GAYPATRIOT and Andrew Sullivan comment on the Log Cabin Republicans.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT.

RAND SIMBERG has a lengthy essay on space policy in The New Atlantis.

THE GENESIS SPACE PROBE CRASHED: Bummer. Unclear whether they’ll be able to get any useful data out of it.

DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES: You may find some blogs you like better than this one.

MIKE BARNICLE ON POLITICAL RHETORIC, from Hardball:

[T]he difference between listening to John Kerry and listening to George Bush is the difference between reading Elmore Leonard and James Joyce. The language of his campaign is so lame that he can‘t connect. He has not yet connected with the American voter. You listen to the president of the United States, whether you agree or disagree with Iraq. . . . his language is direct.

The other problem for the Kerry campaign is that Kerry probably thinks it’s a good thing when you’re compared to James Joyce. . . .

But his waffling has got both pro-war Democrats (“Speaking as an embarrassed and fed-up Democrat, I have to say to the national leaders of my own party: What were you thinking when you nominated this man! “) and anti-war Democrats (“Kerry is imploding because he threw away his most important advantage. He had an energized, passionate base, and he took them for granted. Now he’s losing them . . . Some of them will vote for Nader, but unless Kerry throws them some red meat during the debates, most of them will stay home.”) disgusted with him.

If you try to please everyone, you usually wind up pleasing no one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Micahel Duff, who’s at the anti-war Democrat link above, emails that he’s not a Democrat. From his email and his post, I had thought that he was. Nonetheless, I think he’s right that anti-war democrats are losing interest in Kerry.

MARK CUBAN ON WHY HE BLOGS: Another vote of confidence for the media!

FROM NATION-STATE TO MARKET STATE: Interesting.

IS THE DEBATE OVER STEM CELLS recapitulating the debate over In-Vitro Fertilization? To some degree. And here’s an interesting Leon Kass bit: “Leon Kass (of the President’s Council on Bioethics) was strongly opposed to IVF until its acceptance was more or less a given.”

I think that Bush made a big mistake choosing Kass to head the Council.

SOME TROUBLING STUFF on electrical power grid vulnerabilities. “[F]ailures in a fairly small portion of the network can lead to a major disruption.”

AT SLASHDOT: “Should Star Trek die?”

HUGH HEWITT: “[T]he weakness of Kerrry as a candidate is obvious from the fact that it has now been 38 days since Kerry sat down on camera with a major figure from American journalism for an in-depth interview that would be certain to bring up Kerry’s whoppers about his Vietnam service. Kerry’s still in the box he built from himself of fables of CIA men and hats and gun-running to Cambodia.”

AUSTIN BAY IS BACK FROM IRAQ, and he’s got a column up on what he’s learned. Excerpt:

If there is one mistake I think we’ve made in fighting this war, it’s been the way we’ve soft-pedaled the ideological dimensions. This really is a fight for the future, between our free, open political system and the unholy alliance of despots and Islamo-fascists whose very existence depends on denying liberty.

Iraq — long plundered by despotism — should be a wealthy country. It has water, an agricultural base, a source of capital (oil) and people willing to work. It is the best place to begin to reform the dysfunctional political systems that shackle and rob the vast the majority of Middle Easterners. The lesson of 9-11, three years on, is that liberty must sustain a focused offensive if it is to survive.

Read the whole thing.

TOM MAGUIRE OFFERS ADVICE TO THE BUSH CAMPAIGN on how to respond to the various attacks coming from the Kerry campaign:

Karl Rove can actually use these stories to his advantage. First, spin it as a last gasp, say-anything attempt by the media to win this for their guy Kerry. (Waddya mean, “spin”?). This will rally a newly-aggrieved base.

Secondly (and here comes your sound-bite), turn the AWOL story back on Kerry. “The President is running on his record of leadership and his vision for a safer, more propserous America. We are only having this discussion about new documents because the President has signed the Form 180 authorizing the release of all of his records.

The President is not running on a service record he has nonetheless fully disclosed; John Kerry is running on a service record he has not fully disclosed.. If we are going to compare the two candidates’ records, we need full disclosure from both sides.” (See “MORE”, below).

Finally, timing is everything – the Kitty Kelley book, coupled with the new AWOL charges, looks like a liberal media mudslide, and increases the effectiveness of the “this is a say-anything assault by the media” meme.

(Emphasis in original). Read the whole thing.

The press will call this Kerry move shrewd, but after things like the bogus-boos story from the AP, the press isn’t exactly riding high in the credibility department. In fact, I sometimes wonder if part of Karl Rove’s strategy isn’t aimed at eviscerating media credibility — or, more accurately, encouraging media folks to eviscerate their own credibility — so as to give Bush a freer hand in the second term. If so, the press is certainly cooperating.

UPDATE: Several readers note that — in addition to failing to open his military records — Kerry has refused to release his medical records, as well as Teresa’s tax records. I don’t think the press would allow such behavior by a Republican to pass with so little comment.

ANOTHER UPDATE: RealClearPolitics has further thoughts on what’s going on. And here’s a roundup of Bush AWOL stuff. (Via Dodd Harris, who has much more). And read this by Byron York, too.

And here’s some more Doug Brinkley backpedaling that I had missed:

John Kerry’s biographer today called on the presidential candidate to release his military records and warned a Navy investigation into his medals could prove to be the “death knell” of his campaign.

In the past, Kerry has said he could not release some documents because of contractual obligations to Douglas Brinkley, author of “Tour of Duty.” Brinkley said he has no contractual claims to any of the papers.

No contractual obligations? Interesting. So where are the records?

SIMS RULES FOR A COMPLEX WORLD: My TechCentralStation column, which features more thoughts on the largely positive impact of gaming on today’s youth, is up. There’s a Neal Stephenson angle, too.

ANYONE WHO SAYS THAT IRAQ was “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time,” doesn’t have the judgment or the credibility to be President.

But don’t take my word for it — ask John Kerry.

UPDATE: A question:

John Kerry (at least one of them) says that the war on Iraq is not part of the war on terror. He also said that the 1,000th American died in Iraq in the war against terror. How does that work? Is the war in Iraq the war against terror or is it not? Are the soldiers who are there fighting the “wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time” suddenly become martyrs to the war on terror when they die there?

The message remains a bit muddled.

BESLAN, USA: Froggy Ruminations has some thoughts on the implications of Beslan for law enforcement training. Personally, I think that these lessons are more significant. But both are worth reading.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn observes:

Could what happened in Beslan happen in the US? Two months ago, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported on a fellow called Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi, a suspected terrorist who’d fought with his fellow jihadi in Chechnya and somehow wound up in Minnesota, where he’d applied for licences to transport hazardous materials and drive school buses.

As always, his whole column is worth reading.

MY YOUNGEST BROTHER’S BAND, Copper, is on tour. Check out the schedule — they may be coming to a town near you.

Plus, they’ve got free downloads.

HERE’S AN AMUSING LIVEBLOG SUMMARY from the American Political Science Association panel on blogs. Shockingly, Wonkette was talking dirty. (Via Papa Drezner).

WILL IT HELP KERRY WIN VOTES IN THE SOUTH, when his campaign is making fun of Southern accents?

I wouldn’t post so much on this stuff, but it’s like a car wreck — you just can’t make yourself look away, even though you know you should.

UPDATE: The Gilligan theme continues. (But I like Gilligan!). And read more substantive analysis, with a Kennedy angle, too.

ARNOLD KLING: “Turning to government to help maintain anonymity on the Internet is like going to the Pope for help in keeping abortion safe and legal.”

MICHAEL NOVAK WRITES on “Preacher Zell.”

EFFECTS OF A NATIONAL SALES TAX: TaxProf links to a study.

UPDATE: Gary Comer notes the source:

The link to the TaxProf blog regarding the idea of a national sales tax is interesting, but I do notice that the study that is referenced by TaxProf is from ITEP, an organization funded in part by The Streisand Foundation (yes, as in Barbara Streisand) and having on its board as Vice President Robert Kuttner of the very liberal publication The American Prospect and as board member Robert Reich, the former Clinton Secretary of Labor and now a leading spokesperson for the political left.

So while I can’t necessarily at this point speak to the accuracy of the report itself, not having fully analyzed it, it does seem as if the source of the report has a distinct bias.

Perhaps one of the econobloggers will post a fuller analysis.

SPEAKING OF KERRY AND GUNS, he just shot himself in the foot again:

But in so doing he seemed to forget that Republicans have been tearing him down for months as a vacillating, indecisive, finger-in-the-wind politician of the worst order.

“Everybody told me, ‘God, if you’re coming to Canonsburg, you’ve got to find time to go to Toy’s, and he’ll take care of you,'” Mr. Kerry said, dropping the name of a restaurant his motorcade had passed on the way in. “I understand it’s my kind of place, because you don’t have to – you know, when they give you the menu, I’m always struggling: Ah, what do you want?

“He just gives you what he’s got, right?” Mr. Kerry added, continuing steadily off a gangplank of his own making: “And you don’t have to worry, it’s whatever he’s cooked up that day. And I think that’s the way it ought to work, for confused people like me who can’t make up our minds.“

Is there anyone running this campaign? (Via BarcePundit).

UPDATE: Tom Maguire notes the symmetry: “George Bush sometimes lets the wrong word hop out of his mouth, and John Kerry is unable to make even a simple decision.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Libertyblog says I’m missing the point:

This isn’t about Kerry’s indecision, it’s about his eagerness to empower specialists and elites. This restaurateur gets to decide what Kerry has for dinner, Kerry gets to decide who the restaurateur hires, how his employees get health care, whether he can own a gun, …

He just wants to free us from all those burdensome choices! A couple of other readers suggested that this was self-deprecating humor. If Kerry had shown any sign that he was capable of self-deprecating humor — and if the Times had given even a hint that this was going on — that might be plausible.

ANN ALTHOUSE is photoblogging from Madison. Very nice!