June 23, 2004

I'LL BE OFF SUPPORTING SOCIALISM by delivering a Bar Review lecture. Blogging will be limited today and tomorrow. In the meantime, The Volokh Conspiracy is richly supplied with eminent guest bloggers, so drop by and check them out. And you might want to read Tom Maguire's reflections on complaints that the problem with homeland security is not enough high-profile press conferences.

CBS BLOG SCOOP confirmed.

A LOT OF PEOPLE, including me, have criticized the GOP for being behind the curve on the Internet. But now Paul Boutin says they're catching up.

ANDREW BOLT WRITES THAT WE'RE BEHEADING OURSELVES, and the media are the knife:

Not only did Saddam house and help terrorists, including Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Palestinian suicide bombers and a bomb-maker of the 1993 World Trade Centre attack, but his scientists worked on chemical and biological weapons up until the war, as the Iraq Survey Group now confirms. The day would surely come when Saddam's weapons and the terrorists who wanted them finally met.

This is what Bush, Britain's Tony Blair and our John Howard warned of. But now this history is being shamelessly rewritten in the media.

This week's 9/11 commission reports also said Saddam approached al-Qaida at least three times when it was based in Sudan, and again, it seems, when it was in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden asked for training camps and weapons, but, the reports claim, "Iraq apparently never responded", and the talks "do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship", although at least one Iraqi terrorist group did join his "broader Islamic army".

The reports for some reason don't discuss other reported links between Iraq and al-Qaida, but cautiously conclude: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida co-operated on attacks against the United States."

So there were links between Saddam and al-Qaida, not to mention other terrorists, but no proof (yet) of active collaboration or co-operation in the September 11 attacks.

This is almost word for word what Bush has long said.

"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September 11th," he repeated on CNN last year. But there was evidence "that he has been involved with al-Qaida".

Yet ABC TV news said this week's reports prove al-Qaida "had no links with Saddam Hussein, as suggested by the White House", and ABC's The World Today added: "One of the Bush administration's central arguments for going to war with Iraq appears to be in tatters." As if Bush had blamed Iraq for the September 11 attacks. The liar.

More of this and al-Nashami can take it easy. We'll have cut our own throats already.

Ouch.

REMEMBER WHEN MOQTADA AL-SADR was going to lead a popular uprising across Iraq? (That was April's we're-losing story). Well, he didn't, and here's the story of how we won. I wonder how much attention it'll get.

PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK me how my wife feels about my blogging, and whether it interferes with family life. I always respond that she has plenty of outside pursuits of her own, and that we accommodate each other that way. As you can see from this picture of our den, she's pursuing one of her projects now.

I've accommodated it mostly by staying out of the way. . . .

MICKEY KAUS talks about yesterday's radio show (and provides a link):

Everyone was civil, unfortunately. . . .

I was surprised Instapundit agreed with Wright's argument that the blog world has become more balkanized and "cocooned," with people reading blogs with which they already agree and bloggers persuading the persuaded. ... I've always been partial to the argument that blogs are less balkanized (than, say, talk radio and cable news) because bloggers argue with each other and hence read each other and occasionally even change their minds.

Both are true, I think. The blogosphere has become more divided, with less cross-talk than there used to be. The tipping point seems to me to have been the 2002 elections. That's when the level of cross-blog name-calling went up, and I know I'm much less likely to read blogs that call me names. I suspect others are, too. Nonethless, I think there's still a lot more diversity and conversation than there is in talk radio and cable news.

I've got some more thoughts over at GlennReynolds.com. And Mickey makes a good host -- somebody should give him his own show!

THIS sounds promising:

A cancer treatment that uses a combination of gold nanoshells and near-infrared light to burn tumors while sparing healthy tissue has proven effective in mice.

The approach, being developed by researcher Jennifer West and colleagues at Rice University in Houston, Texas, could be a minimally invasive treatment for tumors in humans.

Let's hope it pans out.

UPDATE: Some skepticism, here.

PLENTY OF READER REVIEWS for Clinton's book over at Amazon now. You could write a dissertation in sociology or political science from these. And somebody probably will. . . .

DEATH BE NOT PROUD: My TechCentralStation column, an interview with Cambridge University biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey on aging research, is up.

JUSTIN KATZ looks at political meanness.

I'VE BEEN READING The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America by Adrian Woolridge and John Micklethwait, two Economist correspondents who cover American politics. I'm somewhat skeptical of their thesis, which is that America is moving almost inexorably rightward. There's lots of interesting stuff, though, and I suspect that they're right that Democrats are desperately afraid that this Presidential election might be their last chance to avoid a long term Republican ascendance. Anyhow, it's pretty interesting, and if you like the "Lexington" column in The Economist you'll probably like this.

ED CONE is declaring a pop-up jihad.

June 22, 2004

STANDING UP for free speech.

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS has published another installment in its series on Catholic Church priestly abuse.

INTERESTING 1999 CNN ARTICLE on Saddam and Osama:

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.

Then there's this 1999 article from The Guardian:

The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam's most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq. . . .

Analysts believe that Mr Hijazi offered Mr bin Laden asylum in Iraq, most likely in return for co-operation in launching attacks on US and Saudi targets. Iraqi agents are believed to have made a similar offer to the Saudi maverick leader in the early 1990s when he was based in Sudan.

No doubt this was a preemptive fiction on the part of the not-yet-nominated Bush Administration.

A FASCINATING IRAQ NEWS ROUNDUP from Arthur Chrenkoff.

CNN'S SOURCE is changing his/her story on Rumsfeld and interrogation notes Ed Morrissey. Think this will get as much play as the original accusation?

UPDATE: Hmm. Some people will start talking about rope-a-dope again.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Powerline has more thoughts, and says that the Associated Press is spinning out of control.

CATHY SEIPP will be on Dennis Miller's show tonight. CNBC.

ANOTHER DARFUR REPORT:

Arab militias, supported by the Sudanese government, are crossing into Chad to attack local villagers and refugees from the Darfur conflict.

Aid workers have said 158,000 refugees from Darfur in western Sudan have fled to neighbouring Chad to escape fighting, which broke out in February 2003. . . .

"Human Rights Watch documented at least seven cross-border incursions into Chad conducted by the Janjaweed militias since early June.

"The Janjaweed attack villages in Chad and refugees from Darfur, and also steal cattle," the New York-based organisation said in its statement. . . .

Human Rights Watch said the Khartoum government must take responsibility for the raids.

"The Janjaweed is the government's militia, and Khartoum has armed and empowered it to conduct ethnic cleansing' in Darfur," the statement quoted Jemera Rone, the group's Sudan researcher, as saying.

Stay tuned.

DANIEL DREZNER IS DISSING LOU DOBBS.

HEH. Guess who got the first signed copy of Bill Clinton's new book? Greg Packer!

JUST DID A SEGMENT on Mickey Kaus's radio show. It'll air at 5:30 this afternoon (Eastern time) and you can stream it from here. (Link in upper left).

Also on were Robert Wright, and Joe Trippi -- who has a new book on the Internet and politics coming out.

PERRY DEHAVILLAND: "It seems astonishing that the state still gets involve with the content of TV programming in the USA. I expect this sort of crap in Britain and Europe, but in the USA?"

Sadly, yes.

NONPARTISAN WATCHDOGS.

IF YOU'RE A STUDENT INTERESTED IN NANOTECHNOLOGY, you might want to read this announcement from the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.

IN THE NEW REPUBLIC, Andrew Sullivan is Fisking Dan Rather's interview of Bill Clinton, and Will Baude is taking on the Supreme Court's Hiibel decision.

INTERESTING NEWS from Gaza and the West Bank.

THEY MAY BE STANDING IN LONG LINES for Bill Clinton's book in New York, but when I visited my local mall just a few minutes after it opened this morning, the customers didn't seem to be lining up for their copies.

Interestingly, there are still no reader reviews on the book's Amazon page, though it does report that the book's number one. Maybe all the Knoxvillians bought their copies that way. . . .

UPDATE: You'll have to click on the image on the right to see the big version, but a sharp-eyed reader notes that in the middle of the Clinton books is a copy of this book on presidential leadership from the Wall Street Journal folks. I swear I didn't put it there. [Note: I changed the time on this post by a few minutes to put it back on top, so proud was I of the first-hand reporting and photojournalism involved. . . ]

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader points out that the New York lines are at a store where Clinton is personally autographing books. Good point. And maybe there's more to Clinton's book than some are saying -- Andrew Sullivan notes a startling admission.

MORE: Well, there's one reader review now. I expect it's the first of a deluge. I was a bit surprised there weren't some earlier as there are often reviews up before a book's official release. I guess this one was held pretty close, though.

STILL MORE: Did Clinton hire a crowd? Some people are offering this link as proof, but I suspect the explanation is more innocuous. Still, if not it might be a scoop for someone. . .

By the way, here's a link to the BBC Clinton interview. The hot stuff begins about 28 minutes in. And there's some very interesting trimming on Iraq and Saddam about 38 minutes in. Rwanda trimming begins at about 51 minutes.

INTERESTING REPORT:

The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has received new information indicating that a senior officer in an elite unit of the security services of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been a member of al-Qaida involved in the planning of the suicide hijackings, panel members said Sunday.

John F. Lehman, a Reagan-era GOP defense official told NBC's "Meet the Press" that documents captured in Iraq "indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida."

Funny, I wonder why this hasn't gotten more attention. (More here.)

UPDATE: This story says that it may be a case of confusing two similar names.

IS IT A MEDIA INDUSTRY ENRON?

NEW YORK Troubled by last week's circulation scandals at Hollinger International's Chicago Sun-Times and the Tribune Co.'s Newsday and Hoy, Merrill Lynch's Lauren Rich Fine released a report today calling into question the reliability of circulation figures for the entire industry. "Our biggest fear," the report said, "is that these two announcements may not be isolated incidents." . . .

The report also takes to task the Audit Bureau of Circulations, saying that the overstatement of circ figures seems to "suggest that there may be loopholes in the ABC audit system" and "at the very minimum, it suggests that ABC's audits need to be completed much sooner." Many newspapers use the ABC publisher's statements to sell advertising because there is a lag in the ABC audited reports.

Hmm. Overstated sales? Shaky financial disclosures? Unreliable audits? Bilked customers? Why isn't this frontpage news? Because the front page is the news?

You just can't trust those corporate types! Sadly, these kinds of problems aren't limited to print media. As I've noted before, transparency in readership numbers is another thing that bloggers -- at least those of us with open sitemeter counters -- have over Big Media. (And read this, too).

UPDATE: Steve Antler: "When it comes to circulation figures the blogosphere is the very embodiment of transparency."

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. Antler has a letter from a guy (who says he sent the same email to me, but I don't seem to have it) distinguishing between counters like Sitemeter and third-party audits. Well, sitemeter is a third-party item, and while I suppose it could be fooled it's more reliable than a self-report, and anyone who cares to browse the information it offers can learn a lot. As for the reliability of audits, that depends on how much you trust the auditors.

Meanwhile, another reader sent me an email that's long enough I'm going to put it in the "extended entry" area. Click "more" to read it. I have no idea whether his assessment of the advertising industry is true, but perhaps this will spur those in a position to investigate to look further and see what they can find out.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Click more for an additional email from David Barlin, in favor of audited blog circulation numbers.

MORE...

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS seems to dislike Michael Moore.

UPDATE: Roger Simon has comments.

LEGAL AFFAIRS presents an interesting debate between Richard Posner and Vicki Jackson on the extent to which the Supreme Court should pay attention to foreign law in interpreting the U.S. Constitution.

SILVIO BERLUSCONI FOR PRESIDENT! (Of the E.U.)

THE POST EDITORIALIZES:

If judges and lawyers wonder about why they are held in such low esteem by so many Americans, they might consider the loose lips of Federal Appeals Court Judge Guido Calabresi. . . .

The New York Sun reports that at last weekend's annual convention of the American Constitution Society in Washington, Judge Calabrese compared Bush's election to the rise of totalitarian despots Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. . . .

But common sense — and judicial fairness — demand that, given his blatant and public political bias, Judge Calabrese recuse himself from any and all cases involving the Bush administration, including any case on which the administration has taken a public position.

Clearly, he is in no position to evaluate such cases fairly.

(Via Howard Bashman). As I said on Hugh Hewitt's show last night, I'm genuinely shocked by Calabresi's comments, which by now I guess must have been reported accurately -- at least, there's no evidence otherwise, and you'd think he'd have said so if he were misquoted. I'm shocked that he'd think something as absurd, ahistorical, and illogical, and I'm even more shocked that when he did think such a thing, he had the poor judgment to proclaim it in a public speech.

Calabresi was always, in my experience, diplomatic; it's sad to think that he might be less concerned with public propriety as a judge than he was as a law school dean. These comments have, as this editorial indicates, damaged his reputation, and that of the federal judiciary.

THE INSTADAUGHTER AND I finished watching the latest Simpsons DVD collection yesterday. My favorite episode is Marge vs. the Monorail, which features this memorable Homer line: "Doughnuts! Is there anything they can't do?"

What's more, Marge's steadfast belief that the city would be better off funding road repairs than mass transit turns out to be environmentally sound:

Encouraging travellers to switch from cars and airlines to inter-city trains brings no benefits for the environment, new research has concluded.

Challenging assumptions about railways' green superiority, the study finds that the weight and fuel requirements of trains have increased to the point where rail could become the least energy-efficient form of transport. . . .

Assuming the continuing dominance of fossil fuel-based electricity, the study indicates that suitable French-style rolling-stock would require twice as much fuel per seat as a Volkswagen Passat, and more than a short-haul aircraft.

Monorails, however, are not specifically mentioned. Still, Marge seems to have been on to something. Or, in other words: "Save the planet. Jump into your car."

Maybe I should print up a bumper sticker with that slogan, and put it on my Passat!

KERRY'S NANTUCKET VACATION IS TAKING SHOTS FROM THE LEFT, as The Progressive writes:

Why was Kerry vacationing on Nantucket, of all places?

To go to this island retreat of the rich sent all the wrong messages to undecided voters, and it discourages his hard core.

Like his ski trip to Colorado after the primaries, the junket to Nantucket, where Kerry owns a home, reinforces the image of Kerry as a member of the upper class.

Well, he is a member of the upper class, of course. But it's probably poor campaigning to stress the point.

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES IS BUSTED FOR FALSE REPORTS of what the 9/11 Commission said. "Does the L.A. Times think we don't know how to find and read a transcript?"

UPDATE: Greg Djerejian has problems with the Washington Post, too.

STILL MORE on the Catholic Church's effort to cover up abuse by priests, from the Dallas Morning News.

RAJAN RISHYAKARAN has a link-rich Darfur news roundup.

June 21, 2004

JEFF JARVIS ON THE 9/11 COMMISSION:

Turns out that the Commission members "do not get involved in staff reports," Kerrey said yesterday. So this report did not come from the "Commission." It is shocking that the commission would allow this to happen. It is another indication of the Commission's incompetence and the politicization of 9/11 it has allowed and fostered.

Safire gives five suggestions for how the Commission can regain its nonpartisan credibility.

Horse. Barn. Gone.

The Commission should be tripping over itself to try to set the record straight but I have no hope of that.

Ouch.

MELISSA SCHWARTZ LIKES the new Metallica documentary.

EUGENE VOLOKH calls Slate's "Kerryisms" column "increasingly surreal."

Maybe they're just trying to make the "Bushisms" feature look fair by comparison. . . .

STILL MORE ON DARFUR, from Greg Djerejian.

"Don't worry -- we've got plenty of lawyers working on it now!"

Call me crazy, but sending some special forces trainers and a bunch of guns to stiffen the resistance would seem more likely to do some good.

UPDATE: A somewhat more positive take on the situation, here.

I'LL BE ON THE HUGH HEWITT SHOW in a few minutes, talking about Judge Guido Calabresi. Go here to listen online.

TACITUS OFFERS INSTRUCTION on White House PR activities.

DARFUR UPDATE: Here's a roundup of newspaper editorials from the Center for American Progress. Meanwhile here's another troubling news report:

Over one million non-Arabs have been displaced within Darfur, predominantly by attacks conducted by Arab Janjawid militias, who are reportedly allied to the government. The government denies involvement in the attacks. Up to 200,000 people are estimated to have fled to neighbouring Chad, while estimates of numbers killed vary from between 15,000 and 30,000.

The US Agency for International Development recently warned that a further 350,000 might die over the coming months from a combination of hunger and disease.

On Sunday, the head of the African Union (AU), Alpha Oumar Konare, flew into Darfur on a two-day assessment of the situation. Sudanese television reported that President Umar Hassan al-Bashir met Konare in Khartoum to discuss the situation. Bashir had earlier ordered security forces to disarm all groups, including the Arab militia blamed for perpetrating atrocities in Darfur, known as the Janjawid.

Progress is slow, if it exists at all. Bashir's government is behind the massacres, and any cooperation we get from it will be forced, and will last only as long as the pressure is on.

THE U.N. AND ANTI-SEMITISM: Some pointed comments from Anne Bayefsky.

ONE REASON WHY I WOULD RATHER BE AN ACADEMIC than a federal judge is that academics can say whatever we think, and can make outrageous-but-clever points without worry, even if our logic goes astray. Judges can't do that without risking their own reputations, and harming that of the federal judiciary.

This is something that my former law professor, now judge, Guido Calabresi, should have thought about more deeply before making remarks comparing Bush to Mussolini. From an academic, these remarks would have been unimpressive but unimportant. From a Senator, they would have been unfortunately overwrought and divisive.

From a federal appeals judge, Guido's remarks (assuming they have been correctly reported) are not only tendentious and inflammatory, but will serve to further encourage those who call the federal courts politicized and overweeningly liberal. He's a smart and thoughtful guy, but he should have been smarter and more thoughtful here.

(Via Andrew Sullivan).

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh delivers a much more vigorous spanking here.

It's deserved, I'm afraid.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here, in response to Calabresi's call for Bush to be voted out of office:

It is hard to take Calabresi's structural argument seriously; the argument is a political one. . . .

In the past, I have advocated according judges broad free speech rights. I retain this position. In general, I think more harm comes from muzzling judges than from letting them freely speak, even on topics that intersect with politics. What constitutional issue does not have a political dimension, after all.

But Judge Calabresi's remarks go too far. His speech constitutes an unambiguous violation of the Code of Conduct. He has improperly publicly declared opposition to a specific political candidate (and thereby implicitly endorsed another). Such brazen politicking from members of the federal bench cannot be tolerated.

Read the whole thing. In a later post, Eugene Volokh observes:

It's possible (though far from certain) that, given the Supreme Court's decision in Republican Party v. White (2002), that Judge Calabresi can claim his speech is protected by the First Amendment, notwithstanding Canon 7. Nonetheless, even if Canon 7 can't be legally binding for that reason, it is (as I understand it) a pretty authoritative ethical judgment about how judges should behave, and thus an important ethical constraint. It seems that the comments at the American Constitution Society meeting transgressed that constraint.

It is my fond hope that a transcript will demonstrate that Calabresi was misquoted.

MORE: Jonah Goldberg observes:

Calabresi's argument for ousting Bush seems like a silly and partisan rationalization for his desire to oust Bush. And, I should say, that demanding a popular uprising to "cleanse" the decadent democratic system in order to sweep your side into power is itself an argument a great many fascists would find very familiar.

Indeed.

STILL MORE: Howard Bashman has a related report.

PROF. BAINBRIDGE has taken a long and close look at Air America's financial troubles. He thinks that we may see actions for fraud.

BILL HOBBS has annotated Maureen Dowd's latest column with hyperlinks. The result is quite interesting.

Meanwhile Ann Althouse wonders what's happened to Dan Rather: "Did Barbara Walters tutor him on how to do celebrity interviews? At my house, we were laughing quite a lot at Rather. He was speaking in an extra-slow, extra-sensitive way that might have been appropriate for addressing a child."

Maybe he was trying to maximize his Amazon referral fees. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

THE SPACESHIP ONE LAUNCH WAS A SUCCESS:

A rocket plane soared above Earth's atmosphere Monday in the first privately financed manned spaceflight, then glided back to Earth for an unpowered landing.

SpaceShipOne pilot Mike Melvill was aiming to fly 62 miles above the Earth's surface. The exact altitude reached was not immediately confirmed by radar.

The ship touched down at Mojave Airport to applause and cheers at 8:15 a.m. PDT, about 90 minutes after it was carried aloft slung under the belly of the jet-powered White Knight. . . .

Burt Rutan, and the project was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who would only describe the cost as being in excess of $20 million.

"Clearly, there is an enormous, pent-up hunger to fly in space and not just dream about it," Rutan said Sunday. "Now I know what it was like to be involved in America's amazing race to the moon in the '60s." . . .

NASA also is interested, said Michael Lembeck, requirements division director of the space agency's Office of Exploration Systems.

"We need people like Burt Rutan with innovative ideas that will take us to the moon and Mars," he said from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters. "Folks like Burt bring a different way of doing business."

Rand Simberg was at the launch and has numerous posts about it.

Woohoo! Phil Bowermaster has numerous posts, too. And apparently they did pass the 100km/62mi mark that's often used as the demarcation point between the atmosphere and outer space.

And Space.com reporter Leonard David has filed his report from the scene.

MORE: Dale Amon has another firsthand report.

I WONDER IF CLIPS OF THIS INTERVIEW will make it to America:

Bill Clinton loses his temper with David Dimbleby during a BBC television interview to be broadcast this week when he is repeatedly quizzed about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

The former American president, famed for his amiable disposition, becomes visibly angry and rattled, particularly when Dimbleby asks him whether his publicly declared contrition over the affair is genuine.

I suspect that they will.

EXTREME ECONOBLOGGING! This week's Carnival of the Capitalists is up.

SYRIAN JAILED FOR INTERNET USAGE:

Abdel Rahman al-Shaghouri, 32, received a two-and-a-half year sentence for "publishing false news that saps the morale of the nation".

He had been arrested in February 2003, and his computer equipment seized.

Four other Syrians are facing similar charges in cases which their lawyer, Anwar al-Bunni, said were "aimed at keeping Syria backwards".

Indeed.

PRIVATIZING FOREIGN POLICY: Well, the State Department could certainly use the help.

FEATURE BLOAT: A microwave oven with a built-in voice recorder?

GUERRILLA MEDIA AND THE FUTURE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT: Over at GlennReynolds.com.

JAMES LILEKS: "I ask my Democrat friends what they’d rather see happen – Bush reelected and bin Laden caught, or Bush defeated and bin Laden still in the wind. They’re all honest: they’d rather see Bush defeated."

June 20, 2004

RAND SIMBERG COMMENTS on a new Bush Administration education initiative. It's certainly addressing a serious and undeniable problem.

UPDATE: More evidence of pressing need here.

KERRY: KOREAN CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION contretemps.

NEW YORK TIMES: Bush didn't lie!

UPDATE: Tom Maguire: "Is this a rowback, or just a complete collapse into schizophrenia?"

HERE'S MORE ON TOMORROW'S scheduled private manned spaceship launch by Burt Rutan.

DAVID BROCK'S MEDIA MATTERS SITE is accusing CBS of hypocrisy.

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF posts a Euro-news roundup.

ANN ALTHOUSE thinks Ray Bradbury should be mad at Michael Moore, and has some thoughts on a non-Moore documentary about serial killer Aileen Wuornos and another about the band Metallica.

AUBREY DE GREY WRITES: "The biogerontologist David Sinclair and the bioethicist Leon Kass recently locked horns in a radio debate on human life extension that was remarkable for one thing: on the key issue, Kass was right and Sinclair wrong."

De Grey's comments are part of a review of this book from Brookings, Coping With Methuselah: The Impact of Molecular Biology on Medicine and Society, which looks quite interesting; enough so that I've ordered a copy.

And yes, as a review of my recent stuff indicates, I'm getting more interested in this topic. It's my sense that the science -- and the regulatory impulse -- are both approaching the take-off point in this area.

A RATHER IMPRESSIVE multimedia presentation by the Dallas Morning News on the Catholic Church's priest abuse scandal and its emerging international dimensions. It's on their front page, too.

HUGH HEWITT is busting Peter Beinart: "I suspect that Peter was handed a quote by a research assistant."

MANY BLOGGERS ARE NAMED in this story about blogging the political conventions. I agree with Bob Somerby, myself, but I'm glad that others feel differently.

BLACKFIVE has more on the Sudan horrors.

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