MADE IT HOME ALIVE, amid rumors of war. See you tomorrow.

SORRY FOR THE LIMITED BLOGGING: I’ve been busy with assorted meetings, talks, and schmoozing. Plus, local TV (San Diego channel 8) came out to interview bloggers on blogging. You can see Lisa Snell, Virginia Postrel, and Nick Gillespie here getting ready to be quizzed for the viewers’ edification. Note the TV camera wrapped for protection against the torrential California rains. And yes, that’s what they’re having here. Just my luck. At least it was nice yesterday.

THE PEOPLE RUNNING PUMA APPEAR TO BE IDIOTS. Gawker offers them some advice.

My advice: New Balance.

MORE REPORTS that Osama has been caught, and the U.S. is hushing it up. True? Disinformation? One or the other, probably. . .

HANS BLIX THINKS GLOBAL WARMING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WAR, which perhaps explains his lackadaisical approach to his job.

But what explains MTV’s belief that “Between Iraq and a Hard Place” is a clever title?

WHAT FRANCE WANTS: Nothing here that will surprise most blog readers. Except, perhaps, the term “cultural cleansing.”

WHILE I WAS AIRBORNE SOMEWHERE OVER LOUISIANA, Eugene Volokh was taking TAPPED to task for hypocrisy.

The blogosphere never rests.

I TOLD YOU it was a “Trent Lott moment” for the Democrats. I was right, and they pass the test:

Embattled U.S. Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D) quit his House leadership post today for making what he called “insensitive” remarks about Jews pushing the nation into war with Iraq.

Moran said he gave up his position as a regional Whip for the House Democrats “as a way to demonstrate acceptance of responsibility” for his controversial comments at a March 3 anti-war forum in Reston, when he said, “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this.”

Not a dramatic drop, but then Moran didn’t have far to fall. He’s always been a marginal member of Congress, and now he’s just a bit more marginal.

MARS EVAPORATES: Reader Mostafa Sabet responds to my Mars posting over at GlennReynolds.com by asking:

One question I have regarding terraforming Mars is its ability to keep the brand-spanking new atmosphere we produce on Mars. I thought one of the reasons Mars’ atmosphere was so thin was that it did not have the gravitational pull to keep it. Wouldn’t we need to create some sort of additional, artificial gravity to keep all the air in? I know CF4 would probably remain in Mars’ atmosphere because of its weight, but what about O2. Granted in the decades (centuries) till the atmosphere could support animal life we might have the artificial gravity tech, but is there a solution short of this?

Granted, it’s been a while since I studied astronomy and you would probably know better than I. If what I asked is not the case, could you help pointing me to some related articles? Thanks for the help and I love the pointers. It depresses me that the most likely way for us to reach Mars is if the Chinese make a race out of this (and by then they’ll likely have a head start, too).

Well, Mars would lose its atmosphere gradually, but “gradually” in this context means over tens of thousands of years at least, as I understand it. I highly recommend Bob Zubrin’s books, starting with The Case for Mars, for more detailed information.

As for the idea that we’ll go because of Chinese competition, well, it’s not as depressing as the idea that we might not go at all. But, yeah, it’s depressing that it might take something like that.

MADE IT IN ONE PIECE, and only a little late. Flying seems to have gotten less unpleasant lately, though I may have just gotten lucky.

Had a nice walk along the beach, where military aircraft flew overhead regularly. You’d think there was a war on, or something. The Stennis apparently left town last night, headed who-knows-where. Korea? Here’s one I snapped right overhead.

Sadly, while the hotel has lots of Victorian charm, it lacks high speed internet access, so I’m connecting via dialup. That’s likely to reduce the bloggage this weekend, though maybe not as much as the various scheduled activities. And, by the way, that means that I’m less likely than usual to have time to keep up on email. Sorry about that. Just looking at the inbox, though, it seems as if an announcement that I’m travelling has, as usual, generated more email rather than less. Guess people want to be sure I don’t miss anything. . . .

Here’s a short QuickTime video from the beach, made with my digital camera. I’m not sure it was worth the time it took to upload, using this slow connection. . . .

I’M OFF TO REASON WEEKEND, where I’ll be speaking about — you guessed it — weblogs, along with Virginia Postrel and Eugene Volokh. I’m taking the laptop, so blogging will continue, but not until later today.

But there will be a new post (Mars is involved) over at GlennReynolds.com later today. If you’re interested in nanotechnology, don’t miss this post. And Oxblog seems to be on a roll. Back later.

NELSON ASCHER sends this link to an article in The Guardian by Le Monde‘s correspondent there, and adds these observations:

This article by Le Monde’s correspondent in England is absolutely marvellous. First, the guy isn’t speaking as a journalist, but as a spokesperson for the government, and this is even stranger as, officially at least, Le Monde is a leftist paper while Chirac’s a rightist. You can see that he cannot make a single criticism of his own government, not even for the sake of looking a bit more balanced or objective. Then there is the arrogance that is so much more evident because he’s absolutely unable to see it himself. He is using with Blair the same tone Chirac has used with the East Europeans. It seems that right now every Frenchman is himself a Chirac, and any other country, even more powerfull ones, is just one small insignificant vassal. And right in the middle of all this arrogance what does he say? That his country’s doing what it’s doing because it is afraid of its own Muslims!!!! Wait: weren’t they the brave ones who were able to challenge the “hyperpower”? And according to him it’s Tony Blair who has reached the depths of despair. And then he confesses that there’s indeed a crisis in his own dear Europe. And so on…

One seldom sees such a childish and transparent display of wounded pride in what’s supposed to be a grown-up profession.

Indeed.

YOU CAN EMAIL JACQUES CHIRAC to let him know what you think about French policy on Iraq and the United States.

HAD LUNCH WITH DOUG INSTALAWYER WEINSTEIN the other day. He’s moved from leaning antiwar to being — very — firmly pro-war. It’s obvious that Saddam’s a threat as long as he’s alive, he says. Others are starting to see it the same way. Maybe Andrew Sullivan’s right, and French intransigence is actually increasing support for war, by making the absurdity of “diplomacy” as an alternative painfully obvious.

FRENCH TOAST: Not actually French.

I HOPE I CAN MAKE Kathy Shaidle happy. Her blog isn’t boring, and it has been around longer than mine.

GARY FARBER looks behind the Perle/Hersh story and suggests that something else entirely is going on.

LIVE AUDIO-WARBLOGGING — very cool.

DON’T FORGET: Saturday is Eat an Animal for PETA Day. Mmm. Meat.

HERE’S A VERY NICE IMAGE GALLERY showing American and British troops preparing for action in the Gulf.

There are a lot of very well-done pictures here, and looking through the gallery will serve as a useful reminder of what the troops are having to put up with. And of who our friends are.

(Via Stephen Green).

WHO’S THE HIGHEST PAID BLOGGER ON EARTH? Hint: not me. (Somehow, the PayPal and Amazon buttons don’t match what — oh, but that would be telling.) But I have gone through over 100 gigabytes of bandwidth already this month.

RAGING PLATYPUS is the cool new geek breakfast drink, apparently. It certainly seems to be popular.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN NANOTECHNOLOGY, and you should be, you should consider attending the Foresight Institute’s Vision Weekend in Palo Alto, on May 2-4. I plan to be there, but there will also be a bunch of bigshots (follow the link for a few of them). Anyway, if you decide to go, you can save $100 by registering by Saturday. Follow the link for more information. I go most years, and I’ve always found it a terrific experience.

ATRIOS HAS TAKEN THE BOEING with a new blogging gig at the New York Press. I have to say that I like his post there — the tone’s somehow better (to me anyway) than his blog. He’s right about the danger posed by the growing trend toward forum-shopping by libel plaintiffs, too. Here’s something I wrote on the subject recently.

EUGENE VOLOKH points out a troubling story about a Congressional committee subpoenaing the records of federal judge Mike Rosenbaum because it thinks he may have been handing out overly light sentences in drug cases. I think Volokh has it right here:

I’m not up the caselaw related to separation of powers in this context; it might be that this sort of subpoena is constitutionally permissible — I’m just not sure. But it does strike me as a very bad idea — a distraction of the judge from his normal duties, and a means of bullying those judges whose legal decisions the Congress dislikes. If Congress wants publicly available records (status of appeals, copies of decisions, and the like), it should get them. If it wants sentencing transcripts, it should pay for them. If it wants private in-chambers information (such as information about whether the clerks helped the judge with his testimony), it has no business demanding it. Either way, the contemplated subpoena seems quite improper.

The allegations of the judge supposedly misleading Congress or of his testimony raising “serious concerns” about the judiciary strike me as unsound. The article doesn’t give all the details, but it sounds at most like the Judge expressed his opinions in an inartful way. (I take it that his claim was that some people get heavy sentences even though they’re only marginally culpable, or perhaps that he thinks they’re probably not culpable but a jury decided otherwise.)

As Volokh says: “Not a good sort of business for Congress to be getting into.”

It looks like bullying to me, too. What are they thinking here?