A SMALL BUT PLEASANT CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY: “Under pressure from the National Rifle Association, police this week began returning guns confiscated after Hurricane Katrina.”

PLAME UPDATE: “Robert Novak said Wednesday that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald knows who outed a CIA agent to the Chicago Sun-Times columnist but hasn’t acted on the information because Novak’s source committed no crime.”

UPDATE: Tom Maguire already knew this.

HERE’S A REPORT that China censored CNN’s coverage of the Falun Gong protester.

FRAN O’BRIEN’S UPDATE: Scott Koenig is looking for a change of venue.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “I’ve had spontaneous discussions with women on the precise subject: Larry David is sexy.”

So what about An Army of Larry Davids, then?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG GETS RESULTS:

Well I marched my unregistered guns out and gave them a good talking to. It seems that most of them knew they should not go out after dark or let themselves be found on the street.

Except my Mossberg. He smelled of cheap booze and refused to look me in the eye. His “Whatever dude!” comments started to get on my nerves.

I’m so worried he will end up in a life of crime and other sorry deeds. What is a dad to do?

I’m sure Mayor Bloomberg will have additional helpful advice.

HEH: “Tax Court: Couple Must Report as Income $25k Paid by Wife’s Paramour.” Should have followed the blackmailee’s tax advice!

FROM MEDIA TO “WE-DIA” — some interesting developments.

ACCORDING TO THE FOLKS AT AMAZON, An Army of Davids has some strange bedfellows:

What do customers ultimately buy after viewing items like this?
49% buy the item featured on this page:An Army of Davids : How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths by Glenn Reynolds $15.74

36% buy The Ghost Brigades (Sci Fi Essential Books) by John Scalzi $15.57

4% buy How to Be a Domestic Goddess : Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking by Nigella Lawson $12.97

3% buy Dog Days by Ana Marie Cox $16.29

2% buy Size Matters : How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America’s Families, Finances, and Freedom by Joel Miller $14.94

Er, shelf-fellows?

UPDATE: Various readers email that they wouldn’t mind “sharing a shelf” with Nigella Lawson. What, no Joel Miller fans out there?

INTERESTING STUFF ON LEGAL BLOGS at 3L Epiphany, including a list of law review articles citing blogs and one of courts citing blogs.

SOME INTERESTING POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN IRAQ: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

DANIEL DREZNER HAS AN OPEN THREAD ON IRAN: I’m not sure what to do. I tend to agree with Jim Dunnigan that military action right now would be a mistake, and that we should be working for regime change, and supporting anti-Mullah activities in Iran. (Perhaps we are, but I don’t see much sign of it). I think some of the fears are overstated — I’ve heard people talk about the Iranians developing an EMP weapon, but I think they’re a long way from that. I think you need a thermonuclear (hydrogen), not simply a nuclear weapon to get a crippling EMP pulse (this says that you need at least a megaton device) and that’s much harder than a simple atomic bomb. On the other hand, claims that the U.S. can’t do anything militarily to Iran are silly — there are lots of things we could do, I’m just not convinced they’re a good idea.

Congressional Democrats aren’t offering many suggestions, though. (Via Billmon, who hasn’t stopped blogging yet!) I don’t really blame them for that — I don’t have any good ones myself — but I do hope that their silence now will be remembered when they pop up to criticize whatever the Administration does, or doesn’t, do.

We had Jim Dunnigan and Austin Bay talking about Iranian nukes and what to do in this podcast a few weeks back. We’re going to try to get them on again soon.

UPDATE: This is interesting:

Recent developments regarding the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapons program have struck a nerve in India. As a result, India has greatly increased its intelligence efforts directed against Iran, and is looking for ways to cooperate with the United States and the European Union. This at the same time India is developing economic and military deals with Iran. The commercial and military people in Iran, that India works with, seem sane enough. But the senior Iranian officials, calling for the destruction of Israel, death to America and converting everyone on the planet to Islam, are worrisome. To put it mildly. So the Indians are taking a close look at their neighbor Iran, with the aid of anyone who will help.

Good.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts here.

BLOGGER BURNOUT: “Why I shut down my blog.” Plus an interview with Billmon, who’s feeling tired, too. I notice, though, that most people who burn out on blogging wind up coming back to it.

IMMIGRATION GROUPS are pulling away from ANSWER. That seems wise to me.

THIS WEEK SAW the 25th anniversary of The Boomer Bible.

HITCHENS ON HEWITT: Transcript and audio here.

MICHAEL SILENCE of the Knoxville News-Sentinel has more on the Bill Hobbs story.

WITH HU JINTAO VISITING THE WHITE HOUSE, I hope somebody leaves a copy of today’s Washington Post lying around open to this oped by Rebecca MacKinnon:

Another victim of Chinese state kidnapping — with whom I am personally connected — is Wu Hao, an independent filmmaker, blogger and U.S. permanent resident. It is unclear why state agents abducted him on Feb. 22, but his friends think it may be related to his work on a documentary about China’s underground Christians. He continues to be held — this is the 58th day of his detention — despite the fact that Chinese law limits the maximum detention without charge to 37 days.

About a month before his abduction, Hao (his first name) also took up the part-time role of Northeast Asia editor for an international bloggers’ network that I co-founded, Global Voices Online ( http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/ ). He was excited about introducing the perspectives of Chinese bloggers to an English-speaking audience. He also kept an English-language blog at http://beijingorbust.blogspot.com/ . While his writings were considerably more honest and edgy than those in the China Daily, he was by no means a dissident and often defended his government against Western criticism.

Hao turned 34 this week. He personifies a generation of urban Chinese who have flourished thanks to the Communist Party’s embrace of market-style capitalism and greater cultural openness. He got his MBA from the University of Michigan and worked for EarthLink before returning to China to pursue his dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker. He and his sister, Nina Wu, who works in finance and lives a comfortable middle-class life in Shanghai, have enjoyed freedoms of expression, travel, lifestyle and career choice that their parents could never have dreamed of. They are proof of how U.S. economic engagement with China has been overwhelmingly good for many Chinese.

Problem is, the Chinese Dream can be shattered quickly if you step over a line that is not clearly drawn — a line that is kept deliberately vague and that shifts frequently with the political tides. Those who were told by the Chinese media that they have constitutional and legal rights are painfully disabused of such fantasies when they seek to shed light on social and religious issues the state prefers to keep in the dark. . . . But we have a serious problem that won’t go away: How can Americans respect or trust a regime that kidnaps our friends?

The Chinese Embassy’s website is here.

UPDATE: At least Bush raised the subject:

As the relationship between our two nations grows and matures, we can be candid about our disagreements. I’ll continue to discuss with President Hu the importance of respecting human rights and freedoms of the Chinese people. China has become successful because the Chinese people are experience the freedom to buy, and to sell, and to produce — and China can grow even more successful by allowing the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely, and to worship.

Indeed.

THE AGE-ADJUSTED DEATH RATE in America is plummeting, and life expectancies are at a record.

VIA RANDY NEAL a very interesting report on online journalism and the future of newspapers.

HOWARD BASHMAN’S “How Appealing” blog is now hosted by Law.com. Its new URL is http://howappealing.law.com/.

SOCK PUPPETS at the L.A. Times?

UPDATE: More here.

THOMAS DOLBY reports on Freakonomics in action.

JEFF JARVIS: What’s wrong with the Pulitzers.

RAND SIMBERG: I didn’t leave the Libertarians. The Libertarians left me.