PUBLIUS: “The municipal government in Volgograd has decided to close down a local newspaper for printing a cartoon showing Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and Moses watching a crowd of clashing people while saying, ‘We never taught them to do that…’ The mayor of the city is quoted as saying that the paper was shut down in order to prevent inter-religious strife; meanwhile, the prosecutor-general is looking to file charges.”

Want people to defer to your religious views and refrain from even the mildest of criticism? Threaten to kill them. Apparently, it works pretty well.

INTERESTED IN FLY-FISHING? Check out The Itinerant Angler, which also has a photoblog, and podcasts, including video on topics like how to make a braided loop, or tie the Davy Knot.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON writes that porkbusting is going bipartisan:

A number of new Congressional proposals have put “earmarks” in the crosshairs. Earmarks are the pet spending items members of Congress request — and which are often slipped into massive appropriations bills behind closed conference committee doors or in the dead of night. These projects are currently not subject to individual up-or-down votes.

And while there are many other areas — including tax and regulatory reform — that would save taxpayers exponentially more than earmark reform, bringing transparency and accountability to this process is an important area where strange ideological bedfellows can join forces.

And this remains for me the most interesting thing about the moves to slice the pork: the way they cut across party lines. Among the competing anti-pork legislation currently jockeying for position in Congress is a Senate bill proposed by John McCain and Tom Coburn and cosponsored by Russ Feingold and Evan Bayh, another introduced by Trent Lott and Diane Feinstein, and a House bill cosponsored by Republican Jeff Flake and Democrat Harold Ford.

The bills vary in scope, strictness and the degree of transparency they require, but they all recognize that something needs to be done to derail the corporate welfare gravy train.

You know something interesting is afoot when Tom Coburn and Barack Obama — and in the blogosphere, TruthLaidBear and Instapundit — are all pushing the same issue.

She’s right that Bush has been fairly limp on this, too.

A LOOK AT THE DIVERSE WISDOM OF BLOGGERS, from Tim Montgomerie, who himself has a blog.

UPDATE: Oops. Had the link to Montgomerie’s blog wrong before. It’s right now. Sorry!

MORE ON THE CARTOON WARS over at GlennReynolds.com. Note that MSNBC is kinda-sorta publishing the cartoons — you have to click on a “warning — offensive” box to see them.

ED DRISCOLL writes on the Spinal Tap media.

A PHILIPPINE COUP? Austin Bay looks at reports.

I’VE GOT A GUEST REVIEW up over at Gizmodo.

IS GOOGLE CENSORING STUFF IN AMERICA? Fred Lapides would like to know.

UPDATE: According to this post at Digg, it’s not Google, but the submitter, who decided that it shouldn’t be playable in the U.S.

IN THE MAIL: Bruce Bartlett’s Impostor : How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy, which seems to be setting off considerable discussion about the “end of conservatism.”

Not being a conservative myself, I don’t have a dog in this hunt, exactly. But remind me again, who was the conservative who had a decent shot at the Republican nomination in 2000? John McCain?

And if the Republicans had nominated a true-blue conservative, rather than a “compassionate conservative,” in 2000 would he have won?

As a libertarian myself, I’d love to see the nation run under small-government principles (which is part of what people are talking about here), but I also recognize that there’s no very substantial base of electoral support for that. (And the Libertarian Party hasn’t done anything to improve things; quite the contrary, it’s probably a net negative.)

You want a True Conservative in the White House? Persuade a majority of Americans that true conservatism is what they want. If you want to start on that, you might take a look at PorkBusters Hall of Shame Grand Prize Winner Ted Stevens (R-AK) and ask if he’s the best face for the Republican Party. Because right now, he is the face of the Republican Party.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: We have a winner in the PorkBusters Hall of Shame. As always, it’s a dishonor just to be nominated, but I certainly do feel that the competitors have given it their all.

SAUDI BLOGGER The Religious Policeman writes:

This is THE big meeting of the OIC, the Organization of the Islamic Conference. So are they finally going to resolve the Darfur conflict, the Brown-Muslim-on-Black-Muslim genocide that has already claimed an estimated 300,000 lives?

Well, actually, no.

As usual, their priorities are elsewhere.

TAMMY BRUCE continues to stand up for women ski-jumpers.

“AN INSTINCT FOR THE CAPILLARY:” I’ve got a piece on the press and the Cheney kerfuffle in today’s Guardian.