BLAMING AL GORE AND ME: It’s a fair cop.

THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT HAS BEEN REINTRODUCED, and here are some thoughts on what it might mean.

Personally, given the tendencies of the people who run universities and government agencies, I’d like to see ironclad nondiscrimination rules on race, sex, and sexual preference. But without the usual loopholes for politically correct discrmination.

UPDATE: Eric Scheie: “NOW is endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”

RICH HAILEY:

Can you think of anything good coming from establishing a troop withdrawal deadline? Anything at all?

Except of course, for getting a Democrat into the White House. And that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?

That’s alway the point nowadays.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

Why the liberal furor over 300? . . . there seems to be an almost elemental anger that such a ‘simplistic’ take on good and evil—West good, East bad—reduced to comic book simplicity has hoodwinked the Neanderthal class in the way they were led by the nose to Iraq by the Bush/Cheney nexus.

But what they fail to grasp is why 300 took off, and, say for example, Oliver Stone’s Alexander bombed, a take that had all the hot-button Hollywood issue from easy homosexuality to the inner crisis over ‘what it all means.’ But critics forget that there were 4 key differences between those two films.

Read the whole thing. Part of it is that the movie industry — or at least the critic section thereof — is stuck in the 1970s, when moral ambiguity and angst used to be groundbreaking and novel. Now they’re overdone, predictable and boring.

HOW BLOGS opened up Microsoft.

POT, KETTLE: A look at what goes on in the comments sections at The Washington Post.

Some related thoughts here.

GENERATING HYDROGEN FUEL ON DEMAND from magnesium and water? Sounds too good to be true. Though I’d be happy to be wrong about that.

UPDATE: But it looks like I’m not. Various readers emailed, but this from chemist Derek Lowe is clearest:

As I’m sure several heaps of people have already emailed you about, magnesium gives off hydrogen as a matter of course when it’s submerged in water. You’re left with magnesium hydroxide, an insoluble white powder. The problem with this (and similar ideas using boron, aluminum, etc.) is that you need energy to get the free metal to start with, and plenty of energy to recycle the oxides back to the metal (when that’s practical at all – it often isn’t).

All the press-release talk about how this process doesn’t release carbon dioxide ignored the production of the metals, as far as I can see. . .

Sounds like the process is of limited utility overall.

CLOSE CALL: “Pieces of space junk from a Russian satellite coming out of orbit narrowly missed hitting a jetliner over the Pacific Ocean overnight.”

More on space debris here.

GIULIANI ON ECONOMICS: David Weigel and Stephen Moore are impressed. “So is Rudy carving out a niche as the fiscal conservative candidate who’ll govern like Reagan without the speeches to the March for Life?”

UPDATE: Steve Forbes to endorse Giuliani.

SCUM.

UPDATE: More scum.

IN THE MAIL: Brink Lindsey’s new book, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture. Best quote from the blurbs: “Republicans want to go home to the United States of the 1950s while Democrats want to work there.”

Guess that’s why I’m not either. I’d rather live in the 21st Century. And the 22d!

A REPORT ON MCCAIN’S conference call with bloggers. One quote: ”I strongly recommend to the White House that the president read the list of pork to the American people when he vetoes this bill.”

THOUGHTS ON THE IMPACT OF T.V. VERSUS PRINT, from Ann Althouse: “Why does TV make me so much more hostile to her? Is the important message in the words or in the whole picture as experienced via television? Is this just about me and Hillary, or is this something more general about TV and print?”

“YOUTHS” RIOT in Paris.

BILL ROGGIO: “Al Qaeda in Iraq is conducting a full fledged chemical war in Anbar province.”

Al Qaeda used to posture as heroic resistance against the West. Now they’re gassing Muslims.

JIM WEBB’S AIDE, PROSECUTORIAL DISCRETION, AND GUN LAWS: Eugene Volokh has some thoughts.

NATIONAL REVIEW: Gonzales should go.

AS INSTAPUNDIT READERS KNOW, I’m a big fan of compact fluorescent light bulbs. But there’s a difference between thinking that something’s worth encouraging people to do, and thinking that people should be forced to do it. Or at least there should be. Katherine Mangu-Ward looks at Big Brother’s light bulb forays.

A BOB BARR FLIP-FLOP: “Bob Barr, who as a Georgia congressman authored a successful amendment that blocked D.C. from implementing a medical marijuana initiative, has switched sides and become a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project.”

I’m glad to see the change, but I wish it had come while he was, you know, in a position to actually legislate on it.

LAW PROFESSORS ON American Idol? Well, they need something to spice the show up after Gwen Stefani’s lame performance.

SCOTT BURGESS interviews Michael Crichton.

YOUR CONGRESS AT WORK: “Spring Break may delay war funds.”

OUCH: “Despite years of attempts from every major phone-maker and service provider, music phones are still little more than spring-loaded bear traps for foolish early adopters.” That seems a bit harsh.

MICKEY KAUS: “Has National Review gone wobbly on immigration?”

THIS NOT-RUNNING SEEMS TO BE WORKING PRETTY WELL FOR FRED THOMPSON:

He’s not even a candidate yet, but Fred Thompson already has risen to third among possible Republican presidential candidates, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Tuesday.

He seems to be doing well with InstaPundit readers, though interestingly Rudy Giuliani is doing better against Thompson with InstaPundit readers than he is overall.