FINISHED THE LECTURE, had lunch with some colleagues, now I’m headed out of town to give another one tomorrow. I’ll try to hit the blog later this afternoon or evening. In the meantime, visit SCOTUSblog and Volokh for more on the Supreme Court’s decisions. And I got a phone call from Austin Bay, who’s back in the States after a 51-hour airborne marathon starting in Delhi. He’ll be updating his blog later, but since he said he only got 5 hours of sleep on that trip, he may nap for a bit first.

The final word on the Supreme Court, however, may be this one: “Court Allows 10 Commandments on Seized Land.” But of course!

EVAN COYNE MALONEY’S NEW FILM got a mention in the New York Times this weekend.

IN THE MAIL: Truth: A Guide, by Simon Blackburn.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up! And so is the Carnival of Revolutions. And last week I forgot to link to the Red Ensign Standard carnival of Canadians.

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF has his usual roundup of under-reported news from Iraq.

GREG DJEREJIAN DISCOVERS that even philosophers are not immune to lucre. Or to rationalization.

I’LL BE GIVING A LECTURE this morning but SCOTUSblog will be on top of Supreme Court events.

LEE HARRIS WONDERS if it’s possible to have too much respect for the law.

VIRGINIA POSTREL thinks that the Kelo decision is likely to lead to more grassroots activism, and offers some thoughts on how that might look.

UPDATE: Fritz Schranck has some thoughts, too: “Given the overwhelmingly negative reaction to New London’s example, it looks to me that the nation’s citizens should accept the Court’s invitation to deal with the issue with their state and local legislators.”

I AGREE WITH EUGENE VOLOKH’S CHARACTERIZATION of this story from Indiana University as “potentially troubling but hard to figure out without more information.”

LANCE MACMURRAY offers some reports from Iraq that haven’t gotten much attention.

UPDATE: CPT Niel Smith emails: “That statue is in the green zone near a traffic circle. That statue is to Iraqi soldiers killed in the Iran/Iraq war, not to US Soldiers. I know because I’ve been there. (15 months) Notice the AK-47’s and “Steel Pot” helmets on the picture, for starters. Sounds like another one of those feel good internet pictures.” Oh, well, at least this error was corrected within half an hour. Thanks to the speed of the blogosphere — and its readers!

WHO’S LOST FAITH IN PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS? Among others, professional journalists, apparently.

THOUGHTS ON POTTY-MOUTH POLITICS: There does seem to be a lot of that going around at the moment.

ROGER KIMBALL HAS MORE ON FLAG BURNING:

I dislike the spectacle of people burning the American flag as much as the next fascist, right-wing, pro-capitalist extremist (I summarize some of my recent fan mail). But Steyn is surely right that criminalizing the activity is cosmetic plaster, as ineffectual as it is incompatible with the principles of a free society. Are we so weak that such dissent is threatening as well as unattractive? If so, we are in worse shape than I had thought.

Indeed.

GATEWAY PUNDIT HAS A ROUNDUP AND VIDEO ON ZIMBABWE, where Robert Mugabe’s latest has left hundreds of thousands homeless.

CONTRARY TO BRIAN LEITER’S CLAIMS, I’m not behind this site. I’m not Juan Non-Volokh, either. I wonder, however, why Leiter is so obsessed with secret lives, and his false statements of fact, delivered with his habitual self-assurance, certainly don’t enhance his credibility on other subjects.

UPDATE: Leiter has apologized for his error, with his customary grace.

PHIL CARTER is going active duty. Send him your good wishes.

STEM CELL UPDATE: I should have mentioned this story the other day, but somehow forgot. Anyway, there looks to be more progress with adult stem cells, as opposed to the embryonic kind. Here’s a nice survey of the topic.

As I’ve noted before, this only eliminates one class of ethical objection to stem cell research, but it’s still important. It would certainly be good news for the Bush Administration, which is dreadfully out of step with public opinion on this topic. However, the article notes that adult stem cells can’t do everything, and I suspect that research with embryonic stem cells will be required in order to learn how to get more out of adult stem cells, though of course I could be wrong.

IN RESPONSE TO MY POST YESTERDAY, several readers suggest this movie as the best ever made. They may be right.

MARK STEYN WEIGHS IN against the flag-burning amendment. His reasons are worth reading.

SAVOR THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: The latest Blog Mela is up!

IRS FILES COMPROMISED? TaxProf: “The potential security breach dwarfs those recently announced by ChoicePoint, Bank of America, Reed Elsevier, and others.”

HOW TO DEAL WITH MISTAKES: An excellent example from my local newspaper.

THOUGHTS ON THE POLITICAL LESSONS to be learned from Hank Hill.

CAN YOU MAKE BIG MONEY BY BLOGGING? Apparently so!

UPDATE: More here.