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PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Mary Katharine Ham reports from the launch of the Ending Earmarks Express bus tour.

DISASTER DRILL INTERRUPTED by threat of bad weather:

A real potential disaster – the threat of tornadoes – has caused the Franklin portion of a massive disaster drill to be suspended until tomorrow and Nashville’s portion to be put temporarily on hold.

The drill, which involves a fake skyscraper collapse staged in Bordeaux and a mock train derailment/chemical spill in Franklin, was scheduled to take place today and tomorrow.

But inclement weather is fast approaching, and the deaths of 24 people in Sunday night’s tornadoes in northwest Tennessee are on the minds of many.

(Thanks to Mary Littleton for the pointer).

ERIC SCHEIE thinks that his silence deserves more attention than mine. He’s undoubtedly right.

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS is up!

MICHAEL YON is on his way back to Iraq.

MICHAEL TOTTEN PUBLISHES AN OPEN LETTER TO HEZBOLLAH:

What do you people expect? It’s one thing when you trot out your impotent Death to America slogans. It’s another thing altogether when you threaten and bully us personally. I’m not a wire agency reporter. When you talk to me you’re on the record. When you say “We know who you are, we read everything you write, and we know where you live,” you’re on the record. Of course I’m going to quote you. If you don’t want to look like an asshole in print, don’t act like an asshole in life.

Read the whole thing.

MICROSOFT ENLISTS THE ARMY OF DAVIDS: “If only Microsoft had taken that approach on Vista!”

IMMIGRATION UPDATE: “A carefully constructed compromise on immigration reform ran into a roadblock in the Senate today as Democrats fended off conservative Republican efforts to amend the agreement and an effort to cut off debate on elements of the plan failed by a lopsided vote.”

UPDATE: Frist blames Democratic “obstruction.”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Just got this email from Sens. Tom Coburn and Barack Obama:

U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) and Barack Obama (D-IL) today announced the introduction of legislation that would publicly disclose all recipients of federal funding and financial assistance. The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (S. 2590) will allow taxpayers to see how their money is being spent, Dr. Coburn said.

The federal government awards roughly $300 billion in grants annually to 30,000 different organizations across the United States, according to the General Services Administration. This bill would require the Office of Management and Budget to establish and maintain a single public Web site that lists all entities receiving federal funds, including the name of each entity, the amount of federal funds the entity has received annually by program, and the location of the entity. All federal assistance must be posted within 30 days of such funding being awarded to an organization.

“This public database will provide transparency to federal spending and will provide an important weapon taxpayers can use to hold the government accountable. The database also would help to reduce fraud, abuse and misallocation of federal funds by requiring greater accounting of federal expenditures,” Dr. Coburn said. “Every citizen in this country, after all, should have the right to know what organizations and activities are being funded with their hard-earned tax dollars.”

“At the very least, taxpayers deserve to know where their money is being spent,” Senator Obama said. “This common-sense legislation would shine a bright light on all federal spending to help prevent tax dollars from being wasted. If government spending can’t withstand public scrutiny, then the money shouldn’t be spent.”

Over the past year, the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management on which Dr. Coburn serves as chairman has uncovered tens of billions of dollars in fraud, abuse and wasteful spending, ranging from expensive leasing schemes to corporate welfare to bloated bureaucracy.

“This database would ensure such spending is better tracked and the public can hold policy makers and government agencies accountable for questionable spending decisions,” Dr. Coburn said. “If enacted, this legislation will finally ensure true accountability and transparency in how the government spends our money, which will hopefully lead to more fiscal responsibility by the federal government.”

In our podcast interview yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said that increased transparency is vital. Let’s see if he gets behind this proposal.

(Later) Here’s the key part of Frist’s comment from the interview:

GR: Do you think we’re going to see any progress in bringing pork under control before this Congress is over?

BF: We absolutely have to, and the first step is transparency, holding people accountable and making sure that if somebody has a particular interest or a particular project — and not all projects are bad, as you know — that it have the opportunity to be seen, sunlight shining on it, debated, voted upon. The age of Pork has got to be destroyed, we’ve got to get a handle on it.

There’s more, but I’m not the kind of transcriptionist that Duane Patterson is.

UPDATE: Love this from CoxandForkum!

BAD REVIEWS FOR JOE WILSON: On the left.

If Karl Rove had wanted to plant a mole to bring down the liberal media, it would have been hard to do much better.

UPDATE: More Joe Wilson quotes: “After reading these quotes made at a public event, how can anyone continue to take this guy seriously?”

Some of us never did.

IN THE MAIL: Eric Shawn’s new book, The U.N. Exposed: How the United Nations Sabotages America’s Security and Fails the World. Looks quite interesting, and it’s blurbed by Rudy Giuliani.

Not as good a title as Emergency Sex, though.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The “Ending Earmarks Express” bus tour will has added Trent Lott’s railway to nowhere to its schedule:

After departing Washington, the Ending Earmarks Express will travel next week to sites that have received questionable earmarked funds in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, Charleston, WV, Frankfort, Kentucky, and St. Louis and Columbia, Mo. A previously planned stop in Iowa has been scrapped at the last minute so the Express can make a detour to Gulfport, Miss., where a new $700 million earmark currently being considered by the Senate would be used to rip up newly reconstructed, fully operational railroad tracks to make way for a new road. A full schedule, including specific earmarks that will be highlighted at each stop, is available at www.AmericansForProsperity.org.

I think Trent’s just going to keep getting tireder.

JOHN “I’M NO ARTHUR CHRENKOFF” TAMMES has nonetheless roundup up a bunch of underreported news from Afghanistan.

A while back, a reader noted a correspondence between Bush’s fall in the polls and Arthur Chrenkoff’s retirement from the blogosphere. Coincidence? Hmm.

WHAT PEOPLE IN HELL have on their iPods.

THE NEW YORK TIMES ISSUES A CORRECTION, but Mediacrity is unhappy.

PLAME UPDATE: Tom Maguire: “The NY Times editors tackle the latest Fitzgerald filings, and are more disingenuous than their reporters.”

More here.

My take: The latest “Bush leaked” story — which doesn’t hold up very well when you look at the actual story — is basically a “spoiling attack” by the NYT and other media who fear subpoenas in the Libby case. As with all their efforts on this front, it’s likely to backfire. The more they say that leaks are bad, even as they rely on politically motivated leaks from insiders for their bread and butter , the more vulnerable they become. That’s why the Plame affair has been more damaging for them, long-term, than for Bush. Bush will be leaving in a couple of years, but the Times and other media will be living with the world they’ve created, and I predict that their position in this regard will be no better if a Democrat is elected in 2008.

VIRGINIA POSTREL:

I’m happy to say that my recovery is pretty much complete. The light blogging recently reflects how much time I’m spending on reporting and writing, a.k.a. “real work.” I even made a trip to San Francisco last weekend to do reporting for my first Atlantic column. Sally Satel–the Three Kidney Wonder–is also doing well.

Glad to hear it; I was actually starting to worry because of the light blogging.

EAT LESS, EXERCISE MORE: Megan McArdle writes on dieting and weight loss. To paraphrase Clausewitz, weight loss is very simple, but in dieting even the simplest things are very hard.

I THOUGHT THAT I HAD BEEN CRITICAL of the Department of Homeland Security, but that’s nothing compared to the multi-barreled assault launched by Michelle Malkin.

MEXICAN IRREDENTISM: Proclaimed by influentials, not just nuts, according to Mickey Kaus.

Meanwhile, Power Line News is running a poll on immigration. The question: “What should be our highest priority in formulating policies on immigration?”

John Hawkins has more. And things have gotten bad enough that John Hinderaker is suggesting that we should learn from France. Surely the End Times are upon us!

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer is unhappy. So is Hugh Hewitt.

THANK GOODNESS FOR BLOGS: Where else would you get this exclusive look inside the Iranian Missile Command?

THOMAS DOLBY is now blogging. He talks about music gear here.

MARK STEYN was on Hugh Hewitt, talking about the NASCAR/NBC debacle, the immigration compromise, and more. Transcript and audio here.

RADLEY BALKO writes on the Supreme Court and “no-knock” raids.

I think that no-knock raids should be illegal absent a clear and present danger to life and limb. The remedy, however, shouldn’t be the exclusionary rule. It should be absolute liability for damages on the part of the officers and the law enforcement agency, without benefit of any legal immunities.