ANOTHER BLOG SWEEPS WEEK IMAGE: I’ve been travelling, but I do intend to spend my holiday weekend drinking beer on the deck, as promised last week.

Sadly, however, the atmosphere won’t be quite this festive, though I’m sure we’ll have a good time.

Hope you enjoy your long weekend, too.

UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster is shocked, shocked at the whole Blog Sweeps Week phenomenon.

OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY looks at Congress’s effort to tax pimps: “Wouldn’t that money be better spent on law enforcement agencies that actually have a prayer of shutting them down? This is pandering at its finest–a pretty bandage that does zero to solve the underlying problem.”

I also agree with this: “If governments actually cared about the victims of sex trafficking, the logical thing to do would be to legalize and regulate prostitution. A legal, transparent system would make it much easier to ensure both the age and ability to consent of prostitutes. Abuse would go down, disease incidences would go down, and child trafficking would go down. Prostitution will always be with us, so why not ensure that any acts of prostitution occur solely between consenting adults?”

Why, indeed?

IN THE NEW REPUBLIC, Cass Sunstein echoes a point I made yesterday: “Hamdan v. Rumsfeld demonstrates that checks on executive power are alive and well.”

THE LATEST BLOG WEEK IN REVIEW PODCAST IS UP, with Daniel Drezner, La Shawn Barber, Eric Umansky and Austin Bay. Don’t miss it!

CHANGING TIMES: At Hot Air.

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

UNSCAM UPDATE: Claudia Rosett is blogging the Tongsun Park oil-for-food trial.

RON CASS WRITES ON HAMDAN: Sorry I haven’t had more, but I’m on travel and haven’t had time to read the decision myself.

Chester, however, has some thoughts, and so does Shannon Love.

UPDATE: Here’s a Hamdan roundup by Mark Moller of Cato.

And more thoughts from Jack Balkin.

MY LAW SCHOOL CLASSMATE PETER KEISLER has been nominated to the D.C. Circuit. He’s a nice guy, and he’s been head of the Civil Division at DoJ for a while. I doubt he’ll prove especially controversial. He’s from the Roberts mold, pretty much.

SINCE IT’S BLOG SWEEPS WEEK, I guess I should note that it’s the Sixtieth Anniversary of the bikini.

Some people are talking about a bikini explosion, and there’s even a special anniversary bikini book. But despite its alluring cover, I urge you to ignore all this commercialism and go beyond Bikini Bottom.

I mean, what’s crasser than using bikini imagery to pump up circulation and sell stuff? Right?

Instead, let’s return to a simpler, more wholesome time.

RAND SIMBERG ON THE NEXT SPACE SHUTTLE LAUNCH:

Many have criticized this decision, claiming that it was reminiscent of the same kind of “launch fever” that destroyed the Space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, with their crews. There are two differences, though.

First, the previous decisions were made out of the public eye, with dissent against them discouraged by management. This decision was made in the open, with an explanation publicly provided by the administrator, and ample opportunities for discussion and disagreement.

Second, the risk of concern (more foam falling off the external tank, and striking the orbiter in a manner similar to that which doomed Columbia) is to the vehicle, but not necessarily to the crew, despite hysteria on the part of some of the critics. Even AA O’Connor agrees with this, which is why he has accepted his boss’s decision to go forward. This is because in the event of damage to the Thermal Protection System, unlike the ill-fated Columbia, Discovery will be going to the International Space Station (ISS), where they will have more options: Potential damage can be inspected and possibly repaired, and if not, the crew can stay there safely until a rescue vehicle can be brought up to return them to earth.

It’s not likely that this will be a problem — we flew over 100 flights previous to the loss of Columbia, and we probably lost foam every time — we just weren’t looking for it — so last July’s “close call” isn’t necessarily as worrisome as some would make it out to be. But if this does occur, it would likely represent the end of the shuttle program (an eventuality that can’t come soon enough for some, even some space enthusiasts). It is no secret that Dr. Griffin would like to end it as soon as possible, to free up money for the president’s new lunar/Mars initiative, and has basically stated that he would end it if there’s another accident, not just because it would be yet another indicator of the system’s unreliability, but because it’s probably impractical to complete ISS construction (the only purpose for which shuttle survives at all) with a fleet of only two orbiters. And the dirty secret, of course, is that despite talk about using the ISS in support of the new exploration programs, the only real reason we’re spending the many billions of dollars and years that it will take to complete it is (uncharacteristically, in the thinking of many reflexive opponents of this administration) to meet our obligations with our international partners in Europe and Japan. But even that reason wouldn’t be good enough in the face of another major shuttle mishap.

Read the whole thing.

IT MUST BE SOME KIND OF A SWEEPS WEEK: Christopher Hitchens is offering a social history of the blowjob. Is it really “the specifically American sex act?”

I GUESS IT IS BLOG SWEEPS WEEK: Nude Britney Spears photos and a comment on the Hamdan decision, all in one post.

PUBLIUS REPORTS on an anti-communist freedom rally in Bolivia that attracted over 100,000 people. There are pictures.

Bolivia seems like a nice place.

UPDATE: Reader Bart Hall writes:

It IS a nice place — actually one of my favourites in all Latin America, and I’ve spent a lot of time there. If you ever get the chance to go there (and a strongly recommend you do) you’ll find that each region is different.

My personal favourite is Cochabamba and environs. The area around Santa Cruz is the heart of free-enterprise libertarianism, and FWIW has a large Japanese community as well as many Mennonites.

The best part of the Altiplano is on the Peruvian side, but I must warn you that Andean cuisine generally sucks (lots of old sheep, potatoes, stringy beef and not a lot else). In Cocha and Sta. Cruz it’s a lot better.

Santa Cruz sounds like the place to be. Unless you enjoy Scottish food. . . .

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON really doesn’t like Hillary.

Neither, apparently, do Peter Daou’s friends.

I still maintain hopes that she might turn out to be “the most uncompromising wartime President in United States history.” After all, she argued that President Bush had “inherent authority” to go to war against Saddam!

Plus, we might see the tough-talking Secretary of State Atrios!

MAN CHARGED AFTER VIDEOTAPING POLICE: I think it should pretty much always be legal to videotape police, but this is particularly silly as it was in his own home:

Michael Gannon, 49, of 26 Morgan St., was arrested Tuesday night, after he brought a video to the police station to try to file a complaint against Detective Andrew Karlis, according to Gannon’s wife, Janet Gannon, and police reports filed in Nashua District Court.

Police instead arrested Gannon, charging him with two felony counts of violating state eavesdropping and wiretap law by using an electronic device to record.

Jeez.

MAUREEN DOWD PRAISES BLOGGERS: “Politicians are courting the best bloggers because they bring donations, volunteers and goodwill to their campaigns. . . . It’s a very healthy situation: blogs lead me to try to be better every day.”

Surely the end times are nigh.

UPDATE: The Anchoress comments: “I knew she’d come around, sooner or later!”

MOTHERS AGAINST DRUNK DRIVING: Stooges for Bin Laden?

AEROTREKKING: Sounds pretty cool.

VERIZON WIRELESS SUCKAGE: Okay, I’ve been happy with my Verizon EVDO card. But now the credit card it bills to has expired, and they’re bombarding me with emails to renew it. Trouble is, the emails are from a don’t reply address, and the phone numbers for renewal require you to enter a phone number before you can proceed. (Entering “0” just gets you dropped.) My wireless card has a phone number, but I don’t know what it is, and can’t seem to find it via the application screen, and the technical support number requires me to enter the phone number before I can get past it to ask how to . . . find the phone number. Jeez. No doubt there’s a way around this, but I’m too irritated to proceed at the moment.

UPDATE: Problem solved. I had to call their main number and pretend to be prospective customer; that got me through to a human being.

BILL ROGGIO REPORTS ON negotiations in Iraq.

FIVE YEARS OF THE WAR ON TERROR: Austin Bay starts a retrospective series.

HAMDAN CASE DECIDED: And Marty Lederman at SCOTUSBLOG says the press coverage is missing the biggest part of the story:

More importantly, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today’s ruling. The commissions are the least of it. This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons “shall in all circumstances be treated humanely,” and that “[t]o this end,” certain specified acts “are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever”—including “cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.” This standard, not limited to the restrictions of the due process clause, is much more restrictive than even the McCain Amendment. . . . If I’m right about this, it’s enormously significant.”

Indeed. At the very least, this should serve as a rebuke to those who have been proclaiming that we live in an era of lawless fascism and rubberstamp courts. And that’s (another) good reason for Bush not to follow advice from some quarters to disobey the ruling, a la Andrew Jackson.

Pajamas Media has a big roundup of blog reactions. And there’s an open discussion thread at Tom Maguire’s.

UPDATE: Andrew Cochran thinks this is a “huge political gift” to the Bush Administration.

Hot Air has video of Bush’s reaction.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Ann Althouse.

STRATEGYPAGE ON IRAN:

June 29, 2006: Although “Supreme Leader” the Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khameini has basically told the world to buzz off regarding the country’s nuclear ambitions, relations between him and radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be deteriorating. Apparently, Ahmadinejad’s frequent arch-conservative ranting on foreign policy and domestic issues runs contrary to a more nuanced, pragmatic approach favored by Khameini and the circle of conservative clerics who are his principal advisors. Khameini has on several recent occasions spoken far more moderately on certain issues than has Ahmadinejad. As a result, Ahmadinejad reportedly has recently told Khameini to button his lip about certain diplomatic matters, as an intrusion on the president’s authority. In a sense, this can be likened to the complexities of the “Red Guards” phase in Maoist China during the 1960s, when various factions in the Communist leadership tried to out-do each other in radicalism in order to firm up their control.

How such a scenario might unfold in Iran will be interesting to see. Iranian politics is considered a blood sport, with the losers getting themselves dead. Unrest among the nations minorities (Azeris, Arabs, Kurds, and Baluchis), continues, with evidence of insurgent activity by some groups (Kurds and Baluchs). More importantly, however, is that there appears to be growing unrest among the country’s Iranian majority population, which has been suffering under increasing religious restrictions and is considered generally pro-American by many analysts.

I keep hearing reports of unrest in Iran, and I’d certainly like to see the mullahs overthrown. What I remain skeptical of, though, is whether the discontent is going to reach critical mass any time soon.

Meanwhile, Scott Norvell — fresh back from two weeks in Iran — recommends a book, We Are Iran : The Persian Blogs. I haven’t read it, but it got a good review here.

He also sends these impressions:

Iran was fascinating. They hate us [FoxNews]. They think we are a branch of the Pentagon. I’m sure they are not the only ones, but they have the excuse of being somewhat detached. The rest don’t.

Population is far more secular than I expected. . . . Tehran’s like Mexico City in terms of traffic, energy and bustle. The expats brave enough to have gone home are making boatloads of money.

He also says that many Iranian elites view Ahmadinejad the way many American elites view Bush, as a not-very-bright guy who’s using saber-rattling to secure power. I’m not sure what that means in terms of the future, though.

TOM MAGUIRE CREDITS THE NEW YORK TIMES with accurate reporting on how much damage the SWIFT program story did. “The Times reporting is clear – this is a good program; ending it would harm national security; publicity may kill it.”