Neolibertarianism, Take 1 - Kevin Maroney e-mails to nominate Greg Costikyan as an early example:

Greg Costikyan has openly been a libertarian imperialist for years. No, really; he's been a contributing editor of Reason, but dig up a copy of the afterword to Pax Britannica some time.

Alas, the afterword doesn't appear to be online, nor does Costikyan link to much of his political writing from his own site (presumably because he doesn't want to tick off any potential clients - smart man).

Franklin Harris e-mails

"Neolibertarian" is probably the right term for these semi-libertarian interventionists. (I can think of other terms, but I'll try to be nice this morning.) The first time I saw anyone use the term "neolibertarian" was 10 years ago, when Eric Rittberg, founder of the Republican Liberty Caucus, used it to differentiate the RLC from the LP and other libertarians. And, true enough, one of the specific policies that distinguished the RLC from other libertarians at the time was military interventionism, with the RLC was less inclined to oppose.

Indeed the one RLCer Unqualified Offerings knows, Brian Kelly of Liberty Blog, is as supportive of an Iraq conquest as anyone UO has run across.

Tom Burroughes of Samizdata wonders

Funnily enough, just to add another twist, I have often wondered how to label those libertarians who are anarcho-capitalists, who at the same time would support tough military strikes against enemies. Should they be "neo-anarchists"?

I have seen how the "neo" word has been used in various fields. In recent years those people who - like me - were broadly supportive of Ayn Rand's philosophy but questioned certain details prefer to be known as "neo-objectivists". I also do this to distance myself from the "official" Objectivist movement, which seems to be populated by the barking insane.

Samizdata's own "bellicose wing," which is just about everyone but Antoine Clarke seem to have comfortably adopted Airstrip One's "anarcho-militarist" jibe as a badge of honor (like Queer Nation adopted "queer"), and that seems better suited to the Samizdata crew specifically than "neolibertarian."

Some e-mails hinted that Unqualified Offerings might be imagining that it had invented the term, which is not true. Others suggested the UO thought the term was of more recent vintage and rarer than it actually is. That is true.

And Speaking of Conspiracy Theories the same article referenced in the prior post (from Eat the State) recounts a useful bit of debunking from...blogosphere bete noire Noam Chomsky!

The legend is that if only JFK had lived through a second term in office, he have would pulled US troops out of Vietnam and led a campaign for global disarmament. Never mind that JFK was responsible for escalating the low level US intervention on behalf of the regime in Saigon into a full blown US invasion of South Vietnam. There isn't any evidence up until the day he died that he was going to change course regarding US policy in Vietnam.

In his anti-conspiracy theory book "Rethinking Camelot," Noam Chomsky reviews every word that came out of JFK's mouth in his last days. There wasn't the slightest indication he was going to de-escalate the US invasion of South Vietnam. If the tin-foil hats were interested in how conservative elites really think, they would consistently read the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and find that JFK ranks just behind Reagan as the editorial board's favorite post-World War II president.

It takes all kinds, Loyal Reader.

Digressing on the topic of JFK a minute, if you ever get the chance, visit the excellent Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, which occupies part of the famous former Texas Schoolbook Depository. Among other things, you can stand one window over from the famous corner window. When Unqualified Offerings did this, one thing became crushingly clear: it wasn't even that hard a shot. The exit ramp onto Elm slopes down and away from the corner, holding the target on line for you. Add a 3X scope and it would be almost like stealing.

Travel Tips - Eric Olsen writes, I Think I'll Take the Bus.

What does it all mean? If nothing else, it means that traveling is a very dangerous business. Contrary to statistics, traveling by air is the most dangerous way to go, in the long run. Though it is much more likely that you will get in a car wreck than a plane wreck, it is also much more likely that you will survive a car wreck than a plane wreck, and more likely still that you will survive a bus wreck.

Paul Wellstone comes up.

Speaking of Wellstone leads one to baseless conspiracy theories. Which leads one to, Why not a conspiracy theory that the Democrats bumped him off? Repubs didn't need to - he was already facing very uncertain election prospects. But given the sympathy vote Jean Carnahan got after her husband died in 2000, and how that plus Jeffords' defection gave the Dems the Senate by the narrowest of margins, isn't it obvious that the Dem poobahs hoped for a similar bounce off the corpse of Professor Paul?

No it isn't, of course. In fact, it's astronomically unlikely to be true, same as the "Republicans killed him" theories. Conspiracy theories almost always tell us a lot more about the theorizers than the world.

Ecoutez-Vous - Unqualified Offerings literally does not know why it is telling you this, but it has discovered that the francophone rock station from the University of Moncton that it so enjoyed last March during its New Brunswick trip has added an internet feed. You can get the streaming audio of CKUM-FM from its (french-only) homepage.

Why does UO not know why it is telling you this? Because the station seems to have hard bandwidth limits that frequently keep one from logging in. However, UO likes this music so much better than almost anything on anglophone radio now that it simply must share the wealth. Much more rootsy and swinging than "Puddle of Creed-era" english language radio.

WARNING: They play french-language techno in the evenings! But that will surely be a feature rather than a bug for some readers.

REQUEST: This site seems to have more Canadian readers than it used to. (But then, this site just has more readers period than it used to. So if any loyal reader can point UO to an alternative radio source of francophone/bilingual/shiac rock that it could use during CKUM's bad bandwidth days, this site will be very grateful.

UPDATE: Now they're playing more hiphop type material. They also mix in english songs now and then, presumably Approved Canadian Content.

Preemptive Blogwatch - Interesting reader mail and links to libertarian matters neo, paleo and even meso. Plus the usual stuff like sniper news, war and whatever Unqualified Offerings happens to come across while intending to write about other things.

Happy Birthday to Gary Farber of Amygdala, simply one of the most eclectic and interesting weblogs going. Go to his site to find out about the Harry Potter books that haven't been translated into english yet, and more.

Blogwatch Auxiliary - Don't know if I'll be able to sustain this, but for some time I've been thinking that Eve Tushnet, the Last Blogwatcher, needed some company. So...

Seablogger: Global Warming and geologic time.

Nick Denton: Have downsized MBAs re-engineer the US intelligence snarl. (A generally good piece, though I quail at the thought of putting "all foreign intelligence work under the Department of Defense" since it's too easy then for ideologues to manipulate the single source. At a minimum, the State Department should have its own intelligence operations. Diplomats are supposed to be spies anyway.) Howard Dean. Immigration, discrimination and cultural self-defense.

The lluminated Donkey: Blog poker, for real. Who is the king of pizza slices?

Through the Looking Glass: Double-edged comparison of Bushian and Clintonian ethics. Were the Greens right after all? Memo to libertarians: Republicans are not your friends.

Uncertain Principles - Lots of great physics stuff, plus some best album lists.

Where Is Raed: Everyone's favorite gay Iraqi blogger (out of all of them!) casts a jaundiced eye on the UN's use of farce resolution. Israel's "weapons of mass love and harmony." Diana Moon's dresses.

Franklin Harris: Economics, Alabama, animé, and the five greatest superheroes of all time. (THE RESULTS - WILL - SHOCK YOU! Well, a little.)

So Say We All - For the sake of the children - Why we must ban all fun now. A British topic, but surely a lesson for Americans too:

Every year politicians implore us not to hold our own ad-hoc firework parties because a) we are too irresponsible and stupid to do so safely and b) we do not have the required training, qualifications, first aid badges, knowledge of the appropriate regulations, paperwork etc. So it was heartening this year to hear the call come from government level, in the person of the charismatic Minister for Stopping People Doing Things, Nick Raynsford.

Link via Natalie Solent.

Quotable - Micah Holmquist has an election postmortem too:

Despite what Eric Alterman, Andrew Sullivan and The Wall Street Journal like to believe, the Democrats aren't an anti-war party and anti-war activists tend not to be Democrats. It will be a big deal if any of this changes.

Pink Pistol - A striking adventure in simile from Teresa Nielsen Hayden:

Basically, I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.

Unqualified Offerings can't wholeheartedly agree with her criticism of the NRA in the same post - it believes the NRA sounds extreme because it knows perfectly well that gun control enthusiasts really do want to take away all guns; it also believes that the NRA's political rhetoric works a lot better outside New York publishing circles.

That's a quibble. TNH's item is a must-read.

Split-Screen Republicanism Watch

"We do the national greatness stuff abroad and the leave-us-alone stuff at home. Sign me up." Andrew Sullivan

NOW WIN THE WAR: I've been reading with some disbelief all sorts of proposals for president Bush's next two years. Here's the only one that matters: win the war. If we can rid the world of Saddam Hussein and see Iran's dictators pushed to the brink, then an entirely new set of circumstances prevails in the world. What the president needs to focus on now is disarming Saddam. This election wasn't a mandate for tax simplification or welfare reform (however important those two things are). It was a vote of support for victory. If Bush lets Saddam wriggle through the gaping U.N. net, and lets al Qaeda off the hook, then he will deserve to be defeated in 2004. Getting the war right is paramount. Everything else will follow. Nothing else, in comparison, matters.

Andrew Sullivan, yesterday.

CF. - Colby Cosh advises students of the Muhammad-Malvo spree to look into the 1973 case of Mark Essex. This we shall do in time.

Spree Graph Extra - Mildred Muhammad is out of seclusion, or at least came out long enough to give "a four-hour interview with The Washington Post."

UPDATE I: NOT out of seclusion. Says the Post: "she agreed to talk under the condition that her location not be disclosed. Since the arrests, she has not returned to her administrative job at Southern Maryland Hospital Center, and her children have not attended school."

UPDATE II: The missing link or our old friend, "It's all about me" syndrome?

I

Now she is convinced that his chief purpose in coming to the Washington area was to kill her. "I'm sure he had me in his scope," she said. "This was an elaborate plan to make this look like I was a victim so he could come in as the grieving father and take the children."

II

"They all died because of me," she said softly.

III

But now, when she looks back at the sniper's trail, she sees messages she thinks may have been meant for her. The Michaels crafts store was one of her favorite stores when she and her husband were living in Tacoma, Wash. It was at a Michaels that she had purchased the materials she needed to fashion a bride and groom to put atop their wedding cake.

IV

She has followed the reports about the sniper shootings and is certain that Muhammad was stalking her. "I don't believe in coincidences," she said.

Several of the shootings took place at stores, including Michaels and Home Depot, where she had frequently shopped in Tacoma. And now she views the sniper's warning contained in a letter left near a shooting scene – "Your children are not safe anywhere at any time" – as a message to her.

Muhammad was here. He had promised that she would not live to raise his children. And she knew that his word was bond.

UPDATE: So how'd you get this way? I:

After John divorced his first wife, he and Mildred were married in 1988 at Fort Lewis in Washington state, where John was stationed with the Army. He wanted to be a career soldier, but he returned from his tour of duty in the Persian Gulf War a changed man, she said.

He told her that black soldiers had been discriminated against. One incident in particular left him seething. After he was accused of tossing an incendiary grenade into a tent, Muhammad was hog-tied, arms and legs cuffed behind his back, he told his wife. When a siren sounded to alert the troops to a possible gas attack, no one gave him a gas mask. By the time he learned it was a drill, he had been humiliated in a manner that he never forgot, she said.

"When he got back, he was a very angry man," Mildred Muhammad said. "I didn't know this man. The one I knew stayed in Saudi. He didn't want anyone to become close to him. He became so quiet."

II

By 1997, Mildred and John and converted to Islam. As their domestic problems mounted, most of their friends at the mosque sided with John, she said. He had wrongly accused her of having an affair, she said, and took the matter to the mosque. As a result, she lost her job as a secretary.

"I was made to look as if I was incompetent and pathetic," she said. "He was telling me I am not good enough, that I was not a good Muslim, not a good mother."

III

In September 1999, he moved out of their home, and she filed for divorce three months later. It was then that she learned that Muhammad always operated with a plan.

On March 27, 2000, Muhammad told his wife he was taking their children shopping. When he called to say they had been delayed, he and the children were actually at the airport boarding a plane for the Caribbean island of Antigua. Although John Muhammad insisted later in court that he had Mildred's permission to take the children away, she said he had kidnapped them. She would not see the children again for a year and a half, until Sept. 4, 2001

UPDATE: So what have we learned? First, if Mrs. Muhammad's account is accurate, she did not see her husband this fall when he was in the area. Since witnesses saw the Caprice and someone looking like Muhammad in Mrs. Muhammad's neighborhood, and since Muhammad and Malvo are implicated in two robberies in Clinton in a ten-day span, there's at least cause to think that he was stalking her. The cross-state spree through Georgia and Alabama in late December took Muhammad to Baton Rouge - home of his cousin, Charlene Anderson, his sister-in-law Sheron Norman...and his first wife, Carol Williams. Muhammad had stayed with Anderson for a brief time in high summer. After that, he appears to have bounced between Maryland and Louisiana as between two poles.

Spree Graphs - In case any of this site's libertarian or neolibertarian readers were under the misimpression that only the government could be incompetent, RonK e-mails re the contrapositive:

TACOMA -- A Tacoma gun shop has filed a police report indicating that the rifle linked to a string of sniper shootings in the Washington, D.C.-area was stolen between July and October.

Though the .223-caliber Bushmaster XM15 semiautomatic rifle was on display and equipped with multiple accessories, workers at Bull's Eye Shooter Supply say they never noticed its disappearance and didn't realize it had been stolen until federal agents asked about it late last month, according to a police report filed Tuesday.

That's interesting, among other reasons, because it seems to rule out that rifle's being the weapon in the Tuscon sniper-robbery discussed here yesterday.

But remember our conservation law! If a murder seems to drop off the Muhammad-Malvo list, another must take its place:

Atlanta police yesterday added another name to the long list of shooting victims linked to John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, saying a man working in a liquor store there was slain Sept. 21 with a gun later found near the scene of a robbery-killing in Alabama for which the two sniper suspects have been charged with murder.

That would be the .22 pistol found in the woods near the Montgomery liquour-store robbery.

Including the sniper victims, Muhammad and Malvo have been charged or named as suspects in 21 shootings in which 14 people were killed and seven wounded in Maryland, Virginia, the District, Washington state, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft announced yesterday that Virginia authorities will be the first to prosecute the suspects – Muhammad in Prince William County and Malvo in Fairfax County. Both face murder trials and could be sentenced to death if convicted.

Unqualified Offerings reminds its readers that it is wrong to shoot, rob and murder. And besides, Muhammad and Malvo already took your turn in addition to theirs.

Harjeet Singh Credibility Watch:

Harjeet Singh, who befriended Muhammad and Malvo in Bellingham, Wash., before the sniper attacks, said yesterday that Malvo boasted in April that he and Muhammad had shot two men on Arizona golf courses and robbed them before concealing their bodies.

In an interview, Singh said Malvo "mentioned that it was older people they had shot." Singh said he did not report the alleged remarks to police at the time because he was not sure Malvo was telling the truth. He also said Malvo did not mention dates or the names of the golf courses. "He said that they buried [the victims] and he said they took things like rings, wallets and a watch from them," Singh said.

In Tucson, Assistant Police Chief Robert Lehner said: "We are taking [Singh's] statements very seriously," although investigators know of only one golf course slaying in Arizona. "We have already interviewed him once . . . and we will interview him again," Lehner said of Singh. Two Tucson homicide detectives flew to Washington state yesterday to reinterview him. "Obviously, to us, it is potentially a very important lead, and we are treating it very seriously," Lehner said.

Singh, in other words, is telling us about golf course murders for the first time only after a golf course murder has been made public. Recall this quote from October 25 in the Bellingham Herald:

The FBI and police went back and talked with Singh on Wednesday, Carroll said. He said Singh gave different information from what he said earlier, but would not elaborate.

"I think that Mr. Singh is trying to position himself in this community to be a bigger part of the totality of the circumstances than he truly is," [Bellingham Police Chief Randy] Carroll said.

A tentative path has Muhammad and Malvo moving south from Clinton, MD after the September 15 robbery, committing two murders in 21 hours in Atlanta on the 21st and then Montgomery, then reaching Baton Rouge by September 23, when they murdered Hong Im Ballenger outside her beauty parlor. (This article has a picture of Mrs. Ballenger and her husband, but I am going to get started again if I don't watch it.)

By the second, they are back in DC and on the way to making themselves famous and arrested.

You Don't Say - Title borrowed from Best [Neocon-Approved Items] of the Web, but it fits this Post headline: Townsend Laments Gubernatorial Defeat.

But here's a good reason why so many of the rest of us don't. Asked whether it was her campaign staff's ineptness or the sheer unpopularity of Givernor Parris Glendening that did her in:

Townsend declined to join that discussion.

"You know what? I'm going to go out as a class act. That's who I am," she said.

Here's a really basic rule: If you refer to yourself as "a class act," you are not one. This is less like a social rule than a rule of nature: it can not be broken. But Unqualified Offerings has caught people trying to break it before.

Speaking of Canadian Blogs there's a new one called The Ambler run by Kevin Michael Grace. He writes that "If pressed, I would call myself (after Erik von Kühnelt-Leddihn) a right-wing anarchist—or a 'paleoconservative.' (Actually, I may have invented the latter label, circa 1986.)" Worth watching. He seems to be another of those Canadians who is slow to implement item-specific anchors, but the bottom of his page currently holds his inaugural, introductory post.

Coming to Terms - Unqualified Offerings has struggled with what to call them, those pundits and bloggers who are anti-regulation, anti-gun control, anti-drug prohibition, anti-socialist, anti-theocrat and generally, you know, libertarian in outlook on just about all domestic issues but also favor the military conquest of Iraq (and Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and Syria, and Egypt, and...) and in most cases the maximal "reconstruction" project in the Middle East that neoconservatives and neoliberals favor - who are, in other words, interventionist and even imperial, however much they occasionally aver that they wish it could be otherwise.

UO hasn't been completely comfortable just calling them "libertarians," because anti-interventionism was woven into the libertarian movement from the start. It was the famous YAF schism over the draft and Vietnam that gave birth to the organized libertarian movement, and libertarians anti-communist and anti-New Deal forebears - Mencken, Lane, Paterson - were also skeptical of war and entangling alliances. They would not be with the regime change program either.

Not all the interventionists are comfortable with the term "libertarian," either. (Just today, Brink Lindsey explains his own discomfort with the label, or maybe just with the idea of being lumped in with those who recognize that, while national security may be a legitimate function of the state, the state is still the state when it performs that function.) Joseph Stromberg coined the term "liberventionism," which he takes to be a contradiction in terms. I pretty much do too, and "liberventionist" has a ring to it, but the ring is pejorative, and unlike Stromberg, I don't despise or disdain (most of) the people we're talking about. I think they're very wrong on the central question of the day, but they're right on most of the others.

So "liberventionist" I won't use, but it would be nice to have a term. Thanks to an item by Kevin O'Reilly of Howl on Stand Down, who links to this blog, I finally have a label I'm comfortable applying:

Neolibertarian.

The shoe fits, I think. It's certainly a new development. It grows out of libertarianism, for all that it dispenses with one of Libertarianism Classic's central pillars. It has interesting correspondences with "neoconservative" and "neoliberal," both movements that had their impetus substantially in national security concerns, both of which were substantially motivated by concern for the security of Israel - similarly a priority for the neolibertarians.

"Neolibertarian" is not an automatically pejorative term, any more than "neoconservative" or "neoliberal" are, though like the other terms, it can be used pejoratively. Certainly, my own every use of the term will contain an element of criticism, but not, I hope, of insult. Having named the thing, we'll consider the phenomenon of neolibertarianism in future items.

Return of the Autogoogle - You can't keep a good (egotistical) blog down. After dropping from result 2 to page 2 when Google jiggered their site-ranking algorithm, Unqualified Offerings has bounced back big time, currently holding down the number 7 Henley spot.

Speaking of Colby Cosh, the item containing this passage is not to be missed:

Everybody down there is milling about in befuddlement over the fact that the Republicans did better than the polls showed over most of the campaign. It was another test of my conviction that there are systemic biases against the right wing in ordinary voter polling. Hypothesis confirmed. There appear to be a small but consistent number of voters, in every Western country, who take a left line with pollsters and then vote their interests on the actual ballot.

Should this be surprising? Given the rise of bogus "push-polling" ("Would you change your vote if you knew Candidate X raped his children repeatedly...?") and other forms of quasi-psephological horsefudge, people have less and less incentive to be truthful with these strangers who interrupt our meals. We tell 'em what they want to hear, and nobody wants to hear that you're a callous right-winger who would take the folic-acid money away from Berber crack babies. But, at every election, it's the same old song. "Hey, Bob Dole did better than expected!" "Hey, Jean Marie Le Pen did better than expected!" "Hey, the Reform Party did better than expected!" "Hey, the Reform Party did better than expected...again!" Figure it out, pollsters. People are going to connect the dots on these repeated "late surges" after a while.

Now, me, I add an implicit 4-6% to any midterm polling figure given for a party of the right, anywhere. I know political scientists have studied this exact subject, too, and they agree with me (SMART MOVE, FELLAS), and I may even have a reference written down.

Unqualified Offerings can think of only one instance where Cosh's Dictum didn't prove out. That's right! Bush vs. Gore, USA 2000. Back then this site posted a lengthy prediction to the Elvis Costello Mailing list the weekend before the election explaining that this very iron law Cosh propounds augured a safe win for Bush, possibly by a margin of as much as five percent.

Famous last words. And yes, you still need to read the whole CC item to learn why Walter Mondale wanted to lose.

Blogwatch - You know what's a really good weblog? Duckboy is a really good weblog. A classic links-style blog, heavy on citations and links to politics and general weirdness. Unqualified Offerings likes to think of the previous item as a "Duckboy-style" post.

Puck Amuck - The US has a culture of litigiousness that is out of control. And we're not the only ones!

TORONTO -- A Canadian father is suing the New Brunswick Amateur Hockey Association after his 16-year-old son failed to win the league's most valuable player award.

Michael Croteau is seeking about $200,000 in psychological and punitive damages from the association. He also demands that the MVP trophy be taken from the winner and given to his son, Steven.

Croteau told the Globe and Mail newspaper in a story published Thursday that Steven was the New Brunswick Bantam AAA leading scorer, which made him the most valuable player. He said the youth was so crushed when another player won the award at a banquet in March that he lost his desire to play.

The league's nine coaches or managers select the most valuable player, and voting results are not disclosed.

Steven had a league-leading 45 goals and 42 assists in 27 games, while the boy named most valuable player finished fourth in league scoring with 21 goals and 39 assists.

"How do you justify that?'' Croteau said in the Globe and Mail. "It's quite obvious he's the most valuable forward in the league.''

No doubt Colby Cosh will be along soon to tell us this kind of behavior has nothing to do with Alberta. Of course, UO's groundbreaking reporting on New Brunswick: Socialist Hellhole was available to early adopters way back in March, including "Wither [sic] Canada - The Continuing Series", and "Things Are Sometimes What They Seem," among others.

Returns and Arrivals - Fans of politics (Unqualified Offerings is not one) have had high praise for The Scrum, an anonymous weblog admired for the caliber of its inside-baseball analysis. The proprietor took just about exactly a month off, but is back now with some post-election pre-election handicapping - that is, he tells you what this week's midterm election results mean for the 2004 Presidential campaign.

And there's a new blog out there, De Spectaculus, run by the pseudonymous Martial. In his early items meditation on the nature and identity of legitimate authority predominates.

Department of Touché - E-mailer David Dillon writes that

If the bad guys introduced plague as the opening shot in the biowar, they did it a few hundred years ago. There's 10-15 cases in the New Mexico area every year.

and Kathy Kinsley makes a similar point on her site. She also e-mails

The reason I got a kick out of your post on the plague was, in fact, because of that very tendency to associate everything with terrorism (I'm guilty there). I just found it amusing that you are debunking Malvo/Muhammad so enthusiastically, and still worry about bubonic plague. I guess we each have
our 'eek' points on things.

A hit, a very palpable hit!

Of course, Unqualified Offerings is changing its plague hypothesis when the facts turn out to better fit another explanation...

A Postrel Postmortem - As Unqualified Offerings hoped would happen, Virginia Postrel has a bunch of post-election coverage on her site (scroll down from top) including several excellent pieces on the Georgia races. There is also this more general item:

Here's a hint for Dems looking for a winning message: Nobody thinks a new prescription drug entitlement constitutes a governing philosophy. It may excite a few ideologues (mostly on the anti- side) and interest groups, but it's the sort of issue that makes normal people's eyes glaze over. Just say "Medicare Part B" and watch the reaction. "Free prescription drugs" can't define a party.

Which begs a couple of questions: 1) Doesn't synecdoche count? (Or would synecdoche constitute a governing poetics? 2) From an electoral philosophy, are governing philosophies all that they're cracked up to be?

UO's instinct is that they may not be. It seems like every two years the sky is seen to be falling in for one party or another, but it keeps changing. As of 1994, the Democrats were dead, dead, dead. Then the Republicans lost ground. After 2000, despite Bush's win, even some conservative pundits worried that the long term trends were against the Repubs. Now they've managed a razor-thin recapture of the Senate while maintaining a 10% advantage in the House and the Democrats are doomed, doomed!

UO would love it if gaseous rot blew the corpse of one of the major parties into smelly little gibbets, opening up the possibility of a grand realignment. It does not live in hope, though. The Dems will be back sooner than people think.

WTF? - Atrios takes time out from bemoaning the end of the world to link to an item about...the end of the world:

(New York-WABC, November 6, 2002) — Two patients at a New York City hospital have been diagnosed with a dangerous disease not seen in this region in decades. Eyewitness News has learned that doctors at Beth Israel Medical Center are caring for the two people who have the Bubonic plague.

Has the biowar balloon gone up? Too soon to tell, as professional journalists say:

The city and state health department were joined by the Centers for Disease Control in their investigation into how the couple contracted the disease. The state health department in Sante Fe, New Mexico, where the couple lives, tested rodents on their property this summer. Apparently many of those rodents tested positive for the Bubonic plague.

Doctors say they believe the couple was infected in their home state after sleeping in a sleeping bags that had been outdoors on their property for several weeks. Those sleeping bags are now being tested.

Officials say there are 20 to 30 cases of Bubonic plague worldwide each year. If caught early, the disease is very treatable, but it is often mistaken for a cold. If treatment is delayed, the plague can, of course, be fatal

Unqualified Offerings thinks that sparsely populated, dry New Mexico is not the place it would choose to introduce infected rats if it were attacking the United States. But you never know.

WTF? - Atrios takes time out from bemoaning the end of the world to link to an item about...the end of the world:

(New York-WABC, November 6, 2002) — Two patients at a New York City hospital have been diagnosed with a dangerous disease not seen in this region in decades. Eyewitness News has learned that doctors at Beth Israel Medical Center are caring for the two people who have the Bubonic plague.

Has the biowar balloon gone up? Too soon to tell, as professional journalists say:

The city and state health department were joined by the Centers for Disease Control in their investigation into how the couple contracted the disease. The state health department in Sante Fe, New Mexico, where the couple lives, tested rodents on their property this summer. Apparently many of those rodents tested positive for the Bubonic plague.

Doctors say they believe the couple was infected in their home state after sleeping in a sleeping bags that had been outdoors on their property for several weeks. Those sleeping bags are now being tested.

Officials say there are 20 to 30 cases of Bubonic plague worldwide each year. If caught early, the disease is very treatable, but it is often mistaken for a cold. If treatment is delayed, the plague can, of course, be fatal

Unqualified Offerings thinks that sparsely populated, dry New Mexico is not the place it would choose to introduce infected rats if it were attacking the United States. But you never know.

Midday Murder Update - Q: Where do known criminals with no fixed address who have spent a little time in homeless shelters get a laptop, if not from their Al Qaeda paymasters? A: They steal it.

Investigators have determined that a laptop computer seized from accused sniper John Allen Muhammad's car was stolen Sept. 5 in a robbery-shooting outside a Prince George's County pizzeria, law enforcement sources said yesterday.

That's from today's Post.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! Remember how some people argued that the snipers must be terrorists because they had not happened to have hit any muslim victims? There goes another theory:

Citing ballistics tests, Prince George's police have said that the .22-caliber pistol used to rob LaRuffa was used 10 nights later and about six miles away at Brandywine Liquor. An employee, Muhammad Rashid, 32, was closing the store Sept. 15 when he was shot once in the abdomen by an assailant who then searched Rashid's pockets and stole his wallet. Rashid has recovered from his wounds.

Muhammad's last name is still Muhammad, though. The Post story also notes a possible connection with yet another crime, a sniper-style robbery/murder in Tuscon on March 19. Someone shot a man dead on a golf course from perhaps 300 yards, and robbed. Here's the good part:

The chief said FBI agents told him that Muhammad and Malvo arrived in Tucson by bus from Los Angeles on March 13. They were picked up by Muhammad's sister, who was living on an Air Force base less than two miles from the golf course, Miranda said.

Recall that Muhammad and Malvo stole the credit card of a Greyhound bus driver around March 25, somewhere between Flagstaff and Nogales. Muhammad and Malvo were back in Tacoma by April 9, which is when they tried to use the card to buy gas.

Final thought: Muhammad and Malvo took the bus to Tucson. They didn't fly. But the director of the Lighthouse Mission homeless shelter said Muhammad was always talking about flying places. Not to go out on a limb, but could it be that, when Muhammad said this kind of thing, he was full of shit?

The Morning After - Some interesting postmortem commentary...

From Counterspin:

I'm happy.

No. Seriously.

At first I was pissed, then depressed. Then...I realized something.

WE'RE FREE!!!!

No more ass kissing the Bush Administration. No more rubberstamping.

From Jesse Walker:

I hadn't planned to support the Libertarian candidate for governor, but I did: He and his running mate looked so lonely, the only third-party ticket on the entire ballot, that I just had to give them my vote. Besides, my original plans for the gubernatorial race were in tatters. I had intended to write in a certain acquaintance of mine, but she refused the honor when I told her my plan, informing me that if I really wanted to help her I could clean one of the bathrooms before she gets home from the late shift.

From a UO reader who prefers to remain anonymous:

Everyone's missing it. Not only has Ehrlich won, and the first statewide elected black is a Republican, but:

Senator Baker, Chairman of the Judicial Proceedings committee, is out--all four Senate chairmen are gone, two through retirement, one in the primary and one tonight.

The two Democratic incumbents in Baker's district are gone as well, one an Appropriations subcommittee chairman.

Speaker of the House Casper Taylor appears to be gone. His district was rather conservative, and it appears they got fed up with his cozying up to the liberals in Montgomery, PG and the city.

Senator Mooney, frankly a bit far to the right even for my taste, has won a resounding victory in Frederick.

I can't wait for the Anne Arundel results on the Neall-Greenip race. Neall switched parties, despite being in the back rooms when the budget deals were made, and he may now pay the price.

Looks like a great night for Republicans in Maryland, and more importantly, a great night for democracy. Hopefully Ehrlich and the rest will govern with reason, and introduce the state to the notion of a two-party system...

From Will Vehrs of Quasipundit:

Undoubtably, there will be classless comments from winners and losers alike after this election, but I'd like to nominate Maryland Governor Parris Glendening for a special Nixon award:

[Kathleen Kennedy Townsend] was originally expected to coast to victory in the heavily Democratic state, but her gubernatorial bid foundered under the direction of an inexperienced campaign team and the burden of the public's growing dislike for Glendening, her political partner.

Glendening, for his part, blamed Townsend, saying she conducted "one of the worst-run campaigns in the country."

From Letter From Gotham:

Governor Pataki looks about to stomp his opponents. To the extent that they are paying any attention to this, I imagine the blogosphere will be reading all kinds of things into it: Republican tide in New York State, rejection of Clintonism, look out Schumer, and so on. It's not. Pataki was a healing figure after 9/11, and he's won by basically poaching Democratic issues. He's a Republican in drag. In any other state he'd probably be considered a liberal Democrat. This says nothing about rejection of Clintons, liberalism, at all. We have two Democratic Senators-for-life and certain issues are written in stone in this state.

Confirmation - Yes, Loyal Reader, this has been an entire day without a sniper update. UO would like to know how Muhammad and Malvo pulled off that Alaska quake, though.

Triumph and Tragedy - CNN has now called Maryland for Ehrlich, about 15 minutes after Unqualified Offerings did. For some reason they're still not calling the Eighth District even though Morella hasn't a chance in hell now. The real losers? The American people! Because Stephen Bassett only pulled 1% of the vote in the congressional race, possibly because the major-party contest was so competitive, and that means Montgomery County still won't have a candidate with the courage to push for an end to the "ET/UFO Truth Embargo."

UPDATE: The Post has had the wit to call the Eighth District for Van Hollen.

Free Free State Update - NOTE: Post contains many updates. In the Governor's race, Ehrlich is barely ahead, 50-49, with 46% of precincts reporting. That probably means he loses, if past practice continues. It's generally accepted that the Baltimore machine likes to report late, so that it gets credit for putting the Democratic candidate over the top.

Of course, back before accusing your opponent of fraud and demanding recounts became fashionable, it was alleged that the Baltimore machine did a little more than that.

UPDATE: The CNN feed (see link in first paragraph) is up to 62% and Ehrlich's lead is holding.

UPDATE: 10:25PM. Ehrlich's lead is up to 51-48%, with 74% of votes counted. That's just under 26,000 votes, easily made up by Baltimore, if those votes aren't part of the count yet.

UPDATE: A minute later. Checked my math. There are indeed 408,000 votes yet to be counted. A 26K lead is not secure.

UPDATE: They're still not calling MD-8, but it's crushingly obvious that Morella is going down. Van Hollen's ahead 51-48% with 84% of precincts reporting. He holds a 5500 vote lead with about 30,000 yet to be counted. That means that Connie would have to pick up about 60% of all remaining votes to pull it out. Ain't gonna happen.

UPDATE: The Baltimore Sun has a "live," blog-style feed.

UPDATE: Interesting. The Sun shows an AP tally with Townsend ahead of Ehrlich 52-48% at 9:57 with 37% of precincts reporting - less than CNN has been showing. The flip in results since 37% suggests that either AP is hearing from different precincts than CNN (don't know how that works) or that a lot of Townsend's best areas have already come in. In the 1994 Glendening-Sauerbrey race, Glendening lost every county in the state except for Montgomery and Prince Georges (the Washington suburbs), plus Baltimore, and squeaked out a 6,000 vote win. UO was in upper Montgomery just last weekend fishing and saw plentiful Ehrlich signs even there. Townsend needs huge huge margins in Baltimore and the DC suburbs or she's toast, because she'll lose everywhere else.

UPDATE: 10:43pm. CNN shows Ehrlich pulling away. 52-47% with 89% counted. That's a margin of 60K ballots. Crunching numbers...There should only be c. 175k votes yet to count. Unless Townsend picks up 2/3 of them, she's through.

UPDATE: Triangulation method, 10:50PM. How many Baltimore votes are still out there? Baltimore fits into the 3rd and 7th districts. Those districts cover a lot more ground than just Baltimore, but Baltimore will have most of the population. CNN's scoreboard on the MD-3 congressional race says 87% of precincts have reported. For the 7th district race, it's 92%. Unless they're keeping the gubernatorial results back, that doesn't leave Townsend a lot of makeup room.

UPDATE: CNN and MSNBC still haven't called the MD governor's race, but UO will risk looking foolish and call it for Ehrlich. The makeup votes just aren't out there. Note: That was at 10:55PM, the call.

Voting. All It's Cracked Up to Be? - Nah. You can find no end of Serious People telling you that your vote is your most precious right, that you have no right to complain if you don't vote, and on and on and on. While Unqualified Offerings did, in fact, vote, it has a lot of sympathy for both non and anti-voters.

Is your vote your most precious right? Hm. You vote once every year or two. You rely on being free to speak your mind, hang with the people you want to hang with, worship as you choose and be free from arbitrary search and seizure all day every day. Among other rights.

If you don't vote, you have no right to complain? Let's see. Say my neighbor Tayeb doesn't vote and tomorrow morning the government sticks him in an internment camp for muslims. Does Tayeb have no right to complain? The question answers itself. Say my neighbor's grandkid gets busted for selling pot and the police seize her car. She didn't vote. Does she have no right to complain? Who should she have voted for? (Yeah, I know - Spear Lancaster! And that would have saved her car how?)

You have the rights you have because you are endowed by your creator, not because you were a good girl and earned an "I Voted!" sticker from an elementary school.

There is a serious argument to be made that voting at all is a vote for "the system" as it has presently evolved: the two mushy, bossy parties, the regulatory state, the interventionist foreign policy, whatever your structural bugaboo is. "Don't Vote," the bumper sticker reads, "It'll Only Encourage Them."

Libertarian antivoting arguments can be found at the Voluntaryist site. A leftist argument for boycotting the 2000 election can be found at Znet Interactive. (Hey, it's not too late! And I couldn't find any of Coleman McCarthy's antivoting essays.)

Declining to vote is not even synonymous with political quietism. Unqualified Offerings is still struck by something Eve Tushnet told it a few months ago. Paraphrasing:

I think politicians do what they think they have to do under the prevailing circumstances, and the rhetorical climate is an important part of the prevailing circumstances.

Her political writing stands to have a bigger effect on US political life than any vote she casts. It could hardly be otherwise. (Here she has a good discussion of the importance of "philosophical/literary explanation[s]" for understanding political history.)

Exit Poll - Tony Adragna provides his own judicious meditation on electoral wars, and rumours of wars. It's precisely the kind of even-handed, acute and, somehow, humane perspective that led Unqualified Offerings to - no lie! - write Tony Adragna's name in for State's Attorney and one or two other offices. (There were several races where one candidate ran unopposed. Can't have that!)

Tony also comes right out and tells you how he voted, and why. (For governor. But Tony, did you go for Van Hollen or Morella? I'm betting Van Hollen.)

The Two-Party System We COULD Have - Ironically, one got glimpses during the 2000 post-election disputes of the Parties at their best and most principled. Don't look at Unqualified Offerings like that! It said glimpses.

The United States is by design a democratic republic. It is by design not a democracy, no matter what bad schoolbooks and ignorant commentators tell you. But any republican system of government has to declare for a means of choosing the representatives of its constituent parts, and democracy is what we chose.

It's easy to discern a tension between the democratic tendency and the republican one. One could be drawn more to the idea of the "voice of the people" as the surest and best way of guaranteeing the good of all, or to a belief in structure and procedure, regularity and rule as safeguarding the people from tyranny and whim. You could call these parties the Democratic and Republican Parties and have a rather interesting ongoing dialectic about the nature of the country. Each side could make claims against the other - "mob rule!" "Hidebound traditionalism!" In that country, this website would be a "Republican," whereas in this one it is merely "republican."

So, Florida. Among the best and most sincere commentators on each side, you could see the basic tendencies. Michael Kinsley really believed that what mattered was that the will of the people be done. George Will and Andrew Sullivan really believed that We have rules, the rules are what make any election fair, and the rules that count are the ones that are set out ahead of time. Both sides found themselves staring into an uncrossable abyss - the Florida election was a statistical tie. The uncertainty in the count was always going to be larger than the margin of "victory," no matter what recounts one did. Faced with this abyss, both parties, now and then, spoke to their theoretically truest principles.

But both contravened them, too. The Gore team was less concerned with "the will of the people" than with mining its most favorable precincts for extra votes. The Bush team proved just as willing to rely on made-up rules - the US Supreme Court - as the Democrats (the Florida Supreme Court). Because it was a statistical tie, and because the Democratic arguments, shifting as they were, amounted to "Don't punish us because our voters are too stupid or blind to follow directions" and because, while I voted against Bush, I am an instinctive republican (small 'r'), I thought the Gore team was wrong and even menacingly so.

Then the Bush team proved just as willing to pull ex post facto rules out of its ass.

What should have happened? The SCOTUS should have let the silly Florida Supremes ruling stand, the Republican legislature of Florida should have chosen a competing slate of electors per Florida law, and the House should have done its enumerated duty and chosen between the two slates. That would not have been a "constitutional crisis." It would have been the constitution. Bush would probably still have won, and the backlash might have cost the Republicans the House this cycle. But they may lose it regardless, and in the meantime both the Supreme Court and the Republican Party itself suffered more tarnishing than they need have.

But that would be under the two-party system we could have.

One Man, One Vote, One Last Time? - Pick one of the two major parties and you can find both its professional and its amateur partisans hurling loud charges of fraud and intimidation around. This whole process started, of course, two years ago. Everyone was sure the Presidential election of 2002 was being stolen right before their eyes - they just differed on who was doing the stealing. Now this may be our future. Jacob Levy wrote last week that we're seeing Anthony Downs' 1957 Median Voter Theorem in action. As Levy puts it

In a competitive two-party system with a unidimensional political spectrum (and some other technical constraints) the parties will tend to converge around the preferences of the 50%+1th voter. They sometimes make mistakes in their estimation of those preferences (though increasingly-refined polling makes that less likely). They are sometimes beholden to a base for volunteer effort, money, and so on in a way that keeps them from migrating to the center. And sometimes the threat of a third-party split at the left or right margin can exercise a short-term pull on the appropriate party that needs to head off the threat. But, in general and over time, we'll just see fluctuation around the preferences of the median voter.

Levy goes on to say that, while there are complicating factors

Most of the conditions Kaus identifies as going on in politics right now could be understood as making this competitive political market (with voters as consumers and parties as firms) work more efficiently and elastically. The absurd heights to which polling, focus-group-testing, and micro-targeted vote appeals have risen are central.

He also suggests some factors that militate against perfect centrist appeal by any party or candidate:

As important is his claim that unions and the Christian right have been weakened enough to allow each party to move to the center. I'm not sure he's right about that; remember the teacher's unions and vouchers. Also remember that the Greens are lurking out there on the Democrats' leftward flank, and the Libertarians-- while not right-wing in any general way-- often grab enough of the GOP's anti-tax and pro-gun base to tip House or Senate seats. And we've seen some evidence in the past few elections that one's base can simply get alienated and stay home on election day. So even now, neither party can simply lunge for the center, with no regard for what's happening among their most dedicated supporters.

I suspect that even the centrifugal forces that Levy identifies militate against candidates or parties achieving "landslide appeal" precisely because the base demands are so polarizing.

So elections become razor thin, and while the stakes may not be so high for the voters - the parties are converging toward the median voter's preference, remember - they sure are high for the parties. There are jobs at stake. Since the margins are thin, the temptation to cheat grows - a small cheat can have a big effect. That leads to two possible behaviors: 1) Cheating; 2) Conviction that the other guy is cheating. It puts a premium on legalistic (as opposed to "legal") maneuver and demagoguery - call the other guy a cheat no matter what he's doing. (It a lot easier than making an argument for your politics.) And if you're truly convinced the other guy is doing it, and you can't stop him, you have a strong incentive to do it yourself.

In a bad draft of an unpublished poem, I wrote, thinking of the after-election strife of 2000, "the future belongs to caudillos in mufti." They are not, goddammit, proving me wrong so far.

In down moods, I wonder if we've already seen our last "free and fair elections." The combination of zeal and suspicion you can see today on partisan websites reeks of decadence - reeks, really, of the Imperial. And there's that word again.

Vox Populi - Reader feedback on UO's matchless - as in "no spark" - election coverage! Bill Dowling writes about Maryland gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's appearance on a Washington-area sports talk show:

I heard that same appearance! I thought it was hilarious that she was hyping a touch football game between Michael McCrary and Ethel Kennedy. Visions of McCrary sacking Ethel and doing a celebration dance over her comatose body ran through my head. Vote for me, I put senior citizens in mortal danger in hopes of reminding people that my uncle was a cultural icon!

Bill also responds to UO's quotation of Franklin Harris on the Green Party:

In order to "sell you out", wouldn't the Greens need to, oh, I don't know, actually win something first? It's easy to claim that you never reneged on a campaign promise if you never actually got into a position with the power to fulfill one.

What can you say to someone like that?

Meanwhile, RGB Greg Pearson finds himself surprised and, implicitly, disappointed that

The Coveted UO Endorsement went to Bob Ehrlich? What happened to [Libertarian Party Candidate Spear] Lancaster? Heck, given the choice offered up to Maryland voters /I'd/ vote for Lancaster and I don't even run a Libertarian blog. Or could you just not bring yourself to endorse someone whose first name is Spear?

Well Greg, the truth is that Unqualified Offerings...kind of forgot the Libertarian Party was running a gubernatorial candidate this year! Fortunately, the Party got the word out in the form of a direct-mail letter that arrived today and was waiting for UO upon his return from work - and voting. But you've made Unqualified Offerings feel guilty now. Thanks.

RINO Hunt - My instinct is that Connie Morella is finally going down this time, and that Chris Van Hollen will be my next representative. Fun's fun, byut Montgomery voters have had quite enough of proving what they're pleased to think of as their independence This is a very political citizenry with a critical mass of folks thinking control of congress. Hollen seems like the worst sort of Democrat, but then, Morella is one of the two worst kinds of Republicans (the other being the hardcore theocrat). Van Hollen, who has run against Morella repeatedly, might as well have chosen the slogan, MY LIFE HAS NO MEANING UNLESS I'M ELECTED. Morella, whose most passionate causes, other than constituent service, seem to involve government spending and subventions to government employees, would win pretty handily, I think, if she just changed her official party registration. There's a kind of honor in her not having done so.

I usually hold my nose and vote for her, and will again, for the simple reason that she opposed the use of force resolution last month and I promised.

The governor's race I ain't calling. I despise the Maryland State Democratic Party and anyone who came within hearing distance of outgoing governor Parris Glendening. Bob Ehrlich ticked me off with what I considered some weaselly comments about state gun control laws during the sniper case. You know Ehrlich doesn't like them, and I know Ehrlich doesn't like them, but he blamed the Glendening-Townsend administration for not enforcing the existing laws. Like Maryland's existing laws would stop a schmuck with a gun from Washington state.

Republicans, never what they should be.

KKT is loathsome, though. She made a brief telephone appearance on Sportstalk 980 yesterday adn worked several separate Kennedy family references into a five-minute appearance. She had just that day played touch football with Michael McCrary of the Ravens, her three children and Ethel! The wonder of it!

It all depends on whether the metropolitan core (Baltimore and DC suburbs) break as strongly for KKT as it did for her loathsome predecessor in 194. I kind of think it won't. But I'm no good at electoral predictions, so I won't.

Quotable - From Franklin Harris:

Like those at The Comics Journal, Doane conflates elitism and intelligence and assumes people (like me) dislike TCJ for the latter rather than the former.

Unqualified Offerings doesn't know this Doane guy, but it knows the attitude. A related attitude it's run into in gaming circles, when proponents of a theory of gaming attribute critics qualms to discomfort with intellectualism rather than disbelief in the theory.

Also from Franklin, notorious right-winger:

(Better Green than Democrat. At least the Greens won't sell you out on things like the USA PATRIOT Act and war with Iraq.)

That's pulled out of a post on electoral reform, which Unqualified Offerings isn't necessarily so big on, but there's a link to a Science News story on the topic too.

For the Good of the Country - Various folks have been kind enough to praise UO's coverage of the Muhammad-Malvo spree, which is kind of them. It occurs to Unqualified Offerings that it's been working under a handicap, though, stuck at this computer, sifting through the reporting of others. Wouldn't it be best for the public if this website were able to do more on-site reporting? Specifically, with so many loose ends there, wouldn't it be ideal if a major media outlet were to fly Unqualified Offerings to Antigua to do some investigating first hand? For as long as it takes, it goes without saying.

Spree Graphs - This CNN story offers good reason to doubt that the July 2001 murder of Benita White in Lansing Michigan is linked to John Muhammad and Lee Malvo.

[Lansing PD spokesman Ray Hall] said Benita White, a 41-year-old Lansing woman, was shot "sniper style" in July 2001 as she walked to the front gate of the city zoo. The attacker shot her once from several hundred yards away. The bullet was never found.

Hall said White was divorcing her husband, a state trooper, who remains a suspect.

"We have more reasons to believe it's not related [to the D.C.-area sniper killings] than reason to believe it is connected," Hall said. It's an extremely long-shot possibility."

Hall said the "sniper style" method of killing is all that would connect the case to the others.

And

Muhammad and Malvo are not known to have been in Michigan, but Nathaniel Osbourne -- co-owner of Muhammad's 1990 Chevrolet Caprice -- was arrested in Flint, Michigan, in connection with the sniper investigation. He is being held as a material witness.

which is no more impressive, as a link, than the formal destination on Richard Reid's plane ticket.

o Reader RonK writes

How stands the "sniper subculture" question?

Submitted for your consideration -- the Bellingham roommates' snapshot of Malvo in a "SNIPER" logo t-shirt ... the pivotal Alabama fingerprint on a gun-related publication ... knowing where to "shop" (undocumented transfers out of Bull's Eye inventory at nearly 1 per business day) ... and not one but two original crime schemes (the early "shoot from distant cover, grab at arm's length" killings, and the DC-area mass extortion killings) woven around the act of sniping, but poorly-conceived in terms of criminal gains.

At a minimum, M&M qualify as "gun nuts" of an uncommon subtype. They were also religious eccentrics (their own twists on the "five-percenter" fringe element of NOI faux Islam) and political eccentrics (even among their religious set). Interesting to have both alive ... I won't be surprised to see other elements of weirdness dribble out over time. Can their crackers & honey diet form the basis of a "Twinkie defense"?

UO mentioned something about the pair's apparent fondness for guns last week. Still, as Stephen Hunter pointed out a couple weeks ago, the actual method of their madness partook of almost none of the stuff that so-called sniper subculture marketing offers - specialized loads, specialized guns etc. They used a scope, but it's not like scopes are some big deal fringe accessory. Wildass theory: Muhammad chose an XM15 because it was closest to what he was used to from the service, being a civilian version of the M16. He doesn't seem to have put much effort into finding a more suitable weapon for sniping. He used what he had to hand and felt comfortable firing.

o In a related story, Unqualified Offerings has come into possession of this previously secret document, the original, planned December itinerary of Richard Reid from last year:

1. Egypt.
2. Paris.
3. Fiery conflagration over North Atlantic.
4. Antigua! Meet John.

Unqualified Offerings is not at liberty to divulge the source of this document.

o Will Vehrs implies that Muhammad should be executed for being a lousy tipper. Unqualified Offerings opposes the death penalty, but a one-cent tip is pushing it.

o The Sun Also Ariseth. We've provisionally disposed of the Michigan case, but the law of conservation of possible Muhammad-Malvo shootings must be observed. Thus, this report from FoxNews discovered by Duckboy:

BALTIMORE — Authorities are investigating whether the suspects in the Washington-area sniper attacks may have shot and wounded two people a month earlier in the town where the ex-wife of one suspect lives.

In one of the shootings, Paul LaRuffa was shot six times at close range after closing his restaurant on Sept. 5. Prince George's County police Capt. Andy Ellis said Sunday that the department is looking into whether the shooting in the town of Clinton is related to the sniper case.

In the other shooting, a liquor store clerk was shot and robbed as he locked the Clinton store where he works on Sept. 15, said police Cpl. Diane Richardson.

Clinton, southeast of Baltimore, is the home of John Allen Muhammad's ex-wife Mildred.

A Sony laptop computer was stolen from LaRuffa, along with more than $3,000 in receipts. A Sony laptop was found in Muhammad's car when he and John Lee Malvo were arrested Oct. 24 at a rest stop.

LaRuffa, 55, said Sunday he wanted to know if the laptop was his.

"I wish somebody would tell me 'yes, it's yours, no, it's not yours,' and that's what's frustrating about it," LaRuffa said.

M.O. Watch: LaRuffa was shot six times, which is a lot for you-know-whom. But it was a small-caliber handgun, so maybe they were being extra thorough.

Or maybe not.

In the Sept. 15 shooting, an attacker fired several shots from a small-caliber gun, striking the unidentified victim once in the abdomen, Richardson said. The man then fled with the man's wallet. The victim has recovered.

Richardson said the task force was investigating the Sept. 15 case because of the proximity to the earlier restaurant shooting and because Clinton is the home of Muhammad's ex-wife. She did not know if ballistic evidence linked the incident to any of the other crimes.

We'll see.

I Told You Not to Tread on Me - Sometimes one is just overwhelmed by the tragedy of war and the futility of violence. Sometimes not.

Help Nell a Little - Loyal UO reader Nell Lancaster would appreciate help coming up with more "Patriots for Peace" type slogans for an upcoming event in Lexington, VA. I've posted the details on NoWarBlog, which has a comments function. Nell and I ask that you post any good suggestions in the comments. I'm ruling out my own idea - I'D RATHER DIE AN AMERICAN THAN LIVE A HAPSBURG - as too long for a sign.

Commonplace Book - Nice:

On the shelf in the wardroom was a green steel radio with a wire mesh speaker at the center shaped like a daisy. It produced the transmissions of a dozen stations, which wandered on and off the air like restless cats.

Alan Furst, Blood of Victory, 2002

Wilderness of - Well, Not Wilderness Exactly - Here's the Antigua Sun article about the Richard Reid-John Muhammad snipe hunt. Good part one:

Last December, Reid, a Briton who had converted to Islam, allegedly tried to ignite explosives in his shoes while on an American Airlines flight from Paris for Miami. His intended final destination was Antigua.

Actually, his intended final destination was Paradise, as noted below. Good part two:

Two specialists from the Federal Bureau of Investigations and one from the Criminal Investigation Agency (CIA) came to Antigua over the weekend.

Now you know what CIA stands for.

Here's an editorial in the same paper saying the Muhammad case demonstrates the need for reform of the Island's "security and regulatory procedures in the state sector."

THAT'S IT!!! is what Peanuts characters used to shout when someone suddenly said something that made perfect sense. Loyal readers, I give you fellow loyal reader (I hope) Bill Sawyers via e-mail:

What these two losers remind me of are characters in an Elmore Leonard novel. Low-lifes (low lives?) on the wrong side of the law, with a propensity for violence, looking for a way to make a few bucks, maybe even one big score. I could easily imagine them threatening the Antiguan PM. Late at night after a few too many lagers - "Hey lets kidnap the Prime Minister". Doesn't mean there would ever be much of a chance of it happening.

The bullshit stories, the wild schemes, the violence-everything but the ending-Leonard could have written it.

Hmmm. Maybe we can blame it on him.

This comparison is so apt that any of us who have been covering this story and not thought of it should hang our heads in shame. That would be everybody, according to Google News and Google.

UPDATE: I left out Bill Sawyers' name in the first edition of this post! BAD Unqualified Offerings! BAD! (Sorry Bill!)

I Did Not Know That! - Samizdata luminary Brian Mickelthwait has started his own education blog, "about Brian's Education as well as about Education." It will be British-oriented, because what are you going to do with those people, writing about their own country and such, but dealing with general principles too.

Thought for the Day - You know what must really suck? Being a Nigerian official trying to send legitimate e-mail.

A Choice, Not a... Never Mind - Election Day is coming, and like many, you may be wondering, should I vote for the Party that pushed the RAVE Act, or the Party that passed the USA-PATRIOT Act with almost no dissent?

The answer is a two-parter: 1) That would be both major parties. 2) No, you shouldn't.

The People! Divided! Will Never Be United! - Saw my first episode of the Samurai Jack cartoon tonight. It's pretty stylish, which is good. It's on-its-sleeve archetypal, which is intriguing. My heart sank a smidge at the plot, though.

Jack has been catapulted into an evil future dominated by the shapechanger Aku. He makes his weary way to a small town, where the innkeeper cries at the front desk. Jack discovers that something has turned the children of the town evil. When he follows a mob of them through the woods he finds...a rave. Turns out the kids are in thrall to an evil deejay playing (and here Unqualified Offerings will commit redundancy) evil techno. In the climactic battle, the evil deejay assembles his sound equipment into a Transformers-style robot, which, UO must say, was way, way cool. Once Jack defeats the deejay and stops the music, the kids come back to themselves and return to the town. The innkeeper hugs his daughter. Jack leaves town, having balked Aku on this small thing.

Now someone will surely object that the episode was more tongue-in-cheek than I appreciated, but what bugged me was that it seemed to be another case of fratricide among objects of official infringement. Busybodies have seen violent cartoons as the source of all kinds of social problems. Busybodies have seen the rave scene as the source of all kinds of social problems. So here cartoons do the busybodies' work for them. In the feeding frenzy after Columbine, the NRA and Hollywood came under fierce attack for "causing" the massacre. So what did they do? They blamed each other.

"Do what you want with the girl," as George Carlin once said, "but leave me alone!"

Feh.

There's a Pony in Here Somewhere - FoxNews has a roundup-style article about evidence of a possible John Muhammad-Al Qaeda connection. Unqualified Offerings will confess that the article occasioned rippling peals of laughter in this website. This part may be the funniest:

The Antiguan Sun is reporting that members of the CIA and FBI are currently in Antigua investigating a potential tie between Muhammad and Reid. When Reid was questioned by police before boarding an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami, Reid said he was on his way to Antigua to visit family. Information received by U.S. investigators suggests the suspected shoe bomber's father was British, and that his mother was Jamaican.

Let's take this very slowly, shall we? Richard Reid. got on that plane. TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!! He wasn't really attempting to go to Antigua or any place OTHER THAN THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN! Unqualified Offerings has been, as loyal readers know, following the Muhammad case closely, and has a reasonable idea of his movements over time and can state categorically that John Muhammad was not on the bottom of the ocean on December 21, 2001. Actually, we know that Muhammad was still at the Lighthouse Mission in Bellingham, Washington, at that time. It was on December 19 that Una James, Lee Malvo's mother, and Malvo were picked up by the INS. (See the useful Richmond Times-Dispatch chronology.)

Here is a very basic principle of international terrorism: You can not commit a suicide bombing on your way to another appointment. That's in the handbook.

In the strictly-for-what-it's worth category, the Jamaica Observer reports that

The attorney-general [of Antigua] also said that investigations being carried out by two FBI agents is on-going and the task force found no evidence to link Muhammad to Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber who was overpowered by passengers on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami last December when he attempted to detonate a bomb in his sneaker.

The FBI agents flew to St John's last week to check for a possible link between Muhammad and Reid whose final destination was Antigua.
When asked if the agents were still on the island, Thom said, "I don't know at this time. I know from time-to-time they will be travelling in and out of the Island."

That story is datelined today. It is of course possible that the story is wrong. The London Times also has a story, apparently, but it would cost Unqualified Offerings 40 pounds to read it. Any kind reader with an internet sub to the Times who would be willing to float this website the text of the Times story would earn its lasting gratitude.

Glenn Reynolds has an excerpt here. The excerpt strongly resembles, to UO's eye, one of those uncanny Kennedy-Lincoln similarities lists.

(Note: If there turns out to be anything to it after all, never mind!)

You Can't Always Get What You Want - I was kind of hoping for Comic Book Guy.

What
lesser-known Simpsons character are you?

Brought to you by the good folks at sacwriters.com.

Wilderness of Murders - With the partial release of Antigua's report on the activities of John Muhammad and Lee Malvo in that island, the sniper investigation has entered its rococo phase. The Post reports that

The commission's chairman, John Fuller, said tonight that an anonymous source told members that in early 2001 Muhammad spoke of kidnapping Antigua's prime minister, Lester B. Bird, and holding him for ransom. Fuller said the idea apparently did not advance beyond the talking stage. "It was more like throwing out an idea -- something to do to raise money," Fuller said in an interview.

He said the source, whom he described as credible, told the commission that Muhammad discussed taking other violent actions to raise money. Fuller would not elaborate.

The Seattle Times' article on the report (link via Kathy Kinsley) adds a further detail:

Ned said that Muhammad would arrange for people to fly to Antigua from the United States and other countries. Other people would use the return legs on those tickets to enter the U.S. with fake documents, Ned said.

Meanwhile, the people who had flown in would participate in some type of training with Muhammad, a Gulf War veteran, and would fly out later, when more people flew in on new tickets.

Other times, Ned said, Muhammad funded the fake documentation of others so they could attend training.

Asked by The Seattle Times in a telephone interview what type of training Muhammad provided, Ned said, "something like army training." But he said he never witnessed Muhammad do any training.

Fuller, the Antiguan investigator, said the task force has not linked Muhammad to any military training on the small island.

For the time being, Unqualified Offerings officially doubts that either the kidnap plot or the "army training" are true. In the case of the alleged kidnap plot, the revelation's timing seems awfully convenient. As UO noted Friday, Prime Minister Bird was just sued by a teenaged girl for sexual assault. A made up story about being the target of public enemy number one might be seen as just the ticket to changing the local headlines for a few days.

As to the "army training," what we have is an acquaintance, Kithlyn Ned, repeating what Muhammad told him. But we already know that Muhammad is a bullshit artist of Renaissance proportions. He "variously said that he was a CIA officer, worked for the FBI or was an international businessman" while on Antigua, as this Post report notes, and he told his cousin in Baton Rouge last summer that "he had retired from the Army but had been recruited into a secret military unit and assigned to find 500 pounds of C-4 explosives that were stolen from the Army in New Orleans."

If Muhammad told you the earth was round, you'd want to hire surveyors.

(Note: The Richmond Times-Dispatch article with the Baton Rouge conversation looks like a good, one-stop account of Muhammad and Malvo's movements.)

We do know that Muhammad tried to get a job "as a trainer at Special Security Services, a private security firm" on Antigua, but failed to get it because "Wilbur Purcell, the owner of the security business, said Muhammad failed to produce documentation on his military record and other paperwork showing that he had no criminal record," according to the Post.

Of course, the question remains how Muhammad was convincing people to fly to the Islands in the first place. The scam, reportedly, worked like this (per the Seattle Times):

Ned said that Muhammad would arrange for people to fly to Antigua from the United States and other countries. Other people would use the return legs on those tickets to enter the U.S. with fake documents, Ned said.

This would seem to leave the people who flew out stuck in Antigua. Now surely there are worse fates. Nevertheless. Another report (can't find the link) said that the people who flew out would fly back on a later trip, using a return ticket from another of Muhammad's outbound passengers. But Unqualified Offerings has a hard time making sense of that: you have one person per ticket each way, so there's a conservation law in effect. There's no way to get everyone who flies out back to the US and have room for Islanders to fly in too.

UO sees only two ways it could work: One, convince people in the US who are moving to Antigua to buy a round-trip ticket and give you the return portion. Two, keep buying more tickets in a kind of ponzi scheme. In any case, since the outbound flyers were apparently legitimate, police should have their identities. The next step would seem to be talking to them.

Jim, UO hears you saying, we haven't had a funny part in this item yet. How about it? Okay, here, from the Seattle Times:

"There is very good evidence showing that he was a very good forger of U.S. documents," said John Fuller, a member of the Antiguan task force investigating Muhammad's activities on the Caribbean island. "I think he used good American technology, Adobe Photoshop."

Yeah, that's good all by itself. But now compare this from the Post the other day:

He obtained citizenship and a passport by using a birth certificate from Louisiana that falsely claimed that his mother was born in Antigua. A close look at the document shows that the mother's name is in a different typeface and appears to have been pasted over the real entry.

"A 10-year-old could have done it better than he did," said John Fuller, who is heading a four-person government-appointed commission trying to sort out Muhammad's and Malvo's stays on the island.