TOUR THE INDIAN BLOGOSPHERE: This week’s Blog Mela is up!

WARTRASH is a new warblog by Fred Lapides.

CNN NOTICES SOME FEMALE BLOGGERS: Trey Jackson has the video.

A BBC REPORTER IS READING THE NEW HARRY POTTER BOOK, and is liveblogging the reading. Liveblogging a book — why didn’t I think of that?

A SAUDI WOMAN GETS A COMMERCIAL PILOT’S LICENSE: I hope she’s the face of the future. Heck, one day maybe they’ll let her drive a car.

DAVID CORN RESPONDS ANGRILY to claims that he was the Plame-outer. (“And, by the way, Mark Felt was not Deep Throat; it was me.”) Given that she never seems to have been outed at all, really, this seems like a non-issue to me. And this roundup of the lefty blogs’ response from Slate suggests that the scandal is pretty much over:

Plucky liberal Joshua Micah Marshall offers what he hopes will be the Democratic line on the scandal. “The entire Wilson/Plame story and the Rove/White House criminal probe sub-story are just so many threads thrown off a much larger and more consquential ball of yarn: the administration’s use of fraudulent evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program to seal the deal for war on Iraq with the American people,” he writes at TPMCafe. Atrios, E Pluribus Unum, Ed Cone, and others on the left are opening up another front in the war on Rove, passing around a New York Times column that attacks the advisor for turning 9/11 into a domestic political opportunity.

When the loudest critics start changing the subject back to their old discredited talking points, well . . . .

UPDATE: Cliff May responds to Corn here — and scroll up from that post for more.

WHILE YOU’RE HITTING TIPJARS, you might want to hit Michael Yon’s. He’s doing more worthwhile stuff with the money than I am.

MORE DOCUMENT-SHREDDING AT THE U.N.: It’s a wonder that they have any left.

THE BUSH GIRLS GO TO AFRICA: Sounds like the title to a movie.

F.E.C. UPDATE: Allison Hayward looks at the D.C. Circuit decision today.

AT INSTAPUNDIT, WE TAKE A FLOGGIN’ AND KEEP ON BLOGGIN’ — Apparently, they’ve dug up our phone line by mistake, leaving us without phone or DSL. Luckily, the Verizon card is still working. It’s slow, but it’s faster than dialup.

THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES IS UP!

A PHONY EPIDEMIC:

A Texas federal judge has issued a blistering 249-page order and sanctioned a high-profile plaintiffs law firm, accusing the plaintiffs bar of manufacturing a “phantom epidemic” of the lung disease silicosis.

And at least one legal expert suggests a similar finding might come if courts look closely at recent absestosis litigation.

Judge Janis Graham Jack, in a June 30 ruling, noted that more than 9,000 plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation case had been seen by about 8,000 physicians who diagnosed and treated them for every other health problem, but never noted the presence of silicosis. The silica illness diagnoses came from just 12 doctors, most of whom were in the employ of various mobile-screening operations, doing what she called “assembly-line diagnosing.” In Re: Silica Products Liability Litigation, No. 1553 (S.D. Tex.). . . .

Brickman finds it remarkable that “despite the overwhelming evidence of fraud uncovered” in the silicosis cases, no state prosecutor has ever launched an investigation. A representative of the Mississippi attorney general’s office, Special Assistant Attorney General Jacob Ray, says he cannot confirm or deny that his office is investigating the silicosis cases.

Sounds like it ought to be.

YES, IT’S TRUE: You can see me and Steven Den Beste in the Wedding Crashers trailer.

REUTERS GETTING COZY WITH TERRORISTS. No big surprise.

EVERY TIME ANDREW SULLIVAN RATTLES HIS TIPJAR, I get more donations, too. Thanks!

SANDY BERGER UPDATE: Unbillable Hours has looked at the documents and has some thoughts on why the sentencing was postponed.

INTERESTING LEGAL DEVELOPMENT:

The Department of Defense won an important legal victory this morning in the Hamdan case. The United States Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. reversed a district court decision that Hamdan, who admits he was Osama bin Laden’s driver in Afghanistan, could not be tried by a military commission unless a “competent tribunal” first determined that he was not a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. The Court concluded that the Geneva Convention is not enforceable in federal court. It also found that a military commission is a “competent tribunal,” and thus that such a commission can try Hamdan and, in doing so, decide his claim that he’s entitled to prisoner of war status.

No link to the opinion yet.

UPDATE: Link here, via (of course) Howard Bashman. I notice that the case was argued by my law school classmate Peter Keisler.

WITH THE NEW HARRY POTTER BOOK COMING OUT, retailers are resorting to the Dark Arts to get sales.

Well, okay, not that dark.

LONDON UPDATE: “The British-born mastermind of the London attacks had direct links with al-Qaeda, police sources confirmed yesterday.”

UPDATE: Another arrest:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) – An Egyptian biochemist arrested Friday in Cairo in connection with the London bombings taught at a British university after taking graduate courses in North Carolina.

Magdy el-Nashar, 33, was arrested early Friday, an Egyptian government official said on condition of anonymity because an official announcement of the arrest had not been made. El-Nashar was being interrogated by Egyptian authorities, the official said.

Stay tuned.

ANOTHER UPDATE: El-Nahsar bio here.