I’M WITH GARY on this one, 100%.

But you probably figured that.

MORE ON GRETTA DUISENBERG:

European Central Bank Chairman Wim Duisenberg should be fired because he supports his wife Gretta’s anti-Israel positions and embrace of Yasser Arafat, a leading Dutch parliamentarian visiting Jerusalem said Sunday.

Jim Jansen van Raaij, deputy chairman of the Dutch parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said he wrote the Dutch finance minister Sunday demanding Duisenberg be replaced.

Van Raaij’s call following Gretta Duisenberg’s comments during a visit to Ramallah that Israel’s occupation is “inhuman,” and that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon provokes violence and “then he blames the Palestinian people.”

On Friday, the Dutch paper Algemeen Dagblad quoted her as saying, “The Holocaust excepted, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is worse than the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.”

“The Holocaust excepted.” But then, for these people, it always is.

I WONDER HOW MANY OF SUSANNAH BRESLIN’S READERS realize that this Lysol ad featured on her site (“still the girl he married”) is in covert reference to Lysol’s popular usage as a contraceptive douche.

Ugh. You’ve come a long way, baby. As have, well, all of us.

SOME PEOPLE WON’T LIKE THIS:

When Israel’s first astronaut, Colonel Ilan Ramon, lifts off for space aboard the US space shuttle Columbia on Thursday, he will carry a pencil sketch of earth, as seen from the moon, drawn by a 14-year-old boy who died in the Holocaust.

Screw ’em.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the picture, and a picture of the boy who drew it.

WELL, CRAP: Just checked and it looks like the PBS Media Matters weblog episode isn’t airing in Knoxville. Bummer.

UPDATE: Oliver Willis informs me that it’s on here on Sunday the 19th at 7pm. I only checked the program guide for the 16th and 17th because the PBS folks told me it was going to be on the 16th. Let this be a lesson for you: check those local listings!

MATT WELCH TO RICE, RUMSFELD, AND POWELL: It’s Fiskin’ Time! In the most literal sense.

TALKLEFT has more on MADD.

ROBIN ROBERTS is dissing Debka.

ANOTHER drug-related death.

UPDATE: Reader John Jenkins points out that the story above isn’t as recent as the blog posting I link to makes it sound. Here’s a link to a CNN story from October of 2000. That doesn’t make it any better, I guess, but it does make it old. I remembered that there had been a wrong-house shooting in Lebanon, Tennessee a while back, but I just figured that this was another one. Which, I’m sad to say, was a reasonable mistake. At least no dogs died.

GOODBYE TO STEVE CASE. Jeff Jarvis won’t miss him.

UPDATE: Oliver Willis has some thoughts.

FIRST THE VLOG. Then the Plog. Now, the Clog.

Where will it all end?

NOTE: Not to be confused with C-Log, which is back up and running after an extended hiatus.

UPDATE: Then there’s c-blogging.

RICHARD BENNETT says that I’m wrong about the latest D.C. government scandal.

THE ROT AT EUROPE’S CORE seems to be Germany:

ABROAD, HE’S ROBBED Germany of nearly all clout with his count-me-out stance on Iraq and his near-total absorption with domestic crises. No one even tries to understand his policies. One week he raises taxes by 23 billion, soon afterward his chancellery “leaks” a paper calling for the exact opposite. As if he had nothing more important to do, he’s suing two tiny regional newspapers for claiming his marriage is on the rocks. Woe betide them had they suggested he dyes his hair.

Few Germans can imagine this mess dragging on for the three and a half years left in his term. But it’s their neighbors who are really getting concerned. Germany’s troubles come at an inopportune moment for Europe. The global slowdown threatens its export-dependent economies. Its leaders are divided over everything from Iraq to the future shape of their newly enlarged Union. How to apportion power and decision making among so many members? Should there be a strong European president? Is inflation or deflation the greatest economic threat? With a stricken giant at its middle, Europe’s answers to these problems will be very different than just a few years ago. What’s more, its leaders now face another perplexing question—how will Europe manage a weak Germany and its aimless chancellor?

Fecklessness, it seems, has its price. Here’s the real irony:

Europe can certainly forget its ambitions of rivaling America, despite its hand-wringing over U.S. “unilateralism” and “hyperpower.” “Without a resurgent Germany,” says Britain’s MacShane, “Europe will never carry the same weight as the United States.” None more ardently pursued this vision than Germany. What a paradox that it should become the greatest obstacle to its realization.

The real paradox is in the notion that Europe could “rival” the United States while still being almost entirely dependent on the United States militarily. Such detachment from reality has its price. I saw someone on one of the talk shows saying that although the United States is the world’s only superpower, we should “act as if” other nations had similar clout. That’s the dreamworld that Europe has been living in. To which the proper response is, “As if!”

PUNDITWATCH is up. And Joe Klein wins the coveted “Pundit of the Week” award, while Tim Russert, well, you’ll just have to read it to find out.

THE MENTION OF JAPANESE INTERNMENTS in this post has produced a rather interesting response from Robin Goodfellow. Excerpt:

It’s interesting how the American internment of Japanese for 4 years during WWII is constantly used as an example of America’s unique evil and racism. When revisiting the subject rarely, if ever, is the Canadian example brought up. At least in America the internee families were kept together, in Canada (which also rounded up Japanese Canadian citizens) the men and women were separated from each other and the men were sent into forced labor. And we all know, I hope, how Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria scored on the racial sensitivity scale during WWII. I find the ability of Europe especially to “misremember” facts so as to paint themselves as lilly-white angels and the US as brutish and uncivilized thugs to be quite remarkable.

Well, you know, if the Europeans faced the truth, the pain would be unbearable.

UPDATE: Reader Byron Matthews says it’s worse than that:

The Canadian record is much darker than Robin Goodfellow’s post indicates. Japanese-Canadians were not only moved inland from BC and interned, their property was seized and sold off, the proceeds used in part to pay for their own internment. Worse, thousands were stripped of Canadian citizenship and deported (“repatriated”) to Japan, even after the war had ended.

He also sends this link to a Canadian history site on the subject. I was vaguely aware that there were Canadian internments, but no more. Fascinating stuff.

Maybe it’s because Europe and Canada were so much worse than the United States in the past that they are so sanctimonious now.

PARIS BAGGAGE-HANDLER FRAMED: Hmm. Some things about this story still don’t quite add up. But then, as I noted earlier, neither did the original one.

So if the in-laws planted the guns and bombs, where did they get them? The planter/witness is a former Legionnaire and shouldn’t have access to that sort of thing. There’s still some unravelling to do here, but at least on first impression it no longer looks like there’s a terrorist connection.

UPDATE: James Rummel had emailed me Friday about his suspicions on this one; here’s a link to a post of his on the subject.

MICKEY KAUS has the full text of those psychological-warfare emails that the Pentagon is spamming Iraqis with.

STEVEN DEN BESTE on resisting criminals and why “don’t get involved” approaches are destructive:

I think that an activist citizenry, one which is engaged, one where individuals feel a bond to their fellow citizens and are willing to defend them and to make sacrifices for them, is greatly to be preferred to one which is passive and unmotivated and fearful.

That was what moved the passengers of Flight 93. They didn’t sit passively; they fought back. Because they did, their jet crashed into an open field instead of into something large and important on the ground full of people.

So what do you get when you punish people who are actually willing to do that for their citizens? A couple of things.

One thing you get is a lot more crime of that kind. Even criminals are making something like a cost-benefit analysis when they decide whether to commit crimes, and if you reduce the potential cost, then crime becomes more attractive.

But there’s something deeper, something more subtle and far more damaging: you begin to destroy the basic camaraderie and commitment among citizens which I feel is essential for a successful civil society. You erode the idea that we’re all in this together.

You teach people that it’s wrong to care. You tell them that the right course of action is to “not get involved”. When they see a crime being committed, then if they try to stop it they may end up in prison, but there’s no punishment for looking the other direction and not seeing. And thus fewer people will get involved.

I don’t want to live in a society like that. I don’t want to live in a society where the Kitty Genovese case is not only not considered newsworthy but is actually considered an example of civil virtue.

Me either.

THE BENEFITS OF EXERCISE: I’m cleaning out the walk-in closet, which we’re having redone. I found my tuxedo — which I wore a lot when I practiced law, but haven’t worn at all in over ten years. Still fits, though it’s a bit tight in the chest now, but I imagine it can be let out.

Of course, the downside is, now I have to decide whether to keep it or give it to the Goodwill folks.

HERE’S A FIRST-HAND BLOG REPORT FROM PAKISTAN: Read the whole thing. There’s good news and bad news. Though mostly bad news.

(Via Jim Henley).

MORE PROOF THAT WAR IS COMING, from Suman Palit.

PATRICK RUFFINI has read David Frum’s new book and wonders what all the fuss was about.

IF BLOGGERS WROTE THE LORD OF THE RINGS: Alan Henderson explores the implications. I especially like the Fisking of Boromir at the hands of Emperor Misha. (Hmm. “The Fisking of Boromir” even sounds like a LOTR chapter title. . . .)

It’s in response to this hilarious ongoing discussion at Cecil Adams’ message board.

JOHN LOTT is being accused, of well, something. The complaint doesn’t run to his published scholarly work, but to public statements he’s made about a survey whose results were never published. Some people are now saying that he never conducted the survey at all. Here’s an email from James Lindgren from a list that I also belong to, posted by vociferous Lott critic (and, if I recall correctly, erstwhile Bellesiles defender) Tim Lambert, that lays it out at some length.

I’ve been following this on that list for months (it goes back before that email) but haven’t posted on it because (1) I thought it would violate list etiquette; and (2) I expected a response from Lott that would lay it all to rest.

But now — as a recent email to the list from Eugene Volokh points out — the story has broken out into the Blogosphere. Here’s a post by Jim Henley, here’s one by Julian Sanchez, and here’s another by Marie Gryphon.

And no satisfactory response by Lott has been forthcoming. I don’t know what to say about that. Lott’s critics want, rather too obviously, for this to be another Bellesiles affair, though to my mind it is, even if the accusations pan out, something less than that, perhaps more akin to the Joseph Ellis scandal. And I can’t help but feel that there’s going to be a strained effort to turn every criticism of every bit of non-PC scholarship into a reverse-Bellesiles affair for a while, as the lame effort to draw a Lomborg-Bellesiles connection seems to demonstrate.

But if the charges against Lott are true — and thus far, the evidence is suggestive, not anywhere near dispositive — it’s a serious matter indeed even if it’s not of Bellesiles caliber. The only one who can really clear this up is John Lott,. If he fails to do so, well, under the facts of the matter it will be difficult for anyone else to prove anything, but many will choose to draw unflattering conclusions.

As I proofed the above I checked, and Clayton Cramer has a post on this, too. He reports that Lott has repeated the 1997 study now, and posts a letter from, and a summary of a phone call from, John Lott.

UPDATE: Tim Lambert, who has been the main figure driving this matter, has a page rounding up weblog coverage and also offering this observation:

Finally, I should comment on the overall significance of this question. Lott’s 98% claim takes up just one sentence of his book. Whether or not it’s true, it doesn’t affect his main argument, which is about alleged benefits of concealed carry laws. I don’t think any fuss would have been made if Lott hadn’t repeated the claim numerous times on TV shows, on radio shows, and in opinion pieces.

Bearing in mind the source of this statement, to which I have added emphasis, I think that those who are too anxious to turn Lott into another Bellesiles should exercise caution.

ANOTHER UPDATE: As I plow through the built-up emails in my office account, it’s obvious that Jim Lindgren is investigating this matter rather thoroughly. Stay tuned.

SURELY THIS violates the Geneva Convention.