THE POLITICO: “Antiwar leaders stymied, frustrated.”

Best sentence: “It shows the tightrope Democrats have to walk with an angry group of liberal organizers who are sensing defeat.” Defeat is not an option! Except, you know, in the war. Where it’s not just an option, but a goal.

THERE’S STILL FALLOUT FROM THE DUKE NON-RAPE CASE, and K.C. Johnson has a roundup.

THERE’S NO BUSINESS like Hsu’s business.

DO MARKETS GIVE US too many choices?

At least these discussions produce hot Megan-on-Megan action in the blogosphere.

A BELIEF IN PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKES — against the Petraeus Report, anyway.

UPDATE: Related items here and here. I’ve noticed that the mantra has gone from “listen to the generals” to “stop hiding behind the generals.” Whatever. Jules Crittenden has related thoughts.

Me, I’ll go with the peaceniks and say stay five years.

UPDATE: I thought it was wrong to question people’s patriotism. Apparently, not always.

SURGING POLLS.

THOUGHTS ON THE GENDER WARS, from John Tierney. And read this post by Tierney, too.

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: Islamists slip in Moroccan elections.

THROUGH THE MAGIC OF AMAZON RECOMMENDATIONS, I ran across 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education. Here’s one: “#15 Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it ‘opportunity.'”

Sounds kind of like what Tony Woodlief was saying.

UPDATE: My 17 year old nephew gets this — he’s been working (in a very grunt-level capacity) at a helicopter outfit and taking lessons with the money he’s made. My sister just emailed that he had his solo flight tonight. I’m very proud of him.

STRANGE BUT HSU: The Norman Hsu scandal just gets weirder.

Meanwhile, in the New York Times, more questions about the money:

At the center of the ever-deepening mystery of Norman Hsu, the fugitive fund-raiser who was captured after a brief flight from the law last week, is the question of how he evolved from a bankrupt swindler in 1992 to a wealthy donor to many Democratic candidates, and a bundler of campaign contributions to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2007. . . .

The records show that Components Ltd., a company controlled by Mr. Hsu that has no obvious business purpose and appears to exist only on paper, has paid a total of more than $100,000 to at least nine people who made campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton and others through Mr. Hsu. The payments occurred in the spring of 2003, several months before Mr. Hsu emerged as a contributor to Democrats and more than a year before he started bundling checks from those same people for various campaigns. In all, he has raised more than $1 million for Democrats. . . . Since Mr. Hsu’s fall from grace, efforts to learn more about the nature of his business and the source of his wealth have led mostly to dead ends.

Read the whole thing. And there’s more here.

PRESS-ROOM PANIC at the Univision debate.

THOUGHTS ON NANOETHICS, from David Brin.

OF FLACKS AND FLAK.

HEH.

I BLAME THE ALIEN OVERLORDS: “A reminder if you’re trying to get around today: 35W is closed between two exit ramps – specifically, the 8th street ramp in Duluth and the last exit before the Iowa border. I-94 is on fire in the Midway area ; winged monkeys are hurling cement blocks on 169, and 280 has been closed – and I’m quoting from the press release here – ‘to block off all possibility of escape and allow the dark army of soul-harvesting machines to fulfuill their horrible duty.'”

SIX YEARS LATER: Remembering Massoud.

PC WORLD: The fastest Windows Vista notebook tested is a MacBook Pro: “Sleek, powerful, and able to run Windows as well as the Mac operating system, the MacBook Pro makes a strong case for becoming anyone’s ultimate notebook. . . . The MacBook Pro outperformed the rest of the notebooks we tested, all of which claim Windows as their primary–nay, their only–operating system.”

CONSUMERISM RULES, even in virtual worlds. Hypothesis: People like having stuff, and it makes them happy. Interestingly, they also like to work for it.

DESIGNING rational, self-improving Artificial Intelligence.

TEACHING YOUR BABY TO Say Wiiii! There’s video.

EUROPE TURNS RIGHT: “Make no mistake: newly-elected conservative European leaders did not win their elections because they are pro-American, they won despite it.” Which makes the shift more significant, I’d say.

A LOOK AT Bin Laden and the Blogosphere.

Related item here.

POLICE TO INSTALL KEYSTROKE LOGGERS in Mumbai’s cyber-cafes.

IN THE MAIL: Zephyr Teachout, et al., Mousepads, Shoe Leather, and Hope: Lessons from the Howard Dean Campaign for the Future of Internet Politics. I suspect that Republicans in particular should be reading this and learning.

NOT FAST ENOUGH: Is humanity getting smarter?