DISSENT ON THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT: Jeff Jarvis rounds up some interesting stuff.

KERRY’S WORLDVIEW: Gred Djerejian looks at Kerry’s 1971 testimony and thinks about what it might mean about Kerry’s positions today.

UPDATE: Related item here: “The war-torn soul of John Kerry.”

RYAN SAGER has posted many new photos from the NYC convention protests.

You can also find more here.

Not all that many nice smiles to be had, though, overall.

MY NIGERIAN SISTER-IN-LAW VICTORIA, who’s now an American citizen, is always irritated when people tell her that she’s not an “African-American.” If I’m not one, she asks, who is?

Robert Tagorda has an interesting post on that debate.

I GUESS THESE ARE ANALOG BROWNSHIRTS, rather than the digital kind:

Nearly 40 protesters gathered Saturday at the home of the chief financial backer of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose ads criticize Democrat John Kerry’s military record.

Or something like that.

JOHN ROSENBERG looks at Joe Biden vs. John Kerry.

I actually defended Biden in The Appearance of Impropriety, the ethics book I coauthored with Peter Morgan. You can read that chapter online here.

JERALYN MERRITT OF TALKLEFT has a column on convention-blogging in the Denver Post.

EXIT INTERVIEW: Tbogg’s father has died, and he’s written a moving farewell. Please send him your condolences.

BETSY NEWMARK notes that Amazon.com has changed its comment policies where the SwiftBoat Vets book Unfit for Command is concerned.

AN AMUSING PRANK in Massachussetts.

SELF-INFLICTED WOUND: “Kerry can rail all he wants about the unfairness of criticism by the Swift boat veterans. But to see who is ultimately responsible for this controversy, Kerry should look in the mirror.”

CROSSWIRE is a new GOP-Convention blog set up by the Knoxville News-Sentinel. It features well-known Knoxville blogger SKBubba on the left, and new blogger WestKnoxMomma on the right. (Via Michael Silence).

THERE’S A TOUCH OF BLOGOSPHERE TRIUMPHALISM in the quotes at the end of this article. But under the circumstances, I think it’s warranted.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

INTERESTING GRAPHIC FROM THE DETROIT NEWS on the impact of Bush’s tax cuts.

I MISSED MAUREEN DOWD’S LETTERMAN APPEARANCE, but Ann Althouse didn’t, and notes that Dowd was (repeatedly) dismissing Kerry as “lame.” It makes me think that Ed Morrissey was right when he wrote that Kerry’s media honeymoon is over.

UPDATE: Althouse has more thoughts here on the media and Kerry: “The media are looking ahead and imagining how the history of the 2004 presidential campaign will read and how their performance will measure up.”

Meanwhile, reader Rick Lee emails:

haven’t seen anybody mention what I thought was the best line of the Dowd/Letterman interview… he asked her if she was backing Kerry (or something like that) and she answered that (roughly quoting from memory) “NY Times columnists aren’t permitted to endorse candidates… [sotto voce] although apparently Paul Krugman is ignoring that”. At this point Dave made a joke about this answer going over his head.

Heh. Wish they posted transcripts.

SPOONS MAKES the conservative argument against Bush. He’s actually been doing that for a while. Bush’s dumb position on Campaign Finance “Reform” plays a major role.

TOM MAGUIRE IS QUESTIONING THE TIMING of leaks concerning an espionage investigation in the Defense Department. I don’t know what to make of this, but if The New York Times is downplaying the importance of the suspect, saying that he wasn’t in a position to influence policy, then it’s probably not a big deal given the potential for embarrassing the Bush Administration, and the NYT’s willingness to stretch things to do so. Needless to say, if the guy’s guilty, he should get slammed. Moles, even for friendly powers, can’t be tolerated.

UPDATE: Hmm. I’m not sure if this is comforting or not:

“From everything I’ve seen, the guy’s not a spy,” the official said. “The guy’s an idiot.”

On the other hand, this definitely isn’t comforting:

An FBI probe into the handling of highly classified material by Pentagon civilians is broader than previously reported, and goes well beyond allegations that a single midlevel analyst gave a top-secret Iran policy document to Israel, three sources familiar with the investigation said Saturday.

The frightening thought is that Sandy Berger’s behavior might have just been par for the course in the national security establishment. Sheesh. Roger Simon has related thoughts.

HUGH HEWITT administers a spanking to Jim Boyd of the Star-Tribune.

RYAN SAGER is photoblogging the convention protests in New York. He’s got quite a few photos.

I hope that a lot of people will be photo- and even video-blogging this stuff, as I suspect that it won’t get as much attention from the mainstream media as it otherwise might.

Nice smile.

NOW THIS IS COOL:

Enthusiasts on Friday unveiled an effort to establish an annual competition for space-elevator technologies, taking a page from the playbook for other high-tech contests such as the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

The project, spearheaded by the California-based Spaceward Foundation, would focus on innovations in fields that could open the way for payloads to be lifted into space by light-powered platforms. Such platforms, also known as climbers, would move up and down superstrong ribbons rising as high as 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. . . .

If space elevators could actually be built, the cost of sending payloads into space could be reduced from $10,000 or more per pound (455 grams) to $100 or less — opening up a revolutionary route to the final frontier. Like the X Prize for private spaceflight, Elevator:2010 is aimed at jump-starting the revolution.

I was involved in the early X-Prize work, and I have to say that it has exceeded my hopes.

OUCH:

Here’s how “presidential historian” Douglas Brinkley figures it: Various factual inaccuracies and contradictions in Tour of Duty, his famously sycophantic biography of John Kerry, are frequently cited by opponents of Kerry’s presidential campaign. On the other hand, the sycophantic parts of the book are just as frequently cited by Kerry’s friends. In other words, both parties find his work useful. And what better proof of his academic objectivity and integrity could there be than that?

I mean, seriously: Ouch.

UPDATE: More on Brinkley from Ann Althouse.

ALAN KEYES: Beyond flip-flopping. I’d say he’s ventured all the way into the realm of flap-flips.

A LOT OF PEOPLE EMAILED ME about irregularities in John Kerry’s citations, including the fact that his Silver Star citation was signed by John Lehman, who wasn’t Navy Secretary until the Reagan Administration. I put it down to some sort of paperwork mixup (I didn’t even link this piece when everyone was sending it to me).

But now the Chicago Sun-Times’ Thomas Lipscomb, who had an article on those records yesterday, has another article out today, quoting Lehman as saying that the whole thing’s a “total mystery” to him. (“It is a total mystery to me. I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me.”)

I think it’s far too early to speculate, as some readers are, that this is a case of fraud or forgery, and it’s entirely possible that there’s an innocent explanation, but I’m glad that someone with Big Media resources is looking into it. It’s puzzling that Kerry hasn’t simply released all his military records to clear up these questions. Nonetheless, I continue to regard the medals issue as a distraction, though perhaps a better-founded one, on closer examination, than I had originally thought.

UPDATE: Reader Andrew Lloyd emails:

When I got a law school transcript reissued to me a couple of years ago, it was certified by someone who wasn’t the registrar when I was there. That doesn’t mean I didn’t graduate in 1997 because someone else signed it in 2002.

I don’t know Navy process, but Kerry may have asked for a new certification in the 1980’s, and Lehman’s signature may have ended up on it as a matter of course.

See, that’s what I thought initially. But the language of the citation also changed, suggesting that it’s not a simple clerical thing. What’s more the “V” on the silver star doesn’t exist. You’d certainly be suspicious of a transcript with a different signature and different grades. Or of a Yale Law School transcript from recent years that showed an A+ average (Since Yale doesn’t have those letter grades). . . To the extent that analogy applies, anyway.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey:

Just when I think this story may lose momentum, it just grows new legs. The Torricelli option continues to beckon the Democrats the longer Kerry refuses to release all the records and put an end to all the speculation.

Meanwhile, ABC’s The Note is looking to the future:

The new joke in Washington — told by all gallows, quasi-panicked Democrats — goes like this:

“John Kerry read in The Note that this was his race to lose, and he’s giving it his best shot.”

Someday, Karl Rove’s precocious grandchildren will say to him, “Grandpapa, what’s it like to run a presidential campaign against an opponent who has had his own background thoroughly researched well before the general election; who is broadly personable and possessed of great campaign skills; and who projects an image of constancy?”

To which Grandpapa Rove will reply, “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

(Via Power Line.) Somehow, though, “Grandpa Rove” makes me think of Grandpa Munster, but they’re in different parties.

MORE: This John Kerry timeline may be useful in keeping track of what happened — or didn’t happen — when.

More observations here, making me wonder if Kerry didn’t order duplicates and get “crosstalk” between the Bronze and Silver Star citations.

STILL MORE: Meanwhile, Matt Rustler is looking into questions about Bush’s medals. Bush had medals? Well, that’s the question. No clear answer yet, but we do learn that Mark Kleiman is now getting his stuff from Democratic Underground, which is informative in itself. And certainly Rustler’s inquiry is more searching than anything the left side of the blogosphere — including Kleiman — engaged in when the Kerry / Cambodia story was appearing.

I’M BACK: Spent the night up at the lake, took the boat to Calhoun’s and had barbecue, then hung out with the Insta-Dad, Insta-Wife, Insta-Daughter and the youngest Insta-Brother.

More blogging later, but in the meantime I have some thoughts on blogs, campaign finance “reform,” and free speech over at GlennReynolds.com. And over at The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru has some harsh-but-true words on Bush’s stance regarding free speech and campaign finance “reform”:

A brief history: 1) I’m against it, and you should vote for me over John McCain on this basis. 2) Some campaign-finance reforms amount to a restriction on free speech, and I’ll veto them on that basis. 3) I’ll sign the bill, let the judges sort it out. 4) The bill I just signed bans all those George Soros ads. 5) I’m going to sue to get those ads all banned. 6) I’m going to support legislation to ban those ads that I already banned, even though they used to be free speech. I think (5) and (6) are new this week.

Here’s a better idea: Rep. Roscoe Bartlett’s First Amendment Restoration Act.

It seems that another Scrappleface parody is on the verge of becoming reality.

Ponnuru’s link to the bill doesn’t work, but this one provides some useful background.

UPDATE: This media analysis column makes some related points.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Readers point out that John Kerry was a co-sponsor of the McCain-Feingold act. Yeah, there’s lots of blame to go around.

IT’S MY BIRTHDAY, which means no more blogging today unless something rather major happens. If you’re bored tonight, check out the InstaWife’s TV show Snapped on the Oxygen Channel. If you happen to be a Nielsen family, please invite several dozen of your friends to watch with you. . . .