HANDWASHING: Better than antibacterial agents:

The general advice for avoiding infection is basic hygiene — washing hands or using alcohol-based sanitizers, keeping scrapes covered until healed and refraining from sharing personal items like towels and cosmetics.

But some recent laboratory studies suggest that antibacterial products containing triclosan may not be the best way to stay clean. Instead of wiping out bacteria randomly, the way regular soap or alcohol-based products do, triclosan may inhibit the growth of bacteria in a way that leaves a larger proportion of resistant bacteria behind, according to lab studies at Tufts and Colorado State Universities, among others.

The concerns are still theoretical at the moment, but of course by the time they’re not it’ll be a problem. On the other hand, it’s hard to argue with this:

Soap companies say the worry about triclosan takes the focus away from the real culprit: the abuse of antibiotics and the need for better hygiene in general.

Unlike illegal drugs, abuse of antibiotics raises the risk of harming many, many other people. And hand-washing is always good.

Plus, this is your skin infection, in pictures.

MORE HATE in tolerant, multi-culti Europe. “Books calling for the beheading of lapsed Muslims, ordering women to remain indoors and forbidding interfaith marriage are being sold inside some of Britain’s leading mosques, according to research seen by The Times.”

Europe mostly tolerates those whom it fears.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal looks at John Murtha, earmarks and an FBI investigation:

In the massive 2008 military-spending bill now before Congress — which could go to a House-Senate conference as soon as Thursday — Mr. Murtha has steered more taxpayer funds to his congressional district than any other member. The Democratic lawmaker is chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, which will oversee more than $459 billion in military spending this year.

Johnstown’s good fortune has come at the expense of taxpayers everywhere else. Defense contractors have found that if they open an office here and hire the right lobbyist, they can get lucrative, no-bid contracts. Over the past decade, Concurrent Technologies Corp., a defense-research firm that employs 800 here, got hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to Rep. Murtha despite poor reviews by Pentagon auditors. The National Drug Intelligence Center, with 300 workers, got $509 million, though the White House has tried for years to shut it down as wasteful and unnecessary. Another beneficiary: MTS Technologies, run by a man who got his start some 40 years ago shining shoes at Mr. Murtha’s Johnstown Minute Car Wash.

A review by The Wall Street Journal of dozens of such contracts funded by Mr. Murtha’s committee shows that many weren’t sought by the military or federal agencies they were intended to benefit. Some were inefficient or mismanaged, according to interviews, public records and previously unpublished Pentagon audits. One Murtha-backed firm, ProLogic Inc., is under federal investigation for allegedly diverting public funds to develop commercial software, people close to the case say. The company denies wrongdoing and is in line to get millions of dollars more in the pending defense bill.

I’d say that further — and broader — investigation is warranted. Read the whole thing, as it’s a free link.

LARRY SOLUM HAS A LENGTHY POST on originalism and the blogosphere. Some earlier thoughts of mine on originalism can be found here.

HOWARD KURTZ on sex and politics.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, Yale Law Professor Kate Stith corrects her colleague Jed Rubenfeld on Mukasey. (Via Scott Johnson).

MARK FRAUENFELDER bought the Twin Peaks 10-DVD set and likes it: “It’s a terrific package of stuff.” That was a show I never got into, but lots of people felt otherwise.

PUBLIUS: Khodorkovsky 2, Putin 0.

PLEASE START SMOKING: It’s for the children.

OPENING THE TAXI CAB MARKET in Minneapolis.

IN REASON: Is the war in Iraq moving from folly to victory? “All the stated goals of this war have been won.” And yet Brian Doherty isn’t dancing in the streets, exactly.

UPDATE: Some interesting thoughts, plus an amusing bit of “approving-link” snark.

DAVID HOROWITZ LOOKS BACK on Islamo-fascism Awareness Week and pronounces it a success.

THE LOWEST LEVEL OF HURRICANE ACTIVITY IN THIRTY YEARS. But I thought that global warming was going to produce an ever-growing number of hurricanes like Katrina . . . .

Now, however, it’s going to produce an ever-growing number of wildfires like in California. So we should be safe from those for a few years . . . .

UPDATE: The real cause of the wildfires. Unsurprisingly, it’s Bush’s fault!

ANOTHER UPDATE: At TigerHawk, thoughts on climate change tradeoffs. “The point, of course, is not that global warming is a myth. I myself attend the church of anthropogenic climate change, if only on red-letter Sundays. Rather, it is that the proclivity of the activists and journalists who are pushing this story to inflate the threat beyond all credibility is actually damaging the case for an effective response.”

MORE: Clark Stooksbury has got this right: “The irony is that most of the Southeast could use a hurricane. Whatever damage one might do on the coast, if a tropical depression were to dump heavy rains over Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee, it would be a blessing.” Yeah, I’ve been watching the computer models for Noel and wishing that the tracks would shift westward.

MORE ON THE DIFFERENCE between Libertarian and libertarian.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS in the Goose Creek terror case.

COMMON SENSE REFORM for Medicaid.

A LOOK AT HAPPENINGS IN “ever-tolerant multi-culti Europe.”

JAMES LILEKS: “I’ve noticed this: the more elaborate the grocery store promotion, the less likely I’ll care. If the store has Ten Cents Off Everything Day, I’ll show up. If they ask me to produce paperwork or enroll in a program, forget it.” I agree.

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS . . . “Insurgents.”

GETTING IT WRONG — AND NOT CORRECTING IT — at the Los Angeles Times.

Perhaps the correction just hasn’t appeared yet. They don’t move very fast over there.

THOUGHTS ON MANNERS, from Dan Collins.

A RETURN TO CARTERNOMICS?

That’s likely to be as popular as the movie.

THE COLBERT CAMPAIGN JUGGERNAUT, explained:

“Blogs are attracted to shiny objects, and Colbert is nothing if not a shiny object,” Beutler said. “Even serious-minded bloggers can’t resist.”

Mmm. . . . Shiny.

FRED THOMPSON ON GUN RIGHTS, at Field and Stream’s gun blog.

A 410-year-old clam. “The clam, nicknamed Ming after the Chinese dynasty in power when it was born, was in its infancy when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing plays such as Othello and Hamlet.” And for all those years, it was happy as a . . . well, you know.