AM I A HEALTHY-LIVING GUY, OR WHAT? First Guinness, and now coffee turns out to be good for you.

WEBLOG GROWTH continues to skyrocket. Cool.

A BUNCH OF SEIZED IRAQI NUCLEAR MATERIAL is apparently just a few miles from my house, at the “famously ill-defended Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.”

Hey, why did my vacation pictures come out foggy. . . ?

UPDATE: Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Why, yes, it is funny that this isn’t getting a lot of media attention. But not surprising.

RICH, BLOGGY GOODNESS: This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is up, with blog posts from a wide variety of interesting bloggers. Hey, you may find blogs you like better than this one. It could happen!

Also, don’t miss Arthur Chrenkoff’s long, link-filled roundup of good news from Iraq, and don’t miss this interesting firsthand report from Afghanistan over at Oxblog. Both good and bad news, but all of it stuff you’re not likely to hear elsewhere.

ONCE AGAIN, Scrappleface anticipates real life.

MICHAEL YOUNG ON AL JAZEERA:

The second comes from a very well informed Lebanese journalist, who tells me that Al-Jazeera has recently fallen under the editorial control of those in the Qatari royal family close to the Muslim Brotherhood, hence its harsh anti-American line. He also added, as an exotic twist, that the station has “received advertising revenues from the former occupation authority in Iraq, despite the protests of the former Iraqi Governing Council.”

No shocker, there. He adds: “For the record, too, a number of Al-Jazeera employees are seriously considering joining the new BBC Arabic-language television station.”

They’ll fit right in.

INTERESTING STUFF on author and Knoxvillian Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote The Secret Garden, which lots of people have read, and Little Lord Fauntleroy, which hardly anyone has read but which everyone has heard of.

I had always heard that the garden that formed the basis for The Secret Garden was here — there’s one in North Knoxville where they give tours occasionally — but apparently that’s (probably) a local myth.

EUGENE VOLOKH writes on treasonous speech, and links to an interesting draft article by Tom Bell. I’m not sure whether I agree with Bell’s analysis either, but his article certainly illustrates a point I’ve made before — that for all the talk we’ve heard about crushing of dissent, anti-war and anti-government speech is in fact far freer than in almost any previous war.

Meanwhile the real threat to free speech gets less attention than it deserves.

UPDATE: Volokh has a later post on sedition, too!

VIRGINIA POSTREL: “John Edwards won’t carry the South, or even North Carolina, for John Kerry, but he may cost the Republicans some votes, as they misunderestimate him–and wildly overestimate the unpopularity of his profession.”

I agree. An influential segment of the Republican Party hates trial lawyers — but not all Republicans, much less swing voters, feel the same way. Republicans who think that just calling someone a trial lawyer will swing voters against them are out of touch.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse agrees.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg agrees, too — but scroll up for other perspectives.

MORE: Bryan Preston says that I’m wrong. So does Will Collier.

Meanwhile Stephen Bainbridge acknowledges that dissing trial lawyers isn’t a big vote-getter per se, but notes that it energizes the Republican base. That, I agree with.

And while this post is only sort of on-topic, it’s kind of funny.

MORE STILL: Here’s Holman Jenkins from the WSJ Political Diary service (pay-only, but they don’t mind me quoting if I provide a link):

GOPers have struck fund-raising gold in John Edwards’ history as a trial lawyer. But have they struck campaigning gold?

Republicans would be smart to tread carefully around Mr. Edwards career as a trial lawyer. He took strong cases with sympathetic plaintiffs. The problem for the nation isn’t that trial lawyers are evil and all lawsuits are bad, but that the lawsuit industry has become so powerful that it’s distorted the legal process and blocked reform. Even Mr. Edwards has implicitly admitted that there’s problem. His bread and butter was medical malpractice, yet he’s tried to inoculate himself from the obvious abuses by proposing an overhaul that would employ a panel of experts to screen out frivolous and unjustified cases before they get to a courtroom.

Tort reform can be a decent (not great) issue against the Democratic ticket if GOPers play it as a matter of special interests standing in the way of goo-goo reform that even Mr. Edwards has endorsed. The case to make is that he and his running mate are beholden to a lawsuit lobby that has gotten too big for its britches.

That seems right. That Edwards is a trial lawyer may give them some issues, and energize part of the base. But it’s not worth much as a slogan, all by itself, which is how I see a lot of people trying to use it.

MICKEY KAUS is all over the L.A. Times for serial journalistic failures. Maybe they need more layoffs! If their coverage continues to deteriorate, they’ll have them. . . .

ED MORRISSEY says that big media are AWOL on the Iranian-carbomb-in-Baghdad story. Killer kangaroos in Australia are getting more attention.

POLITICS AND VIDEOGAME VIOLENCE: My TechCentralStation column is up.

UPDATE: Cool related story here.

JAMES LILEKS:

About the John Edwards choice I have nothing to say that hasn’t been said elsewhere, but I do find it amusing that these guys are all so steeeenking rich. You have a guy whose wife is worth a cool billion and another guy with several dozen million running on a platform of hiking taxes on people who make 200K. Class warfare, man!

Indeed. (But they’re backed by the little guy!) Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, meanwhile, is horrified at the thought that Bush might replace Cheney, especially if the replacement is Rudy Giuliani: “Rudy? Our worst nightmare.” As a guy with gay roommates, though, I don’t think he really qualifies as “Ashcroft times ten.”

DANIEL DREZNER has thoughts on civility and comments in the blogosphere — and note in particular this troubling (though civil!) comment: “And if you buy that blogs (especially those with high readership levels) are points of collection for opinion leaders … well, it may be we’re seeing a leading indicator of less civil debate in our classrooms, breakrooms, and political conventions. As I Michele and I said to each other on the phone just this evening: we may be in for another summer of 1968.”

I certainly hope not.

MEGAN MCARDLE has a fine rant.

KERRY, EDWARDS, AND IRAQ: Some thoughts over at GlennReynolds.com.

THIS IS A MAJOR DEVELOPMENT:

American and Iraqi joint patrols, along with U.S. Special Operations (search) teams, captured two men with explosives in Baghdad on Monday who identified themselves as Iranian intelligence officers, FOX News has confirmed.

Senior officials said it was previously believed that Iran had officers inside Iraq stirring up violence, but this is the first time that self-proclaimed Iranian intelligence agents have been captured within the country.

The Defense officials also confirmed to FOX News that in recent days there has been significant success in tracking down “known bad guys” based on information from local citizens.

Iran caught in an act of war against Iraq? Hmm. What could that lead to? As Ed Morrissey points out:

Combined with their instransigence on their nuclear programs and their capture of British sailors just days ago, the Iranians have exhausted the patience of everyone involved. These explosives would have been used against American personnel in Iraq — in fact, some or most of the attacks on Americans in Baghdad may have already been generated from Iranian intelligence.

One suspects that Bush will be happy for the leverage, and the cover, that this development provides, if this story pans out. I think it’s also good news that Iraqis are cooperating more on tracking down bombers, something that’s likely to increase if this is seen as an Iranian assault on Iraq.

ANDREW SULLIVAN, by the way, clambered out of his hammock long enough to post a lot of stuff. Check it out.

GREG DJEREJIAN notes some speeches where John Edwards sounds like Paul Wolfowitz. Funny, he doesn’t look neoconish!

ANOTHER EMBARRASSING ERROR FROM THE LOS ANGELES TIMES? Bremer left Iraq without even giving a speech? (“almost as if he were afraid to look in the eye the people he had ruled for more than a year.”)

Funny, according to the Iraqis he gave a rather eloquent and well-received speech. . . .

More on the L.A. Times’ failures here and here.

UPDATE: Tim Blair has more (including links to other media accounts of the speech), and says that The Washington Post blew this too. Sheesh. It’s bad enough to get stories about war wrong, but how do you miss a televised speech?

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here, and a longer commentary from recently-returned Marine Reservist Eric Johnson here.

And another news account of Bremer’s speech is here:

Bremer, making his last public speech in Iraq, read the transfer document, which was inside a blue folder.

“As recognized in U.N. security council resolution 1546 … (the CPA) will cease to exist on June 28,” he said. “The Iraqi interim government will assume and exercise full … sovereignty on behalf of the Iraqi people.”

“We welcome Iraq’s steps (to take) its rightful place,” he continued, “among the free nations of the world.”

With a laugh, he added: “signed sincerely L. Paul Bremer, ex-administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority.”

After the ceremony al-Yawer expressed his thanks to the coalition. “There is no way to turn back now,” al-Yawer said.

Bremer said that despite an ongoing insurgency, a series of car bombs and kidnappings countrywide, he was leaving Iraq “confident in its future.”

“Anybody who has any doubts about whether Iraq is a better place today than it was 14 months ago, did not see the mass graves of Hillah … or see any of the torture chambers, or rape rooms throughout this country,” he said. “Iraq is a much better place absolutely.”

(Emphasis added.) Doesn’t sound like a guy who was afraid to look Iraqis in the eye, does it?

THE BITER, BIT:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A group of armed, masked Iraqi men threatened Tuesday to kill Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi if he did not immediately leave the country, accusing him of murdering innocent Iraqis and defiling the Muslim religion.

Heh. Spencer Ackerman comments: “Normally I’m against militias. For Zarqawi, I’m happy to make an exception.”

EDWARDS UPDATE: The New Republic is offering a roundtable discussion on the merits of the Edwards pick, featuring Jonathan Cohn, Jonathan Chait, Franklin Foer & Joe Trippi. Worth reading, and it’s in the free area so you don’t have to be a subscriber. If you’re just dropping by, scroll down or go here for my roundup post on the subject.

UPDATE: This Washington Monthly item on Edwards not knowing who Yitzhak Rabin was will probably get considerable circulation among the punditry. I rather doubt that it will make much difference to voters, though.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A balanced ticket? Not according to some.

This Kerry quote, on the other hand, may come out.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: A roundup of Edwards strengths and weaknesses, from Larry Sabato. And TalkLeft is “ecstatic.”

Susanna Cornett, however, is not. Neither, apparently, are the Deaniacs. (“I’m sick about it. Once again the Kerry campaign is made to order for the ill informed, for pomp and no circumstance, for the pundits and not the people, for the camera and not my kids.” Sounds like a future Nader voter to me.)

MORE: But Joe Trippi’s onboard: “All in all, I do not think Kerry could have done much better. . . . Am I excited about Kerry-Edwards? Hell yes.”

DON’T BLAME JOHN ASHCROFT: For quite a while, I’ve been running a blogad for Cordair Fine Art galleries, featuring a variety of images from their collections. Yesterday the ad featured this 7’1″ bronze statue by Danielle Anjou — a nude — and a couple of readers actually wrote worrying that their companies might fire them for looking at a page containing that image, for fear that having such images on company computers might lead to a sexual harassment lawsuit.

You can complain about Ashcroft, or the FCC (and I have), but neither has done as much to censor speech in America as sexual harassment law. Eugene Volokh has made that point repeatedly, but the emails I got really brought it home. What’s next? Banning The Birth of Venus?

UPDATE: David Bernstein, who knows a lot about this (he’s written a book on the subject) has posted thoughts and links to more writings over at The Volokh Conspiracy. And he notes: “I think my piece may contain the only discussion from an academic book of the famous South Park ‘Sexual Harassment Panda’ episode.”

CHECK OUT Jonathan Gewirtz’s photoblog, which is really quite good.

IS NATO A “FRAUDULENT COALITION?”

Yet, even if the Europeans were more enthusiastic, they might have little to contribute. Germany, the largest country in the European Union, has 270,000 soldiers in its army — yet its commanders maintain that no more than about 10,000 can be deployed at any one time. No matter the politics, the German Parliament is unlikely to authorize an increase in the current ceiling of 2,300 troops for Afghanistan. And Germany is the largest contributor to the NATO operation — France, which has never liked the idea of NATO operations outside of Europe, has only 800 soldiers there.

For now, Bush’s interest lies in glossing over this trouble. Kerry’s pitch is that he can make it go away with a new, alliance-centered foreign policy. Both are, in effect, counting on the myth’s staying alive — at least until November.

Ouch. More background here. A military alliance with Europe is like going on a diet with Michael Moore: one of you will wind up doing most of the work.

In a related vein, Daniel Drezner has an interesting post on U.S. force structure.