March Sanity - Your Talking Dog has a firsthand report from the NON-march in NYC. He e-mails:

Really-- a "march" would have been less disruptive, and, naturally, had there been less effort to stifle this, I'm guessing 80-90 per cent of the crowd wouldn't have been there.

UPDATE: Diana Moon has a non-protester's perspective of the day in Manhattan away from the march. Apparently the riot missed her.

You're Either with Us and You're Against Us (sic) - Atrios hits an Iran-news slit filter and tries to decide if he's a wave or a particle. Kind of.

Me, I think the Bush Administration is just trying to see how dumb the Iranians are.

March Matters? - For literally the first time since the summer, I think it might not happen. Not because of the rally in New York, where a large and, from the reports I've seen, largely peaceful crowd stretched for thirty blocks. It's the London protest that may tell the tale - a million people by reasonable estimates. (Perry de Havilland was forced to commit a 90-in-a-60-mile-per-hour-zone violation of Godwin's Law.)

Please don't mistake me: I don't think for one second that Tony Blair gives a shit about "democracy," and if he were a Tory I don't think the crowd would delay him for a minute. But he's a Labourite. Isn't that his party's constituency out there? Doesn't he have to calculate a real possibility that his government falls if he goes to war without the UNSC on board? In a two-party parliamentary system, it's those internal party revolts that'll do you in quicker than anything.

And if Britain goes, the soft support from most of the rest of the nominal allies goes too, and now the Bush Administration is staring down the barrel of political consequences even they may not wish to face. And suddenly we're in What the hell do we do now territory.

Maybe. This Channel 4 poll, while generally bad news for Blair and the Bush Administration re British public opinion, has one bit that may give Blair heart:

So would a second UN resolution do the trick? If Tony Blair had UN backing for war instantly his problem would be solved 82% would back military action. Without any UN support only 28% would back an attack alongside the Americans.

But here's something very interesting - if Tony Blair got a majority of the Security Council to back military action - even if one or two countries vetoed a second resolution - 62% would go to war.

(Link via The Grille via Instapundit.) My hunch is that Blair shouldn't make too much of these numbers, ironically because of criticisms Eugene Volokh made of another British poll:

What struck me most was this line from the story:

Nearly nine out of ten voters think the UN weapons inspectors should be given more time to establish whether Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction, as France, Germany and Russia have urged. Meanwhile, just a third think that Britain and America have so far put forward a convincing case for military action against Iraq.

"Whether Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction" -- is there really a credible debate remaining about that?

Volokh concludes, "I hope British public opinion is not being accurately reported here. But if it is, then just reflects the errors of the British public, not the errors of a hawkish policy." That's as may be. Here's how I parse the response Volokh analyzes:

1. The British public says they want to give inspections more time to prove that Iraq has "weapons of mass destruction."
2. It's seems pretty clear that Iraq has so-called WMDs - at the very least, gas, and probably germs. (The Channel 4 poll suggests that 9 out of 10 Brits believe this, Eugene Volokh believes it, and I do too.)
3. Inescapable conclusion: when Brits tell a pollster, "We want to give the inspectors more time," what they really mean is "We don't want to go to war."

The implication of this exercise for the support Channel 4 currently finds for war in the case of a majority vote by the UNSC (with vetoes by some permanent members) seems obvious. As soon as that condition presents itself, a great number of Britons will switch their answer.

One is free to think well or ill of the British public on this count. But if Tony Blair can add, shouldn't he be feeling nervous?

Guaranteed Bias-Free - Man-Mountain Max Sawicky, announcing that he will defend President Bush against Andrew Sullivan:

I really don't have an axe to grind here. If Bush was increasing spending, I could say bravo and make fun of his conservative base. If he wasn't, I'd revert to standard issue liberal criticism of inadequate public spending. So the facts are of paramount interest.

Whether Permitting(sic): New York States of Mind - Different perspectives from New Yorkers. Jane Galt sent a long e-mail:

I don't know what the standard is for issuing parade permits, but I've been toDC, and I've been to New York, and no, I'm not surprised it's harder to get a permit to march here. The people writing about the protest seem largely unaware of how costly a march would be to the City and the people who live there, in money and inconvenience, something it's wise to keep in mind if your aim is to generate support rather than bonding.

Unlike Washington, for one thing, there are no alternative routes around a march. I've spent many a happy hour stuck on the wrong side of a parade, waiting to get across town without having to contrive some bizarre subway route through Queens to get back to my apartment.

We have more traffic than Washington. People from Washington claim otherwise, but hah! You don't know from traffic. On a weekday or a weekend night, on one of the central avenues (which is where, I guarantee you, they want to march), traffic moves about one block per light. That's about 1/20th of a mile every 2-5 minutes, and yes, you read right; it can easily take an hour to go a mile in a car. It speeds up some on the weekends, but only some. And since it's straight up and down, the parade also blocks cars and shoves an enormous amount of traffic onto the other arteries. It's no fun driving all the way down to 14th street to go around a rally when traffic is moving at the aforementioned speeds. This gets even worse because many of the people coming from all over to attend the rally come in, you guessed it, cars.

Washington shuts down on weekends, at least in the places where marches are held. The marchers here, on the other hand, will be marching straight through heavy residential and commercial districts that do a lot of business on Saturdays (I don't know where the march is being proposed, but there are few districts in Manhattan that don't fit that description, and I don't see them staging the march in Harlem, 11th Avenue, or the Garment District. They almost always want to go right down Madison or Park, where EVERYONE can enjoy a few happy hours with friends and family as they wait to be allowed to cross onto the other half of the island.)

Marchers here want to go through the heart of the most populous residential/commercial neighborhoods; that's how they get attention. But it also generates enormous hassles and expense; police have to redirect traffic, essentially cutting off crosstown flow for several miles (depending on the size of the march), garbage has to be cleaned, security has to be provided. This involves an enormous amount of police overtime, etc, which has to be budgeted for. Storekeepers will lose business, which will cost tax revenue. Many people will not come into the city for the day, and the marchers will not replace their spending. You may not have heard, but we have a $5b deficit. So while I do not think that a police permit should be denied for a rally (nor for a march, if it turns out to be standard practice to issue such permits in the described time for a march of this size), I'm much more sympathetic to restricting the movement than I am to preventing it from taking place. There are just too damn many people in a very small place; any sizeable activity is hideously expensive and disruptive. It's not unreasonable for the City to keep the activity on a scope it can deal with/afford.

On the other hand, having seen these things, and attended them in my misspent youth, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more exuberant protesters try to cause a riot if they're penned in, with some idiot idea of overrunning the police and taking it to the streets. So maybe it's better just to let them march and damn the inconvenience.

Meanwhile, Your Talking Dog writes

I remain troubled by how easily we are willing to err on the side of "security" over liberty.

Fact:  the United States proper has not suffered a terrorist attack (that anyone besides me is willing to classify as such) since 9-11-01 (and we had not suffered one before since 1995 at Oklahoma City and 1993 at, well, the World Trade Center). Bad stuff happens; we can't protect everyone against everything.  All the social trends are bad:  everyone wants protection from everything (and will sue anyone in sight, even for things that are one's own fault; not to be outdone, those BEING sued are pressing for liability caps and restrictions...responsibility is in effect no longer in our lexicon.)  So: we demand that our government "protect us" from "terrorists".  To do so, it says, it must restrict our (centuries' old) liberties.  There seems to be no outcry of: THE HELL YOU DO!  Well, folks, it’s time to put up or shut up, because we're well along the slippery slope.  If this be treason, make the most of it.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden is with your TD on the matter.

Arthur Silber catches the Sun trying to spin out of its earlier position. As to the separate issue of the City's conduct, he writes

With regard to that ruling, and whether the judge's reasoning is entirely convincing, I view it as a pretty close call about the safety issues concerning the march. Since the protesters are being allowed to have a stationary rally, I don't view the ruling itself as a big issue one way or the other.

Colin's Gulch - When Patrick Nielsen Hayden called the Bush Administration "Hubris in search of Nemesis," he didn't just mean Donald Rumsfeld, but it looks like the shoe may fit:

Powell also paid for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s unfortunate jibe at “Old Europe” at week ago, a remark that turned into a hilarious football at the Security Council, mostly at America’s expense. De Villepin, the first of the permanent five to speak, gave an eloquent defense of the U.N. (and the inspections regime), concluding, “In the temple of the United Nations we are all guardians of an ideal, the guardian of a conscience,” he said. “This message comes from an old country, France, that does not forget ... all it owes to freedom fighters that came from the United States of America and everywhere.” His statement brought a sustained ovation from all parts of the chamber, including the press gallery. The Chinese foreign minister, speaking next, referred to his country as “an ancient civilization,” and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw comically countered with: “Britain is also a very old country. It was founded in 1066—by the French!” Powell, improvising, came back with: “America is a relatively new country, but it is the oldest democracy around this table ...” Unfortunately, that appeared to snub America’s most stalwart ally, Great Britain, which has had an operating parliament that outdates America’s founding by many years.

That's Michael Hirsh in MSNBC.com. I'm sure that Rumsfeld felt good when he said it, and Hawkish Punditry has relived that moment with the relish of groupies recounting a special view of a favorite singer's codpiece, and far be it from me to deny the pleasures of the snarky jibe (like the one I just made).

I'm not Secretary of Defense though. And there's nothing I particularly want from these people. Meanwhile other members of the Administration engaged in counterproductive, hubris-oriented behavior appropriate to their personal styles:

One reason for the French victory Friday was Powell’s rather laid-back diplomacy during the week since his broadside at the Council. While Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Vladimir Putin and de Villepin have spent the week traveling to and fro, forging coalitions, making speeches, Powell (who doesn’t like to travel) and Bush have stayed put.

As of now, France, Russia and China are so opposed to a second "serious consequences" resolution - a green light for the US and UK to launch the conquest - that the US won't even bring it up. Therefore

For now, it looks as if the Americans will have to either wait an undetermined number of weeks for inspections to continue (Blix’s next scheduled update is on March 1, when Guinea takes over the presidency from Germany), or go to war to defend the honor of the U.N. Security Council while in defiance of the majority of U.N. Security Council opinion.

Which could well happen. Will probably happen. Which is too bad, and not just because the war is a bad idea. It's too bad because what we have here, thanks to about seven kinds of irony, is the opportunity of an era. To switch myths for a minute, this is the chance for Icarus to make a soft landing.

Here is what the Administration could say:

For sixty years, the United States has striven to defend freedom and keep the peace throughout the globe. We have fought in Asia, the Americas, Africa, Europe and the high seas. We have risked our own nuclear annhilation for the sake of friendly nations, helped repel invaders from Panmunjom to the Panjshir Valley, fought famine and forced resettlement. When an entire country, Kuwait, was erased, we redrew it by the force of American arms. Our critics have pointed out that we have benefitted economically and politically, and this is true. They have complained from time to time of our methods - the arms we've sold to whom, the tactics we've countenanced among our clients, our attention span and understanding of local dynamics - and they have from time to time been right to complain, though make no mistake about it, everywhere we've gone or thought to go, there were local actors eager to have our cooperation, and our critics have as often damned us for our non-involvement in one place as our involvement somewhere else.

We couldn't, in other words, have done it without you. What is clear from this week's action in the UN is that the implicit terms of our bargain are no longer acceptable to the bulk of the international community. Our role has been to make an outsized contribution to the military force required to staunch the bleeding of the world's trouble spots. In return, we have demanded an outsized say in where and how to apply that force. For reasons this Council has considered at length, we have insisted in the disarming and removal of the present leadership of Iraq. We can accept that other nation's don't see it our way. But not that our blood and treasure should be spent to enforce their vision at the expense of ours. The plan for 'continued inspections' rests, we believe, on the continuing, expensive and dangerous presence of US troops in the Iraqi theater. We decline to support this. Similarly, on the Korean Penninsula, we can understand if Japan and South Korea disagree with our estimate of the appropriate response to North Korea's threat to them, but we can not commit our troops to what we consider to be a wrongful policy.

So we will not. Today we begin removing our troops from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey. We have also begun removing the troops we don't have in Jordan - just a trick of the desert sun, folks. As sealift capacity becomes available we will be closing our installations in Korea, Japan and Okinawa too. Now that France is back in NATO's military program, there should be no problem with our pulling out. We continue to prosecute a war against al Qaeda and those who aid al Qaeda, so we will maintain our operations in Afghanistan, and we will keep our regional command post in Qatar - the Emir has already expressed his pleasure that this should be so.

You said you don't want the US to "rule the world." This Council's actions - and inactions - this week have made that unmistakeable. Then we won't. We wish you the best of luck in ruling yourselves. We won't be the hammer you wield, however. This is not a withdrawal from the world, just from a distorted and distorting relation to it. Nor is this a capitulation. Tread where we sleep and you will know our fangs.

Now my fellow anti-interventionists may find the above summary of US conduct since WWII to be self-exculpating to an almost Nixonian degree. But the point is to spin it the way a US official could plausibly spin it. The problem since the massacres of September 11, 2001, has been to figure out a disengagement strategy that does not look like bowing the knee before Osama bin Laden. Old Europe has handed us that chance.

Here are a few of the ironies:

I've written a lot about how the Administration's national security strategy would tend to unite grand coalitions against us. I never appreciated that this could happen in a lucky way. What I mean by this is, we've inspired in the first instance not an alliance of military adversaries, but a "soft coalition" of parliamentarians whose "success" would actually preserve us from the bigger fall waiting at the end of "Preemption Road." In other words, we can choose to meet a lesser Nemesis now rather than a greater Nemesis later.

A subsidiary irony: this means the French et al could be doing us a favor, though that is probably not their intention. (It can't be China's intention.

Final, unfortunate irony: the administration that brought us to this point did so in a way that probably makes them unsuited, by temperament and discernment, to seize it.

UPDATE: The final irony is that if we put it like this, they'd probably let us have the invasion after all. Because I think it would scare the shit out of them.

Let's Be Careful Out There - Cold in New York today. For friends and others going to the non-March near the UN: Stay warm, and behave yourselves. There's apparently been some rumbling by the usual anarchist assholes about doing asshole anarchist things. After two well-behaved events in DC since the fall, it would be nice to think that the New York organizers can keep their acts together. By denying a march permit, the NYPD may have made its job harder, as instead of one big march down a known street a lot of constituent groups are planning "feeder marches" along a variety of sidewalks to the protest site. But nothing the city has or hasn't done justifies destroying the property of retailers who, it must be remembered, are not the ones trying to drag the country into war and destroy the plain english meaning of the word "preemption" besides. As I'm pretty sure Dorothy Day once said, though you couldn't prove it by Google, Let's leave violence to our opponents - the US government.

Not that I think the readers of this site are the window-smashing sort.

Never Mind! - From ABCNews.com:

Feb. 13 — A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.

The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a "dirty bomb" sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.

Here comes the good part:

It was only after the threat level was elevated to orange — meaning high — last week, that the informant was subjected to a polygraph test by the FBI, officials told ABCNEWS.

"This person did not pass," said Cannistraro.

Does that mean we can take the duct tape back if we kept the receipt? Not necessarily:

Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that the high level of precautions is fully warranted.

Still, there's a lesson here:

It's not the first time a captured al Qaeda operative has made up a huge story and scared a lot of people.

The FBI concluded the information that led to a nationwide hunt for five men suspected of infiltrating the United States on Christmas Eve was fabricated by an informant, and the agency called off the alert sparked by the information.

And Colin Powell's UN report relied heavily on intelligence from defector debriefings and captive interrogations. Hm.

Some people get offended at the notion that Colin Powell might, you know, lie. But actually, Powell has people for that. He doesn't even have to know he's lying. All that has to happen is that, under ferocious pressure from the White House, the intelligence agencies regrade selected interrogation reports from UNRELIABLE to RELIABLE. Bingo. You now have "intelligence" connecting Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. You had the same reports the day before. You just thought the detainees and defectors were full of shit, probably for good reason. But your bosses want results.

Anyway, be careful out there:

Officials said this one got so far because it coincided with other intelligence, that officials still believe points to a coming attack, timed to hostilities with Iraq.

And maybe they're right.

So What Happened - Much consternation among doves the last two days about the evolving story of the contents of the latest Osama bin Laden broadcast. Early in the day there were reports that in the tape bin Laden called for Saddam's overthrow. This was later removed from reports and blamed on a translators' error. Given the possibly odd provenance of the tape, with a US government official (Colin Powell) revealing the existence of the tape arguably before al-Jazeera actually got a copy, suspicions ran high. Atrios has a screen shot and a chronology; Justin Raimondo devoted his column to the issue. Moderate Mark Kleiman tries to make sense of the story here. (This is easiest to do, apparently, if you assume Glenn Reynolds is an Iraqi agent. I have not made this accusation myself, but others have!)

The most sinister explanation is that the tape is a fake, the USG kept switching the translation around until they found one they liked and the major media went along with it. I suspect that what actually happened is that, when it comes to fast-breaking stories, the early reports are never to be relied on. We saw this over and over during last fall's sniper case, for instance. And remember the thirty-three pounds of plutonium siezed along the Turkish border?

So it's just a normal media snafu. Note that that doesn't change the fact that the various White House claims that the tape proved a "partnership" betwen Saddam and al Qaeda were ridiculously overdrawn and unsupported by any plain reading of the text. That's the real scandal.

So what is bin Laden really up to on the tape? I think a couple of things, possibly. The first theory comes from a Stand Down commenter, Dave, in this comments thread:

Osama is putting himself in the same position that Mao's Chinese Communists were in when Japan invaded China in WWII: the government can't fight the invaders, so the insurgents do the job, prove their worth, and end up the winners in the end.

While Dave has clearly forgotten that there is no history other than 1938-1945, his explanation makes a hell of a lot of sense. I would argue that the other possibility, which need not be exclusive of Dave's, is seduction - specifically the attempted seduction by bin Laden of Saddam or anyone in the Iraqi hierarchy who might be convinced to give bin Laden's people Bad Things.

Regardless, if you enjoyed the last tape controversy, you won't have to wait long for the next one.

Imitation LiveJournal Item - This is true: This morning I dreamt I was one of Michael Jordan's personal assistants. It was some kind of holiday - All Star Game or something, but not basketball, because we ended up in an outdoor stadium in the snow - so we were all getting much of the day off, we assistants. Christmas was coming, because I spent a lot of time trying to figure out "What the hell do you get Michael Jordan for Christmas? Particularly on a personal assistant's salary." I decided to get him a copy of Michael Murphy's Golf in the Kingdom, a mystical fable about playing golf in Scotland, on cassette. I didn't figure he'd read the book if I bought that, but I thought he'd like the tape. I felt really good about my choice, even - hey, Phil Jackson was into the Zen thing, so the interest might be there.

But before that, at the morning meeting, we were all sitting around the table, we assistants. Michael was standing. He tossed me a dollar to "get a soda at the game."

"Like I could buy a soda for a buck at this stadium," I said.

"Here then," he said, and peeled off a hundred and a twenty, folded them over and put it on the table in front of me. "This should work."

"Jeeze, boss," I said, half offended, half embarrassed. "I wasn't trying to get more money out of you."

But I pocketed the hundred twenty bucks as I said it.

(Note to LiveJournal users: We kid because we love!)

Worth Thinking About - Dr. Manhattan has been mulling over such details of the Code Orange alert as we have, particularly the mention of "Jewish-owned hotels and motels" as possible targets, and has a theory that makes a certain amount of sense. It's worth putting out there, since it's the kind of thing that could actually be guarded against by the forewarned:

In a couple of months, thousands of Jews will be in hotels to celebrate Passover. Many large, well-known hotels have programs for Passover that attract hundreds of Jewish families. Those in NY can pick up a copy of the Jewish Week to see an amazing array of advertisements for such programs.

The schedules are known well in advance; it's not like Passover's scheduling can be changed, and the Seder ritual feast is always held the first two nights of the holiday (outside of Israel) after sundown. and the Seder is long enough that its conclusion on the East Coast can overlap with its commencement on the West Coast - which makes it easier to plan multiple attacks in different places.

Since 9/11, what has been the most "successful" episode of Jew-killing? Last year's "Passover Massacre" in Israel. That atrocity was perpetrated by Hamas, but al-Qaeda has been willing to crib techniques and tactics from other terrorist groups.

In a comment on Dr. M's site, Meryl Yourish opines that Passover is too far away to be the subject of the current alert, and maybe it is. But there may be others down the road.

Wrong A.N.S.W.E.R. - David Corn of the Nation has been obsessed with the flaws of the antiwar movement for some time, but if this column about plans for A.N.S.W.E.R.'s February 15th San Francisco protest is accurate, things just aren't improving at the rate the rest of us doves need.

So it was natural that [Michael Lerner's] name was floated as a speaker for the protest. Not In Our Name and United for Peace & Justice were two of the four coalitions behind the event. (According to Lerner, he did not ask to address the San Francisco rally. "You can't say much in three minutes," he notes.) But International ANSWER, another of the organizers, said no.

Lerner's crime: he had dared to criticize ANSWER, an outfit run by members of the Workers World Party, for using antiwar demonstrations to put forward what he considers to be anti-Israel propaganda.

I hold no brief for Michael "Politics of Meaning" Lerner. But he's no worse than any of the other speakers the groups plan to put on stage, like the creepy

Abdul Malim Musa, a Muslim cleric. On October 31, 2001, Musa had appeared at a news conference at the National Press Club with other Muslim activists and members of the New Black Panther Party, where speakers asserted that Israel had launched the 9/11 attacks and that thousands of Jews had been warned that day not to go to work at the World Trade Center. At that press conference, Musa blasted the "Zionists in Hollywood, the Zionists in New York, and the Zionists in D.C." who "all collaborate" to put down blacks and Muslims.

who was allowed to speak in Washington. (Bright side: the sound system sucked that day.)

I won't pretend to be able to peer into the soul of any given "anti-Zionist." I'm as sure there's plenty of antisemitism on the left and among Israel's opponents as I am that plenty of Israel's opponents are not motivated by antisemitism. But as one of my readers wrote a few weeks ago, George Washington didn't just warn of passionate attachments to other nations; he also inveighed against passionate antipathies.

You can't separate the question of the government of Israel's national security strategy from the question of the Iraq war. But you can for damn sure separate the blanket acceptance of the program of Israel's direst enemies from opposition to the war. That A.N.S.W.E.R. refuses to do this would be disturbing if their shortcomings weren't already well known. The question now is will the other groups at the top of the movement have the guts to take them on?

One World - Mrs. Offering woke me last night to ask me where the heck we're supposed to find a room we can seal off in the unprepossessing split-level house that serves as the World Headquarters of Highclearing.com. Of course, lots of people have the same worries, as we can see by reading Salam Pax and Imshin. I daresay they've got it worse, though the hassle factor is universal.

Here's some terror advice from Top Federal Officials.

At Last! An Effect on the World! - Couldn't stop the war. Not a good enough writer. But at least I inspired Chris Newman to sunset the word "idiotarian," which he does in this well-written sayonara.

Sympathy for the European Devils - Two readers spoke up on behalf of the French (and Germans and Belgians). Nick Sweeney writes

You're missing the point a little, Jim: the French/German/Belgian argument is that the decision to push through contingency measures on Turkey's defence capabilities is deliberate designed to escalate the momentum towards war: that is, to create a situation whereby Turkey is *less* safe. The complaint (rather more well-founded now, in light of the stock market boom) is that if you talk something up, it makes it much, much more likely to happen, no matter what underpins it.

d-squared talks about this phenomenon here.

It's actually a good way of comparing the true definition of "anticipation" -- acting ahead of something that's *going* to happen -- with the looser modern take, of acting to deal with something that might happen. And the French are quite right to argue that sabre-rattling right now, while Blix and co are writing their reports, is nothing short of obscene.

And Kevin Maroney writes:

You've probably heard this from a dozen people already, but what the French, Germans, and Belgians voted for was to disallow the use of NATO troops to defend Turkey *in the eventuality that Turkey is attacked because it's helping the US attack Iraq*.

This is, in fact, not a disgrace; NATO is not an offensive alliance, but a defensive one. If NATO were to "defend" Turkey in such a situation, it would be like the police threatening to beat someone up for the crime of not paying protection to the mob.

I still think the NATO dispute will get worked out - that's how bureaucratic self-perpetuation works. But that doesn't mean the organization isn't way past its smell date.

Thought for the Day - Attack is apparently so inevitable now that, on the snippet of NPR I heard from Mrs. Offering's clock radio this morning, the speakers weren't even imagining that it might not happen.

Does Saddam have a doctrine of preemption?

In "His" Own Words - Reader Jonathan Hendry found the full text of bin Laden's (if it is bin Laden) message on the Beeb site. I haven't had the chance to read it in detail yet - it's pretty long. Meanwhile, Julian Sanchez writes on his own site that

You have to be a little nuts to be the leader of a massive terrorist organization like Al Qaeda, but you don't last as long as bin Laden has by being a dunce. At a time when Russia, France, and Germany are pushing back against a war that had seemed increasingly inevitable, this is precisely the sort of thing needed to overcome that opposition and guarantee that an invasion takes place. Surely bin Laden realizes as much: so then why would he broadcast such a message just now? Why, unless that result is precisely what he's attempting to encourage, in hopes of enflaming further hatred against the United States, and getting rid of the hated Hussein in the process? If the pair truly were in "partnership," you'd expect bin Laden to be rather more discreet about it, for his partner's sake.

This makes a great deal of sense, though if OBL is already convinced that war is inevitable now, as a lot of the rest of us are, he might throw caution to the wind even if he were Saddam's partner, since he wants the political capital of publically opposing the Great Satan. I think Julian's reading is far more likely, but you never know.

I certainly agree with this part:

Some folks have speculated that this tape is a fabrication of an administration hungry for war, that the timing is just too convenient. The timing is convenient. But that doesn't mean the tape is a fake, because the one person more eager for invasion than George W. Bush is Osama bin Laden.

So It Begins - Some doves have warned that the Administration's policy would tend to drive our antagonists together. Also that Al Qaeda would attempt to capitalize politically on any US conquest of Iraq. Well, Al Qaeda's trying. I can't find a transcript of the tape yet, but this alternate story (from AP) includes the following:

In Tuesday's tape, the speaker urged the Iraqis to stay strong against a U.S. attack and blunt the force of a U.S. aerial assault by "digging large numbers of trenches and camouflaging them."

He described al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan withstanding heavy U.S. bombardment by hiding in trenches. "With all the might of the enemy, they were unable to defeat us and take over that position."

"We advise about the importance of drawing the enemy into long, close and tiring fighting, taking advantage of camouflaged positions in plains, farms, mountains and cities," he said. He said the enemy is terrified about urban warfare "because they will have big casualties."

Am I the only one who can't help thinking of Richard Nixon and the Redskins?

The Playmaker?: The Redskins made the playoffs but lost in the first round to the San Francisco 49ers on December 26. During the game, Allen used a play that Nixon had suggested that resulted in a loss of yards. With the Redskins’ season over, he decided to root for the Miami Dolphins in the Super Bowl, figuring that his residence in Key Biscane made him a sometime Florida resident. On January 3, 1972, he called Miami head coach Don Shula at 1:30 in the morning and suggested the Dolphins use a quick slant pass in the game.
Source: The Washington Post, January 5, 1972

(From Nixon and Sports Images.)

It should be noted that the US could give the arab world free ice cream and Osama bin Laden would try to use the act to attack the United States. I just think a war is a whole lot easier to get people upset about than free ice cream.

UPDATE: Matt Hogan thinks bin Laden should adopt the slogan, JIHAD NOW, SOCIALISM NEVER! I'm allowed to write this "as long as put in context" - the context being, I suppose, that if Matt and I had a chance to shoot bin Laden in the stomach and settle back to watch him bleed to death, we'd be willing to play mumblety-peg, well, I wonder if I could blog live from the scene.

Honor Roll IV - I've updated the honor roll of pro-war writers who have denounced the awful New York Sun editorial. I want to stress that I meant it when I chose the name. I never intended to imply that the list comprised "the only honorable hawks." This list was intended as a sincere appreciation. I've never made an exhaustive inspection of the hawkish internet press either - there could be people out there that have weighed in and I just don't know it. Not denouncing the Sun doesn't make someone a fascist. Supporting the Sun would make you a fascist, but I haven't seen any such pieces, nor do I particularly wish to.

Rift Wars - From MSNBC.com:

The head of NATO urged France, Germany and Belgium to reconsider their veto of defense preparations for Turkey ahead of a possible Iraq war, saying the decision would have grave consequences for the alliance.

If you get a chance, put money on this dispute being worked out. It's up against a serious institutional dynamic, after all. Were it to destroy NATO, NATO would perforce no longer exist. That flies in the face of the self-perpetuation imperative driving any institution. It would also represent a radical change for all the parties involved, and radical change is scary.

Whether Permitting II - Lynxx Pherrett has also been following the UFPJ case. He offers a sympathetic reading of Judge Jones' decision, noting, correctly, that Judge Jones' ruling agrees strongly with his and Diana Moon's view of the difference between an annual parade, scheduled months in advance, and a more sudden event like the February 15th march. And as he mentions, he gets extra credit for managing to find data for a comparison with A.N.S.W.E.R.'s practices.

What we have here is a direct contradiction between Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU and Chief Esposito of the NYPD, with Ms. Lieberman averring in my interview that the lead time was "well within" normal tolerances for an event of this size, and Chief Esposito saying the opposite. The way to settle this would be to find out if the NYCLU can provide a list of marches this large that were approved on 25-days notice.

Meanwhile, Justin Raimondo e-mails to ask

. . . don't you find it a bit odd that NYC is imposing a "no movement" rule on political rallies, and Washington, D.C. isn't? After all, both cities were attacked, both are presumably under the same "orange" alert as the rest of the nation.

I'd say I find it significant but not odd. If anything, NYC's infrastructure may be better equipped to handle a sudden influx of people than DC. On the other hand, New York City suffered far worse during the attacks than DC, which will have an outsized effect on the minds of its officials and residents, and the last two city administrations have had strong control tendencies anyway.

But I still think that, while defensibly wrong, the decision is wrong. That is, I read the judge as striking the wrong balance. Reader Steve Cohen stengthens a point I intended to make more strongly in last night's item. (That item got hosed halfway through and had to be reconstructed from scratch.) A blanket ban on political parades disproportionately favors the interests of whoever happens to be in power, because it is whoever happens to be out of power who will be most inclined to march. Writes Steve Cohen:

have to disagree with you in your partial endorsement (or is it tepid disapproval) of New York's refusal to allow a march permit. The point about no political marches being allowed overlooks that the War Party doesn't need to march. All they have to do is turn on the TV and watch their president validate their views.

Marches are an important way for our side to make the point that the people don't want this war and need to be listened to. Need to be listened to. That's a controversial point, by the way. Yesterday's Chicago Tribune contained an article by a radio personality who said that he shared many of the anti-war crowd's fears about the war, but he hopes the president will not listen to the people - that he was put in office to do a job and he should be allowed to do it. Pardon me, but he wasn't elected to do THAT job.

I also can't help but notice that after all the ANSWER parades were allowed and then criticized for their affiliation with ANSWER, here we finally have a non-ANSWER parade, and it's being disallowed.

That's the tragedy. But it's still an open question whether this is substantially the result of UFPJ's late start. Jason Kafoury told me that the group held its first meeting January 7. UFPJ tried, very quickly, to assume the burden of coordinating the antiwar movement. Judge Jones obviously thinks it's too quick. Perhaps she can enjoin the White House to delay the war.

Party All the Time - Julian has pictures from last Thursday's DC blogarama. (None of me.)

UPDATE: Picture page now with More Unqualified Offerings. I only look semiridiculous, I like to think.

Music Notes - Billboard reports:

Zevon Reissues Tout Bonus Material

Warren Zevon's back catalog will get a boost March 25 when EMI/Capitol reissues the singer/songwriter's 1969 debut "Wanted Dead or Alive," as well as his two Virgin Records efforts, 1987's "Sentimental Hygiene" and 1989's "Transverse City."

All discs house varying degrees of bonus material, with "Wanted" boasting a second, previously unreleased 10-track album titled "A Leaf in the Wind."

More details in the article.

So What Did You Learn Today? That it's easier for a blogger to get people on the phone and get them to answer questions than you might think. I just told people my name, that I ran a political weblog named Unqualified Offerings and that my call was a "press inquiry." Tomorrow I will bug Donald Rumsfeld about a couple of things . . .

Whether Permitting (sic) - A follow-up to last night's discussion of the NYC march permit controversy. The day's news is that US District Judge Barbara Jones upheld New York City's decision to allow the February 15th protesters to assemble for a rally but not to march. Newsday reports that the New York Civil Liberties Union says it will appeal. Newsday:

Jones concluded that the city’s need to protect the public and ensure the safety of the UN in this “time of heightened security” overrides the demonstrators’ rights to march by the Secretariat Building on First Avenue.

“The heightened security concerns posed by an unorganized, large scale march threaten the city’s interest in maintaining the public safety,” Jones wrote. “This is significant governmental interest that warrants the city’s denial of a parade permit in this case.”

I was able to interview representatives of the NYCLU and United for Peace and Justice today. I also reached the very helpful Lisa Zebrowski of the New York City Law Department, but her boss was traveling today and Ms. Zebrowski was authorized only to release an official statement, which she e-mailed within five minutes of concluding our call. The statement pertains only to today's court decision and is . . . short:

Statement from Jeffrey D. Friedlander, First Assistant Corporation Counsel, New York City Law Department, on the ruling of United for Peace and Justice v. City of New York, et al.

We are gratified that Judge Jones agreed with the Police Department's assessment that a march proposed for Saturday by United for Peace and Justice would have put the public's safety at risk. We will continue to work with the organizers so their voices can be heard consistent with the First Amendment and the interests and safety of the City.

NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman told me the following:

o The January 22 phone call was the initial approach to the NYPD.
o This lead time (three-plus weeks) is well within the normal, acceptable range for securing a permit for an event of this size.
o At no time did the NYPD refuse to authorize a rally as opposed to a march.
o In her judgment it is "not clear" that the offered site is big enough to accomodate the size of gathering envisioned.

I asked her why a rally with no march would not be sufficient. She said a march would enable the protesters to convey their message to more places around the city, including the UN, and that marches are a classic and effective form of protest.

She also said that the NYPD testified that it has refused all requests for political marches since last fall, a statement independently verified by this Leonard Levitt column in today's Newsday:

[Assistant Chief Michael] Esposito, who testified at the hearing, said that since last fall the department has not issued a single permit for a protest march anywhere in Manhattan south of 59th Street.

The NYPD has continued to approve non-political parades, including very large ones, as discussed in the NYCLU complaint. Ms. Lieberman said that the news of the policy came as a shock.

I next spoke with Jason Kafoury, media coordinator for UFPJ. He said that all their contacts with the City were through the NYCLU and deferred to them regarding dates. He said that the police initially offered an alternate parade route, but rescinded it at a later meeting, which also jibes with Levitt's column:

[Michael] Esposito also testified that he had offered an alternative plan for Saturday's planned protest, allowing a march north on Third Avenue to 47th Street, then east to an assembly point near the UN. But that plan, he said, was rejected by Chief of Department Joseph Esposito because, he said, the UN was considered a "sensitive" area.

I asked Jason Kafoury if he thought the rally site was adequate to the anticipated size of the event. He expressed a couple of concerns:

o The geometry would make it hard for many people to hear the speakers [a plus for someone like me, but a minus for other demonstrators]
o It's a hilly area, making it hard for many people to see the platform [see above]

His response to the "Why NOT just a rally?" question:

o Weather. It's winter and it would be best for the crowd to have movement.
o A march is more visual.
o A march would also be the best way to show the participants' "diversity."

As I wrote last night, I called International A.N.S.W.E.R. to try to get comparison information on permit-application timelines for their own events. They never called me back.

Before we get into whatitallmeans, some further reading: Diana Moon's long, disdainful response to my item of last night, and Eugene Volokh's blog item about the Constitutional issues in play, CONTENT-BASED AND CONTENT-NEUTRAL SPEECH RESTRICTIONS, which we'll have occasion to return to.

Herewith the opinionated part of this post.

Based on what I heard today from the City's legal adversaries and what I read in the press reports, I think it's unlikely that the Bloomberg Administration has been engaged in malicious thwarting of the UFPJ event - that is, I am much less inclined to believe that the Republican city administration is carrying water for the Republican federal administration and attempting to sabotage this particular march. Newsday's article on the hearing decision:

Jones also noted that since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the city has banned all demonstrations, parades and other public events in front of the UN and U.S. Mission across the street.

By refusing to allow the UFPJ march to pass the UN, the City is being consistent with its recent policy rather than inconsistent. Could anything change my mind back? Yes. The NYPD testified in court that they have denied all political parade permits since last fall. If that turned out not to be true, we'd be back to differential treatment of political groups within their own self-declared time frame.

Something else I suggested last night was that the timeline suggested that the NYPD was stringing the NYCLU along, taking three or four working days to fax a requested parade permit. Certainly it took Lisa Zebrowski (in a different office) mere minutes to perform the equivalent task of e-mailing me an official statement. "They must have been busy with other things" doesn't seem to have much power as an explanation.

But I can offer a plausible, benign interpretation of the delay, on a speculative basis: Before June 22, this march already was well-publicised. That meant that the people on the receiving end of the NYCLU's early inquiries knew they were getting a hot political football kicked their way. "No political marches" was about to collide with "big political march." Serious pileup possible. It's the kind of thing one would hand off to someone who would hand it off to someone who would rather not think about it right then. And the days go by. (Note: none of my interviewees endorse or have been asked to endorse this notion.)

That leaves us with what I'd argue is a defensibly bad policy and a defensibly wrong judicial decision, based on my understanding of Professor Volokh's criteria:

First Amendment law has long (and correctly) recognized a distinction between

1. content-based speech restrictions that suppress speech precisely because of the information or ideas that the speech communicates, and

2. content-neutral speech restrictions that suppress speech because of its content-independent side effects, such as excessive noise, traffic obstruction and the like.

Content-based restrictions are generally unconstitutional, unless they fall within certain categorical exceptions that don't apply here. Content-neutral restrictions, though, are often constitutional if they leave open ample alternative channels for communication.

It seems to me that

The City does not appear to be discriminating among political parades. To the best of our knowledge they have not, say, approved a "Free Iraq" or "Down with SUVs" march since their stated time frame of last fall.

The City does appear to be discriminating between political and non-political parades, having approved major "non-political" marches. ("Non-political" earns scare quotes since political controversies seem to frequently envelope events like the Saint Patrick's Day parade.)

This discrimination certainly seems to constitute a content-based restriction.

Non-political parades also require extensive security and present the same risks - occupation of resources, presentation of targets etc. - that political parades do.

Is there a harm in restricting a political group to a rally rather than a march? I think so. Marches are a different order of protest:

A rally makes most of the participants spectators, while a march makes them performers. That is, a march enables the participants to present their message - chants, signs, floats - to theoretical onlookers.

A march clarifies the stance of the participants in a way a rally does not. Someone listening at an antiwar rally may simply be listening to the presentation rather than endorsing it, may even actively oppose it. Someone walking in an antiwar march is clearly expressing opposition to the war.

The word "diversity" sets my teeth on edge because it's become such a jargon term, but there's a non-jargon sense in which Jason Kafoury's use of it makes sense. A march gives every participant visibility at every point along a parade route. The theoretical onlooker - perhaps on the steps of the UN - gets serially exposed to a wide variety of antiwar messages. Many may not resonate, but some may.

There can be freedom of association within a march. I wouldn't want to march in close proximity to a group brandishing the Palestinian flag, for instance. In marches I've participated in, I've been able to keep my distance from groups I didn't much like.

So, it's worse to rally than to march. Against that set the government's real security concerns. Against that set all the events it has authorized in the last year and a half - the marathons, the parades and so on. Again, I think the NYPD and the Court's positions are defensible but wrong.

I also have a couple of structural concerns about the policy, concerning the government's relation to its citizens.

First, and less importantly, one distinction between political and nonpolitical parades is that the latter tend to be opportunities for politicians to show themselves to advantage, while the former tend to quite another character. The city government's policy is self-serving at both ends.

More importantly, the policy marks out political speech as inherently more dangerous to the public than nonpolitical speech. It deprecates the distinction between political speech and political violence, and implies that political expression is inherently threatening. It's a problematic attitude for a government to have.

How Do They Go? - This MSNBC article purporting to explain the economics of the airline business seems a) never to discuss the cost of fuel; b) doesn't explain that ticket pricing is so wildly variable even within a single flight because airline seats are essentially commodities. When you buy a ticket on a plane, you and the airline are engaging in the same sort of speculation found in a pork belly trade. This is largely why so few people on either side of the deal are ever happy.

Death of NATO - I thought we should have sunsetted this particular "entangling alliance" almost a decade ago, but this wouldn't have been the way I chose:

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Feb. 10 — France, Germany and Belgium blocked NATO efforts to begin planning for possible Iraqi attacks against Turkey, deepening the rift between those countries and the United States over the Iraq crisis. The move infuriated U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who called it a “disgrace.”

Not often I get to agree with Donald Rumsfeld.

THE ALLIANCE would have automatically begun planning for the defense of Turkey — which fears retaliation from neighboring Iraq in case of an invasion — at 4 a.m. EST if no country protested the move. France beat the deadline by an hour with its veto, and Belgium backed the move as expected. Germany expressed its support as well.

I consider our Iraq policy to be deeply unwise. But that doesn't excuse a supposed alliance for leaving a member state exposed to that policy hanging. What's Turkey supposed to do, pick up and move?

Orange Crush - Glenn Hauman of View From Above e-mails:

One note you may not be aware of: NYC has been at Orange ever since the system was inaugurated, and has never gone off it.

Now this is interesting. (I haven't been able to confirm it independently, but on the evidence of his weblog, Glenn is a careful fellow.) It would seem to mean that:

a) the City disapproved the UFPJ march under Code Orange;
b) the City approved the St. Paddy's Day march under Code Orange.

That looks like game and set already if not game, set and match.

Patrick Hynes writes:

And you propose to inquire of the principals "When did the City first offer a
rally?"

It seems to me that your question might not be the right one. If I understand the situation correctly, the request was for A (a march) + B (a rally), and the City said no only to A. The City never said no to B, and so it would not have made sense for the City to "offer" B as an alternative to the denied A. In addition, it looks like the City believed that even after it had denied the "march," there was still going to be an "event," which would presumably consist of the non-denied "rally." If my reading of the facts is correct, your question should be, "Did the City ever deny permission to conduct a rally?"

This sounds like an excellent and appropriate modification.

Creeps - We've had a lot of false alarms about Homeland Security, but if this MSNBC report is accurate, it confirms that al Qaeda are some twisted racist fuckers. (But you knew that.)

But Foxman said the FBI did appear to focus on one area: to identify hotels that are owned by Jews. The issue of possible attacks on Jewish-owned hotels was specifically raised by senior FBI officials with field-office chiefs during a 90-minute conference call on Friday, officials said. During the conference call, a senior official cited the recent Al Qaeda attack on a Bali nightclub that killed nearly 200 people last October, saying that the bureau now believes the facility was targeted because the owner was Jewish. NEWSWEEK could not independently confirm that assertion. Another recent Al Qaeda attack in Mombasa, Kenya, was aimed at a hotel that was frequented by Israelis. In addition, sources said, German law-enforcement agencies have collected information from defectors indicating that terror suspect Abu Moussab Al-Zarqawi, a Palestinian whom the Bush administration says is the link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, had recently been inciting followers in Europe to attack Jewish targets.

Link via Letter from Gotham.

Shall We? - Hesiod suggests, "Surely, if allegedly lying under oath about whether you had sex with an intern is grounds for impeachment, [Hell yes! - UO] allowing a terrorist training camp to operate for months, even after one of its 'graduates' allegedly killed a U.S. diplomat last year, qualifies for a 'high crime,' or a 'misdemeanor' of office."

Gee it would seem so.

UPDATE: But his strained attempt to link support for the Second Amendment with support for preemptive war is silly. For one thing, the analogy is just poorly drawn. For a second, anti-interventionist libertarians like me, the CATO mafia, the paleos at LewRockwell.com and the crowds around Reason and Liberty are every bit as pro-gun rights as the neolibertarians are. For all I know, we are moreso. Heck, I've essentially applied a gun rights-based analysis to the level of the nation-state in arguing against the wisdom of "militant nonproliferation" and I'm not the only one.

Truth Commission - I agree with Avedon Carol's point that the burden of argument lies with those counseling war. But she makes some ancillary claims that don't stand up:

These are people [the Bush Administration national security brain trust] who thought they could fix things by playing "Let's you and him fight" between Iraq and Iran. These are people who thought creating an insane army of religious fanatics (the Mujahadeen) was a cool way to deal with a USSR that was already trying to move toward democracy anyway.

Actually, aid to the mujahideen began under Jimmy Carter. Zbigniew Bzrezinski even says that the Carter Administration began its covert support of the Afghan resistance before the Moscow-led coup and invasion of 1979. (I wrote about it here and here.) And while the Reagan Administration ramped up the program, in cooperation with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, throughout the 1980s, it's very hard to say that the Brezhnev/Andropov/Chernenko era was characterized by "already trying to move toward democracy anyway." That takes us up to 1985 or so - more than an entire Reagan term. Then comes Gorbachev, but it's an open question just how "democratic" he intended things to get before they slipped out of his control. Googling Gorbachev "black berets", for instance, turns up this interesting Time Europe analysis from 1991. Avedon would have a hard sell with the "trying to move toward democracy anyway" argument among an audience of Latvians or Lithuanians.

What the history of the muhahideen really tells us is that there can be a heavy, stubborn cost to strategic games undertaken for even the most serious of reasons, and that foreign interests are not labor-saving devices the US can switch on and off as it chooses. This matters terribly for the current situation, where any number of deals the government has made with the "Coalition of the Bought" have the potential to go very, very sour. And those are just the ones we know about.

The Myth of Media Deregulation is Jesse Walker's Reason article about the real causes of "media consolidation":

What do all these battles have in common? They all involve either new regulations or new problems caused by an old regulatory structure. And they all have the effect of reducing our media choices—put another way, of reducing our alternatives to Clear Channel.

Honor Roll III - Neel Krishnaswami writes

Sure. I'm a pro-war libertarian[*], and my reaction can be summed up as: Bloomberg and the NYC administration are idiots. You can't defend freedom by suppressing it.

[*] Sorry, I'm not a neo-libertarian. My belief that Murray Rothbard spoke garbled nonsense is just a sign that my intellect is in working order.

I've gone into my own problems with Rothbard and his most devoted followers before, but anti-interventionism among libertarians goes way beyond Rothbard himself.

Aaron Haspel of God of the Machine writes, "I'm pro-war, and I want in." And so he is.

Arthur Silber has a long, fulsome deprecation of the Sun's position.

Diana Moon says the Sun's editorial is "abysmal. But it's irrelevant" She also points out, correctly, that the current position of the Bloomberg Administration is to allow a rally but not a march. She links directly to the NYCLU's complaint, which is useful for parsing the chronology.

Diana defends the Bloomberg Administration on the grounds that our current Homeland Security Code is Orange. This would seem to make New York City luckier than they knew about the results of their last election: the Bloomberg Administration is not just prudent; it's prescient.

Because according to the NYCLU motion, the city government denied the permit on February 4th. The Feds declared Code Orange on February 7th. And on the evidence, that February 4th decision came at the end of two weeks' runaround. Item 17 notes that the NYCLU first contacted the NYPD for a parade permit on January 22nd:

The NYCLU specifically informed the official that the group wished to assemble near the United Nations; to march past the UN on First Avenue, across 42nd Street to Sixth Avenue, and up Sixth Avenue to near Central Park; and then to stage a rally at a suitable location near Central Park. Counsel further informed the NYPD official that the plaintiff expected between 50,000 and 100,000 participants, and perhaps more. At the conclusion of the conversation, counsel asked for an immediate meeting with the NYPD to discuss the planned event, as is customary in circumstances such as this.

We interrupt this chronology: it will bear researching tomorrow if the NYCLU's 1/22/03 contact was the first attempt to secure a permit for the march. If it is, that might reflect poorly on UFPJ. I doubt you'd catch the communards at ANSWER waiting until three weeks before the event. However, I don't know what's typical in the march permit-securing business in New York - I'll try to find out. In any case, the NYCLU, an organization that I infer to have some social standing in the City and to be somewhat familiar to its government, seems to have encountered a bit of a responsiveness problem:

18. The NYCLU repeated its request for a meeting with the NYPD on Thursday, January 23; Friday, January 24; and Monday, January 27. On Tuesday, January 28, the NYCLU spoke with the head of the NYPD's Legal Bureau and then sent by facsimile to that official a letter detailing the plaintiff's request for a parade permit as originally conveyed in the phone conversation that took place on January 22.

And you thought big cities were turning to Republican mayors out of a hunger for more responsive governments!

19. Late in the day of January 28, the NYPD informed the NYCLU that the Department would not issue a permit for the march requested by the plaintiff. The NYCLU promptly informed the Department that the plaintiff would consider changing the route of the proposed march or changing other aspects of the planned event to address any reasonable concerns the NYPD had about the march. At the conclusion of this conversation, the NYCLU asked the Department to propose alternatives that would be satisfactory to the NYPD, which the Department routinely does in circumstances such as these.

20. On Wednesday, January 29, the NYPD informed the NYCLU that it would not allow the plaintiff to conduct any march in conjunction with the February 15 anti-war event, regardless of the route of the event and regardless of any other aspect of the planned event. The reason given for the denial was congestion and related concerns arising out of a march.

No stipulation that a stationary rally was offered at this time. (Also worth checking.) Then the NYCLU threatened to sue:

21. Following receipt of the NYPD's decision on Wednesday, January 29, the plaintiff, through counsel, informed the City that it intended to file suit in this matter. The Office of Corporation Counsel then notified plaintiff's counsel that it and the NYPD wished to meet with the plaintiff to discuss possible march options, and plaintiff's counsel agreed not to file suit pending that meeting.

So everybody had a meeting:

22. A meeting took place on Thursday, January 30 with high-level officials from the NYPD and the Office of Corporation Counsel at which the NYPD informed United for Peace and Justice that it would consider allowing a march to take place in the vicinity of the United Nations. Though the parties discussed various march routes and various assembly and rally areas, the NYPD officials at the meeting informed the plaintiff that they had no authority to offer any route or assembly area and first would have to consult with higher level NYPD officials before being able to agree to any march. The plaintiff requested a meeting the following day, but NYPD officials stated that they would not be able to meet again until Monday, February 3. The plaintiff agreed to refrain from proceeding with litigation pending that meeting.

Seems like a cooperative bunch, the NYCLU. Meanwhile, the police put them off until after the weekend. (And do these guys knock off at 5:30 or what? That's not how we do things in River City.)

Okay, not Friday, Monday, right? Wrong:

23. On Friday, January 31, 2003, a senior member of the Office of Corporation Counsel informed plaintiff's counsel that the City wished to postpone the February 3 meeting to Tuesday, February 4 because Mayor Michael Bloomberg needed to be part of the decision-making process but would not be available to do so until Monday afternoon at the earliest. The plaintiff agreed to postpone the meeting and agreed further to refrain from proceeding with litigation pending the February 4 meeting.

And that's when the City offers the stationary rally. (Item 24.) And three days later, the National Mood Ring turns pumpkin-colored.

I'll spare you links to all the columnists, webloggers, editorialists and cartoonists who put a lot less stock in the National Mood Ring than Diana seems to in her item. But I'll mention that I just had a brief conversation with my friend Toiler (in the national security bureaucracy), and his offhand assessment of the threat-level codes was . . . unkind. There are a couple more things to consider:

a) The threat-level is going up, among other reasons, because of the proximity of the war. And the Bloomberg Administration and the Sun seem to think it also makes it too dangerous to allow protest marches against that very war. That's a little too convenient.

b) The City has already issued a permit for the Saint Patrick's Day Parade in March (NYCLU Item 2). So here's my question: Does anyone think that, if the threat level is orange at that time, which it may well be, the City will revoke its permit for the march? If not, then the conclusion that the City's decision regarding this march is a political decision, and thus contrary to the First Amendment, would seem to be inescapable.

So here's a to-do list, and I'll try to get to them tomorrow:

Questions for UFPJ/NYCLU:
When did you first approach the NYPD for a March permit?
When did the NYPD first offer a stationary rally?

Questions for NYCLU:
What is the normal, acceptable time frame for applying for a permit for a large march? (Note: I don't plan to ask UFPJ - I wouldn't trust their answer unverified by an independent source.)

Questions for ANSWER:
How far in advance did you apply for permits to the DC rallies?
Speaking as experienced protest organizers, what would you consider to be a competent time window to give New York City to approve a permit?

Questions for the NYPD and Office of Corporation Counsel:
When did you first offer UFPJ/NYCLU the option of a stationary rally?
Will you cancel the St. Patrick's Day Parade if the HSA threat level is orange at that time?

That would seem to cover it. We shall see.

Reading Around - Walter in Denver gives Atrios what-for about Big L and small l libertarians and the Bill of Rights. The only thing I'd add is that there's more to the Constitution than the Bill of Rights, too, little of which supports the mammoth regulatory state so beloved of modern liberals.

Hawkish blogger Lynxx Pherrett has an interesting piece speculating about just whom the Franco-German "armed inspections plan" is supposed to "contain."

Marie Gryphon says conservatives and libertarians shouldn't be so blase about school bullies.

Missy has a report on Thursday's DC Blogarama, plus photos. (None of me. I'm not bitter.)

Chris Newman loses points for using the long-past-its-smell-date term "idiotarian," but gains points for actually engaging Gene Healy's definitive case against the Iraq conquest, something I haven't seen done much. I hope Gene will have a chance to respond to Chris.

Seablogger is - at sea. But he has a nice report of a visit with the great poet (and former laureate), Richard Wilbur.

Jeanne d'Arc watches Oprah's audience react to the news (delivered by Tom Friedman) that "war with Iraq will have to be followed by a twenty year occupation when it hits the real world." The "Don't Miss" blog item of the week. Link via Charles Murtaugh, who adds, "Almost a year ago, I suggested that proponents of war . . . needed to start making their case more explicitly and more publicly. From [Jeanne d'Arc's] account . . . late might not be better than never." al-Muhajabah weighs in on the same item. She's got lots of links to articles about possible shapes of post-conquest Iraq.

Zack of Procrastination considers honor killings. There's more here. And al-Muhajabah cites Islamic sources forbidding them.

Wendy McElroy has good links to critiques of the Bush budget. I also enjoyed Jane Galt's remark about what she might end up writing about the budget if she found time: "For one thing, I'm far more likely to slam the President for increasing spending than for decreasing taxes, which I don't think is what my correspondants had in mind." Put me down for that, too.

Honor Roll II - Justin Raimondo e-mails:

Before you go handing out awards to the War Party for doing what ought to come as a matter of course -- supporting the right of antiwar protesters to oppose this rotten war in a public demonstration -- why not ask them to come out unequivocally for the granting of the parade permit to the United for Peace group? Volokh's piece in NRO nowhere mentions this, and neither do any of the others.

Justin notes in a follow-up that Tacitus does unequivocally call for the permit to be issued. So does Kathy Kinsley. I read Volokh's essay as tantamount to calling for NYC to issue the parade permit. ("I firmly support a war against Iraq, but it's vital that the people have a right to oppose it . . . " In the context of responding to an editorial about Bloomberg's parade policy, that seems pretty clear.) I invite others to help me lengthen the list. Justin concludes:

And, isn't it funny (funny/weird, not funny/ha-ha): the commies of ANSWER never have ANY trouble getting those permits, but, suddenly, when a more mainstream group tries to hold a rally, the permit is denied. Hmmm.....

To coin a phrase: Indeed.

Foods Touch Item - So I am reading Dr. Doug McGuff's articles on slow-protocol weight-lifting and I find among the articles the striking titles, "Stasis Versus Dynamism," "Stasis vs. Dynamism Part II" and "Stasis vs. Dynamism Part III." Well that sounds familiar. And the first article begins:

Recently I attended a lecture and book signing by Virginia Postrel. Ms. Postrel is the editor of Reason magazine and author of the new book The Future and Its Enemies.

Huh.

Imitation Fitness Blog Post - Firstly, those who habitually skip the fitness items may prefer to go here. Or maybe not. (Link via Making Light, who writes, "They're not art. In truth, I'm not sure what they are.")

This morning's vitals: 194 pounds, 37 & 3/4" waist. Both are slight improvements over last week. I nevertheless suspect I'm coming to a crucial point in my program, where the temptation to pocket current gains (and thus guarantee losing them) overrides discipline. This week I gave in and had some chips Wednesday night at gaming, some pizza Friday afternoon and cookies and cake - awful cake - at Offering Boy's annual Cub Scout dinner last night. Having reached the point where I no longer look ridiculous clothed, and since I'm still improving even with minor cheats, there could be a tendency to push the envelope, splurge-wise. In truth I'm just over halfway to my goal weight (170) and not close to a weight that would support reasonable blood pressure and cholesterol levels. (I haven't had these tested, but I'm still overweight, so . . . )

Before we get to the exercise portion of the weekly fitness item, here's the Fitness Blogwatch:

John Ellis has given up dietblogging because "the nearly universal reaction to daily weight posting was negative." His final posted weight (as of February 3) was 224. I'd like to say 1) Congratulations to John Ellis on his progress (down from 236 during the holidays), and 2) Wimp! Let people skip the freaking diet posts if they don't like them.

Joy and Rob, whose workout blog started up the first week of January, seem to be attempting a very draconian calorie count. Also many posts about intending to exercise.

The Weigh Better Webring site page is ideal for people who like reading yellow type on a white background.

Now: Exercise. This week I kicked off my experiment in a pure weight-training approach to fitness, doing a slow-protocol version of Krista's dumbbell workout that I discussed last week. I really wracked up my legs doing this. I think this is how it happened:

Recall: slow-protocol lifting requires that you

1) Lift and lower the weight at ten-second/ten-second rate. Frederick Hahn usefully explains that three seconds in each direction should be spent moving the weight the first inch, to make absolutely sure you're not cheating the start, turnarounds and finish with momentum.

2) Work to failure, meaning you can't do it no more, with a heavy enough weight that failure occurs within about two minutes' worth of reps.

3) Only exercise every five to seven days. (Once into the program: they tend to start trainees out with twice-weekly sessions.)

So the first thing I did Monday was dumbbell squats, with a pair of 20-pound dumbbells, to failure. And the next thing I did was the rest of the routine, mostly with 20-pound dumbbells, standing up. Then, since my legs weren't killing me, I took the steps two at a time up from the rec room - slowly.

Which is to say, I pushed my legs as far as they would go with the very first exercise, then continued to stress them through the subsequent exercises. By not sitting, I continued to work the legs through the shoulder shrugs, curls and presses, plus the grandstanding on the steps.

Oops! By the next morning, my charley horses had charley horses. My quads still had some residual soreness yesterday. Out of concern, I did no legwork at all in Friday's workout.

There are two possibilities here: One is that I just did it wrong. Live and learn and do better next time. The second is that, without fancy machines to successfully isolate muscle groups, slow-protocol lifting isn't viable. (Isolating muscle groups has two functions. It forces the target muscles to do all the work, and it protects the non-target muscles from strain.) I suspect it's the former, but I don't rule out the latter.

Still too soon to tell, dept. Whether slow-protocol lifting is "all the exercise I need," which is the claim that slow-protocol enthusiasts put forward. The argument made by Slow Burn/Super Slow/Power of 10 advocates is that one session of slow-protocol weight work a week is sufficient. They actually call for a ramp-up rate of two sessions a week while you're learning to do the exercises right, and Fred "Slow Burn" Hahn's book all but says the ideal rate is every five days, rather than every seven. But "every five days" is a far cry from the five times a week urged by the aerobics party.

Anecdotally, I didn't gain any weight this week, and I definitely feel more muscular. Subjectively, I feel kind of restless, the kind of restlessness I'd have invested in a Heavyhands session prior to this. I did my second upper-body strength workout Friday - no squats while the legs recover - so it'll be awhile before I've given slow-protocol lifting a fair shake. One thing the slow-protocol programs seem light on is exercises that work torsion - using the girdle of muscle from hips to ribs to pivot on the axis of the spine, for instance. When I do Heavyhands, I'm confident that, if I've got a muscle, it's getting worked. (Whether it's getting worked to maximum effect or with greatest possible efficiency is an open question.)

More data points are coming, though. Friday, my mother signed up for authorized Super Slow training at Total Results in Sterling, VA, and my sister is planning to sign up at the same facility this week. I was impressed by the proprietor, Tim Rankin, who answered all my mother's and my questions forthrightly and put her through the demo exercises with focus and care. Price: about a third of what Hahn charges in Manhattan. (Note: If, by some miracle, anyone reading this ends up joining Total Results, make sure to tell them that my mom gets free sessions!)

The machines sure are cool-looking.

Ultimate Exercise in South Carolina has a lot more articles on slow-protocol training from an advocacy perspective. Next week I'll try to find some critiques to review.