Amygdala

2009-07-07T18:18:00.003-04:00

YAY! I just wanted to post this picture:

And this video:

[...] Vice President Joe Biden administered the oath. Former Vice President Walter Mondale accompanied Franken.

[...]

Franken took the oath on a Bible that belonged to the family of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn.

Nice touch.

Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5.

2009-07-07T03:45:00.003-04:00

ROGER AND ME. Hey, I got Roger Ebert to respond to two comments of mine on his blog. One on The Shaver Mystery.

In the other I got him to rewrite an ambiguous line about Doris Day.

I knew you wanted to know that.

Read The Rest Scale: only if curious. I've also written quite a few blog posts mentioning or linking to Roger (hmm, Blogger says 37 so far), so I'll only also mention this one on Roger and sf fandom.

And let me also observe that he's been writing a wonderful series of nostalgic looks at his past on his journal in recent months.

2009-07-06T13:58:00.011-04:00

THE WAR WE CAN'T WIN. As you know, a new set of Nixon tapes came out two weeks ago, and I wrote then about doing a new post analyzing the more interesting bits, which for me is all about the Vietnam War.

I've done a number of posts looking at past tape transcripts. Here on some of his racist themes. Here on how stupid Nixon thought J. Fred Thompson was.

And the last on the theme I'll continue in this post, here a long post on how Nixon and Kissinger knew the Vietnam War couldn't be won, and simply wanted to punt the issue until after the 1972 elections, after which they expected South Vietnam to collapse.

I bring this up, of course, because of the ever-ongoing rightwing mythology that we really "won" the Vietnam war, if not for those goshdarn liberals stabbing South Vietnam in the back with their aid cut-offs. Well, let's look at that yet again, shall we? But first, another post I did on that theme, looking back into the Johnson era, with quotes of Johnson tapes, and what Congress thought then. And a post on the history of Congressional ability to deal with war-funding.

General transcripts of tapes here. Aid to finding tapes here. More aid here.

The staggering story here is that it was Nixon himself who organized the threat of a Congressional cut-off of aid to South Vietnam, as a tool to beat President Thieu into signing onto the Paris Accords with the North Vietnamese that would enable the U.S. to withdraw its troops from South Vietnam.

And now, the new Nixon tapes and memos. On November 24th, 1972, Henry Kissinger dictated a memo to our allies on his latest meeting in Paris with the North Vietnamese:

November 24, 1972, Memcon Vietnam

Unfortunately, the text selection option for Scribed pastes out one word per line, which makes transcribing them, save by hand, impossibly time-consuming, as does retyping them. But you can read the threats to the South Vietnamese yourself.

And, as it happens, I've found that the blogger at Fatal Politics has saved me ten tons of trouble by doing most of the same analysis I was going to do, and putting a lot of transcripts into text form, as well as on YouTube, himself.

Nixon's threat to Thieu by diplomatic cable:

I have checked today [the President's cable said] as to the attitude of the leading Democrats and Republicans who support us in the Senate on Vietnam. In preparing them for the consultation which must take place once agreement is reached we have informed them of the key elements of the October 8 agreement: the return of our POWs, a ceasefire, and a formula under which [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu remains in power and all South Vietnamese have an opportunity to participate in a free election to determine what government they want for the future.

The result of this check indicates that they were not only unanimous but vehement in stating their conclusions that if Saigon is the only roadblock for reaching agreement on this basis they will personally lead the fight when the new Congress reconvenes on January 3 to cut off all military and economic assistance to Saigon. My evaluation is that the cut-off would be February 1. They further believe that under such circumstances we have no choice but to go it alone and to make a separate deal with North Vietnam for the return of our POWs and for our withdrawal.

Ken's emphasis correctly added.

Nixon was using this threat of Congressional cut-off of aid to force Thieu's acquiescence. As we'll see, this is a threat Nixon himself organized.

As Ken at Fatal Politics observes:

[...] The Saigon government simply could not continue to exist without U.S. military and economic assistance. (A point Nixon himself made directly to Special Assistant Duc five days later: "Without U.S. aid, Saigon could not survive . . . without U.S. funds Saigon would be through."

Who was making these threats? Again quoting Ken's post:

Goldwater and Stennis Tell Saigon Not to Balk
By David E. Rosenbaum
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18[, 1973]. Two of the Saigon government’s strongest supporters in the United States Senate--Barry Goldwater and John C. Stennis . . . warned that South Vietnam would lose support in the United States for further economic and military assistance if President Nguyen Van Thieu blocked a settlement of the war.

[...]

The warnings addressed to the Saigon government by Senator Stennis, who spoke in the Senate, and by Senator Goldwater, who issued a statement, were markedly similar. . . .

That's right: the most conservative Senators in the Senate, Nixon's closest allies.

Ken:

[...] Stennis told the Senate:
“I do not think this is the time for the Government of South Vietnam to be an obstacle to peace. The South Vietnamese Government must realize that there are limits to what the American people are willing to do.

“The South Vietnamese will need economic and military aid in the coming years. However, the South Vietnamese can jeopardize American support for such programs if they emerge now as the obstacle to peace in Southeast Asia.”
Nixon wrote a letter to Thieu:
It is obvious that we face a situation of most extreme gravity when long-time friends of South Viet-Nam such as Senators Goldwater and Stennis, on whom we have relied for four years to carry our programs of assistance through the Congress, make public declarations that a refusal by your Government of reasonable peace terms would make it impossible to continue aid. ("Nixon to Thieu," 19 January 1973, quoted by Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, pp. 234-235. Or you can read the letter itself here.)

How did Nixon proceed? Over to Ken again:

On January 17, 1973, over three months after the North had agreed to Nixon’s “decent interval” terms, the South still had not. Nixon thought it time to send South Vietnam’s President a particularly threatening letter:
President Nixon: . . . I would make the letter this time very tough in substance and I would smooth off the edges in its content -- you know what I mean.

Kissinger: Exactly. Absolutely.

President Nixon: So that it is one that -- so that he doesn’t look as if we are -- it must have the veiled threat -- one that can be clearly seen. We know what is beneath the veil -- there is no other choice but that the Congress and I will not be able to resist it under these circumstances -- that the aid will be cut off. This is what is at stake. . . . Your going along with the settlement and going along enthusiastically, as I will, would have an enormous effect on American public opinion and provide the continued support which we so desperately need in our Congress for a military and economic aid to South Vietnam.

Kissinger: Absolutely. Exactly.
(17 January 1973, 9:44 AM, KA09292

How did Nixon proceed to organize the threat?

A public statement by "Mr. Conservative," Senator Barry M. Goldwater, R-Arizona:
President Nixon: . . . the only thing I wonder, would it be useful to have Goldwater take a little -- say, "Look, come along boy?"

Kissinger: I think that might do some good.

. . .

President Nixon: I think if Goldwater could just come out and say it’s time to quit this nonsense, stop all this jabbering . . .

. . .

President Nixon: I don’t want one of the left to do it, but somebody like Goldwater from the right should say it.

Kissinger: Exactly.

President Nixon: And maybe [Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John C.] Stennis will say it if he won’t. Stennis should be another good one.

Kissinger: Right.
(18 January 1973, 9:40 AM, KA09303

What followed?

To further veil the threat, Nixon and Kissinger would hide their own hands in it:
Kissinger: None of them would say they talked to me, they keep their--

President Nixon: Yeah, well, you can tell them that it’s very important that this not appear to come from the White House.
(18 January 1973, 9:40 AM, KA09303, subscription)

Goldwater didn't hesitate:
Kissinger: Barry, what I called you about is this: I was wondering whether you would consider making a statement today in effect saying to Thieu, what’s important now isn’t this or that comma or word or clause; what’s important now is to maintain unity between us.

Goldwater: This is directed to President Thieu.

Kissinger: That’s right. Because we are at a point now where if they keep nitpicking around in Saigon on these abstruse theological points, they are going to get so much opposition to themselves triggered here.

Goldwater: Yes.

Kissinger: The difference is between them and us. I mean, we shouldn’t say that, but just for your information -- cannot be explained to the American people.

Goldwater: No, that’s for sure.

(18 January 1973, 11:13 AM, KA09307, subscription)
Thieu wanted any settlement to include the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from the South -- hardly an "abstruse theological" point.

Stennis was even more amenable to Kissinger:
Kissinger: I was wondering whether I could make a suggestion to you.

Stennis: Yes, sir, always.

Kissinger: We think given your long-term commitment to defense and so forth, that if you made a statement saying that you thought that this would be -- that this was now the time for Thieu and us to close ranks and that there shouldn’t be legal quibbles, that to restore the unity between our two governments, or something like that that puts a little pressure on Thieu, so that he doesn’t think that the conservative element in this country is behind him.
(Emphasis added.)
Stennis: Yes, sure.

Kissinger: Today would be a good day to do it.

Stennis: I heartily agree . . .
(18 January 1973, 11:30 AM, KA09310

The following I've covered in previous posts, but let's recap: January 20th, 1973, and Ken at Fatal Politics:

[...] Nixon realized that the Communists were going to win in Vietnam. “I look at the tide of history out there,” he said in the Oval Office, “South Vietnam probably can never even survive anyway.”

And then:

On January 20, 1973, when Nixon and Kissinger were discussing the threat of a cutoff of U.S. aid to South Vietnam spearheaded by congressional conservatives -- a threat designed to force South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu to accept Nixon and Kissinger's settlement terms, which all three realized would lead to a Communist military victory following a face-saving (for Nixon) "decent interval" -- Nixon said, "I don't know whether the threat goes too far or not, but I'd do any damn thing, that is, or to cut off his head if necessary."

So much for the idea that it was the liberals in Congress who stabbed South Vietnam in the back by cutting off their aid.

Ken has more detail. The guy has done an amazing job, and my hat is off to him. Everyone should study his posts.

Read The Rest Scale: 5 out of 5.

ADDENDUM, 5:35 p.m.: Thanks, James Joyner! Thanks, Mac!

ADDENDUM, July 7th, 12:18 p.m.: Thanks, Mike at Crooks And Liars!

ADDENDUM, July 7th, 2:52 p.m.: thanks, Ken!

ADDENDUM, July 8th, 12:34 p.m.: Thanks, PZ! Some mildly interesting discussion in comments here, btw.

ADDENDUM, July 9th, 3:24 a.m.: Audio of Lyndon Johnson detailing Nixon's double-dealings with the South Vietnamese prior to the 1968 elections. Much more detail.

2009-07-06T12:43:00.004-04:00

THE BEST WAY TO START YOUR MORNING is to help with that pesky Alzheimer's.

[...] The 55 mice used in the University of South Florida study had been bred to develop symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

[...]

The mice were given the equivalent of five 8 oz (227 grams) cups of coffee a day - about 500 milligrams of caffeine.

The researchers say this is the same as is found in two cups of "specialty" coffees such as lattes or cappuccinos from coffee shops, 14 cups of tea, or 20 soft drinks.

When the mice were tested again after two months, those who were given the caffeine performed much better on tests measuring their memory and thinking skills and performed as well as mice of the same age without dementia.

Those drinking plain water continued to do poorly on the tests.

In addition, the brains of the mice given caffeine showed nearly a 50% reduction in levels of the beta amyloid protein, which forms destructive clumps in the brains of dementia patients.

Further tests suggested caffeine affects the production of both the enzymes needed to produce beta amyloid.

The researchers also suggest that caffeine suppresses inflammatory changes in the brain that lead to an overabundance of the protein.

Earlier research by the same team had shown younger mice, who had also been bred to develop Alzheimer's but who were given caffeine in their early adulthood, were protected against the onset of memory problems.

Now, if I can just manage to remember to make coffee....

Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5.

Meanwhile, I don't drive, but if you do, and ever get drowsy, this might help even more than coffee.

2009-07-06T11:32:00.011-04:00

WHY YOU'RE READING THIS. Because the internet was invented! And a year ago, Vanity Fair published a spiffy oral history (with audio) from many of those present at the creation of crucial moments. Some excerpts I found hilarious or cool coming up. But the first thing to remember is that the internet was created by government funding and initiative:

Paul Baran: It was necessary to have a strategic system that could withstand a first attack and then be able to return the favor in kind. The problem was that we didn’t have a survivable communications system, and so Soviet missiles aimed at U.S. missiles would take out the entire telephone-communication system.

[...]

Bob Taylor: Sputnik in 1957 surprised a lot of people, and Eisenhower asked the Defense Department to set up a special agency, so that we would not get caught with our pants down again.

[...]

Bob Taylor: There were individual instances of interactive computing through time-sharing, sponsored by ARPA, scattered around the country. In my office in the Pentagon I had one terminal that connected to a time-sharing system at M.I.T. I had another one that connected to a time-sharing system at U.C. Berkeley. I had one that connected to a time-sharing system at the System Development Corporation, in Santa Monica. There was another terminal that connected to the Rand Corporation.

And for me to use any of these systems, I would have to move from one terminal to the other. So the obvious idea came to me: Wait a minute. Why not just have one terminal, and it connects to anything you want it to be connected to? And, hence, the Arpanet was born.

This is how fast government can move:

When I had this idea about building a network—this was in 1966—it was kind of an “Aha” idea, a “Eureka!” idea. I went over to Charlie Herzfeld’s office and told him about it. And he pretty much instantly made a budget change within his agency and took a million dollars away from one of his other offices and gave it to me to get started. It took about 20 minutes.

But the monopoly of AT&T -- that so-called innovator of tech, private enterprise, tried to destroy it:

[...] Paul Baran: The one hurdle packet switching faced was AT&T. They fought it tooth and nail at the beginning. They tried all sorts of things to stop it. They pretty much had a monopoly in all communications. And somebody from outside saying that there’s a better way to do it of course doesn’t make sense. They automatically assumed that we didn’t know what we were doing.

Bob Taylor: Working with AT&T would be like working with Cro-Magnon man. I asked them if they wanted to be early members so they could learn technology as we went along. They said no. I said, Well, why not? And they said, Because packet switching won’t work. They were adamant. As a result, AT&T missed out on the whole early networking experience.

[...]

Bob Kahn: Let me put it into perspective. So here we are when there are very few time-sharing systems anywhere in the world. AT&T probably said, Look, maybe we would have 50 or a hundred organizations, maybe a few hundred organizations, that could possibly partake of this in any reasonable time frame. Remember, the personal computer hadn’t been invented yet. So, you had to have these big expensive mainframes in order to do anything. They said, There’s no business there, and why should we waste our time until we can see that there’s a business opportunity? That’s why a place like ARPA is so important.

Government did it:

[...] Stewart Brand: This was a time which was pretty much ARPA-derived, in the sense that the money for computers and for networking computers was coming from the government, and from pretty enlightened leadership there. The idea of Arpanet was that it was going to basically join up computational resources. It was not set up primarily to do e-mail—but the computational-resource connection turned out to be not so important, and the e-mail turned out to be the killer app.

[...]

Bob Metcalfe: Imagine a bearded grad student being handed a dozen AT&T executives, all in pin-striped suits and quite a bit older and cooler. And I’m giving them a tour. And when I say a tour, they’re standing behind me while I’m typing on one of these terminals. I’m traveling around the Arpanet showing them: Ooh, look. You can do this. And I’m in U.C.L.A. in Los Angeles now. And now I’m in San Francisco. And now I’m in Chicago. And now I’m in Cambridge, Massachusetts—isn’t this cool? And as I’m giving my demo, the damned thing crashed.

And I turned around to look at these 10, 12 AT&T suits, and they were all laughing. And it was in that moment that AT&T became my bête noire, because I realized in that moment that these sons of bitches were rooting against me.

To this day, I still cringe at the mention of AT&T. That’s why my cell phone is a T-Mobile. The rest of my family uses AT&T, but I refuse.

[...]

Robert Cailliau: [...] At one point CERN was toying with patenting the World Wide Web. I was talking about that with Tim one day, and he looked at me, and I could see that he wasn’t enthusiastic. He said, Robert, do you want to be rich? I thought, Well, it helps, no? He apparently didn’t care about that. What he cared about was to make sure that the thing would work, that it would just be there for everybody. He convinced me of that, and then I worked for about six months, very hard with the legal service, to make sure that CERN put the whole thing in the public domain.

Marc Andreessen: Mosaic was built at the University of Illinois. I was an undergrad student, but I was also a staff member at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, which is basically a federally funded research institute. When Al Gore says that he created the Internet, he means that he funded these four national supercomputing centers. Federal funding was critical. I tease my libertarian friends—they all think the Internet is the greatest thing. And I’m like, Yeah, thanks to government funding.

Here's a part I love:

Sky Dayton founded EarthLink, an Internet-service provider, in 1994.

Sky Dayton: I owned a couple of coffeehouses in L.A., and I had a computer-graphics company that I co-owned. And I heard about this thing called the Internet. I thought, That sounds kind of interesting. The first thing I did is I actually picked up the phone and dialed 411, and I said, I’d like the number for the Internet, please. And the operator is like, What? I said, Just search any company with the word Internet in the name. Blank. Nothing. I thought, Wow, this is interesting. What is this thing anyway?

Another:

[...] Thomas Reardon was 21 years old when Bill Gates offered him a senior position at Microsoft, in 1991. Reardon became a program manager for Internet Explorer.

Thomas Reardon: I was the first at Microsoft to know about Netscape. I remember calling down there and saying, Hey, I’m with Microsoft, and I’m looking around at all these people who started Web browsers because I think we’re going to do one inside of Windows and we want to know if we might look at your technology as a source for this, do a license deal, or we buy your technology. And they told me basically to go fuck off.

How did Microsoft respond?

[...] Thomas Reardon: Andreessen said that Windows was just a piece of shit. Well, that became a call to arms for us. We had this famous meeting called the Pearl Harbor Day meeting that year. Bill was going from talking about the Internet to: O.K., now we need a battle plan. The Internet Explorer team went from 5 people to 300.

Hadi Partovi: I personally printed out the strongest quotes from the Netscape people, with their faces, so if you walked down the hallway of the Internet Explorer team, you’d see the faces of one of these Netscape executives and what they said.

Jim Clark: Microsoft was making it very clear that they were going to kill us. We were trying to negotiate deals where Compaq and Gateway and all these P.C. manufacturers would bundle our Web browser. And Microsoft threatened them. Microsoft threatened them that if they did they would revoke their license to Windows. So, needless to say, everyone backed off.

Later, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon:

When we launched, we launched with over a million titles. There were countless snags. One of my friends figured out that you could order a negative quantity of books. And we would credit your credit card and then, I guess, wait for you to deliver the books to us. We fixed that one very quickly.

[...]

When we started out, we were packing on our hands and knees on these cement floors. One of the software engineers that I was packing next to was saying, You know, this is really killing my knees and my back. And I said to this person, I just had a great idea. We should get kneepads. And he looked at me like I was from Mars. And he said, Jeff, we should get packing tables.

We got packing tables the next day, and it doubled our productivity.

Michael Kinsley on how Slate got started:

[...] The only thing we were up against was Salon. They were our only competition. Oh, but dealing with Microsoft was—Microsoft was great in the sense that they did the key thing, which is pay for it. But getting them acquainted with a writer’s contract! They originally wanted us to make every writer sign three different documents which warranted the accuracy of everything they said and indemnified Microsoft. They even wanted us to get anyone interviewed to sign a release indemnifying Microsoft.

So there were 18 different ways that they just didn’t get it.

The early days of eBay:

[...] Pierre Omidyar: I remember clearly in the early days when there was a community of Barbie-doll collectors. They found eBay sort of all at once. And I’ll never forget, we had an early focus group in late ’96, and one of the guys who came to our focus group was a truckdriver—he actually did long-haul truckdriving across the country—and when people were introducing themselves, going around the room, he says, I’m a truckdriver and I collect Barbies.

And then later there were Beanie Babies. Around the time that we went public we disclosed in our filing that Beanie Babies accounted for 8 percent of the inventory on the site.

The Smoking Gun:

[...] We launched the site on April 17, 1997. I didn’t have an e-mail address. I remember actually faxing out like 40 press releases on paper. Boy, what a retard: I’m sending you a fax to let you know about this Web site that we just started.

Pets.com:

[...] Jeff Bezos: I think the only thing I ended up with out of that investment is a sock puppet. An expensive sock puppet.

There's a bunch more there. Meanwhile, Scott Rosenberg has a new book, Say Everything, a history of blogging, I'll have to get some day. Here's the insightfuly Chapter 9, Journalists vs. Bloggers.

And Apt 11D looks back at how blogging has changed for many.

Forbes in 2000 looks at computing in 2010. Er.

Lastly: a guide to Facebook manners from the 1950s:

Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5 for all them there links.

Thanks to Sore Eyes for the Scott Rosenberg and Apt 11D links, and Charlie Stross for the Forbes link.

And thanks, Al Gore, for taking the initiative to create the internet!

And, incidentally, another example of how government can lead innovation? Incandescent light bulbs.

2009-07-03T20:26:00.012-04:00

SOME OF THE BEST FROM NRO'S CORNER on the Palin resignation. God, I love me some wingnuts at times.

Kathryn J. Lopez, 07/03 03:22 PM:

MSNBC is speculating it's a scandal.

Or it's a brilliant way to keep people guessing about you, perhaps?

Yes, because everyone up to now found Sarah Palin staid, predictable, and never speculated about her.

Jonah Goldberg is not a complete idiot after all! At 07/03 03:48 PM:

[...] Resigning strikes me as very strange.

Ya think?

Kathryn J. Lopez is deep! At 07/03 03:54 PM:

Who knows all the reasons — Todd and Sarah Palin, presumably fully understand.

Where would we be without professional pundits' insights such as this?

Rich Lowrey also not as wingnutty as he might be! At 07/03 04:58 PM:

I think I have pretty well-established credentials when it comes to being charmed by Sarah Palin, but that statement, as a statement, was simply terrible. Rambling and not at all persuasive as an argument for her decision. More Gibson/Couric than GOP convention speech. She shouldn't have said a thing without getting Matt Scully—or some similarly talented speechwriter—on the case first.

Because who doesn't want a president or governor who can't put togther on her own the simplest explanation of what she's doing? Oh, right, these folks adored the last Republican president. My bad.

The latest piece of genius, as I write this, comes from Dana Perino at 07/03 07:45 PM:

[...] On the other hand, the great 2012 GOP nominee chess match has already started, and this ensures that her name will be in the mix, even if she has no plans to launch a campaign.

Right, because before she resigned, no Republicans had considered her as a candidate.

God bless The Corner, and all their fellow kooks.

Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 if you enjoy laughing your ass off at this sort of thing.

ADDENDUM: A thought I just wrote about at Obsidian Wings: "...but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out."

That was my favorite bit, too! [Of Palin's "you won't have Sarah Palin to kick around any more" presser] You demonstrate you're not a quitter by quitting!

Although some other bits I particularly liked:

[...] Alaska's mission - to contribute to America. [...] Alaska would be part of America's great destiny. [...] because I know in my soul that Alaska is of such import [....]

The other forty-nine states? Nothing to contribute! No import!

Truly, who wouldn't want to base a national candidacy on this -- and the Alaskan Independence Party?

More seriously, I'm wondering if it's possible that this part might, actually, be the key?

[...] And so as I thought about this announcement that I wouldn't run for re-election and what it means for Alaska, I thought about how much fun some governors have as lame ducks... travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade - as so many politicians do.

This was a really rambly, unthought-out -- it's not even fair to call it a "speech" -- set of strung-together sorta-thoughts.

Maybe it's actually just this simple: Palin decided to not run for election, possibly to set up a 2012 presidential campaign, possibly for some more obscure reason -- and then really did just have the thought occur to her:

Well, golly gee, if I stay on as Governor until the next election, I'll be all bored and doing things that won't personally benefit me at all! And people will keep picking on me! And gee whillikers, that's just no fun!

I know! I'll quit right now!

And I'm going to run out now and announce that, because thinking about things is hard! Let's go talk to the press, Todd!

I'm not saying that's how it went. But the thought does occur to me to wonder about the possibility.

Video of her bizarre ramble here among many other places.

This is, after all, the woman who shortly after this weirdness tweeted:

We'll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election... this is in Alaska's best interest, my family's happy... it is good, stay tuned

And in the middle of her ramble, she goes from saying "So I choose, for my State and my family, more 'freedom' to progress, all the way around... so that Alaska may progress... I will not seek re-election as Governor" to seque directly into "And so as I thought about this announcement." Similarly, she says "With this announcement that I am not seeking re-election... I've determined it's best to transfer the authority of governor to Lieutenant Governor Parnell...."

It certainly does sound as if she pretty much just had the idea of quitting practically on the fly. Notice her shift in that last into present tense. And is it that hard to believe that she's just that impulsive and shallow?

Oh, and the one point where I agreed with her?

[...] I cannot stand here as your Governor and allow millions upon millions of our dollars go to waste just so I can hold the title of Governor.

I didn't want that either!

ADDENDUM, 9:35 p.m.: Sarah Palin quoted Douglas MacArthur: "In the words of General MacArthur said, 'We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.'"

I'd like to point out two things about this:
1) Douglas MacArthur didn't say it. It was said by General Oliver P. Smith, commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, in Korea, at the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.

2) This was one of the biggest military retreats in American history. (More here.)

ADDENDUM, 7/06/09: Extra-special science fantasy lunacy via Robert Farley: Erick Erickson on Palin:

I’ve had this running thought all day, perhaps because I was watching it on TV in HD for the first time, that this is kind of like Ben Kenobi letting Darth Vader strike him down.

Soon it will be revealed that Bobby Jindal has a hidden twin sister.

2009-07-03T19:00:00.002-04:00

THANKS, BRITAIN! Oh, look, a birthday prezzie!

A rare and valuable copy of the US Declaration of Independence has been discovered in the National Archives.

An American antiquarian bookseller carrying out research at the archives in Richmond, Surrey, stumbled upon the document among some files. It is believed to be one of only 200 printed.

Dating back to 4 July 1776, the manuscript is known as a "Dunlap", after the printer whose name appears at the bottom. Only 26 such prints are known to still exist. The last discovery of a Dunlap was at a flea market in 1989. It sold at auction for $8.1m (£5m).

The manuscript was hidden among correspondence from American colonists that the British had intercepted in the 18th century. The archives is now known to hold three copies but said it would not be selling the print.

"We will protect and preserve this copy," a spokeswoman said.

"The Americans are very excited by it. We do often loan out our key documents and I'm sure if an American institution wanted to borrow it, we would consider lending it to them."

Edward Hampshire, a diplomatic and colonial specialist at the archives, said: "This is an incredibly exciting find... uncovering a new document nearly 250 years [after they were printed] is extremely rare, especially one in such good condition."

I like the next part where they explain what the Declaration of Independence is.

Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5.

And you hardly need me to tell you about it, but oh, that wacky Sarah Palin!

She's mad, you know. Completely mad.

2009-07-02T17:53:00.003-04:00

WHY ARE THESE INDIANS SO HAPPY?

Because a country of over one billion and another hundred million people plus just took a big step forward in human rights.

These folks are downright gay about it. As we all should be.

Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5.

2009-07-01T20:18:00.002-04:00

WE HAVE TO DESTROY AMERICA IN ORDER TO SAVE IT. That has, of course, been the philosophy of so many on the right for so very long, but it's rare to hear it put this baldly:

Michael Scheuer, on Glenn Beck's show last night:
Scheuer: The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it's going to take a grass-roots, bottom-up pressure. Because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. It's an absurd situation again. Only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

Beck: Which is why, I was thinking this weekend, if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.

Yes, in order to protect us, we'll have to be attacked; if we're not attacked, Obama won't be protecting us from being attacked.

Man, I've had acid that wasn't this good.

Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 if you want to watch the video.

And always remember: the very best way to protect America, the only truly right way is with as much violence as necessary.

It does sound better in the original German, but these guys are our own, homegrown, fascists.

2009-06-25T22:28:00.002-04:00

THE ABSOLUTE RIGHTS OF AUTHORITIES ARE THE RIGHT TO BE FREE.

This decision in Safford Unified School District v. April Redding came out correctly, much to the surprise of many, including myself.

Justice Thomas's dissent:

[...] The majority's decision in this regard also departs from another basic principle of the Fourth Amendment: that law enforcement officials can enforce with the same vigor all rules and regulations irrespective of the perceived importance of any of those rules. "In a long line of cases, we have said that when an officer has probable cause to believe a person committed even a minor crime in his presence, the balancing of private and public interests is not in doubt. The arrest is constitutionally reasonable." Virginia v. Moore, 553 U. S. ___, ___ (2008) (slip op., at 6).

The Fourth Amendment rule for searches is the same: Police officers are entitled to search regardless of the perceived triviality of the underlying law. As we have explained, requiring police to make "sensitive, case-by-case determinations of government need," Atwater v. Lago Vista, 532 U. S. 318, 347 (2001), for a particular prohibition before conducting a search would "place police in an almost impossible spot," id., at 350.

[...]

In determining whether the search's scope was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, it is therefore irrelevant whether officials suspected Redding of possessing prescription-strength Ibuprofen, nonprescription-strength Naproxen, or some harder street drug. Safford prohibited its possession on school property. Reasonable suspicion that Redding was in possession of drugs in violation of these policies, therefore, justified a search extending to any area where small pills could be concealed. The search did not violate the Fourth Amendment.

[...]

By declaring the search unreasonable in this case, the majority has "`surrender[ed] control of the American public school system to public school students'" by invalidating school policies that treat all drugs equally and by second-guessing swift disciplinary decisions made by school officials.

[...]

In the end, the task of implementing and amending public school policies is beyond this Court's function. Parents, teachers, school administrators, local politicians, and state officials are all better suited than judges to determine the appropriate limits on searches conducted by school officials. Preservation of order, discipline, and safety in public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution.

Neither in the domain of the Constitution are the rights of individuals to be free of unreasonable searches or seizures, if you're a minor, or for any other good reason Justice Thomas can come up with.

Let's hear it for not applying "empathy" or concepts of "freedoms of individuals" over the "rights" of authorities, in constitutional decisions.

The whole set of decisions.

Read The Rest Scale: only if you're a nut like me who likes reading Supreme Court decisions.

2009-06-25T21:25:00.004-04:00

MY SECOND LIFETIME MICHAEL JACKSON POST is about my first Michael Jackson post.

Huh. I was just startled by checking SiteMeter for my blog for the first time all day, not expecting to see anything beyond the abysmally small number of hits I get these days absent a link from a major blog, and was staggered to see hundreds of hits per hour for the last few hours, hitting over 240 hits per hour a couple of hours ago.

And what was being hit? Variants of this Google picture search.

First time I ever got such a large number of links to an image.

Ironically, the post being linked to, from 2003, was, accurately, entitled "MY FIRST AND PROBABLY ONLY MICHAEL JACKSON POST EVER."

But it used the words "professional forensic scientist" in it. He created, back then, a photo of how Michael Jackson "would normally look at age 45."

Suddenly lots and lots of people are interested.

If you type "Michael Jackson" and "forensic" into Google's picture search, my page and picture show up on the first page.

Funny old internet. Original post here.

Read The Rest Scale: whatever.

ADDENDUM, 6:22 p.m.: What I saw on my server logs were just an eddy of the internet:

How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it's just one -- if that one is Michael Jackson.

The biggest showbiz story of the year saw the troubled star take a good slice of the Internet with him, as the ripples caused by the news of his death swept around the globe.

"Between approximately 2:40 p.m. PDT and 3:15 p.m. PDT today, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson," a Google spokesman told CNET, which also reported that Google News users complained that the service was inaccessible for a time. At its peak, Google Trends rated the Jackson story as "volcanic."

As sites fell, users raced to other sites: TechCrunch reported that TMZ, which broke the story, had several outages; users then switched to Perez Hilton's blog, which also struggled to deal with the requests it received.

CNN reported a fivefold rise in traffic and visitors in just over an hour, receiving 20 million page views in the hour the story broke.

Twitter crashed as users saw multiple "fail whales" -- the illustrations the site uses as error messages -- user FoieGrasie posting, "Irony: The protesters in Iran using Twitter as com are unable to get online because of all the posts of 'Michael Jackson RIP.' Well done." The site's status blog said that Twitter had had to temporarily disable its search results, saved searches and trend topics.

Wikipedia saw a flurry of activity, with close to 500 edits made to Jackson's entry in less than 24 hours. CNET reported that by 3:15 p.m. PT, Wikipedia seemed to be "temporarily overloaded."

The Los Angeles Times, the first news organization to confirm Jackson's death, suffered outages. The site also reported that AOL's instant messenger service had been hit, quoting an AOL statement that said, "AIM was down for approximately 40 minutes this afternoon." The statement said, "Today was a seminal moment in Internet history. We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth."

Etc., etc. So my seeing a few hundred hits for an old photo and mention was just a ghost of all this.

I feel so included.

2009-06-23T13:11:00.003-04:00

NEW NIXON TAPES OUT TODAY! I'll be busy reading transcripts, and in some cases, listening to audio.

I'll get back to you on this.

Meanwhile, relatedly, who knew that Chris Crawford had a new sort-of version of Balance of Power out? I spent a lot of time with it last night, doing things like declining to make deals with China to ask North Korea to test a nuclear weapon. I think Nixon would have done the same!

Read The Rest Scale: as you wish.

2009-06-22T19:33:00.011-04:00

1977! Or, an example of why I have a little trouble identifying with the state I presently live in:

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- North Carolina recalled a regrettable side of its history on Monday by unveiling a roadside marker remembering poor people, mental patients and prisoners who were sterilized against their will by state officials.

The cast aluminum sign in downtown Raleigh provides a permanent remembrance of the program intended to keep thousands of people considered mentally disabled or otherwise genetically inferior from having children.

[...]

More than 7,600 people were sterilized by ''choice or coercion'' under the state's so-called eugenics program between 1933 and 1973, according to the marker's text. North Carolina was one of more than two dozen states [SEE BELOW: THE NUMBER IS ACTUALLY 32 STATES] that ran such programs after social reformers began advocating for the approach a century ago.

[...]

North Carolina's program targeted the poor and people living in prisons and state institutions, among others. While officials obtained written consent from patients or their guardians, many didn't know what they were signing and were essentially coerced, state historians said.

Riddick, for example, was a rape victim who was sterilized soon after delivering a baby at age 14. She has said she couldn't have given consent because she was so young.

The state Eugenics Commission was abolished in 1977 after the Legislature transferred responsibility of the mentally ill to the court system.

There was a "Eugenics Commission" until 1977!

They're still just talking about compensation:

[...] A state House panel has recommended that the state give $20,000 to victims of the eugenics program, but the measure is unlikely to pass this year. The House bill that would begin payments now seeks $18.6 million -- a difficult amount to obtain in a year in which lawmakers are facing a $4.6 billion budget gap.

But, hey, a marker should make up for it all.

Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5. There's no coverage of this in the News & Observer, by the way, other than the same AP story. There's just that much caring.

ADDENDUM, June 23rd, 7:44 p.m.: Thanks to a pointer from reader Maven giving me the clue to go looking, here is the whole huge detailed series of articles that the Winston Salem Journal did in 2002, which shined a bright light on this awful program. Really, this is what you should go read!

Incidentally, although the article I initially quoted says "more than two dozen" states had such programs, it was thirty-two states.

ADDENDUM, June 26th, 12:26 p.m.: Thanks, Batocchio, at Crooks and Liars!

ADDENDUM, June 28th, 2:02: p.m.: Thanks, Robert!

2009-06-22T17:58:00.003-04:00

JEWS IN SPACE. Okay, only in difficult-to-get-to rural Peru. Those wacky Jews turn up everywhere!

[...] The history of Jews in Iquitos, dating from the late-19th-century rubber boom that transformed this far-flung Amazonian outpost into a once thriving city of imported Italian marble and a theater designed by Gustave Eiffel, was almost forgotten.

But Mr. Reátegui Levy and a handful of others began organizing the descendants of dozens of Jews from places as varied as Morocco, Gibraltar, Malta, England and France who had settled here and deeper in the jungle, opening trading houses and following their star in search of riches and adventure.

The rubber trade collapsed, and fortunes here and upriver in the Brazilian city of Manaus vanished. Some Jewish immigrants perished young, succumbing to diseases like cholera. A few stayed, marrying local women and raising families. Others returned home, leaving behind descendants who clung to a belief that they were Jews.

[...]

“We were isolated for so many decades, living on the jungle’s edge in a Catholic society without rabbis or a synagogue, in which all we had were some vague notions of what it meant to be Jewish,” Mr. Reátegui Levy said.

“But when I was a child, my mother told me something that forever burned into my mind,” he said. “She told me, ‘You are a Jew, and you are never to forget that.’ ”

Iquitos lies four degrees south of the Equator, reachable only by boat or plane.

The one thing that makes me doubt their Jewishness is that the reporter makes no mention of constant arguing among them. Probably just a reportorial oversight, though.

Read The Rest Scale: if interested, 3.5 out of 5. Otherwise not.

2009-06-21T19:24:00.002-04:00

PRETTY AND WITTY ANIMALS. How very natural:

Homosexual behavior seems pointedly un-Darwinian. An animal that doesn't pass along genes by mating with the opposite sex at every, well, conceivable opportunity, seems to be at an evolutionary disadvantage. So what’s in it for the 450-plus species that go for same-sex sex?

Two evolutionary biologists from University of California, Riverside, set out to answer that question in a paper published today in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

[...]

After studying dozens of published articles on the topic, Bailey and his colleague Marlene Zuk concluded that, in addition to being an adaptational strategy, "these behaviors can be a force," Bailey said. "They create a context in which selection can occur [differently] within a population."

In the Laysan albatross, for example, previous research has shown that a third of all bonded pairs in a Hawaii colony are two females. This behavior helps the birds, whose colony has far more females than males, by allowing them to share parenting responsibilities. It also gives more stability to the offspring of males, already bonded to a female, who mate opportunistically with females in a same-sex couple. Such a dynamic, then may force gradual changes in behavior and even physical appearance of the birds, the authors note.

Next on the Nature Channel: Queer Eye For the Straight Albatross. On a stick.

Read The Rest Scale: 2.5 out of 5.

2009-06-20T08:25:00.007-04:00

OBAMA: GEEK OR NERD? PC Guy wants to know.

He doesn't worship Crom? This explains his failure to understand what is best in life:

What we really need is a Democratic president who understands these things.

These are the sentiments a President needs these days with Republicans. Not pacifism such as this:

Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 out of 5.

ADDENDUM: I'm probably the last skiffy fan to see Joss Whedon's acceptance of the Bradbury Award (aka the Sorta Nebula). And, hey, let's throw in this, too.

2009-06-15T16:29:00.002-04:00

THE ELEMENT TO BE FORMERLY KNOWN AS "UNUNBIUM": Welcome!

Got any suggestions for the permanent name?

Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 elements out of 5. It's heavy, man.

2009-06-12T16:33:00.004-04:00

IJWTS that the phrases "class war" and "judicial fiat" are not, in fact, arguments.

That is all.

ADDENDUM, 5:07 p.m.: "I am a judge" isn't an argument, either. (See my two comments above and one below that one, for context.)

2009-06-12T14:51:00.002-04:00

GILDING THE AGE.

Source.

Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5.

2009-06-11T20:13:00.004-04:00

MORE SHINY METAL ASS coming with 26 new Futurama episodes on the way.

Read The Rest Scale: 1.5 out of 5. Really, I just told you the news.

All right, there's just no satisfying you people. More here.

[...] Comedy Central will begin showing the new installments beginning mid-2010. An interesting note in the press release states, "Twentieth Century Fox Television retains the option to license the original runs of the new episodes to a broadcast network," seemingly implying there is a chance a network (though come on, it would be FOX, right?) could potentially air the new episodes first, before Comedy Central.

Says co-creator Matt Groening, "We're thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000." Added his fellow Futurama creator, David X. Cohen, "We're excited and amazed that the show is coming back, perhaps due to some sort of mysterious time loop. We look forward to working with Comedy Central and 20th Television to make this the best iteration of the loop yet!"

And "on your DVD player" is a pretty good time slot.

Incidentally, did you know that, like almost all Hollywood productions, Return of The Jedi has never gone into profit?

I blame it on Ewok hair-trimming costs.

2009-06-10T16:02:00.001-04:00

LEARN TO WRITE GOOD. Like this.

Read The Rest Scale: 3.5 ooks out of 5.

I know I shouldn't link to what's obviously an ad/link scam of some sort, but I couldn't resist after running across it in a search; too funny.

2009-06-09T00:46:00.002-04:00

I AIM FOR THE STARS, but sometimes I hit the parking lot.

Via Sore Eyes.

View The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5. I am so keeping this in mind next time I say I want to see a rocket launch. (I'll still want to go; it'll just be more exciting!)

2009-06-08T23:00:00.002-04:00

LOSING YOUR SCARY LITTLE ROBOT SHOW. Josh Friedman, creater, developer, writer, and executive producer, of The Sarah Connor Chronicles writes about what it's like to get your show cancelled:

[...] Everyone says having your show cancelled is like a death but I've been dead before and at least when you're dead you don't get thrown off the Warner Bros. lot for haunting your old parking space. They probably mean it's like the death of a friend or a family member but that shit only hurts when it's YOUR friend or family member and even then it's mitigated by age, lifestyle and whether that person was a Hollywood friend or a real one and whether that family member left you money.

Losing your show is more like a surprise divorce where you get served papers in the morning and your (ex)wife is fucking Human Target by three in the afternoon using the same time slot your child was conceived in and also where she did that one thing that one time on your birthday.

People say the bright side to losing your show is gaining time to spend with your family but I'm pretty sure that waking up next to your ex-showrunner spouse whom you haven't seen for two and a half years is pretty close to waking up next to that special someone you met the night before at Carlos n' Charlie's in Cancun on Spring Break.

There's a bunch more. Because, y'know, now he has time to write on his blog.

I really liked Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles; it was good sf, with fine acting by Lena Headey and Summer Glau, and its main problem was that it had too many words in its title, and really that's not a very big problem. Sorry you were cancelled, Josh!

There were foreshadowings:

[...] I guess there were signs that the show was in trouble (other than the 1.3 rating and the four share). First there was the day I was in my office and looked up to see Chuck Lorre and a Warner Bros. facilities manager standing in my doorway pointing to various features and using their hands to take "air measurements." (Chuck tried to play it off like waving to me God Bless him, but I know an air measurement when I see it.)

Read The Rest Scale: 4 out of 5 or killer robots will come kill us all.

I'm pretty worried about that now.

2009-06-07T14:48:00.016-04:00

THE NEWFOUND FAME OF ED WHELAN. Who, you ask?

He's a little-known law professor who has been blogging at National Review Online for some time, with almost no one noticing.

Now he's changed that.

He's also:

M. Edward Whelan III is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He directs EPPC’s program on The Constitution, the Courts, and the Culture. His areas of expertise include constitutional law and the judicial confirmation process.

[...]

Mr. Whelan, a lawyer and a former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, has served in positions of responsibility in all three branches of the federal government. From just before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, until joining EPPC in 2004, Mr. Whelan was the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice. In that capacity, he advised the White House Counsel’s Office, the Attorney General and other senior DOJ officials, and Departments and agencies throughout the executive branch on difficult and sensitive legal questions. Mr. Whelan previously served on Capitol Hill as General Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. In addition to clerking for Justice Scalia, he was a law clerk to Judge J. Clifford Wallace of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

And he doesn't know much about the law, we learn from Eugene Volokh.

The previously almost unknown Ed Whelan has achieved fame with this post, outing "publius" at Obsidian Wings.

As I wrote in comments at this post:

Since you doubtless haven't figured this out, Mr. Whelan, outing a pseudonymous blogger for no better reason than that you don't like what the blogger is saying has long been established as the act of someone who has no better argument.

It's a revealingly pathetic act. It's the act of an angry child.

[...]

What I left unstated above is that the most moronically dense aspect of the-reply-by-outing is that it turns a post that would otherwise be paid little attention to by the blogosphere, and almost entirely forgotten within a few days, into a pointer to a post, the one that the outer is "defending," that becomes infamous to countless readers throughout the blogosphere, who wonder what on earth could have stung the outer into such desperate outrage, and said poster and poster become widely famous for their violation of blogospheric etiquette and blinding stupidity.

And, as always, so it has become.

Publius's post that set Whelan off. Whalan's response. Eugene Volokh's original demolishing of Ed Whalan, revealing him for the legal idiot that he is.

Some rightwing blog reaction: Rick Moran:

Someday, someone is going to make a million by writing a book on what so far is largely unwritten; the rules and etiquette of blogging.

When that happens, we won’t have internet ignorant philistines like Ed Whelan running around destroying the anonymity of bloggers who choose to remain unknown. Or maybe we will, if they prove as unable to control their anger as Mr. Whelan has demonstrated.

[...]

Responding point by point to Publius’s piquing of Whelan’s demonstrably thin skin, the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center couldn’t leave it at that. Instead, he decided to act rather unethically and dig unto Publius’s personal life in order to discover who this mosquito nibbling on his backside might be.

Sounding for all the world as if he had solved the mystery of Area 51, Whelan wrote triumphantly [...]

I am very happy Ed has enjoyed his Captain Queeg moment and solved the mystery of the missing strawberries. Such sleuthing no doubt builds up an appetite to which Whelan might consider eating the plate of slightly overdone crow that is sitting in front of him.

[...]

If not, Whalen’s fit of personal pique looks low, tawdry, childish, and vengeful.

Etc.

Ed Morrisey:

[...] Had someone else outed me instead, I would have been furious, and for good reasons.

[...]

Outing Publius didn’t do anything to advance Ed’s argument, but made him look vindictive and petty instead.

Ann Althouse:

[...] Even so, I think "you a lawprof" is a pretty lame argument, normally wielded by opponents who don't want to bother making substantive points. It's about on the level of proclaiming you're a moron.

Tom Maguire:

Ed Whelan of the National Review outed the once pseudonymous "Publius" of Obsidian Wings due to what looks like nothing more than pique. Not cool at all.

McQ at QAndO:

[...] There seem to be mixed feelings as to whether what Whelan did is “ethical” or not. In terms of ethics, we’re essentially talking about right and wrong. Is it right or wrong to reveal the name of an anonymous blogger?

And the answer?

Well, it depends. It depends on what action by the anonymous blogger might drive such a decision by another blogger. I’m sure if I thought long and hard enough I could come up with a few that I think would justify doing so. But one of them wouldn’t be because some blogger had been “biting at my ankles in recent months.”

I’m sorry but that comes with the territory of blogging.

Heat. Kitchen. Either grow a thick skin or quit blogging.

[...]

I find Whelan’s outing of Publius to be very bad form -unethical- especially for the reason given. If I had a nickel for every anonymous ankle biter I’ve endured for years, I’d be retired. The trick in dealing with them is not to do something as juvenile and “ethics challenged” as violating their privacy, but instead by making tight and considered arguments which leave them little room for rational criticism. At that point they usually do one of two things - go irrational and begin the inevitable descent into ad hominum attacks or go away.

What Whelan just did instead was create a martyr and become the bad guy. And his poor judgment in this case ends up hurting his own credibility while adding at least sympathetic weight to his antagonists arguments.

Too many people on the internet want anonymity for a variety of reasons. Certainly some abuse it. But the unspoken rule of netiquete is you don’t reveal another’s private information publicly over some silly disagreement - ever. Whelan did exactly that and for that act, deserves all the condemnation he’s now receiving.

James Joyner:

[...] Here, however, there is no public benefit achieved. Whelan is simply annoyed that Publius had been “biting at my ankles in recent months” and critiquing his blog posts.

Jeopardizing a man’s career and family relationships over something so petty is simply shameful.

Dan Riehl:

[...] That a writer at a site like NRO would stoop to outing an anonymous liberal blogger is, hopefully, far more a discredit to Whelan and NRO, than it is trouble for said blogger. Were it up to me, Whelan would be gone as an NRO blogger. I think it somewhat revealing when so called professionals start looking like the children out here, as opposed to the more traditional amateur bloggers.

And so on and so forth.

And now the previously almost unknown Ed Whelan has achieved fame.

People who do it brand themselves.

Read The Rest Scale: as interested. What's really amusing are the supporters of Whalan who show up in the ObWi comments to denounce the "cowardice" of anyone who would attack someone else anonymously (setting aside the complete confusion of "pseudonymousness" with "anonymousness") and post with a pseudonym.

Genius.

For another example of Whalan's brilliance, by the way, see Glenn Greenwald's 2008 post about Whelan. I am unshocked to learn that Whelan can't even successfully use a search engine.

Publius also has a follow-up.

ADDENDUM, 8:45 p.m.: Hilzoy spells out the obvious. The former Juan Non-Volokh comments.

ADDENDUM, June 8th, 4:11 p.m.: Simon Owens adds more background by interviewing both publius and Ed Whelan about Whelan's actions.

ADDENDUM, June 8th, 4:45 p.m.: Also, Whelan offers yet more justification here. Another blogger at "Bench Memos" chimes in, and manages to point out a major historical error of Whelan's, while also declaring that "a blogging law professor who argues irresponsibly about legal matters doesn't have much of a claim on our attention when he wants to stay pseudonymous."

So that's the new NRO rule. "Irresponsible," of course, means "you disagree with me."

Wendy Long here calls publius "dishonorable," without bothering to state why. Disagreeing with Whelan, I guess.

ADDENDUM, June 8th, 2009: This is currently a front page story, top of the site, at the NY Times website: The Outing of Publius.

!

ADDENDUM, June 8th, 2009, 9:42 p.m.: Wonkette: National Review Nut ‘Outs’ Famous Liberal Blogger.

It also seems to be the top hit at present for publius' other name.

Scott Eric Kaufman also has a smart take.

2009-06-03T23:11:00.003-04:00

FUN WITH CHARTS. Stolen from Connor Clarke at The Atlantic's website.

But I believe Jonah Goldberg!

Read The Rest Scale: eh. I like the chart. More socialism, faster, please.