Law seems to be going well. Some other things are not.

• Can someone jog my memory as to the relationship between National Review and Andrew Sullivan? I could have sworn the latter worked on, if he wasn't the editor of, the former for a number of years, though my mind may be failing. I remember him being insightful, humourous, and quite a good read, back in the day when I enjoyed National Review more for being well-written, irreverant, and not half as nasty as it is today. I've just read Sullivan's 'statistics don't matter' [1] postings on gay marriage and a mean-spirited 1 September rebuttal by one of my favorite magazines, and it leaves a 'plague on both your houses' bitter taste in my mouth. Is there some kind of bad blood between them?
• Second, do any of my readers have knowledge with Microsoft Sharepoint Services? I've installed it on my Windows 2003 box, but neither the default website nor the admin section will let me log in, I get an error when I try to go to the default page (either 'You are not authorized to view this page'--and I'm the bloody admin--or 'Application error' and the ASP.NET yellow error boxes). If anyone might lend a hand here, I'll send them the URL and password. Any suggestions welcome.

[1] Since as soon as I wrote it someone asked me to explain the 'statistics don't matter' jibe: Sullivan claimed that 'A poll this week for USA Today found that 67% of the 18-29 age group believe that gay marriage would benefit society.' He later admitted (or rather, was forced to admit when criticism came down upon him like a ton of bricks): "It should be that 67 percent thought it would be harmless or a benefit to society. An innocent mistake, I assure you. And the point endures." But does it? He still refuses to split the numbers down in the poll, which were specifically listed in the USA Today article: only 10% thinking it would make things better, and the rest say 'no effect.' (More important from a polling standpoint, USA Today only gives the language of the 'harm to society' response. Those of you who remember To Play the King will remember what insidious tricks you play in that game. That 'no effect' would be completely different if the question were asked 'harm our society' or 'harm the status of marriage in our society,' especially depending upon the introduction and lead-up to the questions.)

On the question of whether a pro-gay marriage policy should be carried out, moreover, the poll is split three ways, between 'yes,' 'no,' and 'don't care.' Again, I'd wager that depending on how you asked the question, you could get the third who said 'don't care' to split either way: you can't evaluate the poll number without knowing what the question was. (And that assumes the question, as here, was neutral: if it wasn't, it might already be substantially slanted one way.)

But one way or the other, Sullivan's argument was either a hideous mistake deserving more of a mea culpa than he put forward (at least mentioning the 57% discrepancy directly), or was patently dishonest. The Sullivan remember reading... hell, the Sullivan whose blog I read when I started reading blogs, just wasn't like that. What happened?

(Most links taken from NRO's The Corner.)