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  THE CORNER

This Could Be Interesting: From the IHT: "Yet all three of his choices - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state, General James Jones, the former NATO commander as national security adviser and Robert Gates, the current and future defense secretary - were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena.The shift, which would come partly out of the military's huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed . . . Go

  LIBERAL FASCISM

Zizek & Fascism: From a reader: Jonah, I'm sure you're aware of Adam Kirsch's article on the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek in The New Republic.  Did you notice Kirsch almost tripping into your LF thesis as he calls Zizek a fascist, while at the last falling back into the description of fascism as a phenomenon of the right ("He is willfully blind to the old and obvious conclusion that totalitarian form accepts content from the left and the right")? It isn't the main point of the piece, but Zizek's standing as academic flavor of the month has been particularly noticeable in theological circles (my own area).  . . . Go

  THE CAMPAIGN SPOT

Wondering About Security in Mumbai Hotels: A correspondent of Mickey Kaus who stayed at the Taj hotel in Mumbai in the past said that they had much heavier security in early November, additional staff and safeguards that were obviously not present the night of the attacks. When I went to Amman, Jordan in January 2006, shortly after Abu Zarqawi sent suicide bombers into three luxury hotels, killing 63 and injuring hundreds, the security was heavy and very visible -- I wrote at the time, "the guards are so gracious with their 'good morning, sir,' that their MP-5 submachineguns almost seem unobtrusive." Describing the thoroughness of the airport . . . Go

  PHI BETA CONS

The Cabal Stays Fat at Students' Expense: John cites an article indicating that the cost of teaching in colleges is declining, all the while that students and parents almost never see any of these savings. Well-paid tenured faculty members and their union chieftains, administrators getting fat salaries, and politicians richly rewarded for their compliance like this arrangement just fine. And gutless governing boards rarely lift a finger to disrupt it. . . . Go

  PLANET GORE

A Bailout for Tesla?: The New York Times on Sunday entertained the possibility of $400 million in low-interest federal loans to Tesla Motors. Tesla's backers in Silicon Valley can be forgiven for hoping for a miraculous technical breakthrough, because Moore's Law makes miracles appear in the Valley every day: costs drop by half every two years, again and again and again. The law is actually a rule of thumb, not a scientific law, and is based on the recurring doubling of transistors placed on an integrated circuit.Unfortunately for Tesla, batteries are based on chemistry and have nothing to do with Moore's Law. Lawrence H. Dubois, . . . Go

  DAVID CALLING

Terror in Bombay: The attack on Bombay seems to have much in common with 9/11. Another group of young men have been prepared to kill and to die.  On both occasions, the intention was to leave as many victims as possible. The captured terrorist says that in Bombay they intended to kill 5,000, which would have been an atrocity on a wartime scale. A lot of planning and premeditation went into the attack. The terrorists had been trained professionally. They had also prepared the ground. The targets were carefully selected. In the big hotels and the café they could be sure . . . Go

  BENCH MEMOS

This Week in Liberal Judicial Activism—Week of December 1: Subverting text and practicing faux originalism:     Dec. 5 1984—No legal text can ever be clear enough to avoid being subverted by a liberal judicial activist.  Consider now-Eleventh Circuit judge Rosemary Barkett’s ruling for a Florida appellate court in State v. Bivona.  Florida’s speedy-trial rule generally provided that every person charged with a felony shall be brought to trial within 180 days of the charge or be forever protected from prosecution on that charge.  Under an express exception (“(b)(1)”) to the rule, a “person who is … incarcerated in a jail or correctional institution outside the jurisdiction of this State … is not . . . Go