IS GM “TOO BIG TO FAIL?” Thoughts at GlennReynolds.com.

DANIEL DREZNER OFFERS praise for the wisdom of average Americans.

SOME LARGELY DEPRESSING THOUGHTS on democracy, stability, and Nepal.

IT’S NOT (QUITE) TOO LATE to register for the BlogNashville conference. Be there, or be square!

ANGLOSPHERE UPDATE: NATALIE SOLENT has interesting thoughts relating to Jim Bennett’s book.

TODD ZYWICKI:

There aren’t many good studies on this, but some have concluded that as much as 10% of bankruptcy filings are caused by tax liabilities (and that doesn’t count those who would have alot more money available to pay their debts but for having to pay their taxes or pay their taxes because they are generally nondischargeable in bankruptcy). For those keeping score at home, this exceeds the number of bankruptcies traditionally thought to be caused by health problems, death in the family, college expenses, and gambling.

Interesting.

UNSCAM UPDATE: ROGER SIMON has new information on the unravelling Volcker Committee.

PERHAPS THIS IS BECAUSE IT WAS ALWAYS A CROCK, but The New York Times notices that ending the assault weapons ban didn’t matter:

Despite dire predictions that the streets would be awash in military-style guns, the expiration of the decade-long assault weapons ban last September has not set off a sustained surge in the weapons’ sales, gun makers and sellers say. It also has not caused any noticeable increase in gun crime in the past seven months, according to several metropolitan police departments.

The ban was symbolic legislation, designed to bolster the media profiles and direct-mail efforts of gun control lobby groups, while building momentun for eventual complete gun confiscation (something that some gun-control enthusiasts admitted, and others unconvincingly denied). It failed at that, and in fact succeeded mostly in costing the Democrats control of the legislative and executive branches.

UPDATE: More thoughts here and, in the comments, here. (“I never wanted a semi-automatic rifle until the government told me I could not have one.”)

TIM WORSTALL is hosting another BritBlog roundup.

(SALMA) HAYEK-O-RAMA: Nobody tell Daniel Drezner about this.

THE BBC: Hiring hecklers? This seems quite damaging:

The BBC was last night plunged into a damaging general election row after it admitted equipping three hecklers with microphones and sending them into a campaign meeting addressed by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader.

Sheesh.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER RIGGED ELECTION in Africa. Publius has a Togo election roundup. We need to be working harder to promote democracy in Africa.

SPONGEWORTHINESS UPDATE: The Sponge is back. (Via The Well-Timed Period, which has much more).

LIGHT BLOGGING: Went to a Seder last night at Doug “InstaLawyer” Weinstein’s. Got back late. Had a good time, as usual.

STRATEGYPAGE ON IRAQ:

The Sunni Arab and foreign terrorists are resorting more to attacks on civilians. The security around government officials, as well as their homes and workplaces, has increased to the point where attackers are discouraged. These failed attacks are often not reported, but they are frequent. Interrogations of captured terrorists indicate that many attacks are called off when it is obvious that the attack would be futile, and just get terrorists killed, and valuable equipment (a vehicle and weapons) lost. . . .

Attacks on civilians are still attempts to discourage people from cooperating with the government, or to encourage support for the terrorists. But once you do a lot of this, you are tagged a loser. Such terror only works if you can do it on a large enough scale to control the entire population. But the terrorists are almost entirely Sunni Arabs, and more and more of their terror is being directed against other Sunni Arabs. This isn’t working, with Islamic terrorist becoming more and more unpopular among Sunni Arabs.

Read the whole thing.

JEFF JARVIS rounds up more information suggesting that we’re at a tipping point in the transition from Old to New media. I think he’s right.

LA VIDA ROBOT UPDATE: A while back I linked to this article from Wired about four kids in Phoenix who beat out MIT at an underwater robotics competition. ¡Gringo Unleashed! reports that things are looking up for them.

DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES: It’s blogalicious!

I’VE MENTIONED AMAZON’S ROLE in pushing short web-films before. Now you can be the judge in their online film festival.

THE MPAA HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF BRIBING NEW YORK COPS to bust people for DVD piracy, according to this report in the Post. (Via Slashdot. Best comment: “I don’t know who’s worse: people paying cops to enforce the law, or cops that won’t enforce it unless you pay them extra.”)

ADAM GROVES: “Senate Republican Caucus Chairman Jeff Miller is currently going through a divorce with his wife over allegations that he had an affair with a Senate staffer. Ironically, Miller is the sponsor of the state’s Marriage Protection Act aimed at preventing gay marriages or unions from happening in Tennessee.”

Brian Anderson’s South Park Conservatives (which I’ve now finished) notes that campus conservatives seem to split with middle-aged ones on the question of gay marriage, not least because they’ve seen so much marital hypocrisy from their parents’ generation. As one student observes, heterosexuals have already done plenty to cheapen marriage.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse has related thoughts occasioned by a Russ Feingold speech:

I would never have said this out loud, but I couldn’t help thinking how interesting it was that Feingold shaped his whole lecture around the sanctity of the oath, when just a few days ago he announced that he was getting a divorce, his second. Was I the only who thought how strange it was to hear a man piously invoke a passionate fidelity to an oath when he had — so conspicuously — gone back on the marriage oath twice?

But I like Senator Feingold. I do think he’s a good man. I don’t presume to know what happens to people in their marriages, and I am divorced myself. Nevertheless, he could have discussed his devotion to the Constitution from some perspective other than the fact that he’d sworn an oath. Taking an oath to the Constitution, after all, is not the strongest reason to support it.

Her commenters discuss whether the oaths are comparable.

IT’S MORE CANADIAN SCANDAL NEWS:

Paul Martin hardly needs another scandal, but the news that Maurice Strong has stepped down from his UN post as special envoy to Korea in the wake of allegations related to the Iraqi oil-for-food debacle is potentially damaging on several fronts.

This week, Mr. Strong, a long-time mentor and associate of Mr. Martin, admitted ongoing links to Tongsun Park, a Korean lobbyist charged in connection with oil-for-food. Mr. Park previously enjoyed 15 minutes of infamy in the 1970s as the conduit for bribes to U.S. Congressional officials, an affair dubbed “Koreagate.” This time, according to Paul Volcker’s independent inquiry, Mr. Park transferred funds from Iraq to high-ranking UN officials. . . .

Mr. Strong is a man of enormous informal power within the “international community.” A lifelong self-confessed socialist, he espouses apocalyptic alarmism as a rationale for a much more powerful United Nations. Paradoxically, however, he has always kept one foot in the capitalist camp via an array of often messy business dealings.

I think it’s more a case of “a hand in the capitalist pocket” rather than “a foot in the capitalist camp.” But it’s really more about power than corruption, though corruption certainly plays its role:

Paul Martin’s senior advisers, angry at having lost control of the political agenda, are determined to get it back. They didn’t ask for the election that is being thrust upon them, but they are confident that they can win it.

Maybe they will. But the fact remains that the Liberals are struggling with more than the ever-spreading fallout from the sponsorship scandal. They must also fight a growing impression that the government is adrift, its agenda frustrated by a minority Parliament and by a Prime Minister who wanted to take on everything and ended up achieving very little.

I’m just interested in seeing how money seemed to be flowing from Saddam Hussein to pretty much every government that took an active role in opposing the Iraq war. And I wonder where else the money was going. I suspect we’ll find out, in time.

THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM and the Internet, in The Economist.

Meanwhile, Bill Hobbs has a dream for the blogosphere.

OXBLOG HAS photoblogging from Afghanistan.

WE’RE WINNING THE WAR, says Victor Davis Hanson, who then offers some lessons drawn from things we’ve done right — and things we’ve done wrong.