THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!

THE SOVIET BIOWAR HANGOVER seems to be continuing, with an outbreak of tularemia in Russia. Gateway Pundit has this and related news.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Todd Steed.

PEOPLE ARE STILL TALKING ABOUT PAT ROBERTSON, but really, this post by Stephen Green is the last word:

Pat Robertson is an idiot. Not only that, but he’s a hypocritical idiot. If we were so hot for toppling dictators, he really ought to stop making millions of dollars off them.

Not that there’d be much wrong with killing Hugo Chávez. If there’s one thing Ayn Rand got right, it’s this: No dictatorship has any right to exist; any free nation wishing to topple a dictatorship has the moral right (but not the moral obligation) to do so.

Failing that, knocking off the dictator certainly couldn’t do any harm.

But Robertson is still an idiot.

Well, yeah.

THE NOT-SO-SAD PLIGHT of female DJ’s — I take up a challenge from K. Lo, over at GlennReynolds.com.

HENRY COPELAND WANTS YOUR HELP designing a new Blogads logo. Be sure to tell him I sent you!

MICHAEL BARONE has thoughts on Iraqi Constitution-making.

UPDATE: Patterico has a solution to any problems that may arise.

ERIN CHAPIN CONDUCTS A VIDEO TOUR of Knoxville’s adult establishments, and offers an “in your face” to Kate Hudson.

Some people in Knoxville do want to entertain Kate.

LYNNE KIESLING OFFERS A summary of reasons why oil and gasoline prices are so high, then expresses enthusiasm for ethanol as a fuel. Er, for bloggers, anyway. . . .

UPDATE: She also has some interesting numbers on household spending on gasoline as compared to income.

WATER FLOWED ON MARS: recently!

The new study suggests water may still bubble to the surface of Mars now and then, flow for a short stretch, then boil away in the thin, cold air.

The conclusion is based on computer modeling of the atmosphere and how water would behave.

“The gullies may be sites of near-surface water on present-day Mars and should be considered as prime astrobiological target sites for future exploration,” said Jennifer Heldmann, the lead researcher from NASA’s Ames Research Center. “The gully sites may also be of prime importance for human exploration of Mars because they may represent locations of relatively near surface liquid water, which can be accessed by crews drilling on the red planet.”

Any potential long-term human presence on Mars would require a water source, both for drinking and to be broken down into hydrogen as fuel for return flights.

The claim that water carved the gullies is based on the shape and size of features spotted by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor.

This is good news, though life on Mars might well be bad news.

ASSASSINATION AS A TOOL OF FOREIGN POLICY: Eugene Volokh is against it. George Stephanopoulos is reportedly more supportive.

OUCH, again.

UPDATE: And again. “Hey, this is blogging, not journalism or scholarly work. But Mr Cole can be pretty blistering when others make errors on his turf.”

I think he’s just defending his monopoly position . . . .

MORE ERROR-CORRECTION BY BLOG.

RADLEY BALKO NOTES that “consumer advocates” can make life miserable for consumers. Bill Quick is mentioned, as is Jeralynn Merritt.

GATES OF FIRE: Michael Yon has more firsthand combat reporting from Iraq, with photos. As always, it’s a must-read. Thank goodness for the blogosphere, as you won’t see this kind of reporting anywhere else.

LYNN KIESLING ON GAS PRICES: “[B]etween economic growth and increased fuel efficiency, the amount we spend to pay for fuel is a decreasing share of our household budgets, and is a much lower share than in the 1970s. It’s expensive and annoying, yes, but it’s not the big budget item in most budgets that it used to be.”

SCOTT OTT has found a leaked White House document.

SOME THOUGHTS on hybrid cars and blogs.

IN CONNECTION WITH THE POST ON SUVs, BELOW, here’s an interesting chart: “The following plot shows how much I paid for each gallon of gas I bought over the past 26 years or so. . . . The upper, black curve shows the actual price paid for each gallon. The lower curve is the data adjusted for inflation using April, 1979 as the datum.”

Of course, as Nick Gillespie has suggested, if we’re worried about people wasting fuel we should ban private jets. But what would Arianna say?

JACK KELLY FACT-CHECKS a New York Times story on the war by calling the source:

Colonel Thomas Spoehr is annoyed with New York Times reporter Michael Moss, for what I think is a good reason.

Spoehr is the director of materiel for the Army staff. He had a good news story to tell Moss, which Moss converted into a bad news story.

Read the whole thing. You know, calling sources to check their quotes in Big Media is an interesting approach.

WELL, IT IS THE VOLUNTEER STATE:

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — Increased bonuses, advertising, relaxed qualifications and more recruiters are being credited by Tennessee National Guard and Army recruiters for rising enlistments. . . .

Wenzler said the National Guard will likely finish about 300 recruits short of its goal of 1,600, but that enlistments are up from last year.

Meanwhile, Rich Hailey has thoughts on why re-enlistments are running so high:

First time enlistments are running a bit behind, another product of a burgeoning economy, but re-enlistments, even from soldiers in combat zones, are running ahead of expectations.

What does it mean when the guys in the thick of it, closest to the action, at risk, on the ground and looking at things with their own eyes, decide to stay for another hitch?

They must believe in what they’re doing.

Indeed.

ROBERT SAMUELSON WRITES:

Economist Robert Fogel, winner of the Nobel Prize, recently told students at Cornell University that “half of you [may] live to celebrate your 100th birthday.” Fogel’s prediction goes well beyond standard projections, which envision today’s college students living into their late seventies. But Fogel, who has studied centuries of change in human well-being, said that conventional forecasts are usually too cautious. “In the late 1920s,” he recalled, “the chief actuary of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. put a cap of 65 on life expectancy.”

Fogel’s forecast reminds us that sooner or later Americans will have to work longer and retire later. It will become economically, politically and morally intolerable for government (aka taxpayers) to support people for a third or even half of their adult lives. Our present Social Security “debate” ought to start this inevitable transformation. But it isn’t. We are in deep denial about the obvious. . . .

The system encourages earlier retirement among career workers and frustrates their reemployment. We could take steps to change this: review age discrimination laws to make it easier for companies to keep career workers; allow people to buy into Medicare at age 62 or 65 while still working.

I’ve had thoughts on that subject, also mentioning Fogel (you’ll have to scroll down), here.

DAN GILLMOR: “The remarkable thing, from my perspective, is the degree to which Google’s public-relations wounds are self-inflicted.”

I DON’T REJECT MANY BLOGADS — if I only ran ads I agreed with, soon people would think my views were the result of the ads and not the reverse — but I would have rejected this one, too.

UTAH RAVE UPDATE: From the Salt Lake City Weekly:

Law-enforcement officers—so often overworked, underpaid and underappreciated—deserve the respect of citizenry. But based on personal accounts and digital-camera footage of that evening that have flooded the Internet since, even the most die-hard supporter of the local constabulary would feel remiss not asking questions. . . .

There’s something telling, too, about the fact that the Sheriff’s Office learned at noon that day where the rave would commence, but waited more than two hours into the music—until 11:30 p.m.—to make 60 arrests and demand the area be cleared. Much was made of one young raver who “overdosed on ecstasy,” and then was released to her parents. If disaster was so imminent, and warranted 90 men in uniform, why wasn’t the rave politely stopped before it started? Perhaps because the spectacle of an outdoor event, like a rave itself, is a lot more fun than sitting at home.

Read the whole thing. (Via the comments here).

UPDATE: Matt Rustler notes reports that the ATF has been acting pretty thuggish lately, too. More here.