MORE ANTI-JUNTA PROTESTS IN BURMA: Gateway Pundit has a roundup. Plus, protests in New York against Ahmadinejad.

A HANDS-0N PREVIEW of the new Nikon D3.

WHAT HATH BOLLINGER WROUGHT: “As the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, prepares to address Columbia University today amid a storm of student protest, state and city lawmakers say they are considering withholding public funds from the school to protest its decision to invite the leader to campus. In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said lawmakers, outraged over Columbia’s insistence on allowing the Iranian president to speak at its World Leaders Forum, would consider reducing capital aid and other financial assistance to the school.”

Plus this criticism: “The issue we see with Columbia is deeper than freedom of speech but rather the inconsistency with which university faculties choose to support it. If men like Richard Bulliet and Lee Bollinger, and women like Lisa Marie Anderson cared about freedom of speech, they might want to enable those who don’t have it, rather than celebrate the men who have taken it away.”

ILYA SOMIN ON MANDATORY NATIONAL SERVICE AND THE YOUNG:

Indeed, the moral case for conscripting the elderly for civilian service is arguably stronger than that for drafting the young. Many elderly people are healthy enough to perform nonstrenuous forms of “national service.” Unlike the young, the elderly usually won’t have to postpone careers, marriage, and educational opportunities to fulfill their forced labor obligations. Moreover, the elderly, to a far greater extent than the young, are beneficiaries of massive government redistributive programs, such as Social Security and Medicare – programs that transfer enormous amounts of wealth from other age groups to themselves. Nonelderly poor people who receive welfare benefits are required to work (or at least be looking for work) under the 1996 welfare reform law; it stands to reason that the elderly (most of whom are far from poor) can be required to work for the vastly larger government benefits that they receive. . . . Why then the focus on the young? I suspect it is because they are politically weak.

Indeed. And read this, too.

SUDAN: “Slow-motion genocide.”

HSU IS HSYMPTOMATIC:

Hsu is hardly the first big fundraiser to create headaches for a candidate. Michigan lawyer Geoffrey Fieger, famous for representing doctor Jack Kevorkian in his trial for assisting suicides, was indicted in August on charges of conspiring to illegally reimburse his firm’s employees for contributions made to the 2004 campaign of John Edwards. And disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was among the “Pioneers” and “Rangers” who gathered $100,000 to $200,000 in campaign cash for President George W. Bush.

Read the whole thing.

MORE ON DDT and Malaria.

A BOY SCOUT TROOP, missing in the Smoky Mountains. I expect they’ll be fine, but it’s hard to appreciate just how big and rough that area is if you’ve never been there.

FLORIDA DEMOCRATS break with the DNC and go ahead with an early primary. As a big swing state, Floridians figure they’re immune to threats of a boycott: “If they choose not to campaign here and they lose? Not our problem.”

PREDICTIONS FROM the Disco era.

JOHN FUND: Republicans should shun Ted Stevens:

It’s time for Senate Republicans to step up to the plate. It’s increasingly clear that their Sen. Stevens has ethically compromised himself and brought shame to the Senate. Will his colleagues continue to kowtow to him as a powerful Appropriations Committee member and allow him to serve on other key committees? Or will they send a signal that they are prepared to shun senators who abuse the public trust?

Read the whole thing. I have to say I agree.