THERE’S LOTS OF ADVICE FOR FIRST-YEAR LAW STUDENTS, but here’s a post with advice for rising second-year law students.

I WOULD HAVE HAPPILY DONATED A MOBIUS DICK CD TO THE CAUSE: Gateway Pundit has pictures from an Iranian rave.

IT’S HARD OUT THERE FOR A MAN, and Fausta has thoughts on why. Oprah is involved.

GEORGE W. BUSH: The President who reads too much!

WILL HILLARY HAVE a Billy Carter problem?

HARVESTING STEM CELLS without harming the embryo. This, if it proves out, should mollify pro-life opponents of embryonic stem-cell research, though it won’t please Leon Kass types who simply don’t like the idea of these new treatments at all. Hey, if longer, healthier lives don’t appeal to you, we’re just not on the same page.

DOKTOR FRANK REPORTS that his novel, King Dork, has been nominated for a Quill Award.

You can vote on it here and here.

A LOOK AT THE SECURITY SITUATION IN IRAQ. And here’s more from ABC News.

UPDATE: Civilian deaths in Iraq decline. I think you can make too much of these trends, but it’s interesting that they seem to get reported a lot more when they’re bad.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Wixted has more warnings about mistaking random fluctuations for long-term trends. He’s right, but as I say the news coverage often seems non-random.

SNAKES ON THE INTERNET: The picture even looks a bit like Oliver Willis.

UPDATE: Oliver doesn’t like this post. Gee, you think he’d be happy to be compared to a movie star . . . .

STIX NIX DIX CHIX: Plus, a fervent defense of Islamic principles.

HOWARD DEAN’S OLD WEBMASTER will be working for John McCain.

MORE ON WEIGHT LOSS AND REAL FOOD AT The Crisper. I agree with his thoughts on BMI, too.

Plus, I should mention that Nina Planck’s website has a bunch of useful resources. And her book certainly seems to be selling well.

UPDATE: Related post at Electric Venom.

MORE: Forget the Summer of Love. This is the Summer of Food!

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Another pro-PorkBusters editorial:

The game goes like this: Each member must pretend to be fiscally responsible. They loudly decry “pork” and/or “fat” in the budget.

However, when it comes to their own district or state what might otherwise be labeled as “pork” turns into a vital public works project.

Therein lies the difficulty. Vital projects and pork projects each happen so frequently that it is difficult to tell the two apart.

But now a disparate group of watchdog organizations have come together in an attempt to provide more transparency to the process. The coalition produced a single database of what are called congressional “earmarks” and each group provides access to that database from its own Web site.

This isn’t all that novel, but the twist is that the coalition wants ordinary citizens to examine the list and to investigate any earmarks that catch their eye and report back via either blog or e-mail.

This operates on the theory that local people may be able to provide the best insights as to the relative merits of a particular earmark.

Nice that people are noticing. Meanwhile, Mark Tapscott is happy with Frist’s response today, but has some further questions. And Human Events’ Robert Bluey says they’ll hold Frist to his promise.

Plus, a look at pork and agro-terrorism.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Pope sacks astronomer over evolution debate.

Or maybe the guy was just working too hard.

UPDATE: Or was he fired after all?

BLOG SWEEPS WEEK HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO RUN ALL YEAR: Pamela Atlas is bikini-videoblogging from the beach.

UPDATE: What’s next, striptease at funerals? Hey, whatever brings an audience, I guess . . . .

“RIGHT NOW, TOM VILSACK IS TAKING PIANO LESSONS:” Mike Huckabee was born to be wild.

AS THE KATRINA DISCUSSION HEATS UP, I thought it might be worth linking my lessons from Katrina post from last year.

I also recommend this Katrina retrospective from Lou Dolinar of Newsday. There’s this, too.

PLANE GROUNDED after 12 passengers showed suspicious inflight behavior.

WHY WE NEED TRANSPARENT GOVERNMENT:

How good is government at wasting our tax dollars? Consider the Department of Homeland Security.

It’s not yet five years old, but it’s already experienced at throwing away cash. A recent congressional report found that 32 DHS contracts “experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending or mismanagement.” Federal credit cards were used to buy beer-brewing equipment and iPods. Tax money was squandered on luxury hotels and “training” sessions at golf and tennis resorts.

Altogether, those contracts cost the government — meaning you and me — $34 billion. Sadly, a lot of that was wasted.

DHS says it can solve the problems — if it can hire more inspectors. “We need more,” Elaine Duke, the DHS chief procurement officer, told lawmakers. “We have an increase coming in the current ’07 budget of about 200 additional [workers], and we are working towards needing even more over time.”

But the answer isn’t to hire more bureaucrats to supervise what the current bureaucrats are doing. There’s a simpler, cheaper and more permanent solution: Allow 300 million Americans to review how government spends our money.

Meanwhile, it’s easy to see how dangerous things can be when you get corruption in national security matters. Just look at Israel:

The serious news is that the IDF’s reserve forces were a shambles when they mobilized. Information from an inside source reveals that, when the reserves’ warehouses and depots were opened, key stocks were missing – stolen.

What was gone? Fuel, weapons, ammunition, food, spare parts – all that a modern military needs to go to war. And I doubt it ended up in Iceland.

Trent Telenko speculated that this sort of thing was a problem earlier.

A NEW WORLD DIESEL SPEED RECORD: In excess of 350 miles per hour. (Via L’Ombre de l’Olivier).

UNLOCK INTERNET OR RISK LOSING STAFF:

Jobseekers will think twice about employers who lock down work internet access, a senior Microsoft executive said today.

“These kids are saying: forget it! I don’t want to work with you. I don’t want to work at a place where I can’t be freely online during the day,” said Anne Kirah, Microsoft Senior Design Anthropologist.

“People that I meet are saying this to me every day, all over the world.”

In fact, I was saying it months ago.

DEBORAH FRISCH UPDATE: “As far as we know, she is now the first troll of the political blogosphere to face criminal charges relating to that activity.”

UPDATE: More thoughts from John Cole.

OVER AT HOT AIR, GUESTVLOGGER BETHANY FROM REALVERSE looks at the Josh Wolf case. Honestly, the most damning things for Wolf are the remarks from his own attorney.

QUESTIONS ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH’S CREDIBILITY.

JULES CRITTENDEN on why terrorism against Fox News isn’t news: “Fox newsmen don’t command the same level of sympathy and interest in our largely left-leaning media that [Jill] Carroll did.”