HAPPY FESTIVUS: Andrew Roth engages in an airing of grievances against the Republican Party. He invites you to join in. This will be followed by the Feats of Strength.

DRIVING HOME FROM TAKING THE INSTADAUGHTER TO SCHOOL, I was listening to Wall Street Journal Radio and noted two back-to-back stories: One about the Vioxx litigation, and one about widespread sales of the “herbal appetite suppressant” Hoodia despite universally dishonest label information about dosage, and no evidence that it’s safe. My thought was that Merck should have just sold Vioxx as a “nutritional supplement” and everything would have been fine. . . .

I haven’t really followed the litigation closely, though having taken Vioxx myself on numerous occasions, and having known plenty of others who did it’s hard for me to take some of the claims seriously. All drugs have dangers after all. But I certainly share Henry Miller’s worries:

Regulators’ increasing sensitivity to safety concerns — sometimes at the expense of the availability of essential drugs — may have become contagious: Drug manufacturers, too, seem to have begun to “err on the side of safety” to a degree that causes safe and effective drugs to be taken off the market voluntarily.

Read the whole thing. Risk / reward here is asymmetrical: If excessive litigation causes people to die because treatments are taken off the market, there’s nobody to sue. Something’s broken.

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

HERE’S A REPORT on the Global Voices Summit in London, and here’s another report from Global Voices’ blog.

VIDEO GAMES FOR DISASTER TRAINING: I’ve got a chapter on this kind of stuff in the book, but it’s too late to add a reference to this cool article, I’m afraid. But that’s no reason why you shouldn’t read it.

A REASON TO VOTE AGAINST THE PATRIOT ACT EXTENSION: Mission creep.

A conference report by Senate and House negotiators to extend for four years provisions of the USA Patriot Act includes a comprehensive anti-methamphetamine package restricting the sale of products containing ingredients needed to cook the drug and providing new tools to police and prosecutors to combat dealers.

Sens. Jim Talent, Missouri Republican, and Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, said the Combat Meth Act — together with anti-meth measures championed in the House — were included in the Reauthorization Conference Report filed Thursday.

Okay, see, the problem with this is that it has nothing to do with terrorism. Putting it in the Patriot Act just reinforces my fears — present since the beginning — that this had more to do with finding an excuse to enact bureaucratic wishlists into law than with protecting us from terrorism. And Feinstein’s presence, alas, indicates that the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans on this. Nonetheless, this is a dumb idea, it undercuts the entire rationale for the Patriot Act, and it’s a reason to be suspicious of the whole renewal enterprise. (Bumped to top).

More on the Patriot Act here.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Glenn — not for attribution, because of my position, please.

As a lobbyist with a passing involvement in anti-meth legislation, attaching the Combat Meth Act to the Patriot Act does not represent “mission creep” of the Patriot Act. Sponsors of the Combat Meth Act had been looking for several months for an appropriate — i.e., popular and bound-to-pass — bill to attach their provisions to in order to speed passage. The Patriot Act reauthorization is the vehicle, but not the impetus. Anyway, it’s SOP, for better or worse.

My trouble with the Combat Meth Act is that state legislatures have been enacting their own anti-meth laws, reflecting local wisdom, experience and policy choices. Passage of a federal bill preempts those decisions. The feds get into the act because fighting meth is politically popular, not because the new law is particulary well-considered.

Well, yes. It’s another piece of dumb symbolic legislation aimed at getting incumbents reelected. And I realize that attaching a dumb bill to a bill that’s sure to pass so that people don’t make as much of an issue of its dumbness is standard operating procedure. But bills about the war, in a time of war, call for a degree of self-discipline that’s lacking here.

UPDATE: Jeralyn Merritt is also unimpressed.

IS CITIZEN JOURNALISM TAKING OFF? “After the London bombings this past summer, apparently the BBC received about 1,000 images from the public. After this weekend’s oil depot explosion, they received well over 6,000.” Read the whole thing. More here.

DAVID ADESNIK calls on President Bush to take a tougher line in favor of Egyptian democracy. I agree.

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED, to see the E.U. misrepresenting things.

SIMON WORLD is covering the Hong Kong WTO conference. And here’s a Reuters roundup.

VARIOUS PEOPLE wonder why I haven’t blogged about the Republican Party’s new “white flag” commercial on the war. I dunno — I watched it, but I didn’t have a lot to say about it. I guess I agree with Ann Althouse that it’s “very powerful and effective,” though honestly I’d give it about an 8/10 overall. But, you know, sometimes I just don’t blog about things because I don’t have anything terribly interesting to say about them, and this is one of those times. Sorry — no deeper meaning than that.

FROM LISTENING TO THE COMMERCIALS on Talk Radio, one thing I know is that it’s always a good time to buy gold. But Econbrowser has a lot of reasons why a gold standard isn’t as great as some people suggest. (Via Megan McArdle).

CALIFORNIA is reportedly unprepared for a tsunami: “The bleak study being released Monday found gaps in the state’s readiness to handle a tsunami, including flaws in the existing warning system, lack of evacuation plans by coastal communities, and building codes that don’t take into account tsunami-strength surges. In addition, many residents are unaware of the potential danger of tsunami waves and wouldn’t know how to respond, the report said.”

JUDITH KLINGHOFFER looks at the poll of Iraqi attitudes I linked earlier, and observes:

When asked what would be the worse thing that could happen to Iraq in the next 12 months, only 8.9% chose “occupation not leaving Iraq.”

When asked what would be the best thing that could happen to Iraq in the next 12 months, only 5.7% chose American forces leaving Iraq.

One thing is sure, American media fails to reflect the reality reflected in this poll.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Pierce Wetter has done some helpful pie charts.

THE CARNIVAL OF TRIBUTE is a new obituary blog.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER has denied clemency for Tookie Williams.

UPDATE: Reactions rounded up here.

BEHOLD THE POWER OF THIS FULLY OPERATIONAL BLOGOSPHERE — in India! Amit Varma reports on a sting operation by Indian bloggers that has cost some parliamentarians their seats. That’s pretty funny. Sepia Mutiny has more.

UPDATE: Reader Ravikiran Rao emails:

Much as we bloggers would like to take credit for this, the blogosphere’s involvement in this is only peripheral. The sting was carried out by a media outfit called Cobrapost (www.cobrapost.com) which you’ll notice, looks a lot like Drudge report. But it is no blog. They aren’t exactly mainstream media either. The best description would be “Internet journalists”. They’ve done gutsy things earlier too when they were running a webzine called Tehelka, when they exposed corruption in defence deals.

The only connection to the blogosphere is that one of the trainees reporters involved in the whole episode is a prominent blogger (Shivam Vij – www.shivamvij.com) and all indications are that the hilarious question planted – one involving blogs -was his idea.

I stand corrected.

SADDAM’S TRIAL, THE RULE OF LAW, ETC.: I’ll be having an online discussion with Austin Bay, Kenneth Anderson of the Law of War Blog, Jim Bennett of Albion’s Seedlings, David Corn, and Omar of Iraq the Model. Starts in just a couple of minutes.

YOU COULD WRITE A BOOK ABOUT DUMB ETHICS LAWS — and I have! — but this seems particularly stupid even by the relaxed standards applicable to Congress:

But the Senate had a different idea, Even before he was sworn in, Dr. Coburn was handed a letter from the Senate Ethics Committee chairman informing him that he cold not “receive compensation for practicing a profession which involves a fiduciary relationship.” The fact that Dr. Coburn wouldn’t have made any financial gain from delivering babies was immaterial. Ethics member Craig Thomas, a Wyoming Republican, summed up the committee’s stance: “When you go into Congress, that’s your job. When you come here, this is your commitment.” . . .

As for the notion that Mr. Coburn will be corrupted by having his expenses delivering babies compensated, it’s common practice for senators to be whisked away, all expenses paid, to exotic locales where they give speeches to special-interest groups. Sen. Coburn is clearly no slouch when it comes to keeping his nose to the grindstone. Even though he has maintained a part-time medical practice so far this year, he has written 10 bills and 72 amendments and presided over a dozen committee hearings.

Read the whole thing.

THE VOTING IN IRAQ HAS BEGUN: Iraqi blogger Omar has a report, with photos, posted.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has much more.

HALEY BARBOUR CALL YOUR OFFICE: More on the Maye case from Mississippi, over at GlennReynolds.com.

CARNIVAL OF THE DIGITAL CAMERAS: I’m going to host one. Put up your digital-camera posts and send me a link by Tuesday night — with the subject line “Digital Camera Carnival” or it may get buried — and I’ll put together a post on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, people are asking me questions about digital cameras. I’ve loved the photos from my Nikon D70 (now replaced by the D70s model) but I’ve had autofocus problems with mine, though that doesn’t seem to be a widespread phenomenon. There’s also a battery recall, which kind of bugs me — I bought Nikon because I expected high reliability. If you’re starting fresh, without any legacy lenses, you may want to go with Canon instead as they seem to have had fewer problems.

Sticking with Nikon for the moment, for most people I think the cheaper D50 is good a choice, and you can put the savings toward more lenses. If you like Canon, you can’t go wrong with the Digital Rebel or the fancier EOS 20D.

Among compact cameras, the Sony DSC-W7 is 7 megapixels, shoots video, and uses AA batteries. I believe it’s what Pajamas Media is sending its correspondents in Iraq and elsewhere. It’s pretty much the newer, fancier version of the Sony I’ve used for blog pix and video.

Going cheaper (under $200), this Samsung camera looks really cool: 5 megapixels, 30fps full-frame video — with stabilization — and even in-camera video editing. All for under $200. I haven’t used one, but on paper at least, it looks like the perfect blog-journalism camera: Capable, small, and cheap enough that you’re not afraid to take it out and use it. (It uses AA batteries, too, which I favor since if the rechargeables die you can pretty much always find AA alkalines).

Well, that’s my advice for now. But let’s put the blogosphere to work and see what other people say — send those carnival entries in!

SALON’S CARY TENNIS TALKS REVOLUTION:

At a certain point in the near future, if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission. It may then be necessary for many people in many walks of life to put their bodies on the line. For the moment, however, although pressing and profound questions have arisen about whether the current government is even legitimate, i.e., properly elected, there still remains a chance to remove this government peacefully in the 2008 election. (Or am I living in a dream world?)

I do think this regime’s removal is the most urgent matter before the country today. . . . This is all terrible and rather fantastic to contemplate. But what assurances have we that it is not all quite plausible? Having discarded the principles that Jefferson & Co. espoused, the current regime seems capable of anything. I know that my imagination is a feverish instrument. But are we not living in feverish times, in times of the unthinkable?

“Feverish,” indeed. Apparently, Tennis is ready to join a militia, since he’s saying the kind of stuff they were saying in 1995.

My advice: you could try something radical like winning elections instead of losing them, by putting forward candidates capable of attracting support from a majority of the electorate. But that would require a commitment to democracy, something that seems rather weak in this piece.

UPDATE: More on Cary Tennis’s remarks from Ace of Spades:

when disaffected, no-account fantasy-race-warriors joined militia movements in the nineties, the media was all a-twitter at this dangerous threat to our nation’s stability. Nevermind that the movement was decidedly fringe and small, and that a lot of the people involved weren’t particularly hard-core politically. They just liked running around the woods with guns (which, I have to admit, sounds kind of fun).

But when mainstream left-liberals write of violent revolution in not-at-all-fringe left-liberal magazines, no one in the media seems particularly bothered.

Suggesting they’re not bothered by the idea of violent revolution, so long as the right people wind up with their backs up against the wall.

Well, and Salon readers usually don’t own guns. More commentary from Rob Port: “This would also explain their willingness to undermine any sort of progress in Iraq with overly negative reporting and a total refusal to acknowledge the progress made there and the positive implications that progress has for the whole region. Because if removing the current regime is the most pressing issue for them right now what does losing a little war in Iraq matter?”

Clayton Cramer notes the unarmed-revolution irony: “What are they going to use? Super Soakers?”

Well, the potato guns are sold out! (To be fair, Tennis at some points seems to be advocating Gandhiesque nonviolent resistance, though in other places he seems to be advocating more violent means. It’s a bit of a muddle.)

Finally, Ed Morrissey offers a short refresher on the Constitution and regime change:

First, let me state the obvious. George Bush and his “regime” will be out the door on January 20, 2009. Bush cannot run for a third term in office, and Dick Cheney is as likely to run as he is to get elected — in other words, almost no chance at all. Even middle-school students know that Presidents can only serve two terms.

It’s not about thinking, it’s about feeling. Me, I’m almost sorry that my “Salon Sexwatch” periodic mockery drove Tennis into writing about other stuff.

MORE: Jonah Goldberg offers thoughts on “regime change.”

And Bill Peschel notes the difference between real and faux repression.

PUBLIUS has more on Lebanon’s latest pro-Syrian assassination. “The pattern of car bombings has always been apparent. They all target anti-Syrian leaders mainly from the Christian and Sunni communities.” More here.

SOME RATHER PROMISING POLL DATA FROM IRAQ, though the news isn’t all rosy.