INFLIGHT WI-FI is coming for domestic flights:

United Airlines plans to announce today that it is the first domestic airline to receive approval from regulators to install wireless Internet networks on its planes.

United passengers will not be able to take advantage of the service just yet. The airline is still at least a year away from having its in-flight Wi-Fi service up and running. When it does, sometime in mid- to late 2006, passengers will be able to check e-mail, send instant messages and surf the Web at 30,000 feet.

I was begging for this years ago, so I’m glad to see it, er, taking off.

Nick Schulz emails with a possible security benefit:

Not sure if anyone has pointed this out yet or suggested it, but it seems to me if people had had working WiFi on flights before 9/11, the passengers on the second plane to hit the towers might have heard about what happened to the first plane sooner, provided instant message works on the flights, and might have been able to pull a Flight 93 on it, possibly saving lives. Maybe not, but if you’re logged on WiFi with IM access from moment go on a flight, you’d know immediately from friends watching TV at work, etc. . . . I remember on 9/11 I couldn’t communicate with Lauren my wife via cellphone, but WiFi worked and we were able to communicate that way (she was still in Lower Manhattan that day).

He also notes that terrorists might possibly coordinate via IM, too, but it seems to me that on balance this benefits the good guys. Terrorists can always just break the no-cellphone rule to coordinate; opening things up to everyone just levels the playing field.

IT’S A HEALTHCARE BLOGFEST! This week’s Grand Rounds is up.

BARACK OBAMA AND RICHARD LUGAR have more on avian flu, in the New York Times.

DO CONSUMERS HAVE TOO MANY CHOICES? Virginia Postrel says no, but notes that claims of too many choices seem to be the Next Big Thing in doomsaying. She’s probably right — I’ve noted this book by Barry Schwartz along those lines before.

But all I can say is that I covered this ground years ago. There’s even a model! [Don’t you mean, “It’s only a model”? — Ed. Probably.]

“IT WAS NECESSARY to rebuild the village in order to save it.”

PERRY DE HAVILLAND:

Robert Mugabe continues his insane demolition of houses and businesses as he increasingly starts to look like Pol Pot reborn, seeking to depopulate the cites and drive the now homeless and unemployed population into the countryside to eke out an even more miserable living, thereby dispersing and isolating people from communities which might oppose his tyrannical rule.

And where are the marchers in the west? Where are the protesters calling for justice in Zimbabwe? Where is the outrage from those tireless tribunes of the Third World, the UN? Why can I not hear the snarls of fury from the alphabet soup of NGOs? What of the legions of Guardian readers finding out about all this? What are they going to call for? Amnesty International is getting a lot of (bad) publicity from having called Guantanamo Bay ‘a gulag’ whilst now admitting they do not actually know what is happening there, yet why are they not straining every fibre of their being in opposition to this African horror? There is tyranny aplenty to be opposed without having to invent any.

So you’d think, anyway. The Belmont Club has further thoughts.

I HAVE HERE A LIST OF 100 COMMUNISTS IN THE GOVERNMENT: Well, that’s what these constantly-shifting and unsubstantiated numbers are starting to remind me of. Fortunately, the blogosphere is more careful.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has interviewed CeCi Connelly regarding her statement, and finds the response unsatisfactory.

THE LATEST on the EU Constitution: “Thus, while it seems that the constitution is very far from dead, the bulk of the British people seem keen to have a go at killing it.”

HOW D-DAY WOULD BE COVERED TODAY: Various thoughts from various commenters.

Then there’s this observation: “After Six Decades, No End to the Quagmire.”

IF THIS REPORT FROM LOS ALAMOS is true, it calls for a major shakeup. Of course, things at Los Alamos seem to call for a major shakeup already.

THE LILEKS NEWS WAYBACK MACHINE is operating:

Stories like these must be told, of course, if only to show what the media finds important, and remind us how good things are going. I can imagine in late 2001 asking a question of myself in 2005:

What’s the main story? The smallpox quarantine? Fallout from the Iranian – Israeli exchange contaminating Indian crops? A series of bombings in heartland malls?

“Well, no – the big story today has to do with soldiers mishandling terrorists’ holy texts at a detention center.”

Mishandling? How? Like, you mean, they opened it up without first checking to see if it was ticking, and it blew up –

“No, they handled it in a way that disrespected it. Infidels are supposed to use gloves.”

Oh. So we lost, then.

No. But it’s an understandable mistake.

MICHAEL TOTTEN WRITES on regime change in Syria and why it’s needed.

JAKE TAPPER notes interesting post-post-Watergate developments:

The son of the acting director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal said that claims being made about his father are “categorically false” and that L. Patrick Gray does not belong on the long list of Watergate criminals and miscreants from the Nixon White House.

Ed Gray said he would be contacting high-profile figures from the Watergate era whom he felt had defamed his father. The comments were made during television interviews following the May 31 revelation by his father’s former assistant, W. Mark Felt, that he was “Deep Throat,” the anonymous source for The Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate scandal.

The “figures” include Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, and dirt-digging detective Terry Lenzner.

UPDATE: Megan McArdle thinks that Watergate is just another geezer obsession.

THE NEXT PANDEMIC? Foreign Affairs has a number of articles on avian flu.

DR. TONY offers advice on pet allergies. In our case, alas, the only alternative was to give away the pets.

THE BLOGGER NEWS NETWORK introduces “The Fisk File,” a contest for bloggers.

IT’S THE ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY: Here’s a remembrance, and here’s another.

ETHIOPIAN ELECTION PROTESTS: Gateway Pundit has a roundup, with photos.

NINTH CIRCUIT 1, SUPREME COURT 0: The 9th Circuit asked the Supreme Court how serious it was about enumerated powers, and the answer, apparently (I haven’t read the decision yet) was not so much. [LATER: I’ve looked at it now. Not so much.]

UPDATE: Orin Kerr has more.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “So much for states’ rights.”

Larry Solum has a roundup here.

David Bernstein; “The five-member majority of the Court simply does not take federalism seriously.”

Radley Balko: “Thomas was dead-on, and proves to be the only principled federalist with an orginalist view of the Commerce Clause.”

Marty Lederman has assembled an all-star cast to discuss the opinion over at ScotusBlog. Just keep scrolling.

MICKEY KAUS: “I suspect McDonald’s keeps a lot more control over its franchisees than Newsweek seems to have over what its Arabic readers read under its banner.”

IN THE MAIL: Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.

I’m a big fan of his work, and I look forward to reading it.

UPDATE: More here. And I hadn’t realized that this article from Wired was online now.

LOADS OF BUSINESS- AND ECONO-BLOGGING: This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up.

CARNIVAL OF CANADIANS: The Red Ensign Standard is up.

MICHAEL YON HAS PHOTOS, AND AN EXTENSIVE REPORT, from northern Iraq. And here’s some background on his reporting.

STEM CELL UPDATE:

In recent months, a number of researchers have begun to assemble intriguing evidence that it is possible to generate embryonic stem cells without having to create or destroy new human embryos. . . .

Yet the gathering consensus among biologists is that embryonic stem cells are made, not born — and that embryos are not an essential ingredient. That means that today’s heated debates over embryo rights could fade in the aftermath of technical advances allowing scientists to convert ordinary cells into embryonic stem cells.

This would defuse the pro-life opposition. It wouldn’t address the concerns of those — like, say, Leon Kass — who are uncomfortable with dramatic advances in medical technology for other reasons.

UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez doesn’t like my Kass reference above. But the reference, which could have been clearer, was to Kass’s generally negative view of “the relief of man’s estate” by science, and in particular to his argument (discussed here) that another 20 years of healthy life would probably be a waste. I should have been clearer — one of the hazards of blogging is that you tend to assume that everyone is keeping pace with the conversation when, through no fault of theirs, that’s not necessarily the case at all.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Cone notes an important passage from the story that bears repeating:

“It is largely by analyzing how nature makes stem cells, deep inside days-old embryos, that these researchers are learning how to make the cells themselves.”

And Ron Bailey observes:

Achieving that goal would certainly have been dramatically delayed, if not made impossible, had human embryonic stem cell research been banned.

As I wrote a while back, this is the weakness in the “just use adult cells” argument:

I actually think that eventually adult stem cells will do all the work. But I don’t know that, and ruling out research involving embryonic stem cells now might keep us from getting to that point, or get us there much later.

Apparently, that’s turned out to be the case. But as that earlier post will make clear, Lopez and I are not on the same page on this issue.

Meanwhile, Nick Gillespie notes that there’s more than just anti-abortion politics involved here:

While I agree that embryo-free embryonic stem cells (perhaps sweetened with Splenda! for a low-cal, low-impact panacea) would shut down one large aspect of the debate over biotech, I think the issue is far more complicated.

That’s because leading opponents to embryonic stem cells are not simply worried about the embryo issue–they fundamentally question whether we should be intervening to prolong and improve human lifespans and ameliorate human suffering.

He quotes Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama as having non-abortion-related concerns about dramatic medical advances. To my knowledge, Lopez doesn’t share those doubts, but she would be wise not to shut her eyes to their existence, or to suggest that those of us who invoke them are unaware of what’s going on.