NEXT YEAR’S political bathroom bust, today!

ON THE UPSIDE, IT WOULD REDUCE CARBON EMISSIONS: “Gasoline prices could rise to about $9 per gallon if the United States withdraws troops from Iraq prematurely, Rep. Jon Porter said he was told on a trip to Iraq that ended this week.”

“Could?” Yeah. Would? Doubtful.

EDWARDS VS. THE SUV: More from The Politico. “Of course, none of this automotive stuff holds a candle (to choose an unsafe metaphor) to the gas they’re all burning with those private jets.”

Because it’s all about The Hypocrisy!

A ROUNDUP OF LARRY CRAIG REACTIONS IN THE BLOGOSPHERE, at The New York Times. I agree that this is the worst part of the Craig story:

According to the police report, the senator presented a business card and asked, “What do you think about that?”

Bathroom sex — or the possible attempt to obtain same — is one thing. Abuse of power is another.

UPDATE: Well, yeah.

AFTER AMES: From Brian Pickrell, a look at where the GOP candidates stand in Iowa, three weeks after the straw poll.

EATING MEAT IS WORSE THAN DRIVING: “But didn’t you know this already?”

TNR TAKE NOTE: Wesley Morgan demonstrates what to do when you’re taken in by a bogus story.

GIRLS GONE MILD.

UPDATE: Related item here: “Fortunately, my daughter shares my goals: She wants to look stylish while still sweet, trendy but not trampy. The designers at Limited Too, a shrine to ‘tween fashion, and I differ on how to achieve this.”

JAMES FALLOWS: “I think it’s silly to complain that David Petraeus’s 20-year-old PhD dissertation from Princeton has lots of vapid passages. I’ll make this challenge (though I probably won’t take the time actually to carry it out): give me any 20-year-old PhD dissertation in the social sciences, and I will show you lots of vapid passages.” Yeah, if they aren’t there to begin with, the committee will make the candidate add them.

BILL HOBBS HAS MORE on the FEC/ACT/Soros story. More campaign-finance related news here.

“BRAVE” ARTISTS liken Osama to Jesus.

I GUESS IT’S GOOD THAT THEY’RE PREPARING:

What may be the largest pandemic planning exercise ever conducted in the U.S. is set to begin next month. The dry run will force financial services firms to operate with shrinking numbers of employees — on paper, at least.

More than 1,800 organizations have signed up to participate in the three-week simulation, which is being sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

I hope we never need to use the knowledge it produces, though.

PUMPING OIL FROM THE BOTTOM OF THE GULF:

Even better, a recent discovery by Chevron has signaled that soon there may be vastly more oil gushing out of the ultradeep seabeds — more than even the optimists were predicting four years ago. In 2004, the company penetrated a 60 million-year-old geological stratum known as the “lower tertiary trend” containing a monster oil patch that holds between 3 billion and 15 billion barrels of crude. Dubbed Jack, the field lies beneath waters nearly twice as deep as those covering Tahiti, and many in the industry dismissed the discovery as too remote to exploit. But last September, Chevron used the Cajun Express to probe the Jack field, proving that petroleum could flow from the lower tertiary at hearty commercial rates — fast enough to bring billions of dollars of crude to market.

Much more at the link.

UPDATE: A geologist reader thinks the above is a bit overstated on current facts: ” ‘Jack’ was a nice discovery, and does indeed confirm potentially commercial oil recovery from a new trend, but it in no way proves up 15 billion barrels. The initial well and test does not even prove up a commercial field – we will need several more wells to confirm the extent and continuity of the discovery (at over $100 million each). . . . . That said, the federal lease sale the other day attracted a very large number of bids by BP in deep water Gulf of Mexico – I haven’t plotted just what acreage they bid on, but it might indicate they are also optimistic about this trend (or a different one). Notably, Chevron did not bid on a lot of acreage – either they already have all they want of the trend, or they don’t think it’s as good as it is being marketed.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Stu Wagner emails:

Your geologist writer is correct, Jack by itself is not that big (there are probably only a handful in the world that are more than 3 billion bbls). But it is one of several discoveries in the Lower Tertiary trend in the deep-water GOM. Consequently, multiple discoveries could aggregate enough reserves to justify a large-scale development with central production facilities, even in thousands of feet of water. However, cost and technology means it will take years to bring on to production.

I find it interesting that we’re messing with deep-water reserves with meaningful environmental risk from hurricanes, etc. while billions of bbls lie under the North Slope of Alaska, where there’s existing infrastructure to carry the oil to market (the TAPS pipeline) and the environmental hurdles and challenges are far less than in 10,000’ of water (not to mention much lower cost and years quicker to market)…..

We have a highly dysfunctional political system.

BEWARE THE HORROR OF “CELL-PHONE FACE:” But happily there are spa treatments for that.

AMERICA: Exporting high wages!

UPPING THE ANTE: A 12-megapixel pocketcam that goes to 6400 ISO. I don’t care about the extra megapixels, but the higher sensitivity is nice — I like to take available light pictures, and sometimes there’s not as much light available as I’d like.

AMY ALKON ON the homoerotic Taliban.

A BIG FEC FINE for the Soros-backed ACT. Seems to me to be evidence of why campaign-finance regulation is a crock — the election is years over, the group is shut down, and while the fine’s big by historical standards it isn’t really all that big considering. It’s as if the whole thing is a sham or something.

ANTIGUN PROTEST FIZZLES: “A swarm of two showed up to protest guns and gun stores near Seattle yesterday.” This minuscule turnout seems to be common.

FLAMING AND BURNING: A report from Greece.

A RATHER COOL photo.

LOOKS LIKE DURHAM WILL SETTLE with the falsely-accused lacrosse players, according to K.C. Johnson, whose book is still up at number 307.

JOHN EDWARDS: SPORTUTES FOR ME, but not for thee. The photo is pretty damning.

UPDATE: Sorry — the link seems to have killed Hedgehog Report. The topic was John Edwards’ statement that we’d have to give up SUVs. Here’s the photo of Edwards’ house, with SUVs indicated. Though, really, the house itself should be damning enough where talk of energy conservation is concerned.

MORE: Professor Bainbridge comments: “Does this remind anybody else of Ted Kennedy’s simultaneous support for renewable energy and opposition to the wind farm proposed to be built near his Massachusetts home? It’s a particularly nasty form of NIMBYism when you have the power to force others to make sacrifices you aren’t willing to make.”

MICKEY KAUS GIVES UP: “I have run out of ways of saying that the LAT is a pathetic stuffy, faux-newspaper run by respectable liberal twits and doomed to die!”

THOUGHTS ON THE ANTI-PETRAEUS TALKING POINTS, from Greyhawk in Baghdad.