UGLY AMERICANS: Or not.

GEORGE WILL ON JOHN MCCAIN:

Presidents swear to “protect and defend the Constitution.” The Constitution says: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” On April 28, on Don Imus’ radio program, discussing the charge that the McCain-Feingold law abridges freedom of speech by regulating the quantity, content and timing of political speech, John McCain did not really reject the charge:

“I work in Washington and I know that money corrupts. And I and a lot of other people were trying to stop that corruption. Obviously, from what we’ve been seeing lately, we didn’t complete the job. But I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.”

Question: Were McCain to take the presidential oath, what would he mean?

In his words to Imus, note the obvious disparagement he communicates by putting verbal quotation marks around “First Amendment rights.” Those nuisances.

That seems to be McCain’s attitude.

MORE ON THE BROOKINGS DATA, from IraqPundit.

I HADN’T HEARD THIS: Bush’s tax cuts make the tax system more progressive, according to a new study from the Joint Economic Committee. Of course, what’s really interesting is how little tax revenue comes from people in lower brackets.

SANDMONKEY has pictures and reporting from the protest crackdown in Egypt. More here.

THE LATEST NSA STORY: Didn’t we already know this?

UPDATE: Of course, if we’d had a terror attack since 9/11 and didn’t have a program like that, people would be complaining.

And here’s a big roundup of blog reactions.

THE GREAT CLASSROOM LAPTOP CONTROVERSY CONTINUES:

When Don Herzog, a law professor at the University of Michigan, asked his students questions last year, he was greeted with five seconds of silence and blank stares. He knew something was wrong and suspected he knew why. So he went to observe his colleagues’ classes — and was shocked at what he found.

“At any given moment in a law school class, literally 85 to 90% of the students were online,” Professor Herzog says. “And what were they doing online? They were reading The New York Times; they were shopping for clothes at Eddie Bauer; they were looking for an apartment to rent in San Francisco when their new job started…. And I was just stunned.”

Wireless Internet access at universities was once thought to be a clear-cut asset to education. But now a growing number of graduate schools — after investing a fortune in the technology — are blocking Web access to students in class because of complaints from professors.

Herzog first went on the offensive in his own law classes, banning laptops for a day as an experiment. The result, he says, was a “dream” discussion with students that led him to advocate more sweeping changes.

(Via Betsy Newmark). I don’t generally get that problem — but we have small classes at Tennessee, and I suspect that student tuneout grows along with class size. Still, the classroom surfing business is a contentious matter among faculties all over.

DOES THIS MAKE HOWARD DEAN A “CHRISTIANIST?”

Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean has contradicted his party’s platform and infuriated gay rights advocates by saying the party’s platform states “marriage is between a man and a woman.”

“The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says marriage is between a man and a woman,” Dean said May 10 during a “700 Club” program hosted by conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson on his Christian Broadcasting Network.

Who knew? Jeez, I guess that whole theocracy thing is spreading faster than I realized.

REP. JERRY LEWIS (R-CA), appropriations chair and Porkmeister extraordinaire, is under investigation as part of the Duke Cunningham probe. “It is not clear where the investigation is headed or what evidence the government has. But the probe suggests that investigators are looking past Cunningham to other legislators and, perhaps, the ‘earmarking’ system that members of Congress use to allocate funds.”

Sounds like fertile ground for inquiry.

UPDATE: Heh: “Glenn, are ‘porkmeister’ and ‘probe’ the best words to use to describe someone involved in the Duke Cunningham affair?”

I guess that was an unfortunate choice of words. Or maybe an apt one. . . .

ROGER SIMON: My dinner with Mary.

WE FINISHED UP OUR PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH RNC CHAIR KEN MEHLMAN a few minutes ago. It was nice of him to come back after our phone problems yesterday, especially as I think the interview was a bit more contentious than he had expected. It’ll be posted later, but I think that the GOP shouldn’t bank too heavily on the “Democrats are worse” argument. It’s not that it isn’t true, much of the time, but you can only go to the same well so often.

Mehlman was also promoting the new GOP grassroots website, MyGOP, which is sort of like MySpace for Republican grassroots activists. I think the site is a great thing, though it’ll be interesting to see how things develop: They’re rolling out a grassroots-empowering technology at a time when the grassroots aren’t very happy.

WELL, DUH: “Tom Cruise’s star power has dimmed in the eyes of the public, especially women, Reuters reports, citing a USA Today/Gallup poll out Wednesday.”

IMPRISONED EGYPTIAN BLOGGER ALAA is doing well, and even, via sneakernet, blogging from prison.

DARFUR UPDATE: StrategyPage is calling the latest deal a “phony peace.” I hope that’s wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were right.

SLAVERY IN COLORADO? “A Saudi Arabian woman indicted with her husband for keeping a young Indonesian woman in their home as a virtual slave pleaded guilty to reduced charges today in federal court.”

Gateway Pundit has much more, and notes that this is not the first time we’ve seen a case like this.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Ed Feulner writes:

Need proof of how pork-addicted Congress has become? Consider this: Some in the Senate are looking for ways to shift funds from the troops in Iraq to some of their favorite pet projects.

At risk is the $94.4 supplemental spending bill President Bush requested from Congress to provide $92 billion for hurricane relief and the troops in Iraq, and $2.4 billion for avian flu response. Despite his warning that anything more would be vetoed, several senators abused the legislation’s must-pass status to add $14 billion in wasteful pork-barrel goodies for influential constituents, labor unions and corporations.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, introduced several amendments to strip these earmarks, but despite some close votes, all but one lost.

Unable to control their colleagues, 35 senators signed a letter promising to support a veto, and the House of Representatives’ leadership announced it would refuse to accept any supplemental exceeding the $94.4 billion target. Despite these positive signs in favor of spending restraint, some in the Senate want to concoct a face-saving deal with the president to sustain these wasteful proposals. Their plan: Shortchange the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to preserve most of the pork.

Meanwhile, here’s an interview with Coburn:

Sitting in his office on a recent morning after two weeks of constant battle with Senate spenders, Mr. Coburn was upbeat over how much he had managed to save for the American taxpayer.

“Fifteen million,” he boasted wryly, fully grasping what a small dent that put in the $14 billion in added pork.

But he said there was a point anyway.

“But remember, we’re not measuring it that way,” he said of the staggering amount of pork that still got through. “This is a long-term strategy to change the behavior in the Congress and to change that behavior by exciting the American people and having them start paying attention. And they are.”

Mr. Coburn pointed to a poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal that showed the No. 1 priority American voters have for Congress is ending the process of “earmarks,” the special projects that members of Congress insert into spending bills to curry political favor.

That the issue has become of such urgent concern to voters is in no small measure because of the single-minded efforts of Mr. Coburn, who won election to the Senate just two years ago. Before that, he entered the House as one of the Republican “Class of 1994,” but left in 2001, keeping his pledge to serve only three terms.

That the issue has become of such urgent concern also has to do with the extravagant examples of pork that Mr. Coburn has hauled out of the shadows, onto the Senate floor and for days ridiculed on national television.

Ridicule is a key weapon. Fortunately, it’s a target-rich environment.

UPDATE: Reader George Walton offers this summary: “Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan risking their butts, but our senators don’t want to risk their seats.”

Like I said. . . .

IS DEMOGRAPHY DESTINY? PUTIN THINKS SO:

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered women cash to have more babies on Wednesday as he tackled a decline in population that is leaving swathes of the country deserted and threatening to strangle economic growth. In his annual address to the nation, Putin said each year Russia’s population fell by about 700,000 — or about the same as the population of San Francisco. He proposed new financial incentives to nudge up the birth rate.

As Philip Longman has noted, there’s a global baby bust, but it’s worse in some places — chiefly places of a statist bent — than others. Also addressed in the story are efforts to address Russia’s demographic problems by getting people to live longer, healthier lives, something where there’s plenty of room for improvement in contemporary Russia. I’ve got more on that subject in a somewhat diffferent vein, here.

MPAA KILLS FEDEX, with DVD-sniffing dogs.

ILYA SOMIN has thoughts on Iraqi federalism.

And The Mudville Gazette offers an interesting near-and-far look at how things are going.

UPDATE: The Futurist looks at the Brookings data and says all roads converge in 2008. That’s bound to be true, one way or another.

THE REPUBLICAN MARGINAL REVOLUTION: Jon Henke looks at the future of limited government in response to the symposium that’s been going on over at Cato Unbound.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Over at PorkBusters.org, a letter to the Republican leadership from thirty House Republicans urging them to hold the line on the spending bill:

Since the House passed this bill on March 16,2006, the Senate has been adding billions of dollars in non-emergency spending to a measure that is meant to provide emergency h d s to our troops in the field and those still recovering from one of our county’s worst natural disasters.

One particularly egregious earmark seeks $700 million in federal funds to move a railroad track that had just been repaired at a cost of $250 million. Supporters of the project say the rail line needs to be moved because it is vulnerable to hurricane damage. Yet the proposed new location is just a short distance inland and was greatly damaged by Katrina last year. There is well documented evidence that the real reason supporters want this newly repaired rail line moved is to make room for casino development along the Gulf Coast.

While these Senators are fighting to secure money for pet projects, American servicemen and women are awaiting these funds to fight for the cause of freedom. Senators who have been adding billions to the bottom line of this legislation by insisting that pet projects receive funds are jeopardizing the passage of this measure. We applaud President’Bush for issuing a strong veto threat against the bill unless it is under his $92 billion request. We also encourage you to work to strip these unnecessary spending increases from the bill when this measure reaches conference.

Bravo. Nice to see that some Republicans are willing to hold the line on spending.

ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES fell while hiking in the mountains and had to have four vertebrae in her neck fused (she’s lucky she can walk). While she’s recovering, we’re taking turns cooking dinner for her. Tonight’s my turn and I’m taking Insta-Chicken, which travels well. The downside is that the whole house smells great now, and the Insta-Wife has been going around complaining of hunger all afternoon.

TAKING A ROVIAN DIVE? Reader Brandon Haber writes:

With all the disinterest and disgust coming from the electorate to the Republican party, I honestly have to wonder what’s going on. It’s certainly possible that it is legitimate: that the Republicans, as they currently stand, are unfit to govern.

Then I thought about it some more. What if they were intentionally sabotaging the 2006 elections, giving the Democrats a temporary run with power for (hopefully) two years? Put the Democrats in control of Congress, and then the Presidency will stay Republican in ’08. Congress is obviously powerful, but if it’s President Hillary Clinton in 2008, the country is screwed. Putting Democrats like Nancy Pelosi in front of the camera more will definitely help the Republicans in ’08.

It’s a crazy explanation for crazy politics. It’s all a Rovian plot, I tell you – but it’s a gamble that just might work, if true.

Well, it’s certainly more positive than the alternative explanations.

THE LATEST BROOKINGS INSTITUTION DATA FROM IRAQ look good. I wonder why these numbers don’t get more attention?