I’M IN WASHINGTON, where I’ll be speaking at the Politics Online conference later today. After which, alas, I’ll just head home.

THE COOLEST IPOD ACCESSORY I’VE SEEN so far: A whole-house FM transmitter. I would have loved one of these as a kid, especially as it works with everything, not just iPods.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Stanton notes that this one comes with hacking instructions in the reviews. Helpful!

And many, many readers recommend the Apple Airport Extreme with AirTunes, but that’s a lot more expensive, and lacks the cool Mad Scientists’ Club angle. Of course, for that, you really need one of these, which Ernest Miller (natch) reports he’s built.

SGRENA UPDATE: The Italian ineptitude explanation is looking stronger:

The AP reports that the Italian story of Giuliana Sgrena’s release and later wounding at an American checkpoint, which also resulted in the death of intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, continues to fall apart. Two Italian newspapers now say that the general in charge of the Sgrena operation did not inform the US that Calipari’s mission was to free Sgrena, and one of them reports that General Mario Maroli didn’t even know it himself.

And Sgrena’s story is changing, again.

MICKEY KAUS wonders if the image of “mooching Boomer geezers” will affect the politics of Social Security reform:

Social Security has always been double-“work-tested”–that is 1) people who got it were seen as too old to be expected to work and 2) they’d worked and contributed payroll taxes when they were younger. But maybe Work Test #1 has now eroded–so many seniors are working that people in their late 60’s aren’t considered too old to work (just as, Gelinas notes, single moms are no longer not expected to work). AARP should worry about this. All those pictures in its magazine of vigorous seniors biking and hiking are coming back to bite them.

Kaus looks at Social Security reform as just another example of welfare reform. He may be onto something.

JOSHUA TREVINO AT REDSTATE calls the bankruptcy bill a “breach of faith,” and observes, “When it passes — and it will — it will be thanks purely to the Republican Party.”

NEWSPAPER CIRCULATION IS IN DECLINE, especially where “quality” circulation is concerned:

The Prudential Equity Group issued a biting 72-page report this morning on the state of circulation and found that both quality and quantity continue to decline.

Among other findings, the report said that “other paid” circulation was up 34% in the last reporting period, which it labled “troubling.”. . .

In the below-average category, the L.A. Times experienced an overall circulation decline of 5.6%. Full-paid home delivery was down 10.8%, much worse than the 2.4% national average, the report said. Home-delivered copies through third party sales decreased “significantly,” said the report.

The report noted a curious trend at the Times regarding other-paid circulation, calling the fluctuations and changes “peculiar.” As one category drops another gains, with the rough total remaining constant. “A 158% increase in discounted copies also signals to us more trouble with circulation and selling at the cover price,” the report said.

I cancelled my newspaper subscription — not out of pique, as is probably the case with many LAT subscribers, but because we weren’t reading it any more, and copies just piled up. They sent a guy to my house to offer me a free subscription. I said no, but last week they just started delivering copies again anyway. I thought it was just a mistake by our carrier, but now I wonder if it wasn’t a circulation-boosting strategy . . . .

More thoughts on the subject here. Is it a “media Enron?” I don’t know, but people sure seem to be doing their best to make the numbers look as good as possible.

BLOGS VERSUS MCCAIN-FEINGOLD: “One other thing, according to Technorati there are now 7,718,207 weblogs. That’s a whole lot of people – and voters! Just to put a John McCain spin on it – that’s about two million more people than the entire population of Arizona.”

BAHRAINIS PROTEST BLOGGERS’ ARREST: More here.

THIS EDITORIAL FROM THE NEW REPUBLIC echoes my democratization is a process, not an event theme:

But liberal democracy is more than just regime change and elections. It can succeed only if it is cultivated–which means devoting time and money to building civil institutions like a free press, nurturing liberal political parties and politicians, and generally inculcating liberal values through all available means, including popular culture.

Though they get in some shots at the Administration, the key point — about the need to support democratic reforms abroad — is clearly right.

I MEANT TO LINK TO THIS LETTER FROM A YEMENI JAIL the other day, but somehow failed to. Now a reply from an American blogger has been published in a Yemeni newspaper. There’s also a petition.

PUBLIUS HAS ANOTHER LEBANON NEWS ROUNDUP that’s chock-full of interesting stuff, including more reports that the Syrians were busing in ringers for the pro-Syrian protest.

DAN RATHER VISITS STATELY INSTAPUNDIT MANOR, and learns who was really behind his demise, in another Chandleresque thriller from IowaHawk.

HEH: “Fatwa issued against bin Laden.”

MICKEY KAUS: “An entrenched institution of the rich attempts to influence the news … and the craven corporate media caves!”

CATHY SEIPP LOOKS AT the demise of department stores. I wouldn’t mind, if they were replaced by Samuel’s.

DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES, where bloggers you may not have heard of before strut their stuff. Check ’em out — you may find somebody you like better than InstaPundit!

I SAID NOT TO GLOAT, but at first it sounds as if Jeff Jacoby wasn’t listening:

The Axis of Weasel is crying uncle, and much of the chorus is singing from the same songsheet.

Listen to Claus Christian Malzahn in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel: ”Could George W. be right?” And Guy Sorman in France’s Le Figaro: ”And if Bush was right?” And NPR’s Daniel Schorr in The Christian Science Monitor: ”The Iraq effect? Bush may have had it right.” And London’s Independent, in a Page 1 headline on Monday: ”Was Bush right after all?”

Even Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s ”Daily Show” and an indefatigable Bush critic, has learned the new lyrics. ”Here’s the great fear that I have,” he said recently. ”What if Bush . . . has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may . . . implode.”

For those of us in the War Party, by contrast, these are heady days. If you’ve agreed with President Bush all along that the way to fight the cancer of Islamist terrorism is with the chemotherapy of freedom and democracy, the temptation to issue I-told-you-so’s can be hard to resist.

And yet, I think it should be resisted at this point, and Jacoby actually agrees:

It is being called an ”Arab Spring,” and Bush’s critics are right to give him credit for helping to bring it about. What his allies need to bear in mind is that cracks in the ice of tyranny and misrule don’t always lead to liberation.

In 1989, a global wave of democratic fervor brought tens of millions of anticommunist demonstrators into the streets. In Eastern Europe, that wave shattered the Berlin Wall, freed the captive nations, and eventually ended the Cold War. In China, by contrast, it was stopped by the tanks of Tiananmen Square and the spilling of much innocent blood.

”At last, clearly and suddenly, the thaw has begun,” said President Bush on Tuesday. Let us all pray that it continues and that the long winter of Arab discontent is finally giving way to a summer of liberty and human rights. There will be time enough for gloating if it does.

We’re just beginning with this. Don’t get cocky.

A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT: Here’s more Ukraine news.

UNREST IN IRAN: Dale Amon rounds up a number of reports.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

SHOCKINGLY, MATT HALE MAY BE INNOCENT: A bizarre twist in the Lefkow murder case.

DOUG KERN thinks we’re blurring the line between misdemeanors and felonies. But I think it’s worth noting that we’ve blurred the line both ways, by making felonies of comparatively minor crimes.

MY DAUGHTER HAS JOINED A CULT: The Cult of the iPod. She’s borrowed my iPod from time to time, and she’s been listening to the audiobook version of Number the Stars, and to the Bangles’ Walk Like an Egyptian, among other things. (This is a big hit with her crowd; I predict a revival of ’80s girl bands.)

Now she wants one for herself, but I’m not so sure. My iPod seems a bit pricey to entrust to a 9-year-old who’ll use it outside of my supervision. So my question for the Cult is, will a 9-year-old be able to handle the non-display interface of an iPod Shuffle, and will the cheap 512MB version hold an entire audiobook?

HERE’S A PROPOSAL for a cross-blogosphere coalition in opposition to the bankruptcy bill. I note that Tennessee will be one of the states most affected by it, and wonder why my local media outfits haven’t paid much attention to that. (Via Tunesmith).

UPDATE: My former student Brent Snyder emails:

As you know I somehow ended up being a bankruptcy attorney at the busiest firm here in Knoxville. There has been some media coverage of the bill, attorney Ann Mostoller was on the talk radio news a week ago or so, my office was called last week as well. The sad fact is that this is a horrible law, designed to feed credit card companies more money. What is worse is that the even more diabolical provision, especially concerning attorney liability has not been mentioned in the senate debates at all.

For instance, if a client lies to me about assets and they are later discovered by the trustee or a creditor, I am personally on the hook. There are many other provisions in the bill designed to either keep people from filing or make it so that bankruptcy attorneys look for other avenues. Something is wrong when the majority of bankruptcy attorneys and trustees think it is a bad idea, Hank Hildebrand the Chapter 13 trustee for MDTN has written an article detailing all the flaws, and this is from someone that stands to benefit from the increase in 13 filings after the amendments are signed in to law.

I am concerned that Zywicki thinks the bill is a good idea, I mean I can understand his assertations that reform is needed and maybe that a means test is the way to go, but the other provisions are so one sided it ‘s comical.

It seems that way to me.

UPDATE: More here.

THE LONDON AND PARIS “STREETS:” They’re not marching for Arab democracy:

Why are so many Westerners, living in mature democracies, ready to march against the toppling of a despot in Iraq but unwilling to take to the streets in support of the democratic movement in the Middle East?

Is it because many of those who will be marching in support of Saddam Hussein this month are the remnants of totalitarian groups in the West plus a variety of misinformed idealists and others blinded by anti-Americanism?

Or is it because they secretly believe that the Arabs do not deserve anything better than Saddam Hussein?

Those interested in the health of Western democracies would do well to ponder those questions.

Some of us have, and we’re not happy about the conclusions we’ve reached.

TEDDY ROOSEVELT: MANLY MAN: “The theorists today who say masculinity is a social construction often give the impression that there’s nothing to it; society waves a wand and a nerd is made manly. No, it takes effort to become manly, as Teddy Roosevelt says. The more manliness is constructed, the more effort it takes.”