I’M GUESSING THAT BILL HOBBS WILL WIN THIS POLL, but I rather doubt the editors of The Tennessean will be moved.

NIDRA POLLER REPORTS on the French parliamentary elections.

WHAT DID THE CIA TELL PRESIDENT BUSH ABOUT IRAQ?

SORRY, BUT THE FOOTNOTE MAKES JUDGE WALTON seem like an ass. And a biased one, at that.

BLOGPOST TITLE OF THE WEEK: “Gaydar Love.”

JOHN PODHORETZ ON THE IMMIGRATION BILL:

It’s a defeat for Bush, because Bush wanted the measure and couldn’t work his will on his own party.

But there’s something else notable here – something that should gladden the hearts of libertarians and all those who are suspicious of big government.

The takedown of this bill is a template for future actions against major pieces of legislation. And like so many templates for action these days, it was made possible by the Internet.

Read the whole thing. Advantage: Bill Quick.

THIS IS RATHER AN OVERSTATEMENT: ” In the world today, there is no truth being told except in the right-wing blogosphere.” It should bother the trad-media that there are so many who feel that way, though, particularly as they’re likely to continue to feel that way regardless of political events over the next few years.

Of course, the “whole picture” doesn’t just include the bad news as well as the worst. Even the presentation of bad news is lazy, inaccurate, and largely useless in making or evaluating policy.

UPDATE: Well, yeah. That’s my point.

HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN: Well, when you turn yourself into a party organ, this happens.

BOYS ARE SMELLY!

LOOKING AT Jihadi ideology.

ED DRISCOLL looks at news media objectivity.

A LOOK AT THE POLITICS OF DEMORALIZATION.

UPDATE: Sounds like Eric S. Raymond was on target.

MORE: Sort-of related item here.

IF YOU LIKED THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS, you might like Tony Woodlief’s latest, Raising Wild Boys Into Men: A Modern Dad’s Survival Guide. I haven’t read it, but I’m a fan of Tony’s work, so I expect it’s worth your time.

RICHARD RORTY HAS DIED: I never knew him, but he and my dad were close.

GORE GOES GREEN:

Al Gore, the environmental activist stung by criticism over his house’s energy efficiency, says renovations are nearly complete to make it a model “green” home.

“This plan has been in the works for a long time,” the former vice president said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press. “The only thing that has changed is that we’re more public about it because of the misleading attack by a global-warming denier group.”

Earlier this year, a conservative group criticized Gore, citing electric bills that were far more than the typical Nashville home. Utility records showed that the Gore family paid an average monthly electric bill of about $1,200 last year for its 10,000-square-foot home.

Still, nice to see that he’s catching up with the environmental pioneers. Of course, the EcoTotality blog was on this story from months ago.

UPDATE: EcoTotality also had this economic analysis of what Gore’s doing. Conclusion: “Economically, Gore’s solar panels are a bad investment. . . . Politically, though, Gore pretty much has to put the solar panels on his roof.”

IS PROSPERITY A problem for the Democrats? “Democrats cannot end the war (actually, they can but won’t), but they can send their tax agenda to the president and dare him to veto it. They can, but they won’t. Do you wonder why?”

A PARLIAMENTARY SWEEP FOR SARKOZY? Fausta Wertz has the scoop.

LIEBERMAN: Bomb Iran. “I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq.”

UPDATE: Iranians respond with bluster. You know, if we had been firm in 1979, they wouldn’t think they could get away with these kinds of threats. If we responded firmly now, we’d get less of that in the future.

But we probably won’t, because our political culture makes a firm response to threats almost impossible. Which is why we get so many.

AUSTIN BAY LOOKS AT BUSH AND ALBANIA, while Gateway Pundit rounds things up and says that Bush is having a good time.

THEY’VE ALREADY USED AMBULANCES, so why should anyone be surprised when Palestinian terrorists use a car labelled “TV” to stage an attack? It’s all upside for them — no significant outrage now, and maybe it’ll lead the Israelis to accidentally shoot up a truck full of real reporters, which will then cause worldwide condemnation. Of the Israelis.

UPDATE: TigerHawk comments:

And when it happens that condemnation will be outrageous precisely because it is so predictable. Palestinian strategists understand the objective, which is to put the Israeli military in an impossible situation. Everybody else also understands the objective, and — this is the big point — everybody understands that the Palestinian strategists understand. It is one giant cesspool of known-knowns, so those who condemn Israel when it happens will be, yes, collaborators.

That’s why it’s hard for me to even pretend to take moralizing in this area seriously.

DON SURBER WONDERS WHY THE PRESS doesn’t write about “the popular death penalty”?

SALENA ZITO looks at Reagan Democrats and 2008.

IN THE MAIL: Peter Ward’s Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future.

Apocalyptic thought: It’s all the rage in some quarters. Which doesn’t make it necessarily wrong.

JOHN TIERNEY:

For Rachel Carson admirers, it has not been a silent spring. They’ve been celebrating the centennial of her birthday with paeans to her saintliness. A new generation is reading her book in school — and mostly learning the wrong lesson from it.

If students are going to read “Silent Spring” in science classes, I wish it were paired with another work from that same year, 1962, titled “Chemicals and Pests.” It was a review of “Silent Spring” in the journal Science written by I. L. Baldwin, a professor of agricultural bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin.

He didn’t have Ms. Carson’s literary flair, but his science has held up much better. He didn’t make Ms. Carson’s fundamental mistake, which is evident in the opening sentence of her book.

Read the whole thing. And he’s got followup posts on his TierneyLab blog, here and here.

DO HIGH CIGARETTE TAXES fund terrorism? Read this post by Wretchard.