JEFF QUINTON has a roundup of all sorts of South Carolina primary items. Stephen Green is primary-blogging, too. Between ’em, they have lots of links to other folks.

CAPT. ED BLOGS goodbye to Joe Lieberman.

ALL ABOUT RICIN: Pharmaceutical chemist Derek Lowe has a post on the subject, which echoes my earlier point that it’s not too hard to make.

UPDATE: Here’s a chronology of Ricin incidents.

FRITZ SCHRANCK reports a very light turnout in Delaware. Meanwhile, here’s a report that Lieberman is pulling ahead. (“As I speak to you, Joe Lieberman is picking out China patterns for the White House.”) Color me skeptical. . . .

EDWARDS WINS QUITE CONVINCINGLY in South Carolina — 45% to Kerry’s 30%.

LT SMASH offers a test for Presidential candidates. It’s pass/fail.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “There’s now going to be an FCC investigation into the nipple.”

Then again, it is kind of sinister.

THE COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW BLOGGERS are shocked, shocked that bloggers everywhere are publicizing the exit poll numbers. But at least they’ve got a sense of humor about it: “Campaign Desk is starting to feel like the indignant moralist who loudly informs everyone within earshot that there is nudity on channel 35 at 10:15 pm every other night. Nonetheless…”

Fortunately, it seems that as the exit polls become more widely available, they’ve become less reliable! So in a way, it all cancels out.

RICIN UPDATE:

As federal investigators try to trace the origin of suspected ricin found Monday in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, ABCNEWS has learned of an earlier, undisclosed incident in which a ricin-laced letter was intercepted on its way to the White House.

In November, a letter postmarked Chattanooga, Tenn., and addressed to the White House was intercepted at an off-site mail sorting facility in the Washington area, sources told ABCNEWS.

Hmm. Wonder why they kept it secret.

UPDATE: Alex Knapp has suspicions about where the ricin came from. You’d be a fool not to think that way — but bear in mind that ricin isn’t that hard to make.

MICKEY KAUS has a roundup of Kerry dirty-tricks reports.

LIGHT-TO-MODERATE TURNOUT in South Carolina.

SHE’S NOT JUST A T-SHIRT MODEL: The Insta-Wife has an essay inspired by the Frum and Perle book up. Maybe now she’ll let me read it. . . .

NUCLEAR SURVEILLANCE IN D.C. AND MANHATTAN: Winds of Change has a report.

TAEGAN GODDARD HAS EXIT POLLS: I’m surprised to see Edwards ahead in Oklahoma — and it looks like bad news for Clark everywhere.

SASHA VOLOKH: “So where are these intelligent Marxist blogs?” I dunno. Surely he’s tried Ken MacLeod’s — though I find MacLeod far more readable as a science-fiction writer than as a Marxist blogger, personally. He’s currently engaged in a fairly interesting debate with Norm Geras though.

UPDATE: Oh, and here’s one that Tim Blair actually likes!

IRAN’S MULLARCHY is banning student protests.

JONAH GOLDBERG is criticizing protectionist conservatives as inconsistent.

JIM MOORE says the Dean campaign is doing better than most people think.

HERE’S MORE ON THE CRUSHING OF DISSENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA, which I mentioned here a while back. The article reports that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has gotten involved, so perhaps the Oklahoma administration will see reason.

UPDATE: Erin O’Connor sends a correction: “FIRE was involved when Deming was first accused of sexual harassment in 2001, and the case appears in their online case archive for that year. Deming does not say that FIRE is involved at the moment, and his article makes it sound like so far he is fighting this one on his own.” Yes, I misread that. Sorry.

HERE’S AN INTERESTING basic training blog from Ft. Benning — though the updates are via snailmail, apparently.

SENATE RICIN UPDATE: It could still be a false alarm, but it looks serious enough that three Senate buildings have been evacuated.

IN AMERICA, YOU CAN NOW BE A DEADBEAT DAD even if you’re not a dad at all. Matt Welch looks at a sweeping injustice that’s not getting nearly enough attention:

What Pierce didn’t realize, and what nearly 10 million American men have discovered to their chagrin since the welfare reform legislation of 1996, is that when the government accuses you of fathering a child, no matter how flimsy the evidence, you are one month away from having your life wrecked. . . .

So a name, race, vague location, and a broad age range is sufficient to launch a process that could quickly lead to a default judgment, asset liens, and a blocked passport? “Right. Right,” Gerhenzon confirms. “If it’s clear that she’s given us enough identifying information to come up with one discrete name, we would go ahead.” Wouldn’t that make people with unusual names easier targets? “Absolutely.” . . .

“When you tell people about the inequities of the system,” Wright says, “they’re surprised. They go, ‘This is America! You couldn’t do that!’ And I go, ‘Yes, you can.’”

Read the whole thing. Then write Congress.

UPDATE: A domestic-relations judge who asks that I not use his name emails:

Tell me about it. The words “due process of law” are wholly unknown to vast portions of the (administrative) child support network. I’m surprised it hasn’t been hugely publicized so far, and it’s not going to get better. Here in Ohio, the legislature’s attempt to enact a “paternity fraud” law is getting a hostile reception from the courts.

He’s right — and, indeed, the entire child-welfare bureaucracy seems actively hostile to due process considerations.

GERMANY: Souring on Chiracism?

One German source complains of how Germany became a ‘prisoner’ of Jacques Chirac’s foreign policy during the build up to the Iraq war: “We were more dependent on the French in that situation. But this will not be a permanent situation.”

Another adds, “We have to be careful that we are not identified with every word that the French president utters. We must have our own identity and be a little more clever.”

Yes.

UPDATE: Be worried — Germans are angry, and they’re drinking less beer.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Power Line notes: “The aftermath of the Iraq war has largely vindicated the administration’s diplomacy, but this good news has been lost in the ‘Bush lied!’ frenzy.”

U.S. SOLDIERS IN IRAQ are still angry about biased media coverage:

In the following days, the press reported on the indiscriminant shooting of civilians. Soldiers were dumbstruck — “They ambushed us.” Maj. Larry Perino was indignant. Although none of his men was involved, he felt the sting.

Many of the soldiers I spoke with were furious.

Meanwhile Michael Novak says that press reports are diddling with the numbers to make casualties look worse:

The news media, which constantly accuse the Bush administration of exaggerating the threat in Iraq, are constantly exaggerating the number of U.S. combat deaths there. I first pointed this out last August. For a while, the exaggeration stopped, but early in January it recommenced. The round number “500” was apparently irresistible. . . .

These 343 (not 500) combat deaths, furthermore, need to be set in context. During 2003, the number of homicides in Chicago was 599, in New York City 596, in Los Angeles 505, in Detroit 361, in Philadelphia 347, in Baltimore 271, in Houston 276, and in Washington 247. That makes 3,002 murders in only eight cities.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Brian Carnell doesn’t think much of Novak’s numbers, and offers an alternative measure of comparison.

STEVE VERDON is deeply unimpressed with John Kerry’s honesty, and offers links and quotations to explain why that is.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Wonkette has discovered something deeply disturbing about Gen. Wesley Clark.