MEGAN MCARDLE: “Guess who lags the US in curbing toxic emissions? No, really, you’ll never guess.”

Hmm. Here’s a possibility:

The annual Taking Stock report, drawn from submissions by more than 20,000 polluters in the United States and Canada, shows that Canada is lagging the United States in curbing toxic pollution. Although total North American emissions declined by 18 per cent from 1998 to 2001, Canadian emissions rose three per cent.

Hmm. And yet. . . .

STEPHEN GREEN OFFERS THOUGHTS on how to end the “Cycle of Violence.”

UPDATE: In a related development, a new wrinkle in nonlethal munitions. Though I think there’s some precedent for its use in the region. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: And speaking of things that havent’ changed in two millennia. . . .

BLACKFIVE OFFERS A LETTER FROM AFGHANISTAN, with a suggestion that Robert Novak read it.

LT SMASH looks at what’s to come in Iraq.

WHILE I WENT OUT TO GET FROZEN YOGURT, the InstaWife watched CBS news. She pronounced it “one long commercial for the Democrats.” (Yeah, but where’s the FEC?) I referred her to RatherBiased.com.

UPDATE: It wasn’t just CBS. MIckey Kaus writes:

Am I the only one who was amazed that the NBC Nightly News ran what seemed like a minute of what was in effect a trailer for Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11, now to be distributed by the Weinstein brothers of Miramax? There was no identifying line on the screen–if you tuned in you’d think you were watching an NBC report. … Q.: What was the news peg that justified the extended showing of footage from the Weinsteins’ film? A.: The peg was that the Weinsteins had released footage from their film! .. Either they have the best PR person in the world or there is a backstory here, waiting to be told.

I think I know what it is.

BETTER ALL THE TIME: Another good news roundup from The Speculist.

CATHY SEIPP posts her monthly review of Maureen Dowd’s work. Once again, it’s unflattering: “You know, I think if you survived Normandy or Iwo Jima you deserve better in your old age than to be clucked over by a condescending Maureen Dowd. But maybe that’s just me.”

KERRY ON LOOSE NUKES: Tom Maguire has thoughts.

UPDATE: Wonkette doesn’t like the color scheme.

THOUGHTS ON AL QAEDA STRATEGY, or lack thereof, from Donald Sensing and The Belmont Club.

SOME INTERESTING STATS on the National Spelling Bee contestants. This one caught my eye:

Most spellers attend traditional public schools (179). The rest attend home schools (35), private schools (27), parochial (20) or charter schools (four).

That seems like a wildly disproportionate number in home schools. (And, if it isn’t, well, that’s news too.)

Speaking of the Spelling Bee, both Mr. Sun and Ed Cone have thoughts. And they’re both big fans of Spellbound, the Spelling Bee documentary that I’ve mentioned before. (Here’s a Brian Micklethwait post on the film.)

UPDATE: One of the spellers from Spellbound has started a blog! And a reader sends this revealingly clueless BBC review of the film. Sheesh. Compare this review with Brian Micklethwait’s post above.

INSTAPUNDIT: The blog women love! But of course.

JESSE WALKER HAS more on low-power radio, including this: “college radio is coming to Afghanistan. Could zines and 7-inch indie labels be far behind?”

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS:

“Right now, our biggest problem is finding qualified people,” said Larson, plant manager at Milwaukee N/C Machining in Fredonia.

On Tuesday, the Institute for Supply Management reported that its manufacturing employment index advanced in May for the seventh consecutive month with a 61.9 reading, the highest mark in 31 years.

Economists say the report from the Arizona-based group shows that the economy is rebounding – especially for the battered manufacturing sector.

I suppose there will be some people who will be disappointed, though.

JOANNE JACOBS: “Rosie the Riveter has trumped Patton.”

SO NOW AMAZON IS SELLING industrial supplies and medical supplies? And, only somewhat less surprisingly, shoes. Soon there won’t be anything that you can’t buy from Amazon. Er, except for Heinz ketchup. Is that a political statement?

UNSCAM UPDATE: The finger-pointing begins:

The former head of the United Nations’ oil-for-food program in Iraq says the Security Council prevented him from effectively administering the multibillion-dollar-a-year program that is now the focus of several inquiries into allegations of corruption and mismanagement. . . .

Mr. Sevan did not explain in his e-mail message how the Security Council had hampered him from effectively administering the sprawling program. But diplomats and United Nations officials said it was what one called “common knowledge” that member states were ignoring the widespread complaints about kickbacks and payoffs by Saddam Hussein’s government so that their companies could continue being part of the lucrative program.

Read the whole thing. He also slams unnamed “pundits” for giving him a hard time.

UPDATE: Roger Simon is deeply unimpressed. “Now let me get this straight. Because Chalabi is probably guilty of various shenanigans, Mr. Sevan and his cronies at the UN did nothing wrong. Grade in logic: F. Blame Canada?…. No, blame Chalabi!”

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW IMPINGES ON THE CAMPAIGN:

In Tuesday’s “cease and desist” letter, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth called on Kerry’s campaign to stop what it said was the unauthorized use of the images of some of them in a 60-second biographical spot titled “Lifetime.” The ad began running nationwide in early May.

Hmm. I don’t think I like this.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh has posted a legal analysis.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON is writing in The New Republic:

The misplaced restraint of the past year is not true morality, but a sort of weird immorality that seeks to avoid ethical censure in the short term–the ever-present, 24-hour pulpit of global television that inflates a half-dozen inadvertent civilian casualties into Dresden and Hiroshima. But, in the long term, such complacency has left more moderate Iraqis to be targeted by ever more emboldened murderers.

He favors a more aggressive approach.

HERE’S A BLOG with cool embedded video of the Rolling thunder parade in Washington that I mentioned earlier.

STRATEGYPAGE offers a frontline report from Iraq.

UPDATE: Orrin Judd offers several interesting items on the transition.

MIKE RAPPAPORT is looking on the bright side.

UPDATE: Reader Elizabeth Mauro points to this passage (“American officials reported that in the cable to Tehran, the Iranian official recounted how Mr. Chalabi had said that one of ‘them’ — a reference to an American — had revealed the code-breaking operation, the officials said. The Iranian reported that Mr. Chalabi said the American was drunk.”) and adds “I’m thinking Ted Kennedy.”

Plausible, but far from certain. On a more serious note, the one thing I’m sure of is that we’re not getting the whole story here, for good or for ill.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Patrick Belton has more questions on Chalabi.

HOW TO THINK about neuroethics: My TechCentralStation column is up.

ANOTHER U.N. SCANDAL: U.N. ambulances used by terrorists. “According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, senior UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah confessed to using his official U.N. vehicle to bypass security and smuggle arms, explosives and terrorists to and from attacks. . . . Moreover, according to Rep. Smith, a UNRWA school hosted a Hamas rally by a key Hamas leader in July 2001 and another UNRWA employee praised homicide bombers, proclaiming: ‘The road to Palestine passes through the blood of the fallen, and these fallen have written history with parts of their flesh and their bodies.'” There’s a link to the video.

SUDAN UPDATE: Carroll Morse has more background on the horrific events there.

ROD DREHER in the Dallas Morning News:

We decided to search photo wire service archives for the past month, looking for images of U.S. soldiers engaged in helping Iraqis instead of shooting at them. We were startled to discover that the photo accompanying this text was the only image of its kind that moved on the wires in recent weeks. This newspaper’s photo department told me that if news photographers aren’t shooting those pictures, it’s because media back home aren’t interested in those stories.

Which justifies the reader complaints we’ve been hearing, does it not?

Jay Rosen is mentioned.