Professor Postrel writes about the myth of physics envy in economics.
This Seems Like A Good Reason
The House committee report said Berger was never given a polygraph test despite having agreed to it as part of his plea bargain with the Justice Department in 2005.
This seems like a weird case where a House committee did a better job of investigating than the Justice Department. Of course, I suspect that the Justice Department still has a lot of Clinton apparatchiks in it, despite six years of a Republican White House. That doesn’t explain the Attorney General’s behavior, though.
Highlarious
Lileks is mercilessly mocking a haughty and pretentious French person.
Israel Without Apology
An oldie (from 2003–Edward Said has died since) but a goodie, but one I’d never noticed or linked to before; a long but fascinating read from a former Berkeley leftist, and why he turned his back on his once comrades, over Israel:
On my last day, I was able to drive across the entire Golan Heights, past the partly destroyed Israeli post at Kfar Nafakh and then on to the farthest point of the Israeli counterattack. I passed the charred wrecks of dozens of Syrian and Israeli tanks, and the smell of burning flesh still hung in the air. I only came to a stop at an Israeli military police roadblock at the western edge of the Golan Heights. There was a tourist observation deck nearby, outfitted with telescopes. Peering through one, I could see Damascus clearly on the horizon.
After the initial Syrian successes of the battle
Why, Yes
I am busy, getting some proposals done that are due at 6 AM tomorrow. Why do you ask?
A Tale Of Two Security Violations
Joel Mowbray talks about the apparent double standard at play, in the Justice Department and the media, about Sandy Berger:
The mainstream media’s palpable disinterest in the Berger case is hardly justified. Many questions remain unanswered. Of the few explanations Berger and his defenders have actually provided, none passes the laugh test.
Berger claimed in court last year that smuggling classified documents out of the National Archives was about “personal convenience,” but the inspector general report states that he walked out of the building and down the street, found a construction site, looked to see if the coast was clear, then slid behind a fence and hid the documents under a trailer.
Which part of that elaborate procedure was “convenient”?
According to the New York Times story last April following Berger’s guilty plea, “Associates attributed the episode to fatigue and poor judgment.” While lying to authorities is poor judgment, it is also illegal. And how exactly did fatigue drive Berger to use his scissors to shred three versions of the top-secret document?
I think we know how this would have been covered if it had been a former Republican National Security Advisor. One of many reasons to not allow the Democrats near the White House at war time.
Bad Economic News
For people looking for…you know…actual bad economic news. Oil prices are at their lowest level in a year and a half:
U.S. crude fell $1.63 to $54.46 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after tumbling more than $2 earlier in the session. Brent crude traded down $1.28 at $54.32.
Both international benchmarks were at their lowest since June 2005.
“$55 was very strong support that has been broken and below that is not much,” said Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix. “If we close below $55, the next big support level isn’t until $50.”
Weather forecaster DTN Meteorologist predicted above normal temperatures for the rest of the week in the U.S. Northeast, extending an extraordinary streak of mild winter weather in the world’s largest heating oil market.
U.S. heating oil demand will run about a third below normal this week, the National Weather Service said Monday.
The steep price drop has rung alarm bells in OPEC producers and the group’s president, the United Arab Emirates, is discussing further action with member states. But traders remained doubtful that OPEC could turn the tide.
I blame George Bush.
No, really. I mean, it’s caused by global warming, right? And isn’t that his fault?
Seriously, this does point out that GW, even if it’s occurring, is not an all-bad thing. We generally use fossil fuels for heat, whereas air conditioning is generated by electricity, which can be produced with nuclear and other means. It’s a complicated world we live in.
No Al Qaeda In Somalia?
In response to Karl Hallowell’s question in this post, what does he think this means?
Ethiopia’s prime minister said on Tuesday that many international terrorists had been killed, injured or captured in the fighting in Somalia.
Meles Zenawi was quoted by the French newspaper Le Monde as saying that suspected terrorists from Britain were among them.
“Many international terrorists are dead in Somalia,” Meles was quoted as saying.
“Photographs have been taken and passports from different countries have been collected. The Kenyans are holding Eritrean and Canadian passport holders. We have injured people coming from Yemen, Pakistan, Sudan, the United Kingdom.”
Let’s keep it coming.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s an analysis of the situation, with a description of the role of US Special Forces. Those are the kind of boots on the ground we need, with a lot more boots on the ground from regional allies. This was the key to overthrowing the Taliban as well. Unfortunately, it’s not clear who our regional allies in overthrowing the mullahs would be.
March Storm
Clark Lindsey has the current preliminary agenda:
- Near Earth Objects (Asteroids and Comets)
- Prizes for Space Achievements
- ITAR Reform
- NASA/Commercial Services
Fine as far as it goes, but I think there’s an item missing there. We need to send a message to incoming chairman Oberstar to keep his hands off our suborbital launch regs.
The Problems With Kagan-Keane
Joe Katzman has some useful thoughts on “the surge.” He’s skeptical, as am I, for many of the reasons he states.
He makes an interesting point that I hadn’t previously considered:
Iran is arming and supporting both Sunni and Shi’ite groups, using a script I explained long ago in “Iran’s Great Game.” What does your strategy presume to do about this? The Saudis have also been sending people over to help the Sunnis for some time now, and run martyr’s profiles in the Saudi press – and now they are publicly threatening to step up their support of Iraq’s Sunnis. How does the proposed strategy plan to deal with this ongoing activity, as well as the threat of more open involvement?
So what we really have going on (among other things) is a war by proxie between SA and Iran. From our standpoint, it’s similar to the situation that we faced in the eighties, when the war between Arab and Persian was more direct, and we aided Iraq not because we wanted it to win, but because we wanted both sides to lose. That’s the case here as well.
But it also points out that Israel is in an interesting situation, in which alliances are shifting in the sands of the Middle East, with clandestine meetings between Jerusalem, and Riyadh, Amman and Cairo, to figure out how to deal with the Shia menace in Iran. I suspect that Omert’s government has been given a wink a nod by those governments against what is now recognized to be a common enemy in Tehran. And of course, it also shows that the war we’re in is really a larger Middle East cold war that they managed to export to our shores five years ago.
Oh, also over at Winds of Change–are we being probed for an attack?
[Update about 10:30 AM EST]
Here’s another interesting thought on probes and “false alarms.”