Lex Gibson, http://lexgibson.blogspot.com/
Matthew Yglesias, http://lexgibson.blogspot.com/
Diane E., http://letterfromgotham.blogspot.com
Ray McAdam, http://www.cheeseblogger.blogspot.com/
Jim Gibson, startlegramwatch.blogspot.com
Andrew Hofer, http://www.morethanzerosum.com
Shiloh Bucher, http://dropscan.blogspot.com
James Morrow, weeklyjames.blogspot.com
Alex del Castillo, http://www.feveredrants.blogspot.com
Matt Connolly, http://hubbub.blogspot.com
Ric Wege, http://www.commonchristian.blogspot.com
Sydney Smith, Medpundit, http://www.medpundit.blogspot.com
Thomas James, http://www.lamarssociety.org
Peter Briffa, http://www.publicinterest.co.uk/
Amy Wellborn, http://amywelborn.blogspot.com/
Orchid The Daily Dose http://thedailydose.blogspot.com
Moira Breen, http://www.moirabreen.com
Rand Simberg, http://www.interglobal.org/weblog
John Strycker, http://www.sgtstryker.com/
Doug Turnbull, http://beautyofgray.blogspot.com
Eric Brott, http://fastlap.blogspot.com
Samizdata, http://samizdata.blogspot.com
Peter Banos, http://tryingforsense.blogspot.com/
Charles Murtaugh, http://www.charlesmurtaugh.com/
Mac Thomason, http://warliberal.blogspot.com/
Paul MacDonald, http://imprudence.blogspot.com
Dave Tepper, http://www.davetepper.net
Lyceum Press, http://www.lyceumpress.blogspot.com/
James Rummel, http://www.handbasket.blogspot.com
Dan Rector, http://blorg.blogspot.com
Christopher Cross, http://xfactor.blogspot.com/
Ming the Mirthless, http://mongoprime.blogspot.com/
Juan Gato, http://juangato.blogspot.com
Ed Driscoll, http://www.eddriscoll.com
Ross Nordeen, http://www.rossnordeen.com/
John Cole, http://grump.blogspot.com
Adragna & Vehrs, http://QuasiPundit.com
Dan Simon, http://icouldbewrong.blogspot.com
Rob Dittmar, http://usualsuspect.blogspot.com
Sean Kirby, http://punditexmachina.blogspot.com/
Stan Lutz, http://www.shadesgray.blogspot.com
Susanna Cornett, bias.blogspot.com
Pejman Yousefzadeh, http://pejmanpundit.blogspot.com
Roger Abramson, http://www.sniperfire.blogspot.com
Joshua Trevino, http://www.i330.org
Bill Allison, http://ideofact.blogspot.com
Steve Gigl, http://www.tc.umn.edu/~gigl0002/
Edward Boyd, zonitics.blogspot.com
Chris Puzak, http://www.chrispuzak.blogspot.com
Punditwatch, http://punditwatch.blogspot.com
Civil Servant, http://civilservant.blogspot.com/
Kathy Kinsley, http://www.site-essential.com
Jeff Wolfe, http://jeffwolfe.blogspot.com
Liberte, http://liberte.blogspot.com
Daniel Wiener, http://wienerlog.blogspot.com
Will Warren, http://unremittingverse.blogspot.com
Ted Barlow, http://tedbarlow.blogspot.com
Stephen Green, http://www.vodkapundit.com
Jay Manifold, http://avoyagetoarcturus.blogspot.com/
Sharon McGovern, http://www.thecobrasnose.com/xxblog/thecobrasblog.html
Dan Dressel, prosamdan.blogspot.com
Justin Adams, curmudgeonry.blogspot.com
Chris Daley, http://www.daleyweather.blogspot.com
Andrew Olmsted, http://andrewolmsted.com
Dr. Frank, http://blogsofwar.blogspot.com/
Lane McFadden, http://www.lanemcfadden.net/
Eve Kayden, http://quare.blogspot.com
Peter Fritz, http://wellfed.blogspot.com
Matthew Edgar, http://matthewedgar.blogspot.com
The Cranky Hermit, www.crankyhermit.blogspot.com
Rich Hailey, http://haileys_home.blogspot.com
Paul Orwin, http://paulorwin.blogspot.com
Bob Owen, http://trivialbob.blogspot.com
Triumvirate, http://triumvirate.blogspot.com/
Ranting Troika, http://ranting_troika.blogspot.com
A Dog's Life, http://dogslife.blogspot.com
Suman Palit, http://www.palit.com/tkl.asp
Bill Peschel, www.planetpeschel.com/Weblog/blogger.html
Cockalorum, http://www.cockalorum.blogspot.com
John Tabin, http://johntabin.blogspot.com/
Michael Walters, http://www.metronet.com/~mwalters/blog/index.html
Gene Hoffman, http://www.hoffmang.com/
Daniel Taylor, http://dpm.blogspot.com
John Hawkins, http://hawksblog.blogspot.com
Chris Bertram, http://junius.blogspot.com
Brian Tiemann, http://www.grotto11.com/blog
Matt Haws, http://www.hawspipe.blogspot.com
Rafael Noboa, http://www.upsaid.com/rafael
Corsair, http://corsair.blogspot.com/
Jeff Evans, http://bigstick.blogspot.com
David VanderMoelen, http://hoofinmouth.blogspot.com
Max Power, http://maxpower.blogspot.com
SmarterHarpers, http://hometown.aol.com/madswede10/myhomepage/index.html
Andrea Harris, http://www.spleenville.com/blog/
Eve Tushnet, http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com
Joshua Fielek, http:\\www.blogofxanadu.blogspot.com
Media Minded, http://mediaminded.blogspot.com
Jason Anderson, http://www.jaceonline.com
Justin Slotman, http://slotman.blogspot.com
Dick Winzer, http://www.lesmonster.com/Default1.asp?Page=Writers&Writer=Winzer
Travis Nelson, http://hepcat.blogspot.com/
Howard Fienberg, http://kesher.blogspot.com
Tim Koruna, http://www.koruna.net
Michael Costello, http://michaelcostello.blogspot.com
Andrew Millard, http://www.spurofthemoment.blogspot.com
TJ Buttrick, http://virtualsanity.blogspot.com
Paxety Pages, http://home.bellsouth.net/personalpages/PWP-Paxety
Duffy Robert, http://firststate.blogspot.com/
Alex Knapp, http://www.hereticalideas.com
Daily Steve, http://dailysteve.blogspot.com
Pundit 21, http://Pundit21.blogspot.com
Scott Farley, http://capitalistroad.blogspot.com
Jan Yarnot, http://fossilfreak.blogspot.com
Brian Silverman, http://www.expatpundit.blogspot.com
Matthew Sheren, http://atlas.blogspot.com
Warren Cheney, http://wnyoffcenter.blogspot.com
Dr. Weevil, http://www.curculio.org/blog.html
Quana Jones, http://www.eristic.blogspot.com
Rapmaster, http://rapmaster.blogspot.com
William P. Sulik, http://blidiot.blogspot.com/
Pat Berry, http://home.nc.rr.com/pberry/scribings/index.html
John Dunshee, http://jsps.blogspot.com
Martin Devon, http://patiopundit.blogspot.com/
Hugh Davis, http://www.humbertpundit.blogspot.com/
Standard Theory, http://standardtheory.blogspot.com
Jim Henley, http://www.highclearing.com
Bryan Preston, http://junkyardblog.blogspot.com
Nick Marsala, http://arrogantrants.blogspot.com/
Jesse Reeves, http://ghosthaven.blogspot.com/
Chris Kerstiens, http://chriskerstiens.blogspot.com/
Alexander & Beetle, http://www.geocities.com/alexander+beetle/
Buck's, http://unklbuck.blogspot.com
Phil Murphy, http://theinvisiblehand.blogspot.com/
Jumping to Conclusions, http://tollbooth.blogspot.com/
Dr. Manhattan, http://www.blissfulknowledge.blogspot.com
Bo Cowgill, http://www.bocowgill.com
Jeremy Lott, http://jeremiads.blogspot.com/
Gut Rumbles, http://www.monsterman.blogspot.com/
Chris Cotner, www.flyovercountry.blogspot.com
Spinsters, http://www.spinsters.blogspot.com
Cogent Provocateur, http://cogenteur.blogspot.com/
BigSkyView, http://BigSkyView.blogspot.com
Blue Derkin, http://headsonfire.blogspot.com

FLAGS ARE NOT BANNED ON MY CAMPUS! THE PHOTO BELOW IS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE LAW COLLEGE. THE FLAG HAS BEEN THERE SINCE SEPTEMBER.

NOW THIS IS FUNNY:

Anatomy of a Failure

By Glenn Harlan Reynolds


Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles is the author of a Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture. The book received rave reviews from writers like Garry Wills, who wrote in The New York Times Book Review that "Bellesiles deflates the myth of the self-reliant and self-armed virtuous yeoman of the Revolutionary militias." Other reviewers, joined in the chorus, pronouncing Bellesiles' book proof that the Second Amendment doesn't protect individuals. The Chronicle of Higher Education featured the book on its front page, with the headline "Exploding the Myth of an Armed America." The American Prospect wrote that "The image of . . . the American founders believing in an individual's right to keep and bear arms . . . turns out to be a myth."

Arming America even received the (up to now) prestigious Bancroft Prize from Columbia University. Bellesiles' provocative thesis is that the Framers must not have meant to protect an individual right to own guns under the Second Amendment because private gun ownership was exceedingly rare at the time, and stayed that way until after the Civil War when the NRA nefariously created the "gun culture" that we know today and ascribe, incorrectly, to the Framers. According to Bellesiles, he checked thousands of probate records and discovered that guns were scarce at the time of the framing.

This thesis was provocative, and also appears to be wrong. In fact, it appears to be worse than wrong. People who have checked Bellesiles' claims against the probate records that he says he consulted have found that he drastically understates the number of guns they show. According to Northwestern University law professor James Lindgren, an expert in probate records who has closely examined Bellesiles' work, in an interview with the Boston Globe, "In virtually every part of the book examined in detail, there are problems. It's clear that this book is impressive to legal and social historians who do not check the background. Law professors and quantitative historians have been suspicious about the book since its release." (Bellesiles' data sets drawn from the probate records he says he examined are unavailable; Bellesiles says they were destroyed in a flood). Worse still, one set of records that Bellesiles says he relied on turn out to have been destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and unavailable to anyone since then without access to a time machine. Various scholars have been criticizing Bellesiles' research for some time, but on September 11 the Boston Globe published a story revealing that it had investigated the claims against Bellesiles and found them to be true.

This was little noticed at the time, owing to other events. But on October 3, Emory University decided that the criticisms made out "prima facie evidence of scholarly misconduct," and ordered Bellesiles to account for himself. What explanation Bellesiles will offer is unclear, but a finding of unforgivable sloppiness seems to be about the best he can hope for.

But for our purposes, it doesn't matter whether Bellesiles is a fraud or merely exceedingly careless. Because there's another failure here, one that in some ways was far more serious than Bellesiles'.

Extraordinary claims, Carl Sagan said, require extraordinary evidence. And that evidence itself requires extraordinary examination. Yet Bellesiles' claims – which counted as "provocative" precisely because they were in conflict with everything we thought we knew about the history of guns in America – got just the opposite. The people who should have examined his evidence rushed to embrace it, because it told them what they wanted to hear.

Instead of reviewers who might be skeptical of Bellesiles' research, mainstream publications assigned reviewers who were antigun. Garry Wills, who reviewed Arming America for the New York Times Book Review has had a reputation as rabidly antigun for years. Carl Bogus, who reviewed the book for The American Prospect, is a longtime gun-control activist. Richard Slotkin, who praised Arming America for The Atlantic Monthly, has referred to the notion of guns as instruments of liberty and equality as "self-evidently crazy."

That such reviewers would not expend any great effort in checking out Bellesiles' claims should come as no surprise, and in fact they didn't. But this raises an interesting question: the claim that mainstream, traditional media organization always make in defense of their importance is that they are careful and responsible, while alternative media and the Internet are not. The Internet, they tell us, is a domain of hype and hoaxes, while traditional media can be counted on to check things out and get them right.

Yet if one looks at Amazon.Com's reviews of Arming America, it is immediately evident that Amazon reviewers found the problems with Bellesiles book a year ago, while the establishment was still smitten. On October 24, 2000, for example, Amazon reader Sondra Wilkins did something that Garry Wills did not: she checked some of Bellesiles' sources and reported: "In checking his sources, often the ones he lists, even the particular pages that he lists, contain evidence that contradicts his claims. He quotes parts of sentences from those sources and ignores the contradictory information on that same page." Another reader, David Ihnat, couldn't believe Bellesiles' claim that it took 3 minutes to load and fire a muzzle-loading rifle. His report: "Never having fired a flintlock before, I tried to load and fire 10 times in succession, and was able to average 50 seconds per load." His conclusion: "Bellesiles has an axe to grind, and worked it throughout this book."

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Internet, amateur scholars were posting long critiques of Bellesiles' work, only to see those critiques dismissed by Bellesiles and his defenders as the work of those ignorant yahoos on the Internet.

It appears, however, that the Internet is sometimes harder to fool than the establishment. (Five days after the Globe story appeared, the New York Times was repeating Wills' praise of Arming America in support of the paperback version.) Keep this in mind the next time the establishment is rallying behind a "provocative" scholarly analysis that just happens to echo views that the establishment has always held.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, and writes for the InstaPundit.Com website.

READER PAUL HOLMES WRITES:

Allow me to offer what I hope is a more cogent defense of the peace protestors in New York than the one offered below.

I believe it is very difficult to stake out a pro-war or anti-war position as long as President Bush declines to define the precise goals of that war or the means we will choose to achieve them. For example, I would
wholeheartedly support an incursion into Afghanistan with the objective of engaging, capturing or ssassinating Osama bin Laden. I would probably support a campaign designed to liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban and install a democratic government. But I would be deeply disturbed by a war that involved wholescale bombing of Afghan cities and a worsening of the humanitarian crisis there.

As of today, all three of those scenarios are possible. One reason Bush's poll numbers are so high is probably because he has declined to define this war beyond the very general idea that we need to defeat global terrorism. I don't think it's unreasonable to oppose a war so vaguely defined. In fact, I think our Default position should be that we oppose all wars until we hear a satisfactory explanation of what they will accomplish and what actions will be committed in our name.

Paul Holmes
New York

(I was at the Mets game while the marchers were marching. It was, I think, a more productive use of my time.)

This is entirely reasonable. I would oppose indiscriminate bombing of Afghanistan (heck, I'll go out on a limb and oppose all indiscriminate bombing. I guess where I differ is that I don't really think that's on the table. Oh, we've rattled the nuclear saber a little, in the hopes of scaring the Taliban (which, judging by the refugees at the borders and the reports of panic and looting by Taliban forces in Kabul, is working to some degree.) But does anyone actually think this is going to happen? Nothing we've heard out of the White House suggests it is.

If I thought that the peace protesters in New York and elsewhere shared Mr. Holmes' moderate and sensible views, I would be defending them, too. But if they do, it's news to me. Instead it seems to be an opportunity for blaming America for whatever they can think of (my favorite inanity: the WTC attack was because of the bombing range at Vieques) and, Falwell-like, trying to inject their own unrelated agendas into the tragedy.

BATTLE OF THE ECONO-PUNDITS: Robert Reich disses the Retail Support Brigade. Paul Krugman says it's essential, and calls for government action to reinforce it. I'm with Krugman on this one.

WHY DO THEY HATE AMERICA? asks Bryan Appleyard in the Sunday Times. An excellent discussion of anti-Americanism, from the middle east to London -- don't just read this excerpt, read the whole, wonderful, impassioned thing. But here's a quote:

I am sick of my generation's whining ingratitude, its wilful, infantile loathing of the great, tumultuous, witty and infinitely clever nation that has so often saved us from ourselves. But I am heartened by something my 19-year-old daughter said: "America has always been magic to us, we don't understand why you lot hate it so much."

Anti-Americanism has never been right and I hope it never will be. Of course there are times for criticism, lampoons, even abuse. But this is not one of them. This is a time when we are being asked a question so simple that it is almost embarrassing - a question that should silence the Question Time morons, the sneering chatterers and the cold warriors, a question so elemental, so fundamental, so pristine that, luxuriating in our salons, we had forgotten it could even be asked. So face it, answer it, stand up and be counted.

Whose side are you really on?