TONY BLAIR SPEAKS TRUTH TO POWER:

“Some have suggested I want to abandon Europe’s social model,” Blair told the European Parliament last month. “But tell me: what type of social model is it that has 20 million unemployed in Europe, productivity rates falling behind those of the United States; that is allowing more science graduates to be produced by India than by Europe; and that, on any relative index of a modern economy — skills, R&D, patents, IT — is going down not up.”

But Bill Quick thinks it’s too little, too late.

UPDATE: Charmaine Yoest is blogging from the G8 conference.

DAVID BERNSTEIN EXPLAINS why Alex Kozinski should be the next Supreme Court Justice.

Gonzales is ruling the futures market, though.

ED DRISCOLL OFFERS a brief history of weblog criticism.

I MENTIONED STEVE LEVITT’S BOOK, Freakonomics, a while back, and I thought it was pretty interesting. Arnold Kling, however, is a lot less positive:

If readers come away from this book thinking that they have discovered how economics ought to be done, I would indeed consider it a “sad development.” The book is most notable for its willingness to pass off speculative and tentative findings as though they were well-vetted, settled facts.

Read the whole thing.

THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTS on newspaper efforts to boost audience participation. Ed Cone gets a plug.

SOME FOURTH OF JULY THOUGHTS from Tikrit.

GEITNER SIMMONS accuses the New York Times’ Elizabeth Becker of resorting to “mere caricature” in reporting on third world debt.

FROM DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, to Declaration of Singularity.

YOU CAN SEE DEEP IMPACT VIDEO HERE, courtesy of CNN.

Of course, the mission has produced this inevitable result.

UPDATE: Via email, James Oberg notes that paranoia strikes deep. So, apparently, does old-fashioned idiocy.

RICHARD FEYNMAN on freedom.

Related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Radley Balko says the Supreme Court needs to think a bit harder about what Independence Day means.

WINDS OF CHANGE has updated its how to support the troops feature with lots of links.

IN THE WAKE OF LIVE 8, some thoughts on things that may make a more lasting difference for Africa.

UPDATE: Crooks & Liars has Pink Floyd video from Live 8.

DON SURBER predicts the next wave of anti-American spin.

TOM MAGUIRE takes a long look at the latest Rove / Plame discussion and asks the question that has been bothering me: “Did the various editors at the Times, the WaPo, and Time magazine really sit on evidence that would have incriminated Karl Rove all through last fall’s campaign? . . . Either they are awfully dumb (possible!), or the story is not there. Or both.”

HEH.

UPDATE: Several readers point out that attacks on blogs and bloggers are behind the times, now that all the cool kids are publishing online magazines instead. Good point!

MORE: Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.

SOME THOUGHTS ON INDEPENDENCE DAY, over at GlennReynolds.com.

FIREWORKS: Deep Impact was a success. Benny Peiser emails: “We used to be afraid of comets. Now it’s their turn to be afraid of us!”

Yeah, it’s making Lucifer’s Hammer obsolescent. And that’s a good thing.

WANT TO DO SOMETHING FOR THE TROOPS? Send some support via AnySoldier.com.

THE LAST CALL thinks that Big Media folks are trying to delegitimize bloggers. Seems to me that what they’re doing to bloggers is a pale shadow of what they’re doing to themselves. And even they seem to know it.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE is photoblogging the Fourth at Ramstein Air Force Base.

FOURTH OF JULY THOUGHTS from Ed Cone:

Note that it is a right to the pursuit of Happiness, not to Happiness itself, and that despite the messages of our consumer culture, Happiness is not always the same thing as Fun. And nothing makes some people unHappier than the prospect of other people being Happy in a way that does not suit them. Yet this right to a personal definition of Happiness, and the right to pursue it, remains at the core of what Americans want their country to be. It is the Declaration’s most profound idea.

Indeed.