TODD ZYWICKI: “Dartmouth’s recent history on matters of free speech is lamentable and well-known.”

IS TRENT LOTT BEHIND THE “SECRET HOLD” on the Coburn/Obama earmarks bill? Ace calls it “pretty speculative,” but I think I agree with the commenter who observes: “While we’re at it, maybe we should try to force an end to this ‘secret hold’ crap.”

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS — Mayor indicted for traffic-camera bribery:

Mayor Shawn Brown was arrested by federal authorities Friday on a charge of soliciting and accepting $2,750 in bribe money from a company that wanted to install red light cameras in St. Peters.

The company is Redflex, which is also the contractor for Knoxville’s traffic cameras. More background here, and note that this isn’t the only bribery case of its type. My article on red light cameras for Popular Mechanics can be found here.

UPDATE: It’s in the linked story, but I don’t want to give the wrong impression, so note this passage too: “Redflex employees then alerted the FBI and cooperated with the agency in carrying out the alleged bribe, said Jay Heiler, a spokesman for the Scottsdale, Ariz., firm.” Thanks to reader Daniel Coyne for pointing out the possible confusion.

WILLIAM BEUTLER RESPONDS to Matt Stoller’s anti-Blogometer Fatwa.

IS BLOGGING JOURNALISM? Sometimes, says Cathy Seipp, but not as often as bloggers think.

Of course, much of what appears in newspapers isn’t journalism, either.

SO WE PICKED MY BROTHER IN LAW UP FROM CHEMO TODAY — hence the light blogging — and took him home. He was doing as well as anyone can do under those circumstances, but the hospital was, as usual, in hurry-up-and-wait mode, so we spent a lot of time on the chemo floor, which is pretty depressing.

But we got home to a “gift pack” from Amazon Grocery. Lots of snacks, coffees, and assorted other goodies, including a miniature flashlight. I don’t know if it’s some sort of blog-promotion gimmick or, more likely, something aimed at big Amazon customers, which we certainly are.

I wonder if this is in response to the investors’ concerns about the Amazon Grocery business that I mentioned a while back?

UPDATE: Looks like they’re casting their net pretty broadly, as quite a few other readers got this, too. Reader Kevin Hisel writes:

I am only a so-so Amazon customer (an order every month, tops) and I too got the goody box gift. I’m certainly not a well-known Internet figure.

So there you are.

WHEN SOCKPUPPETS ATTACK: Ed Cone reports:

Two comments at this blog were signed with the names of real people who comment here, but were not written by them. Both originated from the IP address used by Connie Mack Berry of the Rachel Hunter campaign, and both contain other information that links back to the campaign site.

It’s some sort of bizarre trend.

UPDATE: Could sockpuppetry hurt the blogosphere’s credibility? Follow the link for a spirited debate . . . .

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The Ending Earmarks Express tour visited the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Ketchikan, Alaska.

There’s YouTube video of the bridge, and much more, right here.

I hope that other people will post video and photos of pork projects in their areas. Let the sun shine in!

ORIN KERR HAS THOUGHTS ON THE REASONING in Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s opinion on the NSA intercepts. And Eugene Volokh has thoughts here and here.

MARK TAPSCOTT RESPONDS to the PorkBusters critics.

ME, ERIC UMANSKY, AUSTIN BAY, AND TAMMY BRUCE on the events of the week, at the Blog Week in Review podcast.

ANOTHER U.N. PEACEKEEPER SCANDAL:

The United Nations is investigating a suspected child prostitution ring involving its peacekeepers and government soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the U.N. mission said on Thursday.

Among accusations being investigated is that pimps are using the presence of U.N. peacekeepers to lure vulnerable girls to go and work as prostitutes in areas of South Kivu where they are deployed, the mission said in a statement.

I’m sure that Lebanon will be a success. (Via Newsbeat1).

I’M SURE IT WAS THEIR INVASION OF IRAQ, or maybe their opposition to the Kyoto Protocol that led to this:

Two suitcases containing bottles of gasoline, propane gas and a detonating device that were found abandoned in German regional trains last month were bombs primed to go off and kill a “high number” of people, police said. . . .

The July 31 attempt “is likely to have a terrorist background,” Zierke said. Investigators found pieces of paper with Arabic letters and telephone numbers from Lebanon in clothes which were in the suitcases to pad the gas bottles, he said. They also found starch bags from Lebanon which were sold in a store in or around Essen, a city in North-Rhine Westphalia.

It couldn’t be part of an overall Islamist war plan or anything.

UPDATE: German blog MedienKritik observes:

This is yet another wake up call for all Germans who believe that terrorism at home can be averted through a policy of appeasement and pacifism at all costs.

I’m betting they’ll opt to hit the “snooze” button one more time.

FUTURIST AND LONGEVITY ACTIVIST AUBREY DE GREY is interviewed at Fast Forward Radio.

MICHAEL TOTTEN reports from Israel on Hezbollah’s harm. “If Hezbollah really did the best they could to avoid killing civilians with their inaccurate rockets (as their apologists claim) I would have set up shop in Kiryat Shmona. But the situation was exactly reversed. The exception was the town of Metulla, and the reason for that, presumably, is because it is immediately surrounded on three sides by Lebanon. With that exception in mind, the claim that civilian areas were safer places than military areas is terrorist propaganda.”

SMASHING SATELLITE DISHES IN IRAN: Kind of makes you wonder what the mullahs are anxious to keep their people from finding out.

BILL HOBBS has been blogging from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Lots of legislators are blogging, and interested in blogs.

AN IMPENDING North Korean nuclear test? A distraction that’s part of the Iran/North Korea shell game, I suspect.

MISSING THE HURRICANES:

With the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall (August 29, 2005) rapidly approaching, who would have predicted that we would now be in the middle of a near-normal Atlantic hurricane season? Weren’t the global warming pundits’ predictions for this hurricane season that it would be just as bad — maybe even worse! — than last year?

I’m agnostic on global warming predictions, but year-to-year hurricane numbers don’t have much to do with global warming, and claims otherwise are mostly hype.

JACK SHAFER says that the press doesn’t need to apologize for its JonBenet Ramsey coverage. I’m guessing that few outside the press will find his arguments persuasive.

OMAR HAS THOUGHTS ON SECURITY IN BAGHDAD, while Mickey Kaus wonders why we’re not seeing more from the Bush Administration:

The obvious suspicion is that election-year politics precludes any dramatically increased deployment. But would it really hurt the GOPs in the November election if we sent an additional division to make the Baghdad plan work? Isn’t Bush unpopular in part because of his growing reputation for too-little-too-late adapatation to changing circumstances (Katrina, Iraq, ineffective tooth-pulling concessions on immigration, Social Security, etc.)? Voters might appreciate some decisive action instead of what seems to be an insufficiently alarmed drift. … Would Harry Truman have waited until after the midterms?

Truman’s probably a poor role model when it comes to war-related political competency, though . . . .

IS THE UNITED NATIONS FAILING the “international test?”

UPDATE: A look at Israel’s doomed diplomacy.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Donald Sensing thinks that this temporizing will make the next Israeli/Hezbollah war worse.

CRUSHING OF DISSENT, at Dartmouth?

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh is unimpressed with this report, though there’s an interesting discussion in his comments.

MY NAME IS AHMADINEJAD: “Iran has never been so funny!”

Plus, a Castro endorsement. I’m convinced!

XRLQ HAS MUCH MORE on the libertarian purge-talk that I mentioned briefly the other day.

More constructively, talk of replacing Tom Delay with a Libertarian.