THOMPSON QUITS PRESIDENTIAL RACE: Er, Tommy Thompson, that is.

IS HURRICANE DEAN in the process of forming?

FASHION TV: Ann Althouse and Robin Givhan on Bloggingheads.tv.

SHIFTING JUSTIFICATIONS for a gun ban in San Francisco.

MICHAEL SILENCE: “I am officially declaring privacy dead.” The Patriot Act is not involved.

MICHAEL YON emails this link and adds: “When I wrote in 2006 that I would not be surprised to see a base overrun in Afghanistan in 2007, some people called me a traitor. . . . We are winning in Iraq. Make no mistake about that. But we are losing in Afghanistan.”

Don’t know if that’s right, though I tend to trust Yon’s judgment– here’s the latest roundup on Afghanistan from StrategyPage — but it’s clear that it needs more attention and that it’s not getting enough. I also think that the drug warriors have been undermining the real war there.

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “BTW drug warriors have done an awful lot to wreck economies, promote lawlessness, engender corruption and create illicit economies all over the third world, thus making people of color both miserable and dead. When do they get all the credit they deserve for that?”

To be fair, they’ve done plenty of harm here at home, too.

MORE: Clandestine weapons to Iraq? Probably actually destined for Iranian revolutionaries who will rise up in the spring. . . .

STILL MORE: John Wixted rounds up reports and comments: “I would be reluctant to disagree with Yon’s analyses of Iraq (even if they did not correspond to my own analyses, which they do), but I don’t think that his account of Afghanistan is correct. The Taliban are rising, but they are simply being eradicated on a regular basis.” I hope that analysis is correct.

JOHN PODHORETZ: “I hate to be nasty, but anybody who takes the Ames Straw Poll results seriously is an idiot.”

DAVE HARDY: “Some more revelations on how far CA is sliding toward the British standard, where you cannot defend yourself, yet the government will not enforce its rules, either.”

“IS THE WASHINGTON POST smoking pot again?”

Plus, what happened to Drew Carey?

MORE ENVIRONMENTAL HYPOCRISY, this time in Los Angeles government. Rules and self-restraint are for the little people.

MORE ON CHINESE CENSORSHIP, from James Fallows.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE GOES ALL California-superior on Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. “How is it that we persist in allowing these unrepresentative, yahoo infested, pissant states [to] decide who gets to run for President?”

Now that’s not very nice. But I think the answer is, to piss off Californians and New Yorkers, something that the rest of the country agrees on . . . .

UPDATE: Bainbridge is guestblogging at Andrew Sullivan’s place, for those who missed it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts from Ed Driscoll.

ADDICTED TO REALITY TV: Hey, it’s hard to resist Sunset Tan.

BIONIC ARMS AND MORE: Reporting from DarpaTech.

100,000 MEET TO PLAN A GLOBAL CALIPHATE: Gateway Pundit has the scoop.

277 REASONS TO HAVE SEX.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The New York Times sniffs out some healthcare pork:

Despite promises by Congress to end the secrecy of earmarks and other pet projects, the House of Representatives has quietly funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to specific hospitals and health care providers under a bill passed this month to help low-income children.

Instead of naming the hospitals, the bill describes them in cryptic terms, so that identifying a beneficiary is like solving a riddle. Most of the provisions were added to the bill at the request of Democratic lawmakers. . . .

Republicans sometimes did the same thing when they controlled Congress. Under a 1999 law, for example, a small hospital in rural Dixon, Ill., was deemed to be in the Chicago area — 95 miles away — at the behest of its congressman, J. Dennis Hastert, who was then speaker.

Meet the new boss, yada yada. (Via Prairie Pundit).

GOOGLE: When ownership isn’t ownership.

Notice that Google called these videos “purchased” and “download to own” — as though by buying them, they became your property. Funny kind of property, that. Imagine if these were DVDs: one day, a man from Virgin Megastore shows up at your door and says, “We’re taking away all your videos. Sorry! But we’ll give you a credit to spend at a different store. Not a credit for videos, though. Also: it expires in 60 days.”

This is a giant, flaming middle finger, sent by Google and the studios to the customers who were dumb trusting enough to buy DRM videos. How many of these people will trust the next DRM play from Google (no doubt coming soon from YouTube) or the studios?

Don’t “buy” products from people and companies you don’t trust.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA: The Carnival of Cars is up! So is the Carnival of Recipes, focusing on slow cookers this time. (Here’s one of my slow-cooker recipes). But wait, here’s another Carnival of the Recipes.

There’s also a new Carnival of Homeschooling, and a new Haveil Havalim. I’m not keeping up with the carnival explosion, but you can get more by visiting BlogCarnival.com — and there are regularly updated highlights in the box in my right sidebar.

THOUGHTS ON WEALTH AND POVERTY from Tam. Also, fashion.

BEAUCHAMP UPDATE: “It seems silly and rather sad for The New Republic to be crawling further and further out on the limb for this guy when he’s all but sawn it off.”

WILL BUSH VETO THE lobbying “reform” bill?

“IN ALL FAIRNESS, YOUR SITE HAS POSTED AWFUL THINGS:” Harold Ford to Markos, on Meet the Press. Video at the link.

UPDATE: Are we seeing Markos going mainstream and leaving the netroots behind?

KITCHEN BLEG: I’ve got some pretty decent, but not top-quality, kitchen knives. My brother recently bought some much more expensive ones, and says the difference is big. I’m thinking of upgrading — I do a lot of cooking around here — and wonder if there’s really a big difference between, for example, these high-priced Wusthof knives and these “budget” Wusthof knives. Any other suggestions also welcomed.

CURIOUS DEVELOPMENTS in the Goose Creek case. Dan Riehl continues to follow things.