May 26, 2007

SPACE DIVING: I was talking to Rick Tumlinson about this after lunch and was going to do a post, but here's a report from Leonard David.

THE BULB CONTEST IS HEATING UP: The Kossacks are up to 1000 bulbs already.

They've still got a long way to go to catch up with InstaPundit readers, though.

SAW BUZZ ALDRIN AT LUNCH -- I hadn't seen him in the flesh in years (he was NSS Board Chairman back when I was NSS Executive Chair), and he still looks great. We managed to catch up a bit. He's writing for Popular Mechanics now, too and likes it as much as I do. He gave a speech about the importance of evolution in procurement and research, and how we've fallen away from the evolutionary approach in such things in favor of something bureaucratic and lame.

I certainly can't argue. But what's interesting is that while the government space programs don't inspire a lot of excitement, there's huge interest in the many startup space companies spawned by the X-Prize and related developments. This "NewSpace" sector, as people are calling it (It's easier than "new entrepreneurial space enterprises") is really vibrant, and these people are actually building things, not just peddling vaporware.

It was a good speech, and drew numerous rounds of applause and laughter. One thing for Buzz -- he's been working to promote space tourism, space development, and space settlement tirelessly for years. I couldn't handle his travel schedule, and he's thirty years older than me. (And when we ran in the Race For Space over a decade ago, he was faster than me.) He spoke eloquently about how unfair it was that he and only a few others had managed to experience space and the Moon, and how important it is that others get to share that experience.

I certainly think he's right. I believe that the space tourism efforts we see now will help jumpstart things, and generate a learning curve, and efficiencies, that the NASA programs have never achieved -- and, in fact, have sometimes even undermined. And I think it's a big benefit to have Buzz Aldrin in there pushing for this kind of thing. Ten years ago, space tourism had a high "giggle factor." Now it's taken seriously, and things are just starting.

WHAT THE WORD "UTERUS" DOES TO MEN, including the results of actual research.

NOT EVERYBODY AT THE CONFERENCE is from a hot space startup. Robotics is cool, too.

IT'S NATIONAL SHOOTING WEEK in Britain. No, really.

WITH ALL THE DISCUSSION OF THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS, several readers have written to praise Bertrand Brinley's Mad Scientists' Club books, which -- though fiction -- certainly embody the "dangerous" approach. And there's more than a glimpse of my own boyhood in them. As I wrote a while back: "Interesting review at Slashdot, with an observation that occurred to me, too -- the kids in the Mad Scientists' Club stories seem a lot more independent and free-ranging than kids today. And I think that, with allowances for their excessively-easy access to vital items of scientific equipment at crucial story points, these are pretty realistic portrayals of kids in the 1960s and 1970s. (Sounds like my gang o' geeks, anyway.) Lots of interesting stuff in the comments, too, including a reference to the Henry Reed books, which I've mentioned here before."

As I noted elsewhere, my daughter devoured the Henry Reed books, but saw The Mad Scientists' Club as more of a boy thing, which I can understand.

"OBSCENE AMENITIES:" Happy Memorial Day weekend!

Last night while hanging out in the bar with Rand Simberg and Dale Amon (of Samizdata), I saw some British soldiers at the other end. I had the waitress send them a round of drinks. She wasn't supposed to tell them who did it, but apparently those guys are good at extracting information and their CO came over to say thanks. He said that it meant a lot to his men: they don't get a lot of support from the public in Britain and that they like it when they're in the U.S. for training, etc., because the American public is more supportive. I thought that was kind of sad, actually, but I was glad to do something for them. When I'm out and see military folks I often try to pick up their tab anonymously; this is the first time someone's blabbed. I encourage InstaPundit readers to do the same if the mood strikes you. I think it's appreciated, and not just because of the free food or drink.

UPDATE: AMillionThanks.org organizes thank-you cards and letters to the troops.

BRING IT ON! Over at Daily Kos, they've decided to try to beat the InstaPundit readers in the One Billion Bulbs competition. InstaPundit readers have a commanding lead, but I expect the Kossacks to come on strong.

THE OTHER DAY, I mentioned behind the scenes efforts to kill the lobbyist bundling reporting bill. Those seem to have failed, and the bill has passed the House by a wide margin. It could be stronger, but it's at least a step forward. And note this observation:

By the way, that lopsided final vote to pass it also reflects a Washington phenomenon. As Fred Wertheimer told me in my update to that original post, "Floor votes are our friend." If this had been a secret ballot, most people I talk to think it would have lost. But once it became clear it was going to pass, no one wanted to be publicly on record as defending the discredited status quo. There was a bipartisan stampede to be on the side of open government.

I do think that all the attention on these matters has helped. As I said in my earlier post, there's a lot they don't want the public to know. But they don't want the public to know that . . . . (Via Kevin Drum).

UPDATE: Something for PorkBusters to aspire to? This success is nice, but I don't think it's quite in that league.

WAITING FOR AN APOLOGY FROM THE GROUP OF 88, at Duke.

MARS as art. Beautiful stuff.

ROSIE O'DONNELL: Abstract expressionist!

May 25, 2007

ZING: "By the way, Senator Obama, it's a 'flak' jacket, not a 'flack' jacket."

Though something that protected against "flacks" would be useful in campaign season. Which is, apparently, every season now . . . .

Plus, a question: "Redeploy" where?

MORE WORLD WAR II BOOKS FOR KIDS: Here, and here.

MORE PICS: Phil Eaton of Armadillo Aerospace, which has something like a half dozen people here, and "The Pixel," a lunar-lander testbed. Follow the link for video of its flight. More here.

And here's a piece on Armadillo from Popular Mechanics.

MORE ON DDT and malaria.

SO I'M AT THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE IN DALLAS, where there's a lot of talk about space and space tourism. Here's a picture from the presentation by Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane Kistler.

MORE UNREST IN IRAN: May the crackdown fail. Then there's this.

HOLIDAY TRAVELERS IGNORING FUEL COSTS: That's certainly been my observation. Ron Coleman connects the dots.

DOING THE RIGHT THING for a stricken climber on Mt. Everest.

NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER "SKEPTICAL" ABOUT the "Greenhouse Effect."

WAR IN LEBANON: A big roundup from Michael Totten.

HOWARD MORTMAN TRIES A RON PAUL EXPERIMENT: Looks like it worked!

ANDREW FERGUSON: Don't leave scholarship to the professionals.

THE EU IS probing Google over privacy.

ROBERT X. CRINGELY: "I have a pretty good idea where we'll find the founders of that Google-beating start-up. I think they are working right now at Google. Google is an amazing entrepreneurial petri dish. Yet at the same time, it is doomed to disappoint nearly every entrepreneurial type who works there. This is key: Google is sowing the seeds of its own eventual destruction. It can't help doing so. . . . Google has designed a working environment that provides almost everything their technical people need except a guaranteed sense of satisfaction."

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS on the U.S. / China trade war no one expects.

It's the last thing that we -- or the Chinese -- need right now. Which doesn't necessarily rule it out, alas.

A PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH STEVEN LANDSBURG, about his new book, More
Sex is Safer Sex.

DOES GLOBAL WARMING MEAN MORE HURRICANES? Maybe, maybe not: "Over the last 5,000 years, the eastern Caribbean has experienced several periods, lasting centuries, in which strong hurricanes occurred frequently even though ocean temperatures were cooler than those measured today, according to a new study." There seems to be a lot of complexity involved.

AUSTIN BAY REPORTS ON "Iraq narratives" and counterinsurgency.

MOQTADA UNVEILS A NEW PLAN TO HUMILIATE BUSH and secure a U.S. withdrawal. It just might work!

GERALD STEINBERG WANTS more scrutiny for Amnesty International.

Hey, they're already being charged with suppressing election results to cover up a Dick Cheney loss . . . .

ARE THE RICH GETTING RICHER? I don't know, but they're certainly getting more numerous:

To enter the nation's top 1%, you need more than $5 million. And if you get there, you'll have plenty of newly-arrived company: The number of U.S. "pentamillionaires" has quadrupled in the past 10 years, to more than 930,000. Indeed, 70% of the nation's big family fortunes are less than 13 years old, according to research and marketing firm The Harrison Group. And the people who amassed them are, first and foremost, entrepreneurs — risk takers for whom wealth is a byproduct of pursuing their passion.

What got them to the highest level? It isn't necessarily stock-market savvy: On average, folks who recently hit the $5 million mark report that only 10% of their money came through passive investments. And only 10% of pentamillionaires inherited their wealth.

"Pentamillionaire" is a new term to me. I guess plain old millionaires have become so commonplace that somebody had to up the ante.

GREG LUKIANOFF: "I have always found it fascinating that colleges and universities--which tend to believe themselves to be centers of perfect open-mindedness and progressive thought--so often end up echoing the censors of bygone eras. As we note in FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus, for example, administrators' justifications for punishing politically incorrect, ideologically incompatible, or simply inconvenient speech at times echo the rationale of southern slave owners in the early 19th century who wished to ban abolitionist speech because it "inflicted emotional injury" on slave owners. As we often have to point out, while politeness is a virtue, it is of minuscule importance when compared with robust debate and discussion."

THE LATEST CORN AND MINITER SHOW IS UP!

FOLLOWING THE Congressional money trail.

IN THE MAIL: Naftali Bendavid's The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution. The reader reviews are certainly strong, but I don't think it was Democratic ruthlessness, so much as Republican cluelessness, that ended the GOP majority.

SILENCE ON TORTURE: Silence is complicity, you know.

I'VE NOTED REPEATEDLY that gas prices don't seem to be high enough to affect people's behavior. Apparently they'd have to increase a lot more to do that:

In 1962 -- a year writ large in the popular imagination as the quintessential year of muscle cars and cheap gasoline thanks to the movie American Graffiti -- gasoline prices averaged 31 cents per gallon. When we factor changes in disposable income, today’s gas would have to cost $4.48 to be a comparable burden.

The public likewise thinks of 1972 as the last year of energy innocence prior to the rise of OPEC and the onset of shortage. Fuel prices in 1972 averaged 36 cents per gallon, a hefty $2.77 per gallon in today’s terms. While still high, this price is not all that different than the prices we were paying earlier in the year.

No wonder people are still driving fast and often.

WELL, THIS INSPIRES CONFIDENCE:

The Government Accountability Office, the federal government’s watchdog agency, Thursday released a report critical of the FBI’s internal network, asserting it lacks security controls adequate to thwart an insider attack. . . . Among its other findings, the GAO said the FBI did not adequately “identify and authenticate users to prevent unauthorized access.” The GAO report also criticized FBI network security in other regards, saying that there was a lack of encryption to protect sensitive data and patch management wasn’t being done in a timely manner.

Jeez.

ALI ETERAZ LOOKS AT U.S. Muslims and suicide bombings.

IN THE D.C. EXAMINER, A LOOK AT THE MEDIA WAR. Some interesting data. Read the whole thing.

ROGER SIMON (the other one) rains skepticism on the prospect of a Bloomberg Presidency:

I once worked for Bloomberg News, which is owned by Bloomberg, and had one off-the-record group dinner with him. He was funny, charming, bright and personable. But I think he might need a little bit more than that in order to become president.

Like a reason for people to vote for him. And a way of winning.

He's too nannyish for me.

A REPORT ON THE BLOOMBERG GUN GIVEAWAY.

POLITICS IN GEORGIA: "Oh, and to be fair, it's not just Rudy. Thompson's possible legislative support in Georgia blows away what Romney and McCain have there, too."

STILL SIMMERING IN CHINA: " Residents of a riot-hit area of southern China warned Friday of renewed violence if authorities resume a brutal campaign to enforce family-planning rules. Tension remains high in the Guangxi region, nearly a week after thousands clashed with police over an official campaign that residents say included forced abortions, property destruction and crippling fines aimed at violators of the so-called 'one-child policy.'"

WOULD RONALD REAGAN BE "PRO-AMNESTY" ON IMMIGRATION? "Reagan's positive attitude towards immigration was not just an isolated issue position, but was integrally linked to his generally optimistic and open vision of America. I would add that it also drew on his understanding that America is not a zero-sum game between immigrants and natives - just as he also recognized that it is not a zero-sum game between the rich and the poor."

Both understandings are correct. However, I think that much of today's immigration anger is really about a feeling that voters have been betrayed by the political elites, rather than about immigrants themselves.

FIGHTING GLOBAL WARMING in Marin County.

FOR IT BEFORE THEY WERE AGAINST IT BEFORE THEY VOTED FOR IT: Jules Crittenden looks at last night's war vote and finds widespread unhappiness on the antiwar side.

Meanwhile Don Surber notes that the war funding passed by a bigger margin than the war itself. But: "Clinton and Obama were among the 14 no votes. Clinton voted to send the troops in. Now she votes not to fund them. Presidential. NOT!"

May 24, 2007

THE BIG TROUBLE WITH IMMIGRATION: The shabby way that people who want to come here legally are treated. Here's a post on that from a while back.

ANOTHER EMAIL ON ANBAR, from a Marine reservist I know who's en route back to Iraq: "I'm typing this while sitting on the tarmac in Memphis, waiting for a flight to Camp Lejeune. Every NCO in my platoon is a veteran and most are here voluntarily. And we're reservists."

MORE NON-REFORM IN CONGRESS:

Powerful Democratic chairmen and subcommittee chairmen have relied on lobbyists to raise money during the first three months of this year, according to recent fundraising reports, which cast light on the strong opposition to lobbying reform legislation scheduled to reach the floor today.

Conservative Democrats in the Blue Dog Coalition have been particularly leery of legislation that would require lobbyists to reveal in public reports the total amount of contributions they raise or “bundle” for lawmakers. Many Democrats voiced concerns at a closed-door caucus meeting on the lobbying reform bill last week. . . . It appears many Democrats — and Republicans, for that matter — would prefer that the public not know how much fundraising help lobbyists provide.

There seems to be a lot they'd rather not have the public know.

ENVIRONMENTAL HYPOCRISY UPDATE: Okay, we've heard a lot about the greenhouse effect, etc., but I'm reading Wendy Williams and Robert Whitcomb's Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound and I'm beginning to doubt the political class's serious commitment to this cause. The book's a treasure trove, but here's a description of how what was supposed to be a wide-open democratic town meeting on the Nantucket Sound wind power project was taken over by the astroturf brigades of the project's well-heeled opponents:

The evening's piece de resistance: the presence of the Honorable William Delahunt , the white-haired U.S. congressman whose district included the Cape, Marthas's Vineyard, and Nantucket, as well as towns and cities closer to Boston. . . . Delahunt hated the wind farm. Or, at least, he said he hated it. Delahunt was widely seen as SenatorEdward M. Kennedy's man. What Ted Kennedy hated, Bill Delahunt hated. And Ted Kennedy loathed Cape Wind, with an unwavering ardor that curiously belied the environmental ideals he so often proclaimed from the floor of the U.S. Senate . . . .

Delahunt's control of the podium was unusual. Every other speaker had to use a floor microphone and was limited to three minutes. To maintain discipline, a very large traffic light turned first a warning yellow and then a time's-up red. Delahunt, however, assumed he was exempted from the burden laid upon the rest of the hearing's participants. Blindsided by the Congressman's performance, project supporters -- and there were plenty on Martha's Vineyard, despite the Alliance's efforts -- were miffed. How had this politico gained control of what they thought was to be a "public" -- as in, for the public --- hearing, and opportunity for thoughtful and informed people to add their insights to the discussion.

(In fact, [Delahunt's staffer Mark] Forest had forced Army Corps officials to bow to Delahunt's coup d'etat. Had the Corps refused, the congressman could have taken out his revenge when appropriation votes came up on Capitol Hill.)

And it gets worse from there. I'm finding the book quite interesting so far. And lest this passage give the impression that there were only Democrats acting hypocritically here, I should note that the alliance against the wind power project was bipartisan, with "Bush Pioneers" working happily alongside the Kennedys to block the project lest their oceanfront views be sullied by the sight of windmills five miles away. Here's more:

Reporters had fun for a while that evening, but on reflection, some were saddened. The hearing was supposed to be an opportunity for public discourse and an expression of democracy at the local level. Instead, it had been hijacked and turned into a publicity stunt. While wrapping themselves in the mantle of democracy, the Nantucket Sound affluent were behaving as if they owned the government. . . .

When a democratic process could be sold like this to the highest bidder, and when a U.S. congressman was present to do the honors, what did this mean for the future of America? A few of those present that evening found the symbolism of the event frightening, given the dangerous realities of the new millennium. Energy prices were steadily rising. Regular people were having trouble paying their bills. Climate change seemed to be under way. Oil and gas were in short supply and developing nations were eager to have all that electricity could provide, from lightbulbs to computers.

Somehow, somehwere, sometime soon, these challenges were going to have to be addressed -- by someone willing to take the lead. . . . "Nero's fiddle," muttered a journalist watching the show.

As I say, it's interesting reading, and it certainly speaks poorly for the seriousness of the political class on these matters.

THE ANCHORESS: Impeach Bush! And she has some ideas on how to proceed.

SHOULDN'T THAT BE A "MATRONIZING" RESPONSE?

MARINES VOLUNTEER TO RETURN TO IRAQ:

Marine Cpl. Saul Mellado could be back in California, finishing the final months of his enlistment in a safe billet at Camp Pendleton.

Instead, the 23-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico is patrolling these war-torn streets only recently wrested from insurgent control — and bracing for an expected counteroffensive.

Mellado, a machine-gunner, knows these streets: the adults who eye the Marines with suspicion and the children who beg for candy and water. He was first dispatched to Ramadi in late 2004, a deployment during which 15 Marines in his unit — the 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment — died and more than 200 were wounded.

Under Marine Corps rules about "short-timers," Mellado could have skipped this return to Ramadi six weeks ago. But like 200 other members of the battalion — a quarter of its number — he asked to have his enlistment extended. Unlike a reenlistment, the move earns the Marines no bonus money, no promotion and no promise of a job shift or posting to a favored duty station.

"For a lot of the guys, this is their first tour," Mellado said as his Humvee moved slowly through the rubble-strewn streets. "If anything happened to them, and I could have helped them, I couldn't stand that."

Showing more dedication than some politicians I could name. Plus, there's this:

The Two-Five, whose motto, "Retreat, Hell," stems from the World War I battle at Belleau Wood, has drawn one of the tougher assignments in what remains the toughest city in sprawling Al Anbar province. Phone service is spotty, sewage runs in many streets, and any sign of local government is minimal.

But Marines say that residents, encouraged by tribal sheiks and imams, have turned against the extremists and, among other things, are pointing out the location of hidden roadside bombs.

"The last time, it was like the people didn't want to do anything to help their neighborhoods," Mellado said. "Now it's a big change. I want to be here to help with that, to help my Marines."

Bravo. Again, unlike some politicians I could name.

FORECASTING record air traffic delays this summer. I think I'll drive.

MORE TOXIC FOOD FROM CHINA?

A frozen product labeled monkfish distributed in three states is being recalled after two Chicago area people became ill after eating it, the importer announced Thursday.

Hong Chang Corporation of Santa Fe Springs, Calif., said it is recalling the product labeled as monkfish because it may contain tetrodotoxin, a potent toxin.

While the frozen fish imported from China was labeled monkfish, the company said it is concerned that it may be pufferfish because this toxin is usually associated with certain types of pufferfish.

Eating foods containing tetrodotoxin can result in life-threatening illness or death and the toxin cannot be destroyed by cooking or freezing.

This is starting to look like a problem.

JOE KLEIN ASKS THE ANTIWAR LEFTY BLOGGERS: "I find it amusing that some doubt the military source who told me the good news in Anbar province but don't question the sources who told me about the growing pessimism about the Shi'ites ever putting together a viable government...Why does good news about Iraq, however modest--and this was truly a modest, if intriguing, development--trouble you?"

CASHIER REFUSES TO SERVE STUDENT wearing pro-Zionist t-shirt.

OH NO: I've failed to capture the nuance.

I'M KIND OF SURPRISED to hear this story about John Edwards:

In his new memoir, "No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner," Shrum recalls asking Edwards at the outset of that campaign, "What is your position, Mr. Edwards, on gay rights?"

"I'm not comfortable around those people," Edwards replied, according to Shrum. He writes that the candidate's wife, Elizabeth, told him: "John, you know that's wrong."

Edwards's pollster, Harrison Hickman, who was in the room during the discussion, says Shrum "is sensationalizing and taking out of context what was an honest discussion about [Edwards's] lack of exposure to these issues and openly gay people. I don't remember anything that expressed any kind of venom or judgment about gay people."

Well, "I'm not comfortable" isn't exactly venom. But surely Edwards has been around plenty of gay people in his life, in and out of the Senate.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Yeah, I've had a lot of these, but they just keep giving me so much material to work with:

It was the $500,000 that Congress gave the Sparta Teapot Museum that made it a poster child for wasteful Washington spending.

But North Carolina's notorious "pork barrel" project also illustrates other ways that earmarks influence lobbying, political contributions and spending.

Looking for a way to help pay for the northwestern N.C. memorial to items with both a handle and a spout, the museum's backers decided in 2004 to team up with other area organizations, such as a local hospital, looking for federal aid.

Working through the Alleghany County Economic Development Corp., together they hired a Washington lobbying firm, the Ferguson Group, with close ties to North Carolina.

It was a good move for the museum, which ended up with a half-million dollar allocation from the 2005 Department of Housing and Urban Development budget. But it also received top billing in the 2006 "Pig Book," an annual publication issued by Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group that monitors federal spending.

The lobbyists charged the Alleghany County group $260,000 between 2004 and 2006, Senate records show. The museum's project manager, Jonathan Halsey, says it no longer participates in the lobbying contract because the museum isn't seeking more federal money.

Ferguson lobbyists have given thousands of dollars in recent years to the campaigns of N.C. lawmakers, including the three who helped secure the money for the teapot museum.

It's not just about waste. It's about corruption. You want to clean up campaign finance? Getting rid of this sort of thing would do more than McCain-Feingold ever did.

WHY TERRORISTS ATTACK JOURNALISTS: "It is only infidels that go into journalism and into the media."

SARKOZY UPDATE: "Americanization" at the Sorbonne?

A MURTHA APOLOGY:

Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania sent a note of apology to Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan Wednesday, the day after a divided House denied Rogers a vote to officially reprimand the powerful senior Democrat.

Murtha apologized for his "outburst" in a handwritten note Rogers received Wednesday morning, the latter's office confirmed. This marks his first acknowledgement of an episode between the two lawmakers on the House floor.

Last week, the powerful Democrat allegedly threatened to deny Rogers any future spending projects in defense bills after the Michigan Republican challenged his earmark request for $23 million to prevent the administration from closing an intelligence gathering facility in his western Pennsylvania district.

Well, it's a start.

A FRED THOMPSON EXPOSE from Time.

MICKEY KAUS: "At some point the search for authenticity in state-of-the-art politicians may become fruitless."

JULES CRITTENDEN: "Iran wants a Tet. So do the Democrats."

THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW is up!

IAIN MURRAY:

Five years ago, when we were at STATS, Howard Fienberg and I wrote a piece for the Christian Science Monitor that asked how many Muslims there were in America. We reviewed the evidence and came to the conclusion that there were about 2 million. For this, CAIR called us anti-Semitic, as it claimed there were 7-8 million.

Now, a new, exhaustive study from the Pew Research Center has asked the same question, and concludes there are about 2.35 million Muslims in America.

Story of my life.

Poor Iain.

IT MAY BECOME LEGAL to copy HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs: "The agreement, if supported by movie studios and film companies, could allow a consumer to make a backup copy in case their original disc is damaged and another copy for their home media server."

WHEN I READ STORIES LIKE THIS, I wonder how we're doing as well as we are in this war: "U.S. military continues to discharge gay Arab linguists."

FELONY FREE SPEECH in Illinois.

ALVARO VARGAS LLOSA: "Conservatism has always been pro-immigration."

Has it always been pro-illegal immigration, though? Because that's what seems to be bothering some people.

MORE BAD REVIEWS FOR THE NEW CONGRESS:

Barely six months after their November triumph, Democrats have backed away from their top two policy priorities, leaving House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., foundering on the key issues of Iraq and congressional corruption.

After challenging the White House with a pork-stuffed emergency supplemental funding bill that would have required U.S. military forces to begin pulling out of Iraq by a certain date, Democrats watched President Bush veto that measure, then dithered as he stood like a stone wall daring them to do it again. This week, the Democratic leadership caved, approving emergency legislation that includes 18 benchmarks, but no withdrawal — i.e., surrender — date. That outcome was a given once Bush decided to hold firm because the longer funding was delayed, the more Democrats became exposed to charges they were abandoning U.S. troops in the field. . . .

Similarly, the Democrats’ vow to end the “culture of corruption” in Congress has proven to be empty campaign rhetoric. Only two Democrats joined 187 Republicans on Wednesday in supporting an unsuccessful motion to discipline Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., for violating an ethics rules approved by the House in January. Murtha crossed the line when he threatened to bar spending sought by two Republicans who questioned earmarks in his home district.

The same day, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., disclosed that earmarks will be inserted into bills only after they’ve been approved by the House and sent to conference committees with the Senate. Under this newly rigged process, there won’t be any of those pesky amendments against things like the Bridge to Nowhere. In fact, House members will only be voting on conference committee reports, not on the thousands of earmarks that will be inserted into the bills covered by those reports. In other words, after some tentative moves in the right direction earlier this year, Democrats are now putting the corrupt system disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff called the congressional “favor factory” back behind closed doors.

Who will be the Democrats' Abramoff? Because someone will be.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Adam Keiper has some thoughts on nanoethics. And you might want to read this, too.

VIA MEMEORANDUM, I see that lefty bloggers are raining scorn on Joe Klein's report on Anbar, which I linked yesterday. Apparently, Klein's a victim of anonymous sources in shiny uniforms leaking Administration propaganda.

Well, possibly. Here at InstaPundit, however, I have a report from a non-anonymous source, who (I suspect) isn't shinily clothed. Here's the latest email from Michael Yon, who is actually in Anbar, and has been for a while:

Am in the city of Hit, out in Anbar Province, with Task Force 2-7 Infantry. 2-7 took over this section of Iraq on 08 February. The area of operations comprises approximately 4,000 square km with an estimated 100,000 people. On 30 Jan, as the last of the previous unit departed, 3 mortar rounds landed about 50 yards from where I sit, wounding about 8 of the departing soldiers. Since that time, there have been no mortar attacks on base – and only one possible small mortar attack in the entire 4,000 sq km. The last battalion took nearly 150 wounded and 15 killed in action in 14 months. They fought very hard while building the ISF, and I hope those soldiers, Marines and others would be happy and proud to know that their efforts set the conditions for the current success here. Following a major clearing operation that 2-7 IN executed with Iraqi Police when they initially took over, the guns are mostly quiet now. IEDs are still a threat but are few. Over the first one-hundred days, 2-7 has taken one wounded Soldier, and unfortunately a Marine was killed by an IED.

Otherwise, 2-7 hardly have fired their weapons. Today, I accompanied LTC Doug Crissman, the commander, to three meetings with Iraqi police and civilian leadership. The meetings were important but thankfully more administrative than combat oriented. Subjects included police recruitment and local politics, and actually seemed more difficult to navigate than "simple combat." And to think that only in January of this year, this city was a daily battle. Today, there are clear signs of development and the civilian population was out shopping. In addition to basic services being restored, the city of Hit has rebuilt its library. Citizens had stored away the books during the war here. They are preparing to re-stock the library. Glenn, you know that I do not hesitate to deliver bad news. I have no bad news to deliver today. The town of Hit clearly is doing much, much better. "Anbar the impossible" might be possible after all.

You know, if I didn't know better I'd think that some of the lefty bloggers would actually be happier if things were going badly. Meanwhile, to me the big news about the Time story was that Time was finally catching up with what warbloggers on the scene -- Michael Yon, J.d. Johannes, Bing West, etc. -- have been reporting for quite a while. Instead of criticizing Time for straying (if only a bit) off the current Democratic message, people should, if anything, be criticizing it for taking so long to get to the story.

Some related thoughts -- including, actually, a better criticism of what's going on in Anbar than you'll get from Klein's critics on the left -- here.

UPDATE: Okay, this is cool -- another email from Anbar:

I'm actually sitting about 30 feet from Michael Yon as he types his dispatches, here in the town of Hit, Al Anbar province. As one of the soldiers in Task Force 2-7, I have to say it's really heartening to have a journalist of his caliber out here reporting with us. Hit, along with Anbar generally, has settled down tremendously in the 4 months I've been in country this tour. It's surreal to compare my first two months in downtown Ramadi - incessant gunfire, explosions, and unending violence - to the peacekeeping and institution-building we finally have underway here in Hit. You wouldn't get that reading the papers, with their constant focus on the (obviously tragic) sectarian violence in Baghdad, but frankly what has happened in Anbar is near-miraculous - it's a story that deserves to be reported far more heavily than it has so to date.

I just want to emphasize how much it means to the guys on the ground out here to have our story told by people like Michael Yon. I'm sure sitting through tedious city council meetings and governance/rule of law/economic strategy sessions with the battalion's staff officers is a bit boring for Mr. Yon, but isn't that a tremendous thing that we're in that situation?

I've been a big fan of fan of Instapundit since my first tour in Iraq, in 2004.

Thanks,
Captain Michael Mulvania
Task Force 2-7 Infantry

I wish there were more people like Michael Yon reporting. But it's kind of nice to know that he's not the only InstaPundit reader in Anbar. And I don't know Captain Mulvania, but I'm guessing that his uniform isn't all that shiny either.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Klein-critics apparently missed this report, too, from Neil Munro of National Journal:

Evidence of a deep break between Qaeda-affiliated forces in Iraq and the various other Sunni insurgent groups is mounting. . . . The divisions are changing the battlefield. In Anbar, which has been the heartland of the Sunni insurgency since 2004, many Sunni tribes recently united into the Anbar Salvation Front, which claims to have deployed 20,000 militiamen against Al Qaeda. U.S. military officials, trying to deepen the splits through economic aid and deals with Sunni tribes, say they have recruited more than 4,500 locals -- including former insurgents -- in recent months to serve in the Anbar police force. Together, the U.S. military and the Iraqi security forces, according to numerous recent media reports, have largely pacified Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, which one Army intelligence report last year wrote off as lost.

I'm starting to think that they don't follow the news all that closely. It's true -- as Michael Yon noted in an earlier email -- that Anbar isn't perfectly peaceful. But it's also true that it's changed quite drastically since it was being written off last year. That's news -- if you care about reality, rather than just rooting for America Bush to lose.

MORE: An email from a reader:

I just read your latest post on Ramadi. I'm typing this while sitting on the tarmac in Memphis, waiting for a flight to Camp Lejeune. Every NCO in my platoon is a veteran and most are here voluntarily. And we're reservists.

Below, I've pasted an email I sent to Richard Fernandez yesterday. Since you have read John Robb's "Brave New War," (I read your review of it in CityJournal) I think you may find it of interest. See below. Feel free to excerpt, quote, or use, just please leave my name out.

By the way, here's a local news blurb about our company. Incredibly enough, they even got lots of the facts wrong in this simple story, but oh well: Link

-----

As you can imagine, the events in Anbar are of great importance to me. All recent reports indicate that violence is down dramatically, and not just in Ramadi as I first thought, and has been publicized. We have turned the tribes to our side. Everyone from Time magazine to Michael Yon is sending signals that we've turned a corner there.

If this is truly the case, and not just a confluence of factors that have led to a lull, then we may have found part of the answer to your query as to how to handle 3rd Gen gangs/irregular warfare/the problem with no name (as in your post: "Total Blurring of Crime and War"): the answer is not to eradicate an insurgency, it is to create or find one's own group that offers a reasonable alternative. This is really what has happened in Anbar: the tribes were colluding with Al Qaeda and other criminal and terror groups, but now we have turned them and empowered them. This is not nation-building; it may even be the opposite. Some time ago, Robert Kaplan wrote this in the LA Times:

"Those who proclaim today that the only real solution to the Arab dilemma is political freedom are correct. The problem is that they are describing a process that could encompass several bloody decades. After all, it took centuries for stable democracy as we know it to evolve in Europe. In this Darwinian shaking-out process, the new forms of political legitimacy may more closely resemble militarized social welfare organizations such as Hezbollah and the Al Mahdi army than the ramshackle contrivances of the European model that we saw in the post-colonial era."

Isn't this what we are seeing in Anbar? A tribe that is allied with the US is much more similar to Hezbollah than it is to a nation-state.

Here's the real takeaway though: this never would have happened without some sort of American presence in Iraq. It was not diplomats that turned the tribes, it was military officers. That is the secret that will be hard to swallow: we are in an age wherein the opposite of the 'exit strategy' will have to be the lynchpin of strategy: presence, not early exit, is what is required in these broad swaths of the world that where instability threatens US interests. The key will be not to figure out whether to be there or not, which is the current debate. The key will be to figure out how much to be there and in what form: soldier, diplomat, spy, or some other category that has yet to be determined: perhaps a combo of all three, or perhaps some privatized version of any one of them.

Let's hope that this is right, and that we'll stick it out long enough to make it work.

ANOTHER SHIFT IN EUROPE: "Security officials from Europe's largest countries have thrown their weight behind the EU Commission's plans to map out mosques on the continent to identify imams who preach radical Islam that raises the threat of homegrown terrorism. The project, to be finished by the fall, will focus on the roles of imams, their training, their ability to speak in the local language and their source of funding, EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini told a news conference."

BIZARRE JUXTAPOSITIONS: Side-by-side recommendations for The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, and The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed.

Kind of reminds me of that old joke from the sixties: "'Make Love Not War?' Hell, in my day we did both!"

GATEWAY PUNDIT notes another grim milestone.

DO TELL: "Long-standing rumours that the former French president Jacques Chirac holds a secret multi-million-euro bank account in Japan appear to have been confirmed by files seized from the home of a senior spy."

MY EARLIER POST ON THE AIR-POWERED CAR led a lot of readers to write with questions about crashworthiness. Reader Hank Bradley wrote: "I too lust after that Air Car. It's exactly right for urban conditions. HOWEVER: with a tank full of air at 4350 psi behind your seat, you'd better consider the effects of a collision, say one that pierces that tank with a piece of metal with several thousand pounds of auto behind it. If your car didn't suddenly simulate an Iraqi car bomb, it may elect to simulate a jet plane, or at very least provide you with spontaneous ejection seats for you and the whole family."

I don't know how dangerous it is -- a gas tank is potentially explosive, too, after all -- but the likelihood is that these things will appear first in places like India and China, where neither the government nor consumers care as much about safety. And from the standpoint of oil consumption and greenhouse emissions, early introduction in those places is actually better, since (1) oil and greenhouse emissions are fungible; but (2) the automobile market there is growing much, much faster than in Western countries, and consumers are more interested in urban commuter vehicles than in Interstate / Autobahn cruisers.

UPDATE: Matt Sullivan, who wrote the air car piece for PM, emails:

Just checked out your interesting back-and-forth on the air-powered car. Thought I'd give you the lowdown on the air tank safety--an important part of this innovation that I couldn't fit into a tiny story for the magazine.

The tanks are actually very safe, because MDI (the company that makes the car) has developed an explosion-proof carbon fiber compressed air tank. It's so non-flammable, in fact, that Airbus has contracted MDI to build the
carbon fiber tanks for their planes. More here (link) and video here (Link), and MDI's spokesman told me
this:

"We're really going to try to optimize the technology because the air tank is one of the major things--one of the major innovations--in the car. We've really focused on having the best kind of air tank because, obviously, in case of accidents, we can't afford having any problems."

And Tobias Buckell notes that a lot of people have an exaggerated idea of air tanks' explosiveness, based on the movie Jaws. He notes that "Mythbusters", er, exploded this myth a while back:

Here's the mythbuster link:

http://www.mythbustersfanclub.com/mb2/content/view/185/40/

I know you scuba dive from reading your blog (as did I when I lived in the Caribbean) so you'll know the average air tank is pressurized at 2-3,000 PSI, which is only looking to be about 1,000 less than the air car, so this not all that different from handling scuba equipment.

Secondly, one would expect engineers to put a simple crumple zone around the pressure tank as well.

So no blowing up, crumple zone, and according to the mythbusters episode here's what happens when you shoot a dive tank:

"When the tank was punctured by a bullet it simply decompressed quickly, causing it to fly around like a compressed-air rocket. The team was only able to make the tank explode in the end by using explosives."

So the car might get shoved around a bit, but depending on how much air, how bad the crash, or if there is no crumple zone.

Frankly, I'd rather sit on compressed air than a fuel tank!

Yeah, gasoline's pretty explosive.

ECO-TERROR UPDATE:

Declaring fires set at a police station, an SUV dealership and a tree farm acts of terrorism, a federal judge Wednesday sentenced the first of 10 members of a radical environmental group to 13 years in prison.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken commended Stanislas Meyerhoff for having the courage to "do the right thing" by informing on his fellow arsonists after his arrest. But he declared his efforts to save the earth by setting fires were misguided and cowardly, and contributed to an unfair characterization of others working legally to protect the environment as radicals.

"It was your intent to scare and frighten other people through a very dangerous and psychological act — arson," Aiken told Meyerhoff. "Your actions included elements of terrorism to achieve your goal. . . . Prior to sentencing, Wood asked for leniency, arguing that most of the fires were not acts of terrorism because they were set at businesses, not government facilities.

The prosecution countered that based on communiqués issued after the fires, the blazes were meant to retaliate against the U.S. Forest Service for allowing a Vail ski resort to expand into a national forest, the University of Washington for genetic-engineering research and the government for prosecuting radicals who set earlier fires at the SUV dealership.

Read the whole thing. This kind of behavior, like the terrorism aimed at abortion clinics and animal-rights attacks on scientific researchers, is dangerous, destructive and needs to be stepped on, hard.

TOM SMITH: "Freedom isn't free, and if you had any doubt whether the first amendment was free, I offer you Michael Moore."

Not free, but lucrative for some people.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: More and more news outlets seem to be noticing the Democrats' disappointing performance on pork:

When the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives passed one of its first spending bills, funding the Energy Department for the rest of 2007, it proudly boasted that the legislation contained no money earmarked for lawmakers' pet projects and stressed that any prior congressional requests for such spending "shall have no legal effect."

Within days, however, lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) began directly contacting the Energy Department. They sought to secure money for their favorite causes outside of the congressional appropriations process -- a practice that lobbyists and appropriations insiders call "phonemarking." . . .

The number of earmarks, in which lawmakers target funds to specific spending projects, exploded over the past decade from about 3,000 in 1996 to more than 13,000 in 2006, according to the Congressional Research Service. Most earmarks made it into appropriations bills or their accompanying conference reports without identifying their sponsors. Upon taking control of Congress after November's midterm elections, Democrats vowed to try to halve the number of earmarks, and to require lawmakers to disclose their requests and to certify that the money they are requesting will not benefit them.

But the new majority is already skirting its own reforms. . . . "Absolutely nothing has changed," said the Center for Defense Information's Winslow T. Wheeler, a Senate appropriations and national security aide who worked for both Democrats and Republicans over three decades before stepping down in 2002. "The rhetoric has changed but not the behavior, and the behavior has gotten worse in the sense that while they are pretending to reform things, they are still groveling in the trough."

Meet the new boss, yada yada. Read the whole thing.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY has been getting a lot of publicity for his new documentary Indoctrinate U. Here's a roundup.

And here, by the way, is our interview of Evan and his partner Stuart Browning, from the second Glenn & Helen Show ever.

FOUR GEOENGINEERING PLANS to fight global warming. Research is fine, but we should proceed very cautiously on deployment.

GEORGE W. BUSH, GREENHOUSE HERO!

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped slightly last year even as the economy grew, according to an initial estimate released yesterday by the Energy Information Administration.

The 1.3 percent drop in CO{-2} emissions marks the first time that U.S. pollution linked to global warming has declined in absolute terms since 2001 and the first time it has gone down since 1990 while the economy was thriving. . . . In 2006 the U.S. economy grew 3.3 percent, a fact President Bush touted yesterday as he hailed the government's "flash estimate" that the country's carbon dioxide emissions dropped by 78 million metric tons last year.

With John Ashcroft protecting our civil liberties, and committed environmentalist George W. Bush tackling the greenhouse effect, things are just getting better and better!

UPDATE: Hey, it's already working!

SAVING ENERGY WITH A SIX-STROKE GASOLINE/STEAM ENGINE. You don't see that every day.

SAVING LIVES VIA FRANCHISING, in Africa.

LOTS MORE IMMIGRATION-BLOGGING FROM MICKEY KAUS: The best thing about this whole brouhaha, from my standpoint at least, is that Kaus has been on fire. I was hoping that he and Virginia Postrel would get into a back-and-forth on the subject, but you can't have everything. And hey, there's still hope.

BODY FARMS ARE springing up all over.

May 23, 2007

SECOND AMENDMENT UPDATE: Interesting article by historian Robert Churchill: Gun Regulation, the Police Power, and the Right to Keep Arms in Early America: The Legal Context of the Second Amendment.

SARKOZY AND IRAN: "French President Nicholas Sarkozy called Wednesday for sanctions on Iran to be tightened if the country does not adhere to the West's demands to cease its nuclear agenda. . . . Sarkozy announced that France will join the official US-led struggle against head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei, who recommended that Iran be allowed to enrich uranium in some of its nuclear plants."

ElBaradei doesn't inspire confidence. But read the whole thing.

CONGRATULATIONS, It's a boy, born to Mary Cheney and Heather Poe. We had a podcast interview with Mary a year ago; you can listen here.

A FRED THOMPSON RUN GETS praise from Thompson's ex-girlfriend Lorrie Morgan.

As I've noted here before on several occasions, it pays to stay on good terms with your ex-girlfriends. Sometimes I even get blogging from them!

MIDWEST LUTHERANS LARGELY REJECT VIOLENCE: "By an almost two-to-one margin, Midwest Lutherans voiced solid opposition to decapitation, suicide bombing, and chemical warfare in a new comprehensive survey of their social attitudes. The Pew Research survey, conducted May 13-19, queried nearly 2,500 randomly selected Lutherans at flea markets and convenience stores across the Midwest. Interviews were conducted in High Plains Twang, Great Lakes Nasal and Flat Ohio Valley Bland."

UPDATE: Fanatical Presbyterians in Australia! You can't trust those folks.

MORE ON LEBANON FROM MICHAEL TOTTEN:

Trying to read the logic behind the last three car bombs is a little bit like reading tea leaves. But as someone named Triok pointed out in the comments, it may not be an accident that the first bomb was in a Christian area, the second bomb was in a Sunni area, and the third bomb was in a Druze area.

The overwhelming majority of Christians, Sunnis, and Druze are in the anti-Syrian coalition. And until this week, no bombs have exploded in Sunni or Druze areas since Syria's withdrawal. Perhaps this is enough to discern a deliberate pattern, especially since the UN is gearing up to impose a tribunal against Syrian regime suspects for assassinating Rafik Hariri.

As Triok pointed out, no placement of bombs in Lebanon is ever random.

He's got more.

GOOGLE IS buying FeedBurner for $100 million. Heck, I'd sell InstaPundit for half that!

UPDATE: "Pure evil."

HERE'S A REVIEW OF THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS ("What this title has going for it is an idea whose time has come. . . . Every library and home with kids really should have a copy."), along with some suggestions for girls.

WRITE YOUR OWN "TWO AMERICAS" CAPTION! Note: Link is work-safe, but if you go beyond it to Fred Lapides' GoodShit blog, well, there'll be other stuff that isn't.

SO YOU THINK HYBRIDS ARE just for environmentally conscious wimps like, er, me? Well, think again!

Plus, more on that air-powered car I mentioned the other day.

TIME: "Is al-Qaeda on the Run in Iraq?"

ATTRITION:

The Taliban's much-vaunted spring offensive has stalled apparently due to lack of organisation after dozens of middle-ranking commanders were killed by British troops in the past year, according to military sources. The death last week of the key Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah at the hands of American special forces has harmed the Taliban's morale to the point that local commanders are having to tell their troops to "remain professional" despite the loss.

After suffering more than 1,000 dead in battles with the Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines in the last year, the Taliban retired to regroup and re-equip last winter.

A spring offensive was ordered by the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, Pakistan, and was meant to be launched in late March. But a lack of mid-level commanders has meant that there has been little co-ordination to bring about the offensive.

Hey, I guess killing these guys does help. (Via Don Surber).

JODY WILLIAMS AND MIA FARROW: "Chinese oil companies fuel genocide in Darfur. It's time for Americans to divest."

SICKO UPDATE: Wagner James Au emails:

Glenn, I'm not sure anyone's brought this up yet with Michael Moore's *Sicko*, but one of the biggest costs on US health care is... people like Michael Moore: The World Bank has estimated the cost of obesity in the U.S. at 12 percent of the national health care budget... The Lewin Group examined the costs of fifteen (15) conditions causally related to obesity. They included: arthritis, breast cancer, heart disease, colorectal cancer, type 2 diabetes, endometrial cancer, end-stage renal disease, gallbladder disease, hypertension, liver disease, low back pain, renal cell cancer, obstructive sleep apnea, stroke and urinary incontinence... This method established the direct health care costs of obesity at $102.2 billion in 1999. [Indirect costs surely boost that figure even higher].

Maybe Moore's next film can be called Downsize Me!

YEAH, THAT'LL WORK: Suing OPEC over high oil prices. The discovery process might be fun, though.

THOUGHTS ON "GROWING THE 'RED' BLOGOSPHERE," which is, by the way, absolutely nothing like "hosting a 'communist guest.'"

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Meet the new boss, yada yada.

House Democratic leaders pushing a promised lobbying overhaul are facing resistance from balky lawmakers and fending off accusations that a prominent member is flouting new ethics rules.

The Democratic leaders were forced to scrap a promise to double the current one-year lobbying ban after lawmakers leave office. Now, they are struggling to pass legislation requiring lobbyists to disclose the campaign contributions they “bundle” — collect and deliver — to lawmakers. Failing to deliver on both measures would endanger similar provisions already passed by the Senate.

Other House rules changes this year appear to have done little to alter business as usual on Capitol Hill. House Democrats voted along party lines on Tuesday to block the censure of one of their most powerful members, Representative John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania. He was accused of violating a new ethics rule that prohibits lawmakers from swapping pork for votes.

Still to come is a long-overdue report by a House committee considering the creation of an independent watchdog to monitor compliance with ethics rules. Democrats say the House is unlikely to endorse the idea, which the Senate has already rejected. . . . Some newly elected Democrats say they worry about potential perceptions that their party has failed to deliver its promised cleanup. “Many of the freshmen ran on a campaign of, as Speaker Pelosi would say, ‘draining the swamp,’ on ethics and ethics enforcement,” said Representative Ed Perlmutter, a first-term Colorado Democrat.

Those promises to produce the most ethical Congress in history are looking lamer and lamer. I'm beginning to think they never meant it at all. . . .

THERE ARE TWO AMERICAS: Those who are consistent on the War on Terror, and those who are not.

JEFF EMANUEL looks at embedded journalists in Iraq:

While embedding may be decried by some for causing journalists, who claim the utopian titles of "objective" and "neutral" for their reportage, to lose their cold detachment and actually begin to see the soldiers they live alongside as humans, it is that very quality that makes the practice of embedding reporters with military units so beneficial to both parties. Rather than observing events from a safely detached distance--and thus being able to remove the human element from the equation--embedded reporters are forced to face up to the humanity of their subjects, and to share common experiences--often of the life-and-death variety--with those they are covering.

The military should encourage a lot more of this.

BLOGGING FROM IRAQ, J.D. Johannes reports on the cellular battlespace.

IMPERIAL OVERSTRETCH AT GOOGLE?

Google’s ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said gathering more personal data was a key way for Google to expand and the company believes that is the logical extension of its stated mission to organise the world’s information.

Sounds a bit . . . intrusive. Maybe Ask.com's new competitive strategy should involve respecting people's privacy!

THERE ARE TWO AMERICAS: Those with pirate booty, and those without. My campaign slogan will be "Booty for everyone!"

NOAH POLLAK: Who is responsible for Gaza? A reply to Matthew Yglesias.

I blame John Ashcroft! Oh, wait. . . .

UPDATE: Related item here.

REGINA LYNN HAS THOUGHTS ON sex in space.

I'VE GOT A REVIEW of John Robb's Brave New War over at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal website. You can read it here.

POPULAR MECHANICS looks at an oncoming Very Light Jet revolution.

Plus, a roundup of new VLJs, and video.

Oh, and here are some thoughts of mine on what this may mean.

THE CONSTITUTION AS AN "INFINITELY MALLEABLE SCHMOO:" Now, see, this is what happens when you allow yourself to move away from doctrinal analysis . . . .

PHOTOBLOGGING THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE, at InstaPunk.

THERE ARE TWO AMERICAS: One with good PR skills, and one with a talent for self-destruction.

THIS LOOKS INTERESTING: Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound.

Blurb: "This well-reported assessment of democracy manipulated by powerful federal, state and local insiders, and other not-in-my-backyard shenanigans surrounding plans for a wind farm five miles off Cape Cod, is certainly upfront about its bias. Williams, a former journalist-in-residence at Duke University, and Whitcomb, editorial page editor of the Providence Journal, jauntily champion the cause of energy entrepreneur Jim Gordon's 'bold idea' to plant 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound—a project still snared in a regulatory maze as this peppery account went to press. The authors decry what they call fear-mongering by Gordon's well-funded opponents (2005 contributions: $3.3 million) and are particularly peeved by the obstructionism of Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose behind-the-scenes maneuvering is highlighted, as are the fulminations verging "on the incoherent" by environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr.—normally an outspoken opponent of coal-powered energy generation and a vigorous supporter of alternative energy sources. The Kennedys' stubborn opposition is shared by such moneyed neighbors as Listerine heiress Bunny Mellon and coal, oil and gas magnate William Koch, who are depicted as plutocratic bullies in this rambunctious, unsparing dissection of ruling-class abuse."

Reader-review flamewar starts in 3. . 2 . . 1 . . .

SECOND AMENDMENT UPDATE: Brian Frye looks at the history of U.S. v. Miller.

It might profitably be read along with this article that Brannon Denning and I wrote on the Miller case.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Good grief, did somebody declare this "Make a mockery of Democratic promises for reform" week?

The House Appropriations Committee has decided to insert earmarks into all of the FY08 spending bills during the conferencing committees, instead of during the initial House-only process.

This will prevent lawmakers like Jeff Flake from offering amendments to strip out wasteful pork projects...which is EXACTLY why David Obey, the Approps Chairman, is changing the rules. In defending his move, Obey said ($),

“It’s my job to protect the committee."

Apparently, Obey's job to protect the American taxpayer is a lower priority. In a recent press release, Flake said, "This is a huge step backwards on earmark reform. As bad as the earmark process is now, this would make it immensely worse."

On this, the porkbusting blogosphere should raise its alert status to DEFCON 1. First the Murtha debacle and now this? Things are getting out of control.

Actually, they're getting back under the control of the same old bunch of sleazoids. Meet the new boss, yada yada.

UPDATE: And the new guys aren't helping: Freshmen fail ethics test. Congratulations to Jim Cooper, though, for doing the right thing.

MORE OPPOSITION TO THE IDIOTIC INCANDESCENT BULB BAN PROPOSAL, which typically is being sponsored by nanny-in-chief Mike Bloomberg:

The anti-light-bulb campaign isn’t creeping socialism—it’s nanny-state capitalism: a cross-ideological alliance to force-market lousy products to the public. The left gets to see environmental virtue written into law; the right gets to see the negative consequences of that law fall on individual consumers, rather than, say, the power industry.

I'm happy to use CFLs, and to encourage other people to try them. (I'm writing this in a room lit entirely by CFLs, and the light's fine.) But people whose first instinct is to force this kind of change are people who have a serious character disorder.

JOSE GUARDIA spots a metaphor for the Iraq war.

MORE PEACEKEEPING SCANDALS:

Pakistani UN peacekeeping troops have traded in gold and sold weapons to Congolese militia groups they were meant to disarm, the BBC has learnt.

These militia groups were guilty of some of the worst human rights abuses during the Democratic Republic of Congo's long civil war.

The trading went on in 2005. A UN investigative team sent to gather evidence was obstructed and threatened.

The team's report was buried by the UN itself to "avoid political fallout".

Typical. (Via Gateway Pundit).

OH, JEEZ, GET A SENSE OF HUMOR:

The retail chain has been promoting a £30 sex toy called the iGasm, a device which connects to any music player and offers users an erotic vibrating treat in time to the beat.

A News of the World report claims Apple is furious about Ann Summer's promotion of the device, and is demanding all posters for the gadget be taken down, under threat of court action.

This seriously conflicts with Apple's young, hip, carefree marketing, er, vibe.

UPDATE: "Apple isn't fun any more."

WOW, LOOK AT WHAT ONE GUY CAN DO:

Lo