GEORGIA’S VOTER ID REQUIREMENT was struck down as discriminatory. That’s to vote though. You still need one to buy beer. . . .

JOHN STOSSEL ON GUN CONTROL:

Guns are dangerous. But myths are dangerous, too. Myths about guns are very dangerous, because they lead to bad laws. And bad laws kill people.
“Don’t tell me this bill will not make a difference,” said President Clinton, who signed the Brady Bill into law.

Sorry. Even the federal government can’t say it has made a difference. The Centers for Disease Control did an extensive review of various types of gun control: waiting periods, registration and licensing, and bans on certain firearms. It found that the idea that gun control laws have reduced violent crime is simply a myth.

I wanted to know why the laws weren’t working, so I asked the experts. “I’m not going in the store to buy no gun,” said one maximum-security inmate in New Jersey. “So, I could care less if they had a background check or not.”

Read the whole thing.

MORE FACTS AND FICTION ON KATRINA, rounded up by Gateway Pundit.

THE POCKET PART is a new companion-blog to the Yale Law Journal.

THE SWARM: Why it’s not safe to pick on the little guy any more, over at GlennReynolds.com.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

The United States and its allies should threaten to cut the budget of the United Nations if it fails to end corruption and adopt badly needed reforms, the man who led the probe into the U.N. oil-for-food scandal said yesterday.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that he opposed a unilateral U.S. withholding of U.N. dues, but that a “de facto alliance” of nations demanding reform could cut through the world body’s “culture of inaction.”

The message, he said, should be: “Look, if the organization isn’t ready to reform itself, that has budgetary implications.”

The Iraq oil-for-food program has proven to be the biggest financial scandal in U.N. history, tarnishing the reputation of Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other top U.N. officials and fueling calls for a complete overhaul of the body’s internal oversight and personnel practices.

Read the whole thing.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVICE for bloggers. From an expert!

THE CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS is up!

FIGURING IT OUT: The House Republicans are having a special get-together for bloggers tomorrow. I got the invite, but I’m in no position to make the trip. But Matt Margolis has the scoop for those who are interested.

Ask ’em about the pork!

SOME GOOD NEWS on the Afghan elections.

EBAY NATION AND THE GOLDEN GOOSE: My TechCentralStation column is up.

TAEGAN GODDARD’S POLITICAL WIRE interviews John Edwards.

BELDAR RESPONDS to my WSJ column on the Miers nomination.

JUST FINISHED another episode of Firefly (“Shindig”). People asked me earlier how it compared to Serenity, and I think I’ve seen enough episodes to form an opinion now: The movie was good, but the TV series was better. I hope the rumors of another season done for DVD are true.

UPDATE: Reader Mike Lacy emails:

Thanks for the heads-up on this excellent series. Despite its low-budget woes, Firefly really grew on me. It is very refreshing to see a sci-fi that does not revolve around a high-tech government warship or a quest to save the galaxy.

Aside from the implied libertarian politics, I also enjoy the humor, the dialogue and the chemistry of the crew. The scenes around the dinner table are priceless. Its nice to see a show about loyalty to a
family/crew rather than loyalty to a bureaucracy.

P.S. Wait till you see the “Our Mrs. Reynolds” episode. Heh.

I think it’s next. Related thoughts here. I’m just glad that you can watch shows on DVD so easily now; I much prefer it to tuning in at a fixed time.

ADAM BELLOW: “They don’t teach a course in patronage and nepotism at Harvard Business School — but they should.”

BILL QUICK’S E-BOOK NOVEL, Inner Circles, is now also available in dead-tree form.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Note the Coburn amendment discussed below. There’s a copy of the amendment, and one of Coburn’s “Dear Colleague” letter in support of it.

Meanwhile, here’s a blogger who got a personal phone call from Rep. Rob Bishop (R, UT) in response to a PorkBusters email. Better than a form letter.

UPDATE: Here’s a response from Rep. Mark Udall:

Udall actually echoed back to me part of what I said and addressed it. So this is at least a better-targeted form letter. (In fact, I hope that it’s a form letter — that means a congresscritter in Colorado’s most liberal district got so many requests to cut highway pork that his staff created a letter specifically for that topic.)

Read the whole thing.

JUDY MILLER UPDATE:

Bridgeview used car salesman Muhammad Salah recalls being beaten, housed in a “refrigerator cell” and threatened with rape by Israeli soldiers until he admitted to bankrolling overseas terrorists, according to a new filing in U.S. District Court.

In an odd twist, the interrogation was witnessed by embattled New York Times reporter Judith Miller, and defense attorneys suggested Monday the best way for the U.S. government to prove its case — and prove Salah wasn’t abused — is to call the controversial journalist to the witness stand.

“We think the government is going to call her,” said Chicago defense attorney Michael E. Deutsch.

The prosecutor? Patrick Fitzgerald. This certainly complicates things. (Via Petrelis Files).

UPDATE: More here.

JACOB WEISBERG TELLS DEMOCRATS to stop enjoying the Plame case:

Hold the schadenfreude, blue-staters. Rooting for Rove’s indictment in this case isn’t just unseemly, it’s unthinking and ultimately self-destructive. Anyone who cares about civil liberties, freedom of information, or even just fair play should have been skeptical about Fitzgerald’s investigation from the start. Claiming a few conservative scalps might be satisfying, but they’ll come at a cost to principles liberals hold dear: the press’s right to find out, the government’s ability to disclose, and the public’s right to know.

Depending, of course, on what Fitzgerald does.

UPDATE: And note this observation:

[I]t is not a crime in this country to discredit Joseph Wilson – if it were, we’d have to lock up every member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Heck, we’d have to lock up Joseph Wilson.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Steve Sturm wonders why Wilson lied about his trip.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Reader Robert Duncan notes some real progress regarding Alaska’s Gravina bridge-to-nowhere:

Take a look at this amendment that Senator Coburn filed today to the TTHUD appropriations bill. It takes money from the bridge to nowhere in Alaska and designates it to pay for the bridge from Slidwell La. to New Orleans. If you want to make real progress, tell people to call Senator Coburn’s office and encourage him to ask for a vote on this amendment. They should also call their Senators’ offices and ask them to support this amendment. Attached is the text of the amendment. Looks like your efforts are starting to pay off.

You can see the amendment emailed by Duncan here.

UPDATE: Here’s a PDF of Coburn’s Dear Colleague letter in support of the amendment.

CATHY YOUNG SAYS THAT BLOGS WERE CRYING “WOLF!” over the Oklahoma suicide-bombing story.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: This memo suggests that we’ve still got a ways to go. On the other hand, it’s now over a week old, and we’ve seen some signs of progress since then.

GATEWAY PUNDIT offers some overlooked images from Saturday’s vote in Iraq.

UPDATE: Anomalies in the form of high turnout will produce a manual recount, according to this report.

HERE’S A COOL NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES EVENT:

Wednesday, October 26th, 2005
12:30-2:00 PM
Keck 201 Conference Room

Space Settlement: Homesteading on the Moon?

The degree to which land on the moon may be owned has been the subject of debate and international treaties since the start of the Cold War. This seminar will address the relationship of existing treaties to lunar property rights and the role of such ownership as an incentive for commercial space settlement. Panelists will address the following questions:

Why settle the moon?
What are the policy implications of a lunar settlement?
What are the opportunities and challenges?
Should privately funded missions play a role in lunar settlement?

I wish I could go. (Via Space Law Probe, which also notes that there’s more general interest in space property rights these days).

BRENDAN MINITER writes that GOP spending hawks are respectable again.