CLIVE DAVIS has thoughts on Madonna, Jane Austen, and the importance of being bosomy.

ED CONE IS LOOKING FOR MIDDLE GROUND on abortion.

DANIEL GLOVER rounds up a week in the political blogosphere. Read this post of his, too.

FEMALE BLOGGER stirs up Yemen.

TEXAS IS SUING SONY over spyware.

PROTECTING INTERNET FREEDOM: My TechCentralStation column is up.

GET IT RIGHT THE SECOND TIME: OSM is going back to “Pajamas Media.” About time: I liked that better anyway. As the Insta-Daughter said, “Pajamas sounds cheerful. Open Source Media sounds . . . educational.”

UPDATE: Some Slashdot readers think the whole thing was a publicity stunt.

THIS is encouraging: “Rumors of New Orleans falling into the sea are greatly exaggerated.”

X MARKS THE SPOT.

UPDATE: Evan Coyne Maloney says it’s much ado about nothing.

HILLARY CLINTON says that Murtha is wrong: “The New York Democrat said she respects Rep. Jack Murtha, D-Pa., the Vietnam veteran and hawkish ex-Marine who last week called for an immediate troop pullout. But she added: ‘I think that would cause more problems for us in America.'” (Via Go4Truth.com).

N.Z. BEAR says that people are misunderstanding Murtha.

SHOW AND TELL: Michael Yon posts a photo essay from Iraq.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN ACCUSES THINKPROGRESS of some rather heavy white-phosphorus redaction.

ERIN CHAPIN does some tattoo-videoblogging.

BOB WOODWARD IS TALKING:

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward dismissed claims that he should have revealed his role in the CIA leak case when he discussed the investigation on news interview shows.

The Post’s ombudsman, Deborah Howell wrote in Sunday’s editions that Woodward erred by publicly commenting on the case on CNN’s “Larry King Live” and on National Public Radio without mentioning that a top Bush administration official had told him the name of a covert CIA officer.

However, Woodward told Larry King on the program Monday night: “Every time somebody appears on your show talking about the news or giving some sort of analysis, there are going to be things that they can’t talk about.”

As I’ve said before, I thought we had a press to tell us things, not to keep secrets.

JIMMY CARTER encounters some angry Ethiopians. In Minnesota. No, really!

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE LOOKS AT troop rotation plans from the pre-Murtha era. And if you missed this earlier item on troop levels from Opinionated Bastard, read it now.

A SUMMARY OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S PUSHBACK STRATEGY:

Clearly, the important administration arguments are beginning to coalesce: 1) Criticism of the war is not by itself unpatriotic 2) Similarly, answering anti-war critics is not challenging their patriotism 3) But opportunistic and cynical anti-war critics who are trying to walk back their own votes and level spurious charges at the Administration (they lied to take is into war) are themselves lying 4) These lies are hurting the country and the troops. 5) The burden of proof, in a post 911 world, was on Saddam Hussein to prove he’d disarmed; we could not wait for the threat to become imminent before acting 6) The cause the troops are fighting for is just and right 7) Iraq is moving toward freedom; and things on the ground are improving daily, regardless of what the MSM and prominent Dems would have us believe.

These points, taken together, form an easy, concise, and—most importantly—a factually correct counter-narrative . . . I think the narrative is a good one, but it needs to be repeated as loud and as often as the one the Dems have been peddling.

It’s also several months late, but read the whole thing. And here’s a story on Cheney’s speech today.

BETTER ALL THE TIME, a roundup of (mostly tech-oriented) good news over at The Speculist, is out early for the Thanksgiving holiday. And appropriately enough!

JAMES LILEKS ISN’T IMPRESSED with Kurt Vonnegut. “Dude. Don’t bogart the Semtex.”

I remember an old Yale Daily News item on students’ favorite authors that included the line “a few, apparently under the impression they were still in high school, named Kurt Vonnegut.” That’s pretty much always been my impression.

I HEARD THAT NPR STORY, TOO, and had the same thoughts that Eugene Volokh did.

THE CARNIVAL OF PREWAR INTELLIGENCE, with posts from lots of bloggers on the left and right about what we knew, or should have known, in the prewar era is up. Don’t miss it! You don’t usually see this many bloggers from the left and right side-by-side on issues like this.

UPDATE: Laurence Simon seems to think I omitted his entry, but it was there when I sent it in. I don’t know what happened, but here it is below, exactly as it was supposed to have appeared; as I say in the post, I wasn’t exactly strict regarding topicality, though I didn’t have to bend the rules as far for anyone else . . . . I’ll make sure it’s also up in the right place, so that no one will miss it:

Last, and probably least, Laurence Simon consults the cats.

IN THE MAIL: Tammy Bruce’s new book, The New American Revolution : Using the Power of the Individual to Save Our Nation from Extremists. Despite the subtitle, it’s not much like my book. And the cover features a lovely picture of Ms. Bruce. Strangely, my publishers never suggested putting a picture of me on the cover of any of my books. Okay, maybe it’s not all that strange, really . . . .

BACK TO AFGHANISTAN: StrategyPage reports:

The Taliban has attracted additional money, and suicide bombers, from Arabia. Two years ago, most of this support shifted to Iraq, where al Qaeda believed it had a better chance of winning some kind of victory. But too many Arab terrorist resources in Iraq produced nothing, and Iraqis have become very hostile to al Qaeda as a result of all the Iraqis killed by terrorist attacks. So now, efforts are shifting to Afghanistan. However, this is also a hostile environment for Arab terrorists. Moreover, Arabs stand out more in Afghanistan, where most Afghans are European or Central Asian in appearance (the majority Afghans belong to ethnic groups related to the ones that invaded Europe thousands of years ago.) Afghans have been quick to turn in suspicious Arabs, or any suspected terrorist activities.

Frying pan, meet fire.

MORE ON HYBRIDS: New vehicles are offering more mean, less green — using the electric motors to produce faster acceleration rather than better mileage.

On the other hand, some people are talking about developing more-efficient plug-in hybrids that could get more than 100 miles per gallon. There’s some concern that people wouldn’t want to plug their car in — and I guess the manufacturers think that, because the literature for my Highlander hybrid repeatedly notes that it doesn’t have to be plugged in. Who would think that anyway? Apparently, their marketing research thinks that consumers are afraid of plugging in a car, though I wouldn’t mind.

One modification I’d like to see would be some control changes — I’d like it if the accelerator on my hybrid provided some kind of feedback that would let me know when it was about to switch to gas power so that I could back off if I wanted to keep from burning gas. I think that the design goal is to make it the transition as seamless as possible, but I suspect that a lot of drivers would rather know. Perhaps some sort of force-feedback mechanism that could be shut off if people didn’t want to be bothered, but that would let mileage-geeks manage things more closely?