November 10, 2007

AUSTIN BAY RECOUNTS a conversation in Bagram.

On the desk was a picture of a young US Army second lieutenant. The pilot picked it up. “That’s my son. He just finished armor officers basic.”

I recognized the patch on the young man’s shoulder. Thirty years ago I served in the same division.

“Some day I may be flying strikes to support my son,” the pilot said, his voice soft steel.

I choked up. So did he.

“Thank you for what you do,” I said. “And for producing a son like that.”

Indeed. But read the whole thing.

BRAD DELONG: Can we retire Bob Herbert? I think this is a proposal on which the blogosphere can unite.

OOPS: "For the second time in as many days, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has had to deal with accusations of planting questions during public appearances . . . . In a telephone interview Saturday, Geoffrey Mitchell, 32, said he was approached by Clinton campaign worker Chris Hayler to ask a question about how she was standing up to President Bush on the question on funding the Iraq war and a troop withdrawal timeline."

UPDATE: Tom Maguire: "The latest Hillarity about planted questions has me wondering what will happen to Hillary after she manages to lose the aura of inevitability."

ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh: "She would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those darn kids!"

WHAT HAPPENS when the neighborhood association doesn't like you:

Former Sunni insurgents asked the U.S. to stay away, then ambushed members of al-Qaida in Iraq, killing 18 in a battle that raged for hours north of Baghdad, an ex-insurgent leader and Iraqi police said Saturday.

More like this, please.

UPDATE: More on this from Donald Sensing: "Not content with losing the logistics war, now al Qaeda is just plain losing the war. . . . Well, when it rains, it pours."

J.D. JOHANNES on why the anti-war movies are flopping.

OR MAYBE IT'S AN EMERGENT A.I.: "Some experts have put the number of Storm-infected PCs at close to 10 million, but most estimates are more conservative, pegging the infected pool at between a few hundred thousand and a million or so machines. . . . Some observers have estimated that Storm may have as much as a petabyte of memory at its disposal. The human brain may have as much as a petabyte of storage available to it." If so, I hope it's a friendly one.

TOM MAGUIRE: How gullible are the Kossacks? "Rahm Emanuel wasn't so stupid in 2006 when he helped the Democrats reclaim the House. Maybe he is not so stupid now. As to the gullibility of the Kossacks - in 493 comments no one has provided the completed Potts quote."

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Meet the new boss, yada yada:

While conservative senators have boasted recently about ditching the $1 million "hippie museum" earmark from a recent spending bill, they didn't bother touching billions for Louisiana.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), in fact, put out a press release late last night declaring Thursday as "our $12 billion day." Indeed, Louisiana received $3 billion in home reconstruction aid that was dropped into the Defense spending bill late in negotiations. That bill cleared the Senate on Thursday. Louisiana will receive $7 billion of the $23 billion water resources development act money thanks to the resounding override of President Bush's veto of that bill. And the Pelican State will receive $2 billion in defense funds for various military projects and installations in that state under the Pentagon spending bill.

But she got her pork the old-fashioned way, as the price for supporting Mukasey.

TIM WU, freedom fighter.

JUAN CARLOS TO HUGO CHAVEZ: "Why don't you shut up?"

More here.

DON SURBER: "What broken fences?"

A THANKSGIVING RECIPE FROM BOB KRUMM: Duct tape is involved.

THE GREATEST CAR COMMERCIAL EVER? A Corvette is involved.

SOME GOOD NEWS ON DISCRETIONARY INCOME that you may have missed.

REMEMBERING NORMAN MAILER: Fondly, and not-so-fondly.

UPDATE: Roger Simon weighs in.

BIRTH CONTROL PILLS and heart attacks.

CASUALTIES OF ANTIWAR: "Why Hollywood's anti-war movies are tanking at the box office.

Plus, "'Lions' lie down with lambs and nearly talk them to death."

WELL, THEY CALL HER THE FRONTRUNNER: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has won tens of millions of dollars more in federal earmarks this year than her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, even though two of them have significantly more Senate seniority. A review of the first three appropriations conference reports finished by Senate and House negotiators shows that Clinton has successfully requested at least $530 million worth of projects." This'll make it kind of hard for her to take advantage of the Republicans' vulnerability on pork, though.

FAME AND SHAME: Eric Scheie takes on the bluenoses. Fortunately, being shameless, none of this bothers me.

WILL GOOGLE KILL YOUR CELLPHONE CONTRACT? Glenn Derene takes a look.

IS RAHM EMANUEL A RACIST? Kos is asking. (Via Dan Riehl).

KARL ROVE POINTS OUT NETROOTS CURSING, gets this response: "F*ck the f*cking f*ckers."

You could see that one coming . . . .

BROUGHT A COUPLE MORE OF LEE CHILD'S NOVELS with me. I'm enjoying them, though I'm finding Jack Reacher a bit less sympathetic with each additional story.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, Hollywood writers would be force to name names so that those who deviated could be punished. And, apparently, they were right!

BRENDAN LOY: Where did all the hurricanes go?

SAY IT AIN'T SO: Clinton aides plant student's question.

The Clinton campaign admits it, and says it won't happen again. It shouldn't. And this is a stumble that may reveal a lot.

It ain't the 90's anymore, and this kind of thing is harder to get away with. Have the Clinton folks been keeping up?

UPDATE: Like I said.

OUCH: "Hillary wants a Presidency with training wheels."

HEH:

In his extended remarks, the former President also explained that Hillary deserved credit for the magnificent job creation and budget surpluses during his two terms; the collapse of the Palestinian peace talks occured only because her invaluable advice went unheeded; and one of his great regrets is that he didn't listen more carefully when she made the case for aggressively pursuing Osama Bin Laden.

MORE: I 'fess up - he didn't really say those other things. Yet.

Whatever it takes!

WELL, DUH: The evidence emerging from the ongoing Al Dura trial in France indicates that Western journalists are fully aware that some of the footage they use in their reports on Mideast conflict is staged.

"When confronted with the pervasive evidence of staging in the case of Al Dura, the reaction of France 2, which ran the story, has been essentially that 'everybody does it.'"

REPORTEDLY, MUKASEY BELIEVES that the Second Amendment protects an individual right.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: How the war was won. He's not shy about his theme.

UPDATE: It's all about evolution.

RAND SIMBERG remembers Kristallnacht.

November 09, 2007

BLOGWORLD WRAPUP: So, I had a good time. But what's the big picture? Well, first the show was better than I expected. It was the first iteration of a blogosphere trade show, but it ran smoothly with no major glitches. The exhibitors, etc., were far more polished and professional than I expected. There were lots of new companies offering new products, and a lot of energy. Political blogging has been around a while, and although it's still growing, it's no longer exploding like it was in, say, 2002-03. That's led some people, who mostly look at political blogs, to think that the blogosphere as a whole is in the same state. This thing reminded me just how wrong that is.

It really underscored to me how big and diverse the blogosphere has become. There were lots of big bloggers I barely knew of, because they're in areas I don't follow. Some tech folks were telling me that they liked it because, going to the tech conferences, they saw the same people every time. I think a lot of political-blogger types felt the same way. There was plenty of cross-fertilization.

But the bottom line is that the blogging pond has gotten very big, and there are a lot of big fish in it now. I think that's a huge success for the blogosphere.

SOME MORE BLOGWORLD IMAGES:

There were aspiring Congressmen:

Bloggers in need of stress-relief:

Conversations, possibly of the flirtatious variety:

And, when it was over and people were loading out, some folks just couldn't bear to shut their laptops:

But they're going to have another one next year, in September. So it's not over forever.

UPDATE: So no sooner did I post the picture above when I got an email from Shama Hyder, who saw herself and sends this link to her coverage of Blogworld Expo.

MICHAEL TOTTEN:

A RECIPE FOR Oyster Mushroom Stuffing.

WELL, WE WERE IN LAS VEGAS:

PAJAMAS:

A CELEBRITY APPEARANCE by Matt Welch!

WHEE! I'm blogging!

SOME MORE PHOTOS FROM BLOGWORLD EXPO:

Pinups for the troops:

Duane Patterson and Ed Morrissey:

Bill Roggio:

The vital part of any trade show -- free food and drink!

ALVARO VARGAS LLOSA on the Mexican problems that lead to illegal immigration to the U.S.: "What has been the consequence of a century of collectivization of the land? In the 1990s, when trade policies became more liberal, Mexico's rural population found itself caught up in an extremely inefficient system that was undercapitalized, making it very difficult for Mexican peasants to compete with the outside world. When the government finally allowed the villagers to sell the ejidos, something they had been prevented from doing since 1917, many of them put their land on the market and left for Mexico's cities. When the urban areas did not offer improved conditions, they migrated to the United States."

TERRY HEATON: News is a process, not a finished product.

FROM THE INSTA-WIFE, a review of You: Staying Young.

MORE ON space-based solar power. Bring it on!

BAND OF BLOGGERS: Video here.

OUCH: "Sen. Joe Lieberman on Thursday painted a dim picture of his party, saying Democrats have given up their moral authority on foreign policy because they are more concerned with opposing Republicans than doing what is right."

UPDATE: Remembering the pro-war John Edwards. What could have changed?

IN A CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY ARTICLE -- sorry, subscription-only -- David Obey explains what members of Congress want most -- earmarks!:

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey, D-Wis., challenged House Republicans to join Democrats in supporting the bill despite the veto threat.

Obey made clear that lawmakers who support the president risk losing what many members most want out of spending bills: earmarks, or funding for local projects.

“I would ask every serious-minded person in this body if they really think there’s a chance of a snowball in Hades that members’ earmarks on either side of the aisle will survive if we wind up at the president’s level of funding,” he said.

Thanks for making those priorities clear, sir.

DANNY GLOVER ON Karl Rove's love-hate affair with blogs.

A LOOK AT politicians and the current U.S. economy.

WELL, I WON'T SEE HIM, since I'm in Las Vegas, but my brother informs me that Jason Ricci & New Blood will be playing in Knoxville at Sassy Ann's tonight. Dang.

IN THE MAIL: The publication issue of Kenneth Timmerman's Shadow Warriors. And now that it's officially on sale it seems to be doing very well on Amazon.

PUT A BUNCH OF BLOGGERS TOGETHER AND WHAT DO THEY DO? Mostly, they interview each other.

But there are trad-media folks, too:

And here you see the New Media decision-making process in action:

PREHISTORIC ZOMBIE ATTACKS!

THOUGHTS ON BARNEY FRANK'S SUB-PRIME MORTGAGE REFORM, and on Barney Frank's anti-discrimination legislation.

THE THRILL OF VICTORY.

The agony of defeat.

November 08, 2007

ELIZABETH STEPHAN, from Breitbart TV. Sophisticated? Yes. Too sophisticated for free t-shirts? No.

OKAY, FARK CRUSHED ALL OPPOSITION, but it's interesting that Little Green Footballs outscored the much larger Kos community by a significant margin. Though Kos is reportedly larger, they don't seem to be as good as sending people offsite.

THE ENGLISH SYSTEM OF MEASURES, explained.

NEW MEDIA ARE AT BLOGWORLD, old media are in a less happy place.

AL QAEDA PLANNING shopping mall attacks? I don't know how well-founded these reports are, but I've been expecting something like that since 2001.

From the comments: "Just another reason to shop online." Maybe these rumors are being spread by Amazon stock-pumpers!

ADVANCING CANCER RESEARCH, with grid computing.

WANT MY URL? A lot of people seemed to be asking.

MARY KATHARINE HAM, on what's been happening at Blog World Expo:

I'LL BE ON HUGH HEWITT'S SHOW at 5 pm Pacific, 8 pm Eastern.

A LOOK AT neo-McCarthyism in the academy.

THIS VIDEO illustrates, through its, er, spontaneity, that there's a writer's strike! Or at least that there was no scabbing going on . . .

SO FAR, BLOGWORLD EXPO is mostly a class reunion or something. Here's me with Stephen Green and Ed Driscoll. I just heard that Bill Roggio is a couple of booths over.

The big news is just how big the place is and how many people are here. As Stephen Green noted, a few years ago you could hardly have filled the Pajamas Media booth with bloggers, much less a huge exhibit hall.,

JAMES KIRCHICK LOOKS AT THE ANTI-NEOCON FERVOR:

Not long ago, while visiting a friend at Oxford University, I found myself in a heated political discussion with a Scotsman. The subject of our dispute was the Iraq war, but the conversation turned toward the rise of latent anti-Semitism in once-respectable quarters of British opinion. Two years earlier, a story entitled “A Kosher Conspiracy?,” illustrated by a gold Star of David plunged into the heart of the Union Jack, graced the cover of Britain’s most prominent left-wing magazine, The New Statesman. Since then, the intellectual climate had only worsened. In response to my remark that many use the epithet “neocon” to describe Jews, my interlocutor replied, “I’d rather be an anti-Semite than a neocon.”

Sometimes, wishes do come true. Kirchick concludes: "Welcome to the new political discourse."

JUST LANDED IN LAS VEGAS, for Blog World Expo. Continental got me here on time with no hassle. Maybe the air-travel curse is broken.

REPORTING ON the health risks of not drinking.

Stay safe out there!

PJM POLITICAL will be on XM Satellite Radio's Potus '08 channel (130) at 6 p.m. Eastern tonight. Or you can listen online here.

CASUALTIES OF THE TV writers' strike.

WILLIAM GIBSON INTERVIEWED:

I find myself less pessimistic than I sometimes imagine I should be. When I started to write science fiction, the intelligent and informed position on humanity's future was that it wasn't going to have one at all. We've forgotten that a whole lot of smart people used to wake up every day thinking that that day could well be the day the world ended. So when I started writing what people saw as this grisly dystopian, punky science fiction, I actually felt that I was being wildly optimistic: "Hey, look — you do have a future. It's kind of harsh, but here it is." I wasn't going the post-apocalyptic route, which, as a regular civilian walking around the world, was pretty much what I expected to happen myself.

Read the whole thing.

DANIEL PIPES on Saddam's Damn Dam. "Since April 2003, I have argued that this shouldering of responsibility for Iraq's domestic life has harmed both Americans and Iraqis. It yokes Americans with unwanted and unnecessary loss of life, financial obligations, and political burdens. For Iraqis, as the dam example suggests, it encourages an irresponsibility with potentially ruinous consequences."

GEORGE W. HAIG?

NO LOVE for Hollywood:

Wagner described Hollywood as one of the oldest "closed clubs" existing, an industry ruled by lawyers and unions that fight technological and other sorts of progress at every turn. Typical of the mindset, he recalled, was Jack Valenti's 1980s statement that "the VCR is to the movie industry what the Boston Strangler was to women."

Heh.

"THE FUTURE BELONGS to those who show up."

IN THE MAIL: Carole Platt Liebau's Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!). I would venture that the real problem isn't sex as such, but the puerile way it's treated in pop culture. I think actual porn is more honest and healthy than the pop-culture treatment of the subject.

CONGRESS AND BLOG BANS: "Conspiratorial rumors of blog bans have finally made their way to Congress -- and have been quickly shot down just like similar rumors that have surfaced periodically in federal and state agencies."

IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO vote for InstaPundit in the Weblog Awards "Best Individual Blogger" category.

SO I GOT MY NEPHEW the Fisher-Price Smart Cycle that I blogged about a while back, for his third birthday. My brother reports that it was a hit: "William is pedaling away on his Smart Cycle right now... giggling maniacally all the while." Good.

SARKOZY'S SPEECH IS PLAYING BETTER IN AMERICA than it is with the French media.

MAJOR JOHN TAMMES returns to active duty.

SCHOOL DISTRICT threatens blogger.

CHINA: No binding emissions limits: "China will reject any agreement that calls for binding limits on carbon dioxide emissions that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, an EU official said Wednesday." China's now the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, which makes this pretty important.

UPDATE: MARK STEYN: "It's fascinating to observe how almost any old totalitarian racket becomes respectable once it's cloaked in enviro-hooey. For example, restrictions on freedom of movement were previously the mark of the Soviet Union et al. But in Britain, they're proposing limits on your right to take airline flights to other countries - and, as it's in the name of environmental responsibility, everyone thinks it's a grand idea."

I'll buy it when they stop jetting off for global-warming conferences in Bali. As I've said before, I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who keep telling me it's a crisis start acting as if it's a crisis.

SPACE EXPLORATION: The next generation.

GREAT:: "The former director of President Bush's flagship democracy program for the Middle East is saying that the State Department has 'effectively killed' a program to disburse millions of dollars to Iran's liberal opposition."

Instead, we get mass graves.

"INCREASINGLY EFFECTIVE:" Indeed.

UPDATE: This sounds like good news: "A rare visit by a delegation representing Sunni tribes in the Province of Anbar to the predominantly Shiite Province of Qadissiya is yet another signal that Iraqis are keen to put an end to sectarian strife." (Via ATC).

November 07, 2007

THANKS AND PRAISE: Michael Yon emails: "I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John's Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome. A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from 'Chosen' Company 2-12 Cavalry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John's, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope. The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. 'Thank you, thank you,' the people were saying. One man said, 'Thank you for peace.' Another man, a Muslim, said 'All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.' The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers. (Videotape to follow.)"

Let's hope these sentiments continue to spread.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg: "If things continue to go well, this photo should win a Pulitzer."

Plus some further thoughts at The Belmont Club.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Ramsay sees a poignant contrast with this picture.

MORE: Excellent move: "Michael Yon is making this photograph available to media outlets, such as print publications and cable and television news broadcasts, at no cost for a limited period of time. For more information, please contact us here."

STILL MORE: "An iconic image of hope and unity." Plus this: "Thanks to the lens of Michael Yon, we can see a fuller, truer picture of Iraq than the 'grim milestone'-driven legacy media lens allows us to see. That deserves thanks and praise, too."

And reader James Mabry emails: 'If you are game for another update to your post, please consider an encouragement to readers to spread the news to their local media outlets. Thanks." Good idea.

Some additional photo thoughts here.

And The Anchoress offers some musings of her own.

Plus, observations from Bob Krumm. And, finally, "The silence from the left has been absolutely deafening." Plus, a cautionary note. (Bumped to top.)

HEH:

Two holders of concealed-weapons permits surprised armed thugs who approached them in west Orlando this week.

Both men opened fire rather than surrender their wallets. The robbers beat it.

"They left with broken egos. They didn't get nothing from us," Juan Amezaga said Tuesday. "If more people stood up for themselves, a lot of crime could be prevented. And the concealed-weapons permit, that's great."

Don Surber calls it "the feel-good story of the day."

UPDATE: This, on the other hand, seems like an improper use of firearms: "Lamentably, I killed your cat."

MOHAMMED FADHIL DOUBTS that we'll see an awakening in Southern Iraq.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: "Worker productivity surged in the summer at the fastest pace in four years while wage pressures eased. The Labor Department reported that productivity -- the amount of output per hour of work -- jumped at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the July-September quarter. That was more than twice the 2.2 percent rise in the second quarter and was the fastest surge in worker efficiency since 2003."

GUNMEN OPEN FIRE ON Venezuelan protestors.

HEH: "Waiting for CNN, the New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, ABC, CBS, NBC, FoxNews, et al, to pick up Yon’s coverage. If there were justice in the world anywhere, Michael Yon would have a Pulitzer by now."

MICKEY KAUS: "So it's another victory for the Spitzer Plan then!"

Plus, amusing video. And Tom Maguire on matching headline to story.

VIDEO: Missile interceptions.

JAMES LILEKS posts some amusing tidbits from his about-to-appear book, Gastroanomalies.

SOME THOUGHTS FROM IraqPundit.

SEEMS REASONABLE TO ME: "A judge ordered a Wellesley College student to be held without bail during a dangerousness hearing after she was accused of stabbing her former boyfriend several times as he slept in his MIT dorm room."

RON PAUL: Good as gold, according to David Weigel.

I BLAME GEORGE W. BUSH: "The number of people who are chronically homeless dropped by nearly 12 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to government estimates being released Wednesday."

SARKOZY SOUNDING "REAGANESQUE"? Judge for yourself -- there's video at the link. Plus this: "What’s particularly interesting is that, years ago when the Bush presidency was new and Iraq was a fresh issue, the left told us constantly that George Bush was making America less popular in the world. Yet during the President’s term in office three of our traditional allies (Canada, Germany and now France) elected leaders that displaced virulently anti-Bush and anti-American leaders with people more of Sarkozy’s temperament (Stephen Harper in Canada and Angela Merkel in Germany)."

UPDATE: But Sarkozy has complaints about the falling dollar.

And this observation: "America’s relations with allies have seldom been better."

JUST TOOK A CALL FROM A RASMUSSEN ROBO-POLLER: That was sort of fun, since I don't get those generally. Lots of different questions, but they seemed awfully interested in the 2010 governor's race, and in attitudes about illegal immigration. I can also see why Rasmussen does so well -- it was quite painless.

This'll be Chris Muir's Day By Day cartoon tomorrow, but he said I could put it up here ahead of schedule.

OBAMA: Don't look to Baby Boomers for change.

SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF: Tennessee is home to the world's tallest horse.

EMOTIONALLY AMBIGUOUS songs for the holidays.

IN THE RACE FOR BEST ONLINE COMMUNITY, it's neck-and-neck between DailyKos and Little Green Footballs.

CNN GETS GUN CONTROL STORY WRONG: Again.

ROGER KIMBALL on the New York Times' circulation drop.

BAND OF BLOGGERS: That's the name of a show on the History Channel, including J.D. Johannes among the cast.

NEW VS. OLD MEDIA. Tell the advertisers!

INSTAPUNDIT IS STILL IN THE RUNNING for Best Individual Blogger.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Pro-life liberal?

YOU MAY NOT KNOW IT, but your digital camera produces hidden data.

MY EARLIER SURVIVAL-KIT POST caused reader Fred Weldon to recommend including toilet paper, which may be in short supply: "After all, if you're gonna eat, you're gonna excrete." Good advice. I do keep a roll in my kits, and also in each car. And Target sells purse- or backpack-convenient mini-rolls, from Charmin. Those also fit nicely in a glove compartment.

Reader Michael Fisher, meanwhile, suggests this kit, and wonders why I didn't mention a gun. Well, I figure most Insta-Readers have their own preferences in that department already.

BILL RICHARDSON OUTLINES his foreign policy agenda.

BOB OWENS: Media Terminator. And that's from Michael Yon.

A SUBMARINE-LAUNCHED HELICOPTER: Every Bond villain will want one!

ED MORRISSEY: Waterboarding is torture and Congress should outlaw it. That would, however, require courage.

A TRIUMPH FOR APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY: Mostly smooth debut for paper ballots.

Can I say "I told you so?" Yes, I can.

UPDATE: First link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

INCREASINGLY EFFECTIVE IRAQI SECURITY FORCES: "A reduction in violence in Baghdad over the past few months represents a sustainable trend that will allow fewer U.S. troops to protect the Iraqi capital, a top American general said on Wednesday. . . . He said the Iraqi security forces had become 'much, much more effective,' while volunteers who patrolled their own neighborhoods in coordination with the Iraqi security forces had had a positive impact."

MILITARY CRACKDOWN IN THE REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA: A firsthand report at the Democracy Project. Reportedly, journalists are being locked up at gunpoint. Is there a Russian connection?

UPDATE: More here.

JAMES CARAFANO IS blogging from Gitmo, He's covering the trial of Omar Ahmed Khadr.

GIULIANI'S pseudo-coup.

A HILLARY SLIP? "The federal government should be making immigration policy and that's what I'm going to try to do as president again." Again? (Via Yankee Sailor).

UPDATE: Video, courtesy of Ian Schwartz.

JOHN TIERNEY LOOKS AT money, fats and science.

Meanwhile, scientists are terrified. I'd say that the biggest threat to scientists' credibility, though, comes from overheated science journalism, and its exploitation by politicians and interest groups.

NORM AUGUSTINE once -- mathematically -- compared the growth of bureaucracy to that of weeds. Here's more support for the comparison. Can we get some Roundup, please?

IN THE MAIL: Kingsley Browne's new book, Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars. Kingsley's a smart guy, but I'll take some persuading on this topic.

ANOTHER NEW PLANETARY DISCOVERY, adding to the sense that planets are pretty common in general. What about earthlike planets? Looking better, but so far pretty much a matter of inference, not discovery. That'll change as instrumentation improves.

A SETBACK FOR RUDY: "Evangelical Christian leader Pat Robertson on Wednesday endorsed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani." Well, it's only fair -- Hillary has to deal with the Mondale endorsement . . . .

UPDATE: David Gulliver emails: "This helps Rudy far more than it hurts him. " Oh, no doubt. Just my usual shot at Robertson, whom I have never liked. Sorry -- I thought the snark was obvious.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some further thoughts on the endorsement game.

MORE: (One) reason why I don't like Pat Robertson.

CAN'T PEOPLE JUST get along? "Norvalla Marie Peacher, 28, of Joelton, was arrested by TBI agents late Monday night after an investigation revealed she planned to have someone kill the girlfriend of her baby’s father."

DECODING whale conversations.

IS PLANKTON OUR FRIEND? "The WeatherBird II, a 115-foot private research vessel, has put to sea from Florida as part of a novel and contentious effort to commercialize the removal of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by triggering blooms of plankton."

But as I've noted in the past, you can never trust Plankton.

UPDATE: Reader Jim O'Neill has identified the global-warming mechanism:

So is it now conceivable that the root cause of global warming is the growth of the whale population that is decimating plankton in the oceans?

21st Century Hippies: pro-nuclear power and anti-whale!

Irony abounds.

SO I WAS AT STAPLES THE OTHER DAY, and they were hawking this Grab 'n' Go Emergency Kit up front, next to the printer paper and the antivirus programs. Just further evidence of the mainstreaming of survivalism.

UPDATE: SayUncle emails:

It's even getting to our kids. There's a show called Lou & Lou safety patrol. They have a short on Bug Out Bags:

You can see the video here: select Get Ready, Get Set, Emergency

I think that's a good thing.

GIGGLING ROBOT becomes one of the kids.

SOME COOL PHOTOBLOGGING from Lisa Scheer.

JOHN LEO HAS MORE ON THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE, where it looks like there's a coverup of sorts: "The RAs are forbidden to talk to outsiders about the residential curriculum, though attacking FIRE is apparently allowed."

GEORGE LEEF: "The situation at Columbia is playing out just the same as the lacrosse case at Duke."

TNR ADVERTISERS respond to the Beauchamp scandal.

UPDATE: From the comments: "Contrast the speed of response to the Dog the Bounty Hunter incident by the network, versus this by the corporations involved with TNR."

I'VE HEARD OF BEING PREPARED TO FIGHT THE LAST WAR, but this is ridiculous: "John Kerry: I'm Now Prepared to Fight Off Swift Boat Veterans."

BOOKS ON THE TITANIC, for kids.

THE PORK AIRLIFT OF 2007: Somewhat less noble than the Berlin Airlift of 1948.

BEING FAT: Not as bad as they thought. Er, healthwise, anyway. Of course, this study isn't really about fat, but about BMI. Lots of bodybuilders with 3% bodyfat have high BMIs.

November 06, 2007

"IT'S NOT A DOCTOR'S OFFICE. It's a saloon."

LICENSES FOR ILLEGALS: Not so popular.

ERNIE FLETCHER LOSES IN KENTUCKY: Apparently, that ten-commandments-posting issue wasn't a winner for him.

ALCEE HASTINGS on Dennis Kucinich.

EVERYBODY LOVES Obama. "The people that Obama so thoroughly charmed generally weren't the charm-prone types. I say the following as a well known Republican partisan--the fact that his classmates so universally held him in the highest regard suggests that Barack Obama may truly be a special person. All of which makes his campaign's ineptness more mysterious."

MICKEY KAUS: "A full week after the Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton is still flailing on the licenses-for-illegals issue."

SINGLE AND NOT-SO-RESTLESS in Cairo.

SO I BOUGHT this little Sony HD video camera, which records to a chip. First impressions out of the box: Boy is it little! (The Insta-Wife pronounced it "adorable"). Pretty easy to use -- but I'm used to Sony cameras. Battery's charging now, though, so I won't be able to really play with it for a while.

FAKE ELECTION websites.

I WASN'T: "Obama 'stunned' by Bill Clinton's remarks."

PORKERS SAY THE DARNEDEST THINGS: The excuses that members of Congress use to defend pork. Plus, this important observation: "There are currently two members of Congress in prison, and several more under investigation for corruption. In a lot of these cases, earmarks were involved. This is because the earmark process allows members to exploit their positions of power. . . . Pork projects are the currency of corruption in Congress." It's not the earmarks as such. It's the corruption the earmarks represent, and foster.

TOO BAD WE DON'T SEE AT LEAST A TOUCH OF THIS ATTITUDE in the federal government: "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday ordered all state departments to draft plans for deep spending cuts after receiving word that California's budget is plunging further into the red -- largely because of the troubled housing market."

"NUANCED GIULIANI-BASHING," from David Adesnik.

BILL QUICK ON how technology has changed his life.

PLEASE SUPPORT Project Valour-IT.

A FEW CORRECTIONS ON JUSTICE STEVENS, from Jeffrey Rosen. But the NYT buried them by putting them in the print edition and leaving them off the website.

GIVING YAHOO! HELL, for cooperating with dictators.

BWANA!

SOUNDING ALMOST LAFFERESQUE:

"The evidence is that when tariffs come down, tariff revenue tends to go up."

- Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, on why poor countries should liberalise trade

Go figure.

MORE ON THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE, from Joanne Jacobs.

THOUGHTS ON repairing our alliances.

A BLOGGER VICTORY: "Egyptian Police Jailed For Sexual Abuse of Prisoner."

HERE'S A SURPRISE: "Farm Payments Benefited Legislators:"

When the bill that would extend farm subsidies for five years goes to the Senate floor this week, eight senators will have special reason to pay close attention: They or their relatives collected about $3 million in federal payments from 1995 to 2005, according to government records compiled by a non-partisan environmental group. . . .

Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., says the system works well. He and his family's farming interests received almost $2.4 million in federal payments from 1995-2005, records show. His net worth in 2005 was $1.7 million to $6.6 million, according to his financial disclosure statement. "He has firsthand experience of how this really benefits farmers," said his spokeswoman, Angela Guyadeen.

I imagine he does . . . .

JETTING TO BALI to talk about global warming.

How about staying home and using videoconferencing instead?

WHERE THE UNINSURED get free medical help.

A BIG TERROR BUST in Europe. We've seen a lot of this sort of thing lately; it's almost as if somebody's selling them out.

SOME HOME THEATER ADVICE for people interested in setting one up. An earlier installment is here.

A CONSTITUTIONAL LAW THOUGHT: I was working on the revisions for my Is Dick Cheney Unconstitutional? piece, which is moving through the Northwestern University Law Review's editorial process with blinding speed, when something occurred to me. The conventional wisdom -- summarized in this post -- is that the Vice President presides over his own impeachment:

The Senate has the sole power to try impeachments. The Vice President is the President of the Senate. He presides. The Constitution provides for only one exception in cases of impeachment: "When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside." That's because of the obvious conflict-of-interest of having the VP preside when the President is tried. But there's no similar provision for having someone else preside if the Vice President is impeached.

This is generally treated as a drafting error. But if the Vice President is a legislative official, then it's not an error at all -- legislative officials aren't civil officers of the United States, and hence aren't subject to impeachment. Instead, they're subject to expulsion by the house to which they belong, which in this case would be the Senate. This makes the impeachment problem go away, and perhaps even suggests that the Framers thought of the Vice President as primarily a legislative official. Of course, as I note in the piece -- earlier draft is here -- none of this produces results that the current Vice President is likely to find congenial.

UPDATE: Yeah, that shifts the drafting error to the provision saying that the VP is subject to impeachment. But still . . . Nah, it's a loser. But the idea of floating half- quarter-baked ideas on the blog before publication is kind of a good one. At least, I like the reader mail it generated. Thanks!

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Thanks to Google Earth, a map of where the pork goes:

One of Sunlight's resident creative geniuses (yes, there are many of them) have taken all the Defense Appropriations Earmarks and made them available for viewing within Google Earth. (You can only view this using Google Earth which you can download from this page.)

And as they say: a picture really is worth a 1,000 words. One of our policy wonks loved the flight simulator that allows you to fly over earmark locations. It allows you to fly your choice of two aircraft anywhere around the globe, with custom layers visible from the aircraft.

Follow the link for more information.

A STACKABLE ELECTRIC CAR for city driving.

YOUR MY TAX MONEY at work.

CONTRASTING British and American tactics in Iraq. The British approach, once hailed as more sophisticated than the American, seems not to have worked as well.

A LOOK AT Zero-G robot surgery.

BOGUS ROBOCALLS in the Kentucky elections.

THE INSTA-WIFE ORDERED You: Staying Young: The Owner's Manual for Extending Your Warranty. It's not Aubrey de Grey stuff, but I suppose it can't hurt. Video, and an excerpt, at the link.

VOTING ON EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH in New Jersey.

BIOFUELS ARE NOW officially evil.

A LOOK AT the spiraling cost of higher education.

DAVE KOPEL HAS THOUGHTS on equivocation and jury nullification.

And here's something that I wrote on jury nullification, in response to Clay Conrad's book on the subject.

WHY IS THE WORLD MORE CONC