MERRY CHRISTMAS, IRAQ!

UPDATE: Christmas in space.

A TSUNAMI ANNIVERSARY ROUNDUP:

One year ago, a massive magnitude 9 earthquake ruptured the sea floor off Indonesia’s Sumatra island, sending 10-metre waves roaring across the Indian Ocean at jetliner speeds that crashed without warning into seaside communities in a dozen countries.

The disaster’s scale was overwhelming.

At least 216,000 people were killed or disappeared in the waves, the Associated Press found in an assessment of government and credible relief agency figures in each country hit. The United Nations puts the number at least 223,000, though it says some countries are still updating their figures.

The true toll will probably never be known, as many bodies were lost at sea and in some cases the populations of places struck were not accurately recorded.

Hard to believe it’s been a whole year.

HERE’S AUSTIN BAY’S CHRISTMAS COLUMN.

He’s also got a blog post with a Christmas note from Iraq.

And it’s still Thank A Soldier Week. People certainly seem to be doing that.

Meanwhile, the Pope delivered a Christmas message on Darfur.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, or whatever you’re celebrating today. And here’s a one-size-fits-all Christmas Carol from Audra and the Antidote.

SUCCESSFUL DEMOCRATIC BLOGGER finds blue state too expensive. Heh.

MICKEY KAUS: “Another spy scandal and Bush will be at sixty percent.”

More here and here.

IN THE “WAR ON CHRISTMAS,” CHRISTMAS HAS OPENED a second front:

Hundreds of young men decked with tinsel wander outside Senegal’s mosques, hawking plastic Christmas trees. Women pray to Allah on a sidewalk where an inflatable Santa Claus happens to be hanging.

Senegal may be 95 percent Muslim, but it certainly knows it’s Christmas. In fact, for this nation of 12 million it’s a national holiday.

Blame it on globalization, which has turned the West’s yuletide icons into a worldwide commodity. Or the Internet, or Hollywood, or the availability of travel that allows new generations of Senegalese to sample Christmas at close quarters. But mainly, Senegalese revel in the trappings of Christmas because they can and want to. . . . Secularism elsewhere may mean the freedom not to celebrate a religious holiday. In Senegal many interpret it to mean they should celebrate all of them.

Someone tell John Gibson!

BRIDGES TO NOWHERE: They’re not dead. They’re baaack!

And to think I was just blogging about zombies.

HOLIDAY WISHES from the Insta-Wife.

ANOTHER REASON, BESIDES CORY MAYE, why no-knock raids are a bad idea.

OMAR HAS MORE on on developments in Iraq, where there seem to be signs of progress.

UPDATE: Austin Bay’s take on what’s going on: “Jaw, Jaw Emerges Instead of War War and Terror Terror.” Let’s hope.

ANOTHER HOMELAND SECURITY HOAX:

It rocketed across the Internet a week ago, a startling newspaper report that agents from the US Department of Homeland Security had visited a student at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth at his New Bedford home simply because he had tried to borrow Mao Tse-Tung’s ”Little Red Book” for a history seminar on totalitarian goverments. . . .

But yesterday, the student confessed that he had made it up after being confronted by the professor who had repeated the story to a Standard-Times reporter.

The professor, Brian Glyn Williams, said he went to his former student’s house and asked about inconsistencies in his story. The 22-year-old student admitted it was a hoax, Williams said.

”I made it up,” the professor recalled him saying. ”I’m sorry. . . . I’m so relieved that it’s over.”

The student was not identified in any reports. The Globe interviewed him Thursday but decided not to write a story about his assertion, because of doubts about its veracity. The student could not be reached yesterday.

Williams said the student gave no explanation. But Williams, who praised the student as hard-working and likeable, said he was shaken by the deception.

”I feel as if I was lied to, and I have no idea why,” said Williams, an associate professor of Islamic history. He said the possibility the government was scrutinizing books borrowed by his students ”disturbed me tremendously.”

I’m disturbed tremendously that such a suspicious story was accepted so uncritically by alleged critical thinkers — and I’m a bit surprised that the student’s identity is still being protected. Why shouldn’t we know who’s behind this?

UPDATE: Tim Blair: “Molly Ivins and James Carville lied to the American people! Well, not really, but they did repeat information that was later shown to be false—which is the same thing, if you’re one of them Bush-hatin’ folks, yessir (must … stop … channelling … Ivins).”

MARK TAPSCOTT HOSTS a Carnival of the Cars.

CALIFORNIA’S VIOLENT-VIDEOGAME BAN has been struck down as a free-speech violation. I’m not surprised. As the Tech Law Prof notes: “So far, no law of this type has survived a challenge.” (Via PJM).

Here’s my column on this topic from last week.

HERE’S A FOLLOWUP on that missing-explosives case:

Authorities arrested four men and were searching for one more person in connection with the theft of 400 pounds of explosives _ enough to flatten a large building _ from a storage depot.

All of the explosives and detonating materials were recovered, and there was no evidence to suggest the theft was connected to terrorism, said Wayne Dixie of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Well, that’s a relief.

AUSTIN BAY has thoughts on Rumsfeld’s Christmas in Iraq.

INSURGENTS IN TIKRIT: A shocking interview.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO DUBYA: Rasmussen’s robots show Bush’s approval breaking fifty percent, and investor confidence at a 17-month high.

Consumer confidence, and approval of how the war is going are also up. (Via Red Vee-Dub.)

ORIN KERR AND EUGENE VOLOKH look at the question of warrantless radiation surveillance. And read this, too.

MYSTERY POLLSTER writes on open-source polling and links to a new article of his in Public Opinion Quarterly that would otherwise be pay-only.

A DIEBOLD CRACK-UP? There’s an easy solution.

UPDATE: More here.

ACCORDING TO THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’s report, the story of a U. Mass. Dartmouth student visited by Homeland Security agents because he requested Mao’s Little Red Book from the library appears to be a hoax. Can’t say I’m surprised.

ADS: By the way, the Pajamas Media folks are still testing ads, and your feedback is still welcome. We quickly established that people don’t like ads with annoying, repetitive audio clips though I probably could have told them that up front . . . .

STEM CELL GOOD NEWS: Don Ho says he’s feeling “100% better.”

UPDATE: Good news for autologous stem cell transplants, but bad news for embryonic stem cell research:

Scientists fretted Friday that a spectacular cloning fraud that hid in plain sight has set back legitimate stem cell work around the world.

Cloning experts and stem cell scientists said research in the potentially revolutionary field of regenerative medicine will continue unabated. But they said public confidence in their work had been weakened by a sham branded by experts as the most visible case of scientific fraud they could recall.

Scientists also struggled to explain how they didn’t earlier catch the charismatic South Korean veterinarian’s claim in a Science paper published in May that he cloned 11 human embryos to produce stem cells.

This is very unfortunate.

AMAZON UPDATE: The Serenity DVD I mentioned below showed up on time today. I guess it was just the notification email that was wrong.

UPDATE: And, on a different truck a few minutes later, came the book I ordered yesterday.