A LASER-POWERED PAPER PLANE doesn’t sound like much. But this research could lead to dirt-cheap space launch. The energy cost to put a person in orbit is considerably less than flying one across the Atlantic — the problem has been that we use energy so inefficiently when launching things into orbit. Laser launch would largely eliminate ordinary rockets (you’d actually still need a small one for a circularization burn) and would make large-scale space activity practical. This is a small step in that direction. (U.S. labs have done similar stuff already, though not with anything winged).

Plus it’s kind of cool.

FRESHLY RETURNED FROM FRANCE, Sasha Volokh reports on where the pro-Le Pen sentiment comes from. It doesn’t sound like racism to me.

STEVEN DEN BESTE has a great essay about military pilots. Then, just to flaunt his superior essay-blogging skills, he has another great essay above it, about civilian pilots.

JUST SENT OFF MY FOXNEWS COLUMN, which is about the Department of Homeland Security. The more I think about it, the less impressed with it I am. But you’ll have to wait until Wednesday night to find out why.

A STORY ON COLLEGE-PAPER SEX COLUMNS that doesn’t mention Rachael Klein? Hard to imagine, but I’m afraid it’s true — though it does mention the column.

Question: Why is this a preserve of female writers?

ATTENTION, MICKEY KAUS! David Hogberg has done a study on welfare reform concluding that the drop in caseloads was caused by reform and not by changes in the economy. There’s more. Read it! Er, and anyone else out there interested in welfare reform can read it too.

AL QAEDA ARRESTS IN MOROCCO: A cell planning suicide attacks on U.S. warships, reportedly. Maybe we’re getting some useful intelligence.

ISRAEL IS TELLING THE EU to butt out. My prediction that Israel might start supporting separatist groups in Europe is looking less farfetched.

CRAIG BIGGERSTAFF IS NOT A BLOGGER. His page just looks like a blog, honest!

CHARLES JOHNSON REPORTS that the E.U. is cutting off funding to the Palestinian Authority in light of a lawsuit from a terror victim.

THE UNITED STATES is the most-admired country according to a poll of educated young Muslims. Japan was number two. Egypt and Britain were numbers three and four. Bizarre? Yes. But here’s a similar BBC story on Arabs’ love-hate relationship with the United States. (Thanks to reader Martin Pratt).

DIANA HSIEH reports from the Hayman wildfire where she’s awaiting evacuation orders at this very moment. But still blogging! And N.Z. Bear has maps.

DAWN OLSEN interviews John Scalzi. Trollage and breasts are discussed, along with asteroids and comets.

IF ONLY CANADA’S BORDERS WERE THIS SECURE against terrorists.

“Any ‘tools of civil disobedience’ Mr. Omar?”

“Nope, just Semtex and smallpox.”

“Okay, well, drive safely, eh?”

THE SUPREME COURT HAS denied certiorari in the Emerson case, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms. For more on the Emerson case, you can read this piece that Dave Kopel and I wrote last fall, or this piece by Michael Barone, who wrote: “It will now be very hard–I would say impossible–for any intellectually honest judge to rule that the Second Amendment means nothing.” I think that’s about right.

FLYOVER COUNTRY IS “DIRTY BOMB CENTRAL” today, with scads of links to information on the subject. It’s your one-stop center for dirty-bomb news!

SMALLPOX UPDATE: Reader Jack Bell sends this:

You forgot another possible explanation for a smallpox outbreak: Some Al Queda operative screwed up while preparing a bio-weapon and it got loose. In fact I would say that, other than there being no outbreak at all, this is the simplest explanation being as we know they are hiding out in Pakistan at this time and we know they are interested in such things and do not care about worldwide condemnation of their actions (as opposed to the Pakistani government, which does care).

Bell attaches a lengthy email, the gist of which is that we should watch for outbreaks of unusual diseases in obscure places, as indications that someone may be doing such research.

MORE ON NORTH KOREA. I wonder why the horrors there aren’t getting more attention? Surely we’re past the point where people won’t report on government-created famines in communist countries — Walter Duranty has been dead for a long time. Do people just not care?

JOE KATZMAN says that SFSU is playing very dirty in its effort to make the bad publicity over its complicity in anti-Semitic rioting go away.

IF THE SMALLPOX POST BELOW isn’t enough to get you gloomy about Pakistan’s future, Suman Palit thinks war is pretty likely, and soon.

On the other hand Eric Olsen offers good news.

SMALLPOX? Pakistan’s The Dawn is reporting a smallpox outbreak, supposedly “rapidly spreading” in Swabi district (the upper left of this map).

This seems unlikely to me — it’s certainly not getting any other attention that I can find — but worth keeping an eye on.

UPDATE: MedPundit Sydney Smith shares my skepticism about this story, but has some good arguments for going ahead with smallpox vaccinations in the U.S. anyway. I agree. And Jerry Pournelle has more information on smallpox vaccinations.

Also, several paranoid readers suggest that Pakistan is either (1) testing smallpox (doubtful — you wouldn’t release it into your own population, as it’s too easy for it to get away; you’d do it the old fashioned way and test it on political prisoners); or (2) broadcasting a false cover story in case it releases smallpox in a war with India (sadly, not quite so doubtful).

TAPPED IS JOINING LOU DOBBS in declaring the war one against fanatical Islamists, not simply “terror.”

So now Bush is not only to the left of Richard Cohen on guns in the cockpit, now he’s to the left of The American Prospect on the war! Is this because of Karen Hughes’ departure?

THE UNITED STATES has arrested an Al Qaeda terrorist who planned to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States, according to a statement from Attorney General John Ashcroft reported in The Washington Post just a few minutes ago.

These guys are out there, and they’re still trying. As I’ve mentioned before, Al Qaeda isn’t particularly bright by all evidence, but they’re persistent and willing to learn from their mistakes. That’s enough to be dangerous.

UPDATE: Kenneth Silber has a proposal for dealing with the problem of bombs smuggled in shipping containers.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Several readers join with TAPPED in questioning the Administration’s timing here, given that this guy was actually arrested on May 8. Though there are legitimate reasons why they might have sat on the news (hoping, for example, to scoop up confederates before his arrest was known), this is also a legitimate question to raise.

TECHCENTRAL STATION now has a European edition. It looks pretty cool.

MICHAEL BARONE says Bush has an internal management problem:

Clearly some middle- and high-level officials have taken it on themselves to set up roadblocks on the road to Baghdad. The question is whether Bush and his top appointees will tear them down. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seems to have the intellect and temperament to push aside false claims of military incapacity and overstretch (claims nicely debunked by the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon, no Iraq hawk). On the other hand, one wonders whether George Tenet or someone nearly as high in intelligence ranks is behind the attempts to discredit the Czech reports of the Atta-Ani meeting. Neither Tenet nor Secretary of State Colin Powell seems inclined to overrule CIA and State officials who are resisting, sometimes on nitpicking grounds, cooperation with the INC. And has FBI Director Robert Mueller taken a hard look at the agents who are so convinced that the anthrax attack came from a domestic source that they airily dismiss serious evidence of a foreign source?

In other words, the George W. Bush who has made it plain in his State of the Union speech and at West Point that we must go to war with Iraq needs to take control of his own administration.

Yes. But is that the real George W. Bush? There’s reason to doubt his ability or willingness to rein in underlings who sandbag him.