THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES IS UP! Happy eating! Or drinking, as the case may be.

FOR ONCE, I’M IN THE MAJORITY:

Fifty-seven percent say being homosexual is the way people are, not the way they choose to be — up from its level a decade ago. But likely voters by 2-1 also call it inappropriate for Kerry, when asked that question, to have noted that Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian. Cheney himself mentioned his daughter’s sexual orientation in a campaign appearance in August. . . .

Indeed only among one group, Kerry’s own supporters, does a majority (52 percent) say it was appropriate for him to mention Mary Cheney. Among Democrats, 51 percent call it inappropriate; that rises to 64 percent of independents, 80 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Bush supporters.

I said it was a mistake.

UPDATE: Another poll, this time from the Washington Post:

An overwhelming majority of voters believe it was wrong for Democratic nominee John F. Kerry to have mentioned in Wednesday’s presidential debate that Vice President Cheney’s daughter was a lesbian, according to the latest Washington Post tracking survey.

Like I said, it was a mistake.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Ardolino is pleased with his newfound majority status, too.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW WITH BURT RUTAN by Leonard David of Space.com. Lots of interesting stuff there. Here’s the bit that will probably get the most attention:

Over the decades, Rutan said, despite the promise of the Space Shuttle to lower costs of getting to space, a kid’s hope of personal access to space in their lifetime remained in limbo.

“Look at the progress in 25 years of trying to replace the mistake of the shuttle. It’s more expensive…not less…a horrible mistake,” Rutan said. “They knew it right away. And they’ve spent billions…arguably nearly $100 billion over all these years trying to sort out how to correct that mistake…trying to solve the problem of access to space. The problem is…it’s the government trying to do it.”

Governments are good at doing things like this first. Markets are much better at doing them cheaply, reliably, and frequently. He also has a prediction:

“IBM didn’t know in 1975 that they were going to build $700 dollar computers for people and that they were going to build them by the tens of thousands. But then came Apple,” Rutan said, “and they had to.”

That being the case, Rutan made another prediction: “Lockheed and Boeing will be making very low-cost access to space hardware within 20 years. They just don’t know it yet…because they’re going to have to.”

I certainly hope so. Meanwhile, as FuturePundit notes, there are still signs of life at NASA. I’d like to see the R&D functions split off into something much more like the old NACA (National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics), entirely separate from the operational end and with the primary mission (like NACA) of helping private industry advance. Rob Merges and I wrote an article arguing for that back in 1989, but I don’t think it’s available on the Web.

YES, I MADE IT BACK, though rather late as Continental seemed to have misplaced the crew for my plane. More blogging later.

I’VE BEEN SLACKING TODAY, and will soon (I hope) be airborne — but Tom Maguire has been on a roll, again.

ANN ALTHOUSE writes that Kerry is “refueling her mistrust” with his bogus draft claims:

Quite aside from Kerry’s attempts to scare people into voting for him with a trumped-up threat that Bush will revive the draft, this statement refuels my mistrust for Kerry. His argument about the draft implicitly asserts that he plans to withdraw from Iraq without adequately providing for a successful resolution of the conflict.

That has been my fear all along, and Kerry hasn’t done much to address it. Meanwhile, reader J. H. Weible wonders if Kerry, who wants to add two new divisions, will have a recruitment-and-retention problem in light of polls like this suggesting that he’s not very popular among the military. Can Kerry produce the force he’s promising without a draft? Somebody should ask him.

I’M IN THE NEWARK AIRPORT, where the wi-fi seems intermittent. But at least I’m not having Will Collier’s problems.

Sorry, Jeff: I still love you, but this was a quickie up-and-back trip using one of the fleet of Gulfstreams the University of Tennessee has for faculty use since I was able to line up good nonstop flight connections.

MICKEY KAUS notes that ABC’s The Note has been busted by a blogger for posting bogus quotes. ABC has posted a correction, though you’ll now have to scroll to the bottom to see it.

JOHN EDWARDS has been savagely beaten by a man in a wheelchair.

CALL ME PETER PARKER: Ken Layne is quoted calling me a “lone webslinger.” But in the blogosphere, you’re never really alone.

I’M IN NEWARK, in the palatial new building of the Rutgers Law School, at an ABA conference on technology and legal education. Rutgers has a nice WiFi network, but I’ll be pretty busy for a while. Blogging, and email response, are likely to suffer. Back later.

ON TRAVEL TODAY: Blogging is likely to be intermittent. I’m taking with me a copy of John Birmingham’s alternate-history novel Weapons of Choice, which I purchased solely because of this bit in the Amazon description: “At the start of Australian author Birmingham’s stellar debut novel, a United Nations battle group, clustered around the U.S.S. Hillary Clinton (named after “the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States”), is tasked in the year 2021 with stopping ethnic cleansing by an Islamist regime in Indonesia.”

That’s plausible enough that it makes me wish Hillary were running this year . . .

JEFF JARVIS ASKS: “Would you go to jail for your weblog?” Of course, another way of putting it is, “should your weblog keep you out of jail?” That is, if you do things that would otherwise get you sent to jail — like violating a subpoena — does the fact that you’re a journalist get you off the hook? The Constitution doesn’t say that.

I found the Vanessa Leggett case troubling because the Justice Department seemed anxious to keep her from publishing — they wanted all her notes, manuscripts, etc., not just copies, and they wouldn’t let her keep copies. But as I wrote in a Wall Street Journal piece back then, the Justice Department’s problem was as much in trying to draw lines regarding who was a journalist and who wasn’t:

Contrary to frequent assertions from professional journalists, there is no special First Amendment protection for members of the press. Such protections, to the extent they exist at all, exist only as a matter of statutory or regulatory grace. Under the First Amendment, everyone enjoys the same protection as “professional journalists.” Ms. Leggett probably had First Amendment grounds for refusing to turn over all of her notes, but not for refusing to testify to a grand jury, and not for refusing to make her notes available for copying (rather than seizure). Her refusal to testify may make her a heroine to journalists, but it does not make her a First Amendment heroine.

The Justice Department’s behavior was thus doubly odd. The first oddity was requesting her material in such a way as to block work on her book. The second oddity was making an argument based on her status as a nonjournalist. As a matter of internal policy, the Justice Department often avoids asking journalists to identify their sources, but that has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

If you think that journalists — which I would interpret as anyone doing journalism, but be aware that others may differ — deserve the kind of privilege that they often claim, then support legislation that grants it. I don’t think that legislation would pass, though, because I don’t think that most people really believe that it’s justified.

SOME INTERESTING IRAQ NEWS AND PHOTOS, here.

MY MUCH-LOVED NEC laptop is showing its age. I had to replace the keyboard in April; now it’s having charger problems. I’m sending it back but it’s obvious that a replacement will be in order soon.

What I’d like is something like it: Small, light, not necessarily especially powerful but with very long battery life. And fairly rugged (since it gets heavy use) but cheap (so I can take it anywhere without worries). Any suggestions? This looks pretty good, though the battery life may be the shortfall. This looks cool, but it’s a bit pricey. Could I blog comfortably from a tablet PC?

UPDATE: Randy Barnett says he loves his Toughbook W2. And please, no “get a mac!” emails, unless there is once again a WordPerfect for macs. I’ll give up my WordPerfect when they pry it from my cold, dead CD-ROM drive. Or something like that. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: More praise for the Toughbook. It’s a bit pricey, though.

EUGENE VOLOKH NOTES MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: I guess it’s proof that the incidents in Evan Coyne Maloney’s film Brainwashing 101 are far from unique.

UPDATE: Crushing of bloggers in Canada, too. More on that here.

I HAVE A PLAN, by Ann Elk.

THE COMMAND POST is looking for a few good bloggers to help provide state-by-state election coverage. Okay, actually at least 50.

PAUL MARKS notes progress.