THE CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is UP!

So is the latest Haveil Havalim.

SO IF KNOX COUNTY’S CHARTER has been ruled invalid, I guess it’s too much to hope for that I won’t have to pay my property taxes.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Andy Roth reports that we can’t look to Democrats for relief from earmarking:

At a recent gathering for Democrats, Congressman Jim Moran (unfortunately, my congressman) promised to bring home more bacon if the Democrats re-capture the House and he gets re-elected. And he isn’t shy about admitting it. Here’s what Moran said according to a report in the Arlington Sun-Gazette:

“When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I’m going to earmark the s—t out of it,” Moran buoyantly told a crowd of 450 attending the event.”

Well, that’s encouraging. Sheesh.

A SUPER PRIUS is on the way.

STRATEGYPAGE: “Smart dust” stalked Zarqawi.” Well, it is the 21st Century.

TOM MAGUIRE:

Two weeks ago when I quoted Dan Abrams as saying “Drop the charges” on the Duke rape debacle, I thought the prosecution case could not get any weaker.

I was wrong – it could get a lot weaker.

All the publicity, of course, will make it difficult for the DA to climb down, even if he should want to. Which is yet another reason why prosecutors should generally avoid big press conferences, even when there’s an election looming.

SOME CORRECTIONS FROM TIME on Haditha.

UPDATE: Here’s much more from The Mudville Gazette.

And Dan Riehl has thoughts, too.

I suspect that something bad did happen at Haditha, but the press reports have run way in advance of the evidence, and have been marked by a readiness to believe the worst in advance of the evidence, as the backtracking demonstrates.

EGYPTIAN BLOGGER ALAA has another blog entry from prison. He’s worried about Hosni Mubarak’s health.

COLUMNIST PAUL MULSHINE OF THE NEWARK STAR-LEDGER IS BEING DISHONEST. Writing about a post of mine on Zarqawi’s death and the press reaction in Baghdad, Mulshine writes:

Sure enough, there was Reynolds holding forth on the MSM’s insufficiently obsequious coverage of the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It seems that during the news conference in Iraq at which the killing was announced, the Iraqi reporters broke into cheers but the American reporters didn’t. After deep rumi nation, Reynolds lumped this in with other perceived MSM offenses as symptoms of “the misconduct of the American press.”

What Mulshine leaves out — because, being an old-media columnist who doesn’t have to provide links, he can leave it out — is what my post actually said. You can read it here.

When you do, you’ll see that the mention that it was Iraqi reporters, not U.S. reporters, who were cheering was there as a correction to Howard Kurtz, who was quoting a report of cheering reporters as evidence that the U.S. press was properly patriotic.

The sad thing about guys like Mulshine isn’t that this sort of dishonesty is new. It’s that they keep doing it even when it’s easy to catch them. But “old media” isn’t necessarily “bright media,” as we’ve seen.

UPDATE: Reader Brian Weigand emails:

I narrowly avoided a spittake at this part of the column:

“The lawyer, on the other hand, tends to take one side of an issue and then make the evidence fit the argument.”

He actually does what he wrongly accuses you of doing. I suppose it’s no wonder that he did not provide a link to your post. (Maybe he just doesn’t know how.) Further I see no link to email him.

Maybe we have a new MSM motto here:

We’re Big Media. Not only don’t we feel any need to provide evidence to support our specious conclusions, but we don’t want to hear from you peons about it. So f*** off (but continue to subscribe.)

it’s a bit long, but it’ll do.

It’s a bit harsh, but it’ll do, too. Meanwhile, a new Jersey blogger writes that I’ve been trolled:

The funny thing is, more people will now read a Mulshine column because widely read blogger, Glenn Reynolds, linked to his piece. It looks like Ann Coulter isn’t the only one stirring up controversy for the sake of publicity.

Well, I certainly hadn’t paid any attention to Mulshine before.

Meanwhile, Mark Hessey emails:

Mulshine’s conclusion strikes me as bit odd and decidedly unfunny:

“Anyone can travel to a war zone and write about it. I would strongly recommend this for any of the critics of the MSM who are seeking to get out the real truth about Iraq. Go for it, guys. War coverage is great fun. One word of caution, though: Don’t lose your heads in all the excitement.”

It sounds as if he’s completely unaware of Yon and Roggio, to name but two that have done just that, and whose reporting runs circles around anything produced by the MSM.

I think he’s unaware of a number of things.

By the way, the link in my older post unaccountably points to a later Kurtz column. The correct link is here.

The Philadelphia Enquirer’s Frank Wilson thinks that the future of newspapers won’t be bright if this sort of thing continues.

As Fausta notes, at some papers, the present isn’t very bright . . . .

BAD INTERNET — back later.

ADVICE GODDESS Amy Alkon is blogging from the Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference at Penn, and offers information on things like worming your way to good health and the dubious utility of antlers.

AUSTIN BAY has thoughts on Iran.

ANA MARIE COX reports from YearlyKos:

Everyone knows that the attendance at Yearly Kos by so many traditional politicians (we’re also going to be treated to speeches by Tom Vilsack, Howard Dean and Harry Reid) assures bloggers’ place in the political universe. Shortly before Moulitsas’s speech, Joe Trippi gropes for the right metaphor, comparing politicians’ courting of this nascent movement to the presidential primaries: “No one wants to skip Iowa.” Yet the politicians especially seem to be figuring it out as they go along — fear of missing the boat outweighs doubt about its final destination. Clark gives his speech on American innovation to a well-attended science panel flanked by bloggers whose name recognition is high in this room and nowhere else. One of them is wearing a colorful, flowered hat. Clark’s handler leans over: “Ten days ago, he had a street named after him in Kosovo, today he’s on a science panel with a man named ‘Darksyde’ and a woman in a bonnet. That is democracy.”

She also emails: “Bonus material: I saw Joe Wilson get not one but two standing ovations today; he was also called ‘a true American hero.’ People waited in line for his autograph. I’m going to begin drinking now.”

The Bill Richardson / Victoria Principal story is funny, too.

ANGELA MERKEL is podcasting.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT ACADEMICS IN COLORADO?

A former professor of French at the University of Northern Colorado has been cited for allegedly making a special delivery to U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave that reeked of political partisanship.

Kathleen Ensz, professor emeritus at UNC, is accused of depositing a Musgrave campaign mailer full of dog feces at the Republican lawmaker’s Greeley office. Ensz was charged Thursday by Greeley police with criminal use of a noxious substance, a misdemeanor.

Okay, so it’s not Ward Churchill, but still. . . . Oh, well, there’s more than one way to stink up the place.

MICKEY KAUS: “I’m not saying GM has effectively used its web site to make the NYT letters editors look like self-protective twits of the sort you might expect would wind up editing the New York Times letters section. But I’m not saying they haven’t!”

JOE GANDELMAN notes a serious fumble for James Webb. I’ve always liked Webb, based on his books, but his campaign seems a bit rocky.

Calling someone the Antichrist is right out, though.

UPDATE: James Joyner says it’s much ado about nothing.

PROTEIN WISDOM SCORES the coveted post-death Zarqawi interview.

IowaHawk, meanwhile, features a Zarqawi op-ed.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Captain Ed notes that things have gone pretty well for PorkBusters:

The conference committee on the emergency appropriations bill has reached agreement on the measure which had an original spending gap of $16 billion. The resulting bill will reach the White House at $94.5 billion, $2.5 billion more than the House-approved plan but much lighter than the heavily-porked version the Senate tried mightily to get. . . .

The Washington Post goes on to report what didn’t get included in the final version. The first item to make an overdue exit, Trent Lott’s Moveable Railroad, got left out and saved taxpayers $700 million. The committee didn’t appear very sympathetic to funding a new railroad right next to the existing line the government just spent $250 million repairing. Also gone from Mississippi porkfests was the obnoxious Northrup bailout, contributing $200 million in savings. In the end, the committee trimmed $13.5 billion from the Senate’s bloated budget-buster, or roughly $45 for every man, woman, and child this year.

Take the family out for a nice meal, and leave a tip. Have the pork roast; I’m sure it will be delicious.

This shows that we can have an effect on earmarks and the politicians addicted to them, as long as we remain vigilant. Organization and tenacity will leave a mark on those who defy voters for long enough. Lott has become the poster child for arrogance on Capitol Hill during this debate, not because he is a bad man — he isn’t at all — but because he treated us as though taxation and appropriations were none of our business. That kind of politics went out when the first website went up, and more and more our representatives have begun to understand this.

Yes. Read the whole thing. I wish I’d packed my PorkBusters t-shirt for the beach!

His conclusion: “We made a difference this time, a difference of $13.5 billion. A few more of these, and we’ll be talking about real money.” Heh. Indeed.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW has a contest with a $20,000 prize for:

any molecular biologist who could demonstrate that a much-publicized prescription for defeating aging by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey was “so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate.”

They’ve gotten some submissions, and judges will announce their opinion next month. I predict that no prize will be awarded.

JOHN TAMMES ROUNDS UP more news from Afghanistan that you may have missed.

YES, NOT MUCH BLOGGING TODAY. We’re en route to the beach, which means that blogging will be light — though not nonexistent or anything — for the next week-plus.

IN THE MAIL: Madison Smartt Bell’s Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution.

AUSTIN BAY looks at the strategic and political implications of Zarqawi’s death. Plus, some thoughts on the operational implications.

UPDATE: Read this post by Rand Simberg, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More intelligence leaks.

And amid the good news about Zarqawi, it’s also worth reading this NRO symposium about Somalia, where things aren’t going so well. What’s next there?

MORE: Bill Quick notes the spin reversal:

Two months ago, a Time-Warner hack said that Zarqawi was a “superstar.” That was when he was a symbol of Bush “failure.” Now, another Time-Warner hack says he was an easily replaceable nobody. That’s because he’s become a symbol of a Bush victory.

Given Time-Warner’s fortunes at the moment, I wouldn’t be raising the subject of easily replaceable nobodies. . . .