ANN ALTHOUSE: “Why not engage with me instead of trying to make me into your enemy? I have supported gay marriage in numerous posts on this blog for almost three years, and I am a law professor who teaches a course in Religion and the Constitution. Why don’t you see me as a valuable ally or, at the least, a person to avoid reprinting lies about?”

I could ask the same thing. In fact, I have!

SCALIA THE civil libertarian?

MICKEY KAUS: “With the midterm election safely in the past, the NYT’s Robert Pear reveals that the Bush administration delegated the task of saving the Medicare drug plan to … a competent civil servant.” Analysts say that this business of holding positive stories until after the election is common media behavior . . . .

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE looks at the Alcee Hastings vs. Jane Harman battle: “In 1989, the Democrat-controlled House impeached hastings by a vote of 413-3, with none other than Nancy Pelosi voting for impeachment. After a trial before a Senate committee, Hastings was convicted of the requisite ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ and duly removed from office by the Senate. Hastings was only the sixth federal judge to be impeached and removed from office in the entire 200+ year history of the US judiciary. If you’ll pardon the pun, given Harman’s unimpeachable credentials, this seems like a very easy choice.” And note the sensible observation from Kevin Drum.

FREE BOOKS FOR THE TROOPS: John Scalzi has arranged for soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to get free copies of his book, The Ghost Brigades.

If that’s you, or someone you know, go here to find out how.

MORE REPORTS OF BOGUS IRAQ STORIES FROM A.P.: Kind of makes you wonder about the reporting from Iraq. Okay, it’s more like “confirms your suspicions” than “makes you wonder,” really.

PUTIN: Set up by the Jews?

Claudia Rosett has a different view.

ATLANTA SHOOTING UPDATE: The story just got a lot worse:

The confidential informant on whose word Atlanta police raided the house of an 88-year-old woman is now saying he never purchased drugs from her house and was told by police to lie and say he did.

Chief Richard Pennington, in a press conference Monday evening, said his department learned two days ago that the informant — who has been used reliably in the past by the narcotics unit — denied providing information to officers about a drug deal at 933 Neal Street in northwest Atlanta.

“The informant said he had no knowledge of going into that house and purchasing drugs,” Pennington said. “We don’t know if he’s telling the truth.”

The search warrant used by Atlanta police to raid the house says that a confidential informant had bought crack cocaine at the residence, using $50 in city funds, several hours before the raid.

In the document, officers said that the informant told them the house had surveillance cameras that the suspected drug dealer, called “Sam,” monitored.

Pennington on Monday evening said the informant told the Internal Affairs Unit hat he did not tell officers that the house had surveillance equipment, and that he was asked to lie.

If this is true, the cops involved should face serious jail time. And this is just more evidence that we need legal protections against these sorts of raids.

EUGENE VOLOKH looks at the romance of engineering.

A LIST OF “insanely great gadgets.” Some of them were news to me, and I’m a gadget kind of guy.

YOU DON’T SAY: “Lure of great wealth affects career choices.”

Plus, this shocker: “The bigger the prize, the greater the effort that people are making to get it.” Someone rewrite the economics textbooks, stat! (Via Ann Althouse),

UPDATE: Reader Byron Scott emails: “The linked article ‘Lure of great wealth affects career choices’ is all about middle-class people moving into upper-class incomes. Just a month ago (you know, prior to the Democrats taking power) all I remember hearing about was how the great divide between the poor and the wealthy was widening. It’s amazing how quickly things turn! Those Democrats must be better than even they tried to convince us they are.”

Heh.

THE DOGS OF CONSTANTINOPLE: Joshua Trevino is blogging from Istanbul.

WINDS OF CHANGE HAS ITS REGULAR IRAQ ROUNDUP posted.

Plus, trying to create an American Madrid?

FRIENDS OF THE EARTH: “Not friends of starving Africans.”

I don’t know — they seem pretty friendly to the idea of starving Africans, to me. . . .

ARNOLD KLING ON AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM: “Compared to the United States, other developed countries, particularly in Continental Europe, put up more regulatory impediments to entrepreneurs, particularly the important subset of entrepreneurs that I will define below as change agents. In underdeveloped countries, regulatory impediments are compounded by crime and corruption, creating an environment even less conducive to entrepreneurship. . . . If the United States is exceptional because of our entrepreneurial culture, then our natural allies may not be in Continental Europe, in spite of its democratic governments and high levels of economic development. China seems more dynamic than Europe, but I would argue that China’s government-controlled financial system ultimately is not compatible with American-style entrepreneurship. Instead, we may have more in common with other nations of the Anglosphere, as well as such entrepreneurial outposts as India, Israel, and Singapore.”

THEY’RE STILL CALLING FOR A BOYCOTT OF PILOT OIL, in response to Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam’s membership in an antigun mayors’ group organized by Mike Bloomberg.

Some of the other members are pretty iffy, but I think this is really bad for Haslam’s statewide ambitions for a simpler reason. His weakness is that he’s seen as a country-clubby guy who cares more about how other rich guys feel about him than about how the voters feel. The Bloomberg thing is just fodder for that.

MAGICAL REALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Chester takes a look at the Iraq study group.

WOULD GROWING OLD BE SO BAD, if people treated you like you were young?

A QUIZ ON DIVERSITY in higher education.

ROWAN CALLICK: “The Democrats are being lauded in Europe and much of the Americas as the heroes of the hour, rescuing the USA from those mad neocons. But in most of Asia the perception is quite different — of the Democrat majority as a threat, an enemy of trade, and a busybody across a broader range of issues than the Republican human rights campaigners with their predictable religious focus. In China especially, where the mid-term election itself attracted little media interest, its outcome is now starting to arouse loudly expressed concern about the future relationship of the two great powers.”

CENTCOM IS DEMANDING A RETRACTION FROM A.P. over bogus Iraq reporting.

BALL OF WHACKS: I got one of these in the mail, too, but unlike Virginia Postrel, I haven’t used it and blogged about it.

TROUBLE NOT THE BLOGGER IN HER LAIR: A lesson that Alcee Hastings hasn’t learned. Yet.

Blog criticism of Hastings has been persistent and harsh enough that he responded Nov. 20 by blasting “anonymous bloggers” in general and conservative Michelle Malkin in particular. “I hope that my fate is not determined by Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael Barone, [Matt] Drudge, anonymous bloggers, and other assorted misinformed fools,” he wrote in a five-page letter to House Democratic colleagues.

The may have done more harm than good to Hastings’ cause, however, because Malkin answered in kind with a post that labeled Hastings a “fool” and his letter to colleagues an “unhinged rant.” She included plenty of background links on the Hastings bribery case and current criticisms of his leadership bid.

“It isn’t just right-wingers objecting to the possibility of a convicted judge for sale chairing the House Intelligence Committee,” she wrote. “In peacetime, Washington can chalk up Hastings’ resurrection to business as usual. In wartime, Washington has no business doing business as usual.”

Hastings is an obviously bad choice. He’s also the perfect target for hostile bloggers — a guy with a really lousy record who’d rather people didn’t think about it, whose every complaint just provides an opportunity to remind people how lousy that record is.

A LIFETIME IN JAIL FOR PORN, in that “Christianist” bastion, the People’s Republic of China.

WELL, THIS SUCKS: “Dave Hermance, the lead engineer of Toyota’s hybrid vehicle development in the U.S., died on Saturdaywhen his small plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles. He was instrumental in bringing the Prius to the U.S., and his passing is a blow to Toyota’s hybrid vehicle program.”