on the attacker.

UPDATE: Claire Berlinski reports from the scene:

Hi Glenn,

I was, evidently, within 50 feet of the attack — I was at the Hotel de Ville at exactly that time — and had no idea, none at all, that it had happened until this morning. Neither did anyone else there. The mayor didn’t want to ruin the good time everyone was having and insisted upon being escorted away discreetly. Today the French papers are reporting that the assailant appears to have been a random lunatic “known to the police” — there’s no evidence as yet that it was political.

Re. your headline “Those Violent Europeans:” This was such depressing news, because this event was otherwise inconceivably good-natured and civilized, by US standards — imagine opening the White House doors to every US citizen for the night, having an open bar, live music, no security — none — at the gates, letting in anyone who wants to come in, and having an perfectly lovely evening where everyone listens politely to the music, admires the paintings in the Oval Office and is very careful not to damage the carpets. The whole city was having a good time and no one was behaving badly — except for one lunatic. Really sad, especially since the mayor is such a *nice* guy — he organized all of this just so that Parisians could have fun and feel that the public monuments really belong to them. That’s why there was no security.

Sad, but the way of the world today, I’m afraid.

HERE’S A REPORT FROM READER GREGORY HILL — unconfirmed as of yet:

Hasn’t made any of the local newsites yet, but the 11pm teevee news is reporting that a body was found in Howard County (Northeast of Montgomery County) around 9pm tonite. Single shot. No witnesses.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Hill emails that it was on the 11 o’clock news on WBAL and WJZ, but there’s nothing on their websites that I can find.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Turns out it was a false alarm — a real death but not connected, apparently. Meanwhile, Orrin Judd asks: “Is this guy a suspect or not?”