MATT POTTINGER: “Why I gave up journalism to join the Marines.”

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE looks at the Iraqi elections, and what some people were saying not long ago. Plus, this cool opener:

CNN International’s front-page headline: “Ballots counted in Iraqi election”

Think about how mundane that sounds on one level – and the amazing story it tells for just that reason.

Read the whole thing.

RADLEY BALKO has more on Cory Maye.

WELL, THIS IS BAD NEWS:

A doctor who provided human eggs for research by cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-suk said in a broadcast Thursday that the South Korean scientist agreed to withdraw a key research paper because most of the stem cells produced for the article were faked.

Roh Sung-il, chairman of the board at Mizmedi Hospital, told KBS television that Hwang had agreed to ask the journal Science to withdraw the paper, published in June to international acclaim. Roh was one of the co-authors of the article that detailed how individual stem cell colonies were created for 11 patients through cloning.

Roh also told MBC television that Hwang had pressured a former scientist at his lab to fake data to make it look like there were 11 stem cell colonies.

In a separate report, a former researcher told MBC that Hwang ordered him to fabricate photos to make it appear there were 11 separate colonies from only three.

This piece of mine on scientific fraud would seem to be timely again. This sounds a bit like the Summerlin mouse case.

AS OMAR REPORTED EARLIER, turnout in Iraq appears to be quite high — with Saddam’s hometown showing 80%. And overall it was up substantially from the last election. (Via ATC).

That’s great news, though not everyone seems to be as excited about it as I am. But hey, we’ve all got our priorities. [LATER: Some of the lefty blogs linked above have commented now.]

IN THE MAIL: Joel Miller’s Size Matters : How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America’s Families, Finances, and Freedom. My blurb says it should be a political call to arms. I hope that it will be, as it’s a virtual manifesto for the PorkBusters movement, and it doesn’t just stop there.

Miller has also been my editor on An Army of Davids, and in fact I was attracted to the publisher by the chance to work with him, since I was a big fan of his drug-war book, Bad Trip, which seems especially insightful in light of the Cory Maye case.

AUSTIN BAY offers an analysis of the New York Times’ coverage of the Iraqi elections.

OMAR REPORTS that voter turnout in Iraq is quite high. Tom Smith says the atmosphere is like a block party. (Though one where you still have to watch out for crazed Islamist suicide bombers. . . .)

Meanwhile, an embedded reporter visiting Iraq for the first time notes the difference between media accounts and reality on the ground:

Everything I thought I knew was wrong.

Maybe not wrong, but certainly different than the picture in my head.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A little informal exit polling in Najaf.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Gateway Pundit notes that the BBC says we’ve achieved stability in Iraq, and observes: “that headline has more shock value than a bomb in Baghdad!” He’s got a big roundup, with photos and links to video.

WRITING IN THE L.A. WEEKLY, Michael Totten reports on partying with Hezbollah: “Hezbollah’s South Lebanon Commander Sheikh Nabil Qaouk said the militia wants to build strong relations with American journalists and academics. Yet its attempt to make a good impression on me failed spectacularly.”

ARNOLD KLING: “Policy pundits are unhappy with the state of health insurance. What is the problem? After considering some alternative theories, I believe that the best explanation is simply that most people do not want health insurance.” I do! But Kling says I’m in the minority.

NEWS FROM IRAQ: Over at the Pajamas Media site, Omar & Mohammed of Iraq the Model, plus stringers from all over Iraq, are posting reports and photos from the Iraqi elections. This will go on all day.

It’s a bit of an experiment still, but I hope that we’ll see a lot more of this kind of coverage from all sorts of places, on all sorts of topics, as things progress.

If you have any comments on the coverage, email me and I’ll pass ’em on — or you can use the email form in the left-hand column on the main Pajamas page.

UPDATE: Here’s a blog-report from Bill Roggio, too. He’s in Barwana and notes: “The poll site sits right beneath the now-destroyed Barwana bridge, where Zarqawi terrorists routinely executed residents for not conforming to their perverse interpretation of Islam.” Note the past tense. He concludes: “Barwana, once part of Zarqawi self declared ‘Islamic Republic of Iraq,’ is now the scene of al-Qaeda’s greatest nightmare: Muslims exercising their constitutional right to chose their destiny.”

Heh. Indeed.

AUSTIN BAY: “With Iraq’s latest trip to the polls, the great revolt continues. . . . Democratic politics, emerging in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, are providing an alternative to the afflictions of war, terror and tyranny.”

BRITAIN AND THE JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER: Potentially a major foreign policy disaster, and bad for the GOP: “Because the reason things have reached this point lies in the US Congress, and it’s Republicans not Democrats who have created this situation.” Reps. Henry Hyde & Duncan Hunter are singled out. But read the comments for some interesting discussion.

EUGENE VOLOKH ENDORSES John Scalzi’s Agent to the Stars. He’s right, of course, that it’s not as “meaty” as Old Man’s War, but it has a charm of its own.

Among its charms, I guess, is that you can read it for free online here, if you want.

MORE DRUG WAR STUFF being slipped into the Patriot Act renewal.

IRAQIS VOTE: A multimedia presentation from the Detroit Free Press.

STINGINESS UPDATE:

Donor fatigue? Not this year. Even after the outpouring of donations for the Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, holiday giving is robust this season and 2005 could well set an overall record, U.S. charity officials are reporting.

“It seems to be a phenomenal year,” said Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. “Donor fatigue is something not many charities are seeing.”

Which is good, because it’s been a big year for disasters.

TONY SNOW wants the Barrett report released.

UPDATE: Reader Peter Schiavo emails: “Everything else gets leaked in D.C. Why not this report?”

JACOB SULLUM: “How big a boob is Ted Stevens? So big that the Alaska Republican has me defending the Transportation Security Administration. Stevens and several other senators are in a tizzy about TSA’s plan to let passengers carry small tools and scissors (up to four inches long) onto airplanes. . . . I’m guessing that when Stevens flies someone else takes care of his bags.”

UPDATE: Ted Stevens needs to hear from the tweezer people.

Air security is a joke. Stevens is a joker.

I MISSED BUSH’S SPEECH TODAY, as I was in a faculty hiring meeting this afternoon, but it gets a good review at RedState.

Here’s the text of the speech. My only (perhaps overly hopeful) interpretation: Bush’s comment about accepting responsibility for intelligence errors — and for fixing the problem — is not so much an apology as an announcement that he’s going to do some housecleaning at the CIA. I certainly hope so, anyway.

AN IRAQI VOTER explains things. Ian Schwartz has video.

UPDATE: Here’s a report from Basra.

TRUTH ON THE GROUND: Interesting oped in the Washington Post from a Marine who’s headed back to Iraq. Read the whole thing.

DAM BURST: Jim Hoft is all over the story.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: “My conversations with the latest victim of Syrian terror.”

RADLEY BALKO has a big Cory Maye roundup posted.