MICROSOFT WORD: It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday. The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

The mistaken release of the unedited report added further support to the published conclusion that Syria was behind Mr Hariri’s assassination in a bomb blast on Valentine’s Day in Beirut. The murder of Mr Hariri touched off an international outcry and hastened Syria’s departure from Lebanon in April after a 29-year pervasive military presence.

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, described the report’s findings as “deeply troubling”. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said: “It is an unpleasant story which the international community will take very seriously indeed.”

But the furore over the doctoring of the report threatened to overshadow its damaging findings. It raised questions about political interference by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary- General, who had promised not to make any changes in the report.

I’m guessing that he used the phrase, “You have my word as a diplomat.” Retief, where are you when we need you?

UPDATE: More reason why the U.N. wants to control the Internet?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Addison Laurent points out that the Retief stories are available free online from Baen Books. I’ve mentioned the Baen Free Library before; it rocks.

ANOTHER VICTORY FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: DESPITE MASSIVE GOVERNMENTAL AND INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT, a gun control referendum has failed in Brazil, and by a rather sizable margin:

More than 64 percent of voters favored keeping arms sales legal, the electoral court said with 75 percent of the expected 122 million votes counted.

Only 35 percent supported the ban even though some 36,000 people were killed by guns last year in Latin America’s largest country, where bloodshed and violence are a daily concern for many citizens. [Yeah, it’s a Reuters story, so you have to expect asides like that.] Full results were expected by midnight (0200 GMT).

“We didn’t lose because Brazilians like guns. We lost because people don’t have confidence in the government or the police,” said Denis Mizne of anti-violence group Sou da Paz.

This may be true — but one might say the same about many civil rights, of course. As Dave Kopel suggests, this looks like “a stunning repudiation of the international gun prohibition movement.”

The next question is when gun rights activists will stop playing defense against gun-control efforts and start promoting the right to arms as an international human right.

UPDATE: Reader Joe Rega emails:

Hi Glenn, I live in Brazil and believe me, you don’t know the half of it. The level of propaganda from the pro-ban side, which included the current government, the Church, the Globo television network (think CBS, ABC and NBC combined) and the arts/intelligentsia crowd was beyond the pale and clearly directed at the less fortunate. In other words, it was presented as a class vote. The margin of victory indicates that Brazilians of all classes voted against this ridiculous referendum. It is a sure sign of the steady but certain maturing of democracy in this country.

Bravo.

INDIAN BLOGGER DESI PUNDIT announces a Blog Quake Day to raise money for Pakistani earthquake relief. It’s quite explicitly modeled on the Katrina effort.

A TIPPING POINT WITH SYRIA? Plus there’s this:

Syria continues to arm proxy guerrillas and run spies in Lebanon despite withdrawing its troops from the country in April, an Israeli newspaper quoted an upcoming U.N. report as saying on Sunday.

The report, due out later this week, could compound international pressure building up against Damascus since a U.N. probe last week named senior Syrian officials as suspects in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.

So far, so good.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH posts a Serenity review and talks about his new brown coat.

MORE GOOD NEWS FROM “THE QUAGMIRE:” Gateway Pundit has a roundup: “‘Iraq the Quagmire’ is maturing into ‘The MidEast Democracy Leader’! The strongest proof of this it that even the Arab League is backtracking from its previous stand.”

UPDATE: Bill Quick, meanwhile, notes that the A.P. is blowing it again.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Brian Dunn.

CHARLES FRIED on the Miers nomination:

OF COURSE, it is not necessary for Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers to have attended an elite law school to be qualified for a seat on the Supreme Court: Neither John Marshall Harlan nor his grandfather (famous for his eloquent dissent in the separate-but-equal decision) did, and Robert Jackson, perhaps the most elegant writer in the court’s history, attended no law school at all.

And it certainly is not necessary that she previously have served as a judge on a lower court. Many of the great justices were new to the bench, starting with John Marshall, through Charles Evans Hughes, Earl Warren, and William Rehnquist.

What is indispensable is that she be able to think lucidly and deeply about legal questions and express her thoughts in clear, pointed, understandable prose. A justice without those capabilities — however generally intelligent, decent, and hardworking — risks being a calamity for the court, the law, and the country.

Read the whole thing.

MICKEY KAUS has a lengthy post on the New York Times’ response to the Miller/Plame business, which he calls “incoherent.”

BOLIVIANS MARCH IN THE STREETS FOR FREE TRADE: If only we could get people to turn out for that here.

MY WALL STREET JOURNAL OPED on Harriet Miers’ nomination is now available for free over at OpinionJournal.

MICHAEL YON reports on the Iraqi elections in the Weekly Standard.

A LEBANON PROTEST ROUNDUP FROM PUBLIUS, plus some Beirut protest photos at light seeking light, and another roundup, with video, at Gateway Pundit.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

A LIBBY/MILLER ROUNDUP, from Tom Maguire.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett and George Russell report some rather sinister connections in the oil-for-food scandal.

HOWARD KURTZ has more on the NYT/Miller split.

THE SOUTH ASIA QUAKE BLOG collects recovery resources for the Pakistani earthquake, whose toll seems to keep getting worse. I agree that “disaster fatigue” has led to this getting less attention than it deserves.

JONAH GOLDBERG DECLARES AGAINST MIERS: “It’s not just that Miers was in favor of racial quotas — we’d pretty much known that for a while. It’s the fundamental confirmation that she’s a go-along-with-the-crowd establishmentarian.”

UPDATE: Here’s George Will’s column on the nomination.

MICHAEL TOTTEN IS PHOTOBLOGGING the anti-Syrian rally in Beirut.

BETTER ALL THE TIME: The Speculist posts its roundup of good news on all sorts of fronts that hasn’t gotten enough attention. It’s mostly tech stuff, but not exclusively.

A RATHER RUDE ANTIWAR READER challenges me to admit that the Iraq invasion has produced a quagmire. This seems like an odd time to be claiming that given the recent elections, but I’ll just endorse this statement from Kevin Drum:

In other words, democracy is nice — eventually — but the bigger issue is kicking over the status quo in the Middle East and forcing change. And the hawks would argue that this is happening. Slowly and fitfully, to be sure, but let’s count up the successes so far: Iraq and Afghanistan are better off than before, Libya has given up its nuke program, Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution is a sign of progress, Egypt has held a more open election than any before it, and the Syrian regime is under considerable pressure.

Did the invasion of Iraq precipitate these changes? I think the hawks considerably overstate their case, but at the same time they do have a case. Even if Iraq is a mess, it might all be worthwhile if it eventually produces progress toward a more open, more liberal Middle East. At the very least, it’s an argument that needs to be engaged.

I think the critics overstate their case, and rather consistently ignore the good news that Kevin notes. My anonymous emailer thinks that U.S. casualties are proof of a quagmire. That’s an odd formulation, since it means that any war in which troops are killed, which means pretty much any war generally, is a quagmire. There’s no question that some antiwar folks think that’s true, but pardon me if I’m unimpressed with that argument. (What I said here in 2003 about antiwar folks being disappointed that things had gone so well seems to remain true, as people keep making every effort to portray Iraq as Vietnam). Saddam’s on trial, Iraqis are counting ballots, and as noted above we seem to have shaken things up — though I’d argue not enough yet — throughout the mideast.

If Bush’s effort here fails, it won’t be because the antiwar critique of bloodthirstiness and warmongering is correct. It will be because Bush hasn’t been vigorous enough in toppling governments and invading countries in the region. What happens with Syria in the next little while may answer that question. (And don’t miss this).

In the meantime, this piece by Jim Bennett from 2003 is also worth reading again. It has certainly proved prescient — just read the last paragraph.

UPDATE: Reader Fernando Colina emails:

One of the indications that the war may be going much better than the MSM would want it to is the Miers controversy in the right. At critical points in the course of the war I suspect that most conservatives would have let the Miers thing go relatively unchallenged because of overriding national interest. Not any more.

For years, the left has been focusing on domestic issues and has wished the war to go away; well, maybe it’s about to and the right is now refocusing on spending, the border and the supremes. The game has changed.

I think that’s probably right.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Stuart Williamson emails:

Quagmire is one of those ominous-sounding words that negativists apply blindly to any minor reversal or static situation. A quagmire is like a quicksand, into which you are steadily sucked down to death. That is certainly not the situation in Iraq and the Middle East generally. The truth is the exact reverse. The Arab peoples are slowly, slowly being raised out of the bog of despotism. Iraq is not even a stalemate: the forces of democracy are gaining, painfully slowly, but steadily. The best parallel is a wrestling match, with
the coalition gradually pinning their weakening opponents to the mat. Anyone who uses “quagmire” in a critical sense can be immediately dismissed as blindly anti-war and beyond reasoned response.

Indeed. Plus, people were declaring a “quagmire” by this time in 2001, suggesting that they’re both unduly negative, and anxious to be so.

More here and here.

A WHILE BACK, I wrote about some modern ideas for energy conservation and observed: “I haven’t heard anyone suggest bringing back the 55 mile per hour speed limit, though, so I guess I should be grateful for small favors.”

Well, the San Francisco Chronicle has, sort of, proposed doing that, in an article encouraging people to just drive 55 now, even where the speed limit is 70. Overlawyered thinks that the Chronicle is putting profits before people and observes:

In sum, the Chronicle and the 55 Conservation Project are making a recommendation that doesn’t really save that much (if anything) in the way of money, can substantially inconvenience others, and, most of all, make the roads more dangerous.

What’s the liability reform tie-in? Well, note that automobile companies have been hit with millions of dollars of product liability verdicts for design decisions less risky and more cost-saving than what the Chronicle and 55 Conservation Project are proposing here. And (as should be the case) no one thinks that these two institutions, or the drivers that unilaterally adopt their recommendation to needlessly drive slower than the prevailing traffic, should be held liable for the foreseeable consequences of the recommendation or its adoption.

If we held news media liable for defective products in the same fashion that we do for, say, automobile companies or drug manufacturers, they’d all be bankrupt.

BILL KELLER sends an email to the NYT staff on the Judy Miller case. Shockingly, AP seems to have obtained a copy.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Gamble emails: “Why is it that when the NYT and Judy Miller mis-reported the WMD threat, they made ‘mistakes,’ but when Bush turns out to (arguably) be wrong on the exact same topic and in exactly the same way, he told ‘lies?'”

ANOTHER UPDATE: NYT Editor Vows Not to be Distracted by Scandal.

MORE: Jeff Jarvis comments on Keller’s letter, and on a column by some woman who writes for a private, subscription-only website.

MORE STILL: A reader notes Keller’s repeated use of references to entanglement and wonders what that means. Perhaps we’ll find out.

EVEN MORE: Jake Tapper has more on the Dowd / Miller catfight. It is amusing to see Dowd complaining that NYT staffers are allowed to write all sorts of absurd things without editorial supervision . . . .

ORIN KERR NOTES a Kansas Supreme Court decision holding that treating same-sex conduct differently from heterosexual conduct for purposes of statutory rape laws violates Equal Protection.

If this case winds up in the Supreme Court it will be interesting to see how the Court resolves the tension with the Michael M. decision, which held that subjecting men, but not women, to criminal liability for underage sex does not violate the Equal Protection clause because, essentially, men don’t get pregnant. Bonus points to the reader who first spots a law review article arguing that Equal Protection permits treating homosexual activity more favorably than heterosexual activity, but not the reverse, because there’s no pregnancy risk . . . .

A NETWORK OF LONERS?

HERE’S THAT POPULAR MECHANICS STORY ON PORTABLE DEFIBRILLATORS that I mentioned below. They were kind enough to make it available on the web in response to my mention. PM editor Jim Meigs writes:

I think what’s cool about the study is that it shows that ordinary citizens are eager to use the technology made available to them to save a life. They don’t have to wait for the experts to show up. And a 60% survival rate is pretty amazing, given the circumstances.

Yes. He also forwards this abstract of a New England Journal of Medicine story on automated defibrillators, and this other article on the topic.

UPDATE: Reader Greg Gray emails:

In your item today (10/21) about home defibrillators, you said “… — it doesn’t strike me as a mass-market item.” I’d have to stand in disagreement with that idea.

It seems to me that a home defibrillator /*would */become a mass-market item, to be stored in each home along with the medical kit and fire extinguishers, and in the trunk in each car along with the jumper cables, blankets and bottled water. Granted, most people probably give little thought to the possibility of a heart attack until they’ve reached at least middle-age, but with a little advertising push… who knows?

The main barrier would seem to be price. Once defibs reach commodity status, everyone will own one.

Good point. So maybe Amazon’s heavy advertising is helping!