Good news from Belgium, whose constitutional court has upheld the constitutionality of that country’s burqa ban. There are of course questions of public safety, the court noted. Beyond that, in democratic societies we need to be able to see one another.

I hope they have good security. We’ll see whether Tunisia’s government will even let them hold this conference.

Romney’s eyes look a little red. Tired? Anxious? Good line from Romney: “We can’t kill our way out of this mess.” (Talking about instability in the Middle East.)

Actually, Obama’s eyes look red too. Maybe it’s the cameras.

Too bad they’re sitting down this time. I think striding around was good for both men. Seemed to wake up Obama.

Obama gets in the first hit: Romney’s strategy in regard to the region “has been all over the place.”

Romney gesticulates more than Obama, which I find sort of surprising.

Another hit from Obama: Romney called Russia – not the Middle East – our biggest foreign policy challenge. “Every time you’ve offered an opinion about the region, you’ve been wrong.”

Romney comes back strong, correcting Obama on Russia. Yes, he called it a geopolitical problem, but “in the same paragraph” he identified Iran as our biggest national security threat.

The guys are mixing it up now, talking over each other. Obama is rather condescendingly lecturing Romney.

“Syria is Iran’s route to the sea,” says Romney, which neglects, Mr UD points out, Iran’s long coastline.

Romney’s long-suffering smile is a little odd after awhile.

Obama, in talking about Egypt, makes an elegant reference to JFK (the moderator began by noting that today is the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis.)

Romney’s effort to characterize our weak economy as a threat to our power and influence abroad is rather unconvincing.

“America is stronger now than when I came into office.” Obama answers strongly. “Our alliances have never been stronger.”

What happened to foreign policy? They’ve wandered totally into domestic policy. Bob Schieffer is being a wimp. Get Candy Crowley in there!

Romney says the navy has fewer ships than it did in 1917. “Governor, we also have fewer bayonets and horses. Things have changed. There are now, for instance, submarines; boats that go under the water.” Ouch. Fantastic comeback from Obama. On Romney’s budget: “We’ve visited your website quite a bit. The numbers still don’t work.” Getting laughs from the audience. Strong stuff from Obama.

Both men have beautiful speaking voices (Obama also sings well, while Romney’s singing voice is painful). Mellifluous is the word that comes to mind.

I’d say that generally Obama seems nimbler, more energetic. Romney feels a little flat-footed, reciting policy paragraphs but not punching well. I’d even suggest that Romney’s age relative to Obama’s is showing a bit.

The seated arrangement is hurting Romney. Obama is now going down a long list of examples of Romney being “all over the place” on foreign policy, versus Obama’s “clarity of foreign policy.” If they were standing, Romney would be striding about; here, he’s forced to sit there and take it.

“When Tunisians began to protest, this nation moved to support them before anyone else.” Good answer from Obama in defense of our response to the Arab Spring.

Obama has also told, throughout the debate, lots of human interest stories (Romney has told none).

Romney’s good on the trade imbalance with China. In fact, he’s now telling his first story: His encounter with counterfeit valves.

They’re both keeping their tempers. “People can look it up,” says Romney calmly, on the matter of exactly what he said about Detroit and bankruptcy.

Another anecdote from Romney. Good. On the other hand, his repeated statement – “I love teachers.” – comes across as empty, and in fact Schieffer just made fun of it.

Closing statements now.

Instant responses here, with our friends:

Obama won the debate.

I don’t know. They agreed about so much.

UD‘s blogpal Allen Frances is currently down the street from her house, at the National Institutes of Health, where UD‘s father spent his whole career as an immunologist. Frances is lecturing to a group of journalists about what he calls diagnostic inflation, or the tendency of the culture, led by profit-seeking pharmaceutical companies, and abetted by the authors of the paradigmatic postmodern work of our time, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses, to designate everyone, from as young an age as possible, mentally ill.

It hasn’t happened yet in this election cycle, but UD anticipates American presidential and vice-presidential debates revolving mainly around a clash of diagnostic claims. You can see how easily it could have been done in this latest round, with Biden’s inappropriate affect, Ryan’s compulsive swallowing, Obama’s first-debate narcolepsy, and (most troubling) Romney’s disclosure at the Al Smith dinner that he hasn’t had an alcoholic drink in sixty-five years. All of these people are mentally ill, and all of the people who will run for these offices in the future are mentally ill. Americans will have a choice between borderline psychotic and psychotic.

It’s a choice.

… already know about Tunisia’s Manouba University (scroll down), a school under siege by Salafists. Now the readers of the Washington Post know about Manouba too.

… inevitable.

… “Afghan human rights activist, ex-minister and burka opponent Sima Samar is …seen as a possible winner” of this year’s Nobel Peace prize. This would be spectacular publicity for the effort to get women and children out from under this grotesque garment.

Plus of course UD‘s beloved Don DeLillo is again being shortlisted for the literature prize. He and Philip Roth always show up together on this list.

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I thought of DeLillo’s novel Mao II tonight while reading again – for the first time in forty or so years – Catcher in the Rye. Almost at the end of that novel, Holden Caulfield has a heart-to-heart with one of his teachers, the very smart, alcoholic, Mr Antolini. Antolini recognizes Caulfield’s intelligence, sensitivity, moral rigidity, and self-destructiveness. He understands how the trauma of Holden’s beloved brother’s death has set on him on a nihilistic, existence-loathing path. He also sees how this rage, combined with Caulfield’s restless intellect, could make him some sort of dangerous fanatic. Here’s one of the things he says to Holden:

“Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.”

This know-yourself haberdashery put me in mind of a very similar piece of advice DeLillo’s hero, the totally Salingeresque writer Bill Gray, recalls having read and heard growing up:

He remembered the important things, how his father wore a hat called the Ritz, gray with a black band, a raw edge and a snap brim, and someone was always saying “Measure your head before ordering” which was a line in the Sears Roebuck catalogue…”

As he’s dying, Bill repeats this phrase to himself.

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly. Measure your head before ordering.

… next catalogue will put all women in burqas.

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Update: And speaking of burqas: This is precisely the outcome UD and many other observers anticipated. And France will now be a model for other countries who will be banning the burqa.

It’s given the Right Livelihood Award to Sima Samar, an Afghan, and a high-profile opponent of the burqa.

Swedish-German philatelist Jakob von Uexkull founded the donor-funded prize in 1980 after the Nobel Foundation behind the Nobel Prizes refused to create awards honouring efforts in the fields of the environment and international development.

For this reason, the Right Livelihood Award Foundation oftens calls its distinction the “alternative Nobel prize.”

Through laws like the one in France, and through high-profile awards like this one, the woman- (and child-) smothering burqa gradually assumes its place as an artifact of the past.

Senior clerics in Iran’s theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women, including declining birth and marriage rates.

[A University of Southampton student] was bewildered when she… flicked through [a university] publication [with her photo in it] and discovered her arms and legs had been covered up using computer software to make the image less revealing.

[The change was] made in deference to conservative cultural sensitivities of prospective students from abroad.

International pupils are a lucrative market for universities, particularly as the number of UK applicants has declined following the recent increase in top-up fees.

The institutions have an added incentive to recruit pupils from abroad as they pay 50 per cent more in fees than those from the UK.

It’s interesting to watch the various evolving photographic technologies here. The choice seems to be between

Erasure (as in Hillary Clinton’s removal from the famous Osama raid photo); and its opposite,

Sheeting (as in draping various amounts of material over pictures of women).

Of course the real solution is right in front of our noses, and it’s practiced by men all over the world.  Never let them out of the house.

… writes a pithy and precise defense of her country’s burqa ban.

Debate about the legality and morality of allowing men to put their wives and children in bags will continue, but the direction of things is now pretty clear, as more and more municipalities and countries enact a ban.

Finally, a clear statement from the University of Virginia Board of Visitors. Heady stuff.

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UD thanks Daniel.

… attacked Mona Eltahawy’s article as overstatement.

Her article.

And what happens when women try to assemble in Cairo.