FUTUREBLOGGING: This week’s Carnival of Tomorrow is up, with an Ed Wood theme.

TIGERHAWK notes interesting developments regarding Syria.

NEAL BOORTZ is considering a career as a screenwriter.

53% OF AMERICANS say they’re likely to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2008?

Well, if she wins, I hope she lives up to her billing as “the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States.”

More evidence of Hillary’s growing influence here.

ETHIOPIAN ELECTIONS UPDATE: The E.U. observers are very critical:

Ethiopia’s electoral board appears to have lost control of the vote counting for the May 15 legislative polls, European Union election observers said in a report obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The confidential report went on to say the EU might have to make a public denunciation of developments to distance itself from “the lack of transparency, and assumed rigging” of the vote

“Ten days after the polling day, the situation is of political uncertainty and informational chaos regarding the results of the election,” according to the confidential report.

What’s more, Jimmy Carter made the problem worse:

The EU report also said former U.S. President Carter, who led a team of 50 election observers, undermined the electoral process and EU criticism with “his premature blessing of the elections and early positive assessment of the results.”

Unless there is a “drastic reverse toward good democratic practice” the observer team and EU “will have to publicly denounce the situation.”

“Otherwise, the EU jointly with ex-President Carter will be held largely responsible for the lack of transparency, and assumed rigging, of the elections.”

It’s Venezuela all over again for Jimmy, apparently. Meanwhile, several thousand Ethiopian-Americans protested the elections, at the State Department.

YOU CAN LEARN A LOT SOMETIMES from reading people’s websites.

BILL HOBBS has the indictments in the Tennessee legislative corruption cases.

JOE GANDELMAN says it’s not nice to make fun of Arlen Specter’s cancer.

He’s right.

GREG DJEREJIAN says there’s nothing to the Bolton NSA intercept story.

VIDEO-FILLYBLOGGING, courtesy of my sister. (QT version here).

WILL PAJAMA-CLAD INTERNET ACTIVISTS BRING DOWN THE E.U.?

In cyberspace, a whole range of opinions – individual or on behalf of trade unions and anti-globalists group such as ATTAC – can be freely accessed, while “No” campaigners appear much more at ease with the Internet than the traditional party campaigners.

With an estimated 24 million internet users in France (out of a population of 60 million), it is an increasingly powerful tool.

Stanislas Magniant, at Publicis Consultants Net Intelligenz told one newspaper that in this campaign, France was seeing the beginning of real grass-roots militancy on the Internet.

Stay tuned.

LOOKING FOR MORE BLOG CARNIVALS? WHO ISN’T?

So check out the Carnival of Gamers, with game-related posts, and the Carnival of Comedy is, well, self-explanatory.

UPDATE: Don’t miss the latest storyblogging carnival, either.

HUGH HEWITT INTERVIEWED DANA MILBANK of The Washington Post. The transcript is posted here.

18 THINGS YOU CAN’T SAY ABOUT MUSLIMS IN ITALY, judging from the Oriana Fallaci case. (Via Volokh).

KURTZ CORRECTION: Note the email from Howard Kurtz, below.

SOME UNDERREPORTED GOOD NEWS from Africa.

THE BELMONT CLUB has moved to a backup location in response to more problems at Blogger.

JAMES LILEKS:

Wherever you go, there you are. But at least in Arizona, you’re warmer, and CRIMINEY JUDAS I’m tired of being cold all the time.

Thus speaks a true Minnesotan. It’s unseasonably cool here, too. But that means 70 degrees.

A PACK, NOT A HERD:

For more than four years – steadily, seriously, and with the unsentimental rigor for which we love them – civil engineers have been studying the destruction of the World Trade Center towers, sifting the tragedy for its lessons. And it turns out that one of the lessons is: Disobey authority. In a connected world, ordinary people often have access to better information than officials do.

(Via DefenseTech). Some of us have been noting this for a while.

DAVE PRICE is saying I told you so.

IT’S REFORM THURSDAY at Willisms. Social Security reform, that is.

UPDATE: More on Social Security here.

AVIAN FLU UPDATE: Nature has a special issue devoted to the subject. Interestingly, they’ve chosen to dramatize it with a fictional weblog ostensibly authored by a journalist in the thick of next year’s epidemic. That’s a testament to blogs’ ability to capture news with immediacy and drama, I guess. (Via Effect Measure).

AN FBI STING OPERATION has resulted in the arrest of several Tennessee legislators. Bill Hobbs has a roundup.

HARRY’S PLACE worries that we’re backsliding on democracy in Egypt.

LAURENCE SIMON: “Today, I learned that I am some kind of illegal Mexican narcoterrorist gunrunner.” Well, yeah.