THE NEXT HARRY POTTER BOOK will reportedly kill off a major character.

London bookies have been giving odds on which character it will be, and Chris Lynch has been keeping track.

AL QAEDA SAYS ZARQAWI IS WOUNDED, and asks for prayers.

Is it unChristian to pray for gas gangrene?

UPDATE: Reader David Cushing emails:

Of course it is un-Christian to pray that Zarqawi gets gas gangrene. The correct thing to pray for is that he is captured immediately, so that he has the resources of modern western medicine available to him to assist in his speedy recovery. After all, we want him healthy for his trial.

Well, OK, I guess.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Another prayer from LT Smash.

MORE BLOG BOOKS: Cam Edwards emails that the folks at the Surviving Grady baseball blog have a book out, too. It’s called Surviving Grady.

Judging by its Amazon rank, it’s doing pretty well, too. Of course, the obvious blog-spinoff book would be one by Steven Den Beste. Publishers take note.

BIG-MEDIA GUESTBLOGGING: Michael Silence is traveling, and is turning his Knoxville News-Sentinel blog over to three guestbloggers — SKBubba, SayUncle, and Les Jones — who will be posting unfiltered. I think this is the first time something like that has happened.

WANT HEALTH-CARE BLOGGING? This week’s Grand Rounds is up!

DEATH BY A THOUSAND BLOGS: Nick Kristof writes on the impact of citizen media:

The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and massive pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square. But now it may finally have met its match – the Internet. . . .

Mr. Li travels around China with an I.B.M. laptop and a digital camera, investigating cases of official wrongdoing. Then he writes about them on his Web site and skips town before the local authorities can arrest him.

His biggest case so far involved a deputy mayor of Jining who is accused of stealing more than $400,000 and operating like a warlord. One of the deputy mayor’s victims was a businesswoman whom he allegedly harassed and tried to kidnap.

Mr. Li’s Web site published an investigative report, including a series of photos showing the deputy mayor kneeling and crying, apparently begging not to be reported to the police. The photos caused a sensation, and the deputy mayor was soon arrested.

Heh. Tim Worstall thinks that this is an argument for Pajamas Media. So do I.

UPDATE: Mark Daniels has a somewhat less sunny take.

THINGS ARE GETTING WORSE IN ZIMBABWE, hard as that might be to believe. It’s the Cambodia of Africa.

GARY FARBER POSTS the inevitable Sith post-mortem, including a rather detailed look at the script.

ARTHUR CHRENKOFF ROUNDS UP more underreported news from Iraq.

THE ARAB STREET EXPLODES: In laughter.

THERE’S A FILIBUSTER COMPROMISE, but John Hinderaker is deeply disappointed.

UPDATE: Stephen Bainbridge is happy. Ed Morrissey is not.

As I’ve said before, I’d probably care more about this issue if Bush looked likely to appoint some small-government libertarian types to the bench. Since he doesn’t, I don’t.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some people are saying I told you so. “I said they didn’t have the votes on 29 April. The hard core Republicans need to be nicer to the RINOs. They aren’t going anywhere without them.”

MORE: Hugh Hewitt is happy that Nan Aron is unhappy. Crooks and Liars has a video roundup.

EUGENE VOLOKH CRITICIZES people who are undermining trust in the judicial system.

BILL ARDOLINO notes some shady photo-cropping at the Washington Post. This wasn’t in the Web version, so I missed it.

Maybe this is part of some devious plan to boost print circulation . . . .

JEFF GOLDSTEIN has a rare serious post on where South Park Republicans really stand. Not being one of those myself, I can’t say, but he seems to hit the right note — though the first commenter expresses disappointment at a lack of “dick jokes.”

UPDATE: Related thoughts here, with a thought on how the blogosphere needs to develop:

However, while the pure number of bloggers might actually rival the number of individuals making up the MSM, their disadvantage has more to do with organization and resources than pure number.

Fox News has not realized its significant growth because it riffs on CNN and ABC fodder everyday. It has developed into a MSM organization with its own view and brand while market dynamics have revealed a vast audience for its content. I suspect the same would or will be true when blogs finally get around to generating original news content, as opposed to a rehash of the day’s MSM offerings.

I’m not faulting Goldstein or Cole, there’s more right than wrong in both their essays. But until blogs develop into a form capable of genuinely reporting news, as well as standing for and not just against something, they’re destined to occupy a compartmentalized fringe on both sides of the political equation.

There’s a lot of truth to that, which is why I’ve been boosting the idea of original blog-reporting. Call it news without newspapers.

UPDATE: Bill Quick discovers that in-progress crime reporting is harder than he thought. Don’t feel bad, Bill — even Big Media folks have problems with this. But never be shy about shoving a camera in people’s faces.

ANOTHER UPDATE: BlackFive joins the conversation.

UZBEKISTAN’S NOT-SO-GREAT GAME:

If the United States reacts to the Uzbek uprising based upon its articulated principle of supporting democracy, is it not repeating the mistakes of the Carter era, undermining an ally, and potentially paving the way for something worse?

Though there is some legitimacy to this concern, casting 2005 Uzbekistan in the role of 1979 Iran is an error. First, though Uzbekistan has been a meaningful ally in the War on Terror, Uzbekistan cannot be considered a staunch, long-term ally of the United States. Over the past several years, Uzbekistan has actively moved away from the West, towards an alliance of authoritarian states. Second, not all revolutions in Islamic countries are alike. The uprising in Uzbekistan is part of a larger international trend. The Iranian revolution was not. It inspired no imitators. No government outside of Iran has been toppled by a revolution based on the Iranian model. Uzbeks, on the other hand, have been observing a string of revolutions in countries with which they share a common history. . . .

China and Russia are standing behind their Shanghai Cooperation Organization partner. The foreign ministries of both countries have expressed support for Uzbekistan’s methods of maintaining order. Those who believe that the word “multilateral” automatically legitimizes any international action need to consider the situation in Uzbekistan very carefully. Uzbekistan is now the focal point of a multilateral effort of authoritarian powers trying to stop the international wave of democratization from progressing any further.

I can understand why they’d feel that way.

ROGER SIMON: Only the red know Brooklyn.

JULIE FIDLER HAS A BLOG, and now her first book is coming out. It’s called Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or For Absolute Worst, and I gather it’s based on firsthand experience.

I think we’ll be seeing more books by bloggers. Which will probably range from better, to absolute worst . . . . Just like the rest of ’em.

MORE ETHIOPIA ELECTION WOES, from Gateway Pundit.

IT’S MEDIA-VS.-BLOGS in Frank J.’s latest.

UPDATE: On a more serious note, Ann Althouse observes:

Is anyone counting the number of articles in the NYT that assert that bloggers aren’t as influential as you might think? They can’t stop looking at us and talking about us, but they always conclude that we aren’t really worth much.

Heh. Personally, I think they know as much about blogs as they do about NASCAR, but then, so what? Nobody listens to me, as you can tell by reading the Times . . .

JOHN LEO: “[T]he biggest flaw in mainstream journalism today is the lack of diversity.”

THE BLOGOSPHERE: “Half forensic lab and half tavern.”

I like that.

FUTUREPUNDIT LOOKS AT PROSPECTS FOR HYBRID CARS: I’m deeply skeptical of the claim that most increases in fuel economy are simply “consumed” as people drive more miles. Most people I know drive as much as they want to already, and I don’t think a decline in fuel prices would make much of a difference. I’m sure it would make some difference overall, but I doubt it’s as substantial as claimed.

FOUAD AJAMI:

To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country. I was to encounter people from practically all Arab lands, to listen in on a great debate about the possibility of freedom and liberty. I met Lebanese giddy with the Cedar Revolution that liberated their country from the Syrian prison that had seemed an unalterable curse. They were under no illusions about the change that had come their way. They knew that this new history was the gift of an American president who had put the Syrian rulers on notice. The speed with which Syria quit Lebanon was astonishing, a race to the border to forestall an American strike that the regime could not discount. I met Syrians in the know who admitted that the fear of American power, and the example of American forces flushing Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, now drive Syrian policy. They hang on George Bush’s words in Damascus, I was told: the rulers wondering if Iraq was a crystal ball in which they could glimpse their future.

Read the whole thing.

SADDAM, OSAMA: What’s the difference?

UPDATE: Yeah, it’s a minor slip — but if Bush had made it, it would be a bigger slip than most of what makes Slate’s “Bushism of the Day” feature. I mean, come on: This is, basically, the only talking point he’s got on the war, and he blows it completely.

It’s not as good as Ted Kennedy’s confusion of Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama, though.

THIS WEEK’S Carnival of the Capitalists is up!