SLATE’S DAVID EDELSTEIN has a fascinating review of a documentary about the National Spelling Bee by Jeff Blitz, called Spellbound.

I was in the National Spelling Bee, and the documentary sounds like it rings true. I’ll have to order a copy when it becomes available.

MORE ON THE JOHN LOTT –STANFORD LAW REVIEW ISSUE: There’s an update here.

ALPHECCA’S WEEKLY CHART OF MEDIA BIAS ON GUNS is up.

JUDGE GILBERT MERRITT, THE JUDGE I CLERKED FOR, is going to Iraq to offer advice on setting up a real judiciary there. He’s a thoughtful guy with a lot of experience in this sort of thing, and I think this bodes well.

TENNESSEE’S STATE LEGISLATURE is looking at some truly dreadful DMCA-like legislation. But grassroots opposition is growing. Bill Hobbs has more.

SOME THOUGHTS ON SPACE SETTLEMENT, over at GlennReynolds.com. And scroll down for some reader email on Star Trek, in a post that I neglected to plug over here.

Of course, why should you listen to me, when I only rate the three of freakin’ clubs? I mean, you’d think that one of the Four Horsemen of the Ablogalypse would rate at least a face card. But I’m not bitter.

JUAN PAXETY NOTES that two can play the frivolous-Belgian-complaint game. Except that I’m not sure that he’s being frivolous.

ALL SORTS OF PEOPLE have been weighing in on Norman Mailer’s latest remarks, but fellow novelist Roger Simon has it nailed:

Talk about white boys who still need to know they’re good at something–how about NM and political analysis? Mailer continues to see everything as sports–fills the article with stale athletic references–as if, unconsciously, he were still in competition with Hemingway. (I doubt Hemingway, wherever he is, thinks much about Mailer.) That is also probably part of the reason he personifies the war in Iraq as Bush’s affair. There always has to be some kind of human adversary for Norman. Issues are not the point because they are not, never have been, Mailer’s forté. He prefers the boxing match and the ready opponent on the other side. But this time it’s interesting, despite the fact he’s writing in the London Times, Mailer didn’t dare take on the real heavyweight in town — Tony Blair. I guess even Norman knows when he’s over his head.

It was another novelist, Pietro Di Donato, who once said that for all their tough talk, Mailer and Breslin couldn’t punch their way out of a paper bag. Nowadays, that’s true even with regard to their rhetorical skills.

SMALL WISDOM FROM PRINCE CHARLES: My TechCentralStation column, inspired by Prince Charles’s comments on the dangers of nanotechnology, is up.

UPDATE: And note this post by David Appell on how disappointing it is when even science writers aren’t ashamed of ignorance about basic scientific facts.

ORIN KERR has your 2002 wiretap roundup, just in case you were wondering.

VIRGINIA POSTREL WRITES THAT BILL MCKIBBEN ISN’T “BRAVE:”

This is an abuse of language. McKibben’s book may be sincere, forceful, impassioned. It may be well written. But it is not brave. It will offend absolutely no one who matters in Bill McKibben’s world. To the contrary, it will reinforce the righteous self-image of those who promote his career. By writing this book, McKibben can count on attention and praise. That doesn’t make him a coward. But neither does it make him brave–or the reviewers brave for praising him.

But if you say it often enough, maybe no one will notice.

What really interests me is that people think that they’ve made a moral argument against genetic engineering when they say that the idea “sickens” them. The idea of sodomy “sickens” some people, too. So does the idea of interracial marriage.

So you feel ill. Why should I care? After all, pompous, empty-headed moralizing sickens me, and nobody’s stopping that.

ROBIN GOODFELLOW WRITES that America is ready for a political axis-shift.

THE ELF-AQUITAINE SCANDAL REACHES INTO SOME ODD PLACES:

One of the largest private shareholders in BNP Paribas , the French bank that holds more than $13 billion in Iraqi oil funds administered through the United Nation’s oil-for-food program, is an Iraqi-born businessman who once helped to arm Iraq in the 1980’s and brokered business deals with Saddam Hussein’s government, according to public records and interviews.

The involvement of the businessman, the British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, raises questions about how carefully the United Nations has vetted the bank in its continuing role as repository of oil-for-food funds. . . .

Earlier this month, Mr. Auchi was arrested and released on bail in London pending a court hearing next week on fraud charges involving the French oil giant TotalFinaElf. French prosecutors have accused Mr. Auchi of helping channel bribes to Total’s executives, a charge Mr. Corker denies.

We keep hearing about Halliburton, but it seems to be TotalFinaElf that’s at the center of all the really shady stuff.

UPDATE: Reader Kathleen deBettencourt emails with an excellent suggestion:

The United States should propose that a full audit of the Oil for Food program be conducted by an international team of independent auditors immediately. This proposal should be done in open session. It will be very illustrative to see who objects.

Indeed.

DANNY PEARL: Killed because he knew too much?

PARIS (AP) – Islamic extremists killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl because he had discovered dangerous secrets about their ties to the Pakistani intelligence community, according to an investigation by a respected French writer. . . .

Levy believes that Pearl was about to complete an article revealing that the al-Qaida terror network was close to acquiring nuclear weapons from supporters inside Pakistan’s scientific establishment.

“Pearl’s conclusion, like my own, was that in Pakistan there are atomic scientists who are also committed Islamic extremists,” Levy said in an interview with Paris Match magazine published Wednesday.

That wouldn’t surprise me at all.

HOWARD VEIT has some thoughts on why celebrity anti-Americanism seems particularly offensive.

DR. WEEVIL is playing “Ba’ath poker,” and seems to have more cards to play with all the time.

GARY FARBER has good news and bad news. The good news: he doesn’t have SARS, and he didn’t have a heart attack. The bad news: he does have pneumonia, and high blood pressure.

Drop by his blog, and leave him a little love. Heck, hit his tipjar if you’re in the mood.

TERRORISM, PORN, AND SAUDI MONEY in The Netherlands: DiLacerator has a post.

The Saudis have been waging low-key war against the West for decades; this is just more evidence of that.

MIKE HAWASH HAS BEEN CHARGED as a terrorist coconspirator. I don’t know how strong the evidence is, but at least he’s not being held without charges now.

HERE’S AN ENCOURAGING REPORT on the humanitarian situation in Iraq, though I don’t know a lot about the sourcing other than that it comes from the UN. But th