The Superiority of Conventional Weapons to WMD
Eugene Volokh quotes e-mail from reader Stephen Marsh:

Saddam would have been much better served if he had spent the money buying portable disposable anti-tank missile launchers (of the same category as the LAW missile) and just provided them to the PLO. Suicide bombers with LAWs would have an impact far beyond anything currently seen.

For an interesting take on this point see A Weapon For All Seasons: The Old But Effective RPG-7 Promises to Haunt the Battlefields of Tomorrow. Fascinating stuff.

Exploiting online raunch at the polls - by Declan McCullagh

Granholm's efforts are also constitutionally suspect. In April, the Supreme Court ruled that only porn produced with real children could be censored. "Morphed" or fantasy porn produced using adult actors or bit-twiddled using computers was offensive but legal, the court ruled

Good article Declan but be careful about this language.

The Supremes didn't rule that morphed or animated kiddie porn was legal. They said that the added controls and penalties of the Child Pornography Prevention Act couldn't be applied to it. If found obscene under the Miller Test, morphed or animated kiddie porn would still be illegal.

RTF Webmaster Pleads Guilty

RTF Webmaster to be Convicted on Monday, Sept 23rd

Raisethefist.com, Sherman Austin will be convicted on Monday, Sept 23rd as he pleads guilty to felony count: 18 U.S.C. 842 (p)(2)(A): DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION RELATING TO EXPLOSIVES, DESTRUCTIVE DEVICES, AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WITH THE INTENT THAT SUCH INFORMATION BE USED IN FURTHERANCE OF A FEDERAL CRIME OF VIOLENCE.

The plea bargain gives Austin a felony conviction with 1 month in jail, 5 months in a half-way home and 3 years supervised release. Austin does not start his sentencing on Monday, but will find out the exact date at his court appearance.

The arraignment is at the downtown federal building in Los Angeles on 255 east temple on the 3rd floor at 8:30am

Another one of those unfortunate chicken defendants we seem to get. He would have got a max of 4-5 at trial. So now he has a felony conviction anyway plus endless parole supervision which gives the Feds way too much control over you. And he gives up a chance to challenge the "Publish Bomb Plans" go to jail law.

If you go to trial and lose and do your time you are then free of supervision. Plus you never admitted any crime. A plea is an admission. When you are in custody, your cooperation is the only thing you can deny your captors.

See some of the actual links:
http://www.raisethefist.com/news.cgi?artical=wire/----9846413t4a.article
and
http://www.raisethefist.com/news.cgi?artical=wire/----9845643t4a.article

Being bombed can be fun.

Overlooked in discussions of the terror bombing of civilian populations by wartime combatants is the fact that being in a city undergoing such an attack can be a very enjoyable experience.

My friend Byrt was around 20 the first time he was bombed. A native of Berlin, Byrt was a skinny kid. His slenderness would later allow him to slip between the slats of the rail car that was taking him and his mother somewhere as guests of the German government [religious differences]. He was never to see his mother again.

He was first bombed on the evening of August 25th 1940. Byrt heard the noise as the city's defenses began to fire and ran up to the roof of the building where he was staying. He sat there and watched the first of many British night bombings of Berlin.

In later years, Byrt said that being bombed was great because it provided him with evidence that someone, somewhere was fighting his government and perhaps he had some small chance of survival.

In the end Byrt did survive and is, today, enjoying his retirement in the Northeastern US.

True Hallowed Ground

George Will on Chancellorsville and the WTC.

...But regarding commemorations, Americans today seem inclined to build where they ought not, and to not build where they should, as at the site of the World Trade Center.

In New York City, many people who are anti-growth commerce-despisers want to exploit Ground Zero for grinding their old ideological axes. They favor making all or most of the 16-acre parcel a cemetery without remains, a place of perpetual mourning -- what Richard Brookhiser disapprovingly calls a "deathopolis" in the midst of urban striving.

But most who died at Ground Zero were going about their private pursuits of happiness, murdered by people who detest that American striving. The murderers crashed planes into the twin towers, Brookhiser says, "in the same spirit in which a brat kicks a beehive. They will be stung, and the bees will repair the hive."

Let the site have new towers, teeming with renewed striving.