PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: $4.5 million for a boat nobody wanted — but the real scandal isn’t the spending, but how it got there:

Tucked away on Seattle’s Portage Bay, a sleek, 85-foot speedboat sat idle for years — save for an annual jaunt to maintain its engine.

The Navy paid $4.5 million to build the boat. But months before the hull ever touched water, the Navy gave the boat to the University of Washington. The school never found a use for it, either.

Why would the Navy waste taxpayer dollars on a boat that nobody wanted?

Blame it on Sen. Patty Murray and Congressmen Norm Dicks and Brian Baird. All three exercised their political muscle to slip language into a 2002 spending bill to force the Navy to buy the boat from Edmonds shipbuilder Guardian Marine International.

Year after year, the Washington lawmakers did favors for the tiny company, inserting four “earmarks” into different bills to force the Navy and Coast Guard to buy boats they didn’t ask for — $17.65 million in all. None of the boats was used as Congress intended.

The congressional trio say they were helping Guardian Marine because it had a great product. But each has also received generous campaign donations from the company’s three executives, its sole employees: $14,277 to Baird, $15,000 to Murray, and $16,750 to Dicks.

It’s not really about the pork. It’s about the corruption that the pork represents.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: “‘How does killing them lessen their numbers?’ You must have meant something more intelligent.” Actually, I doubt that.

WHAT IRAN’S DEMOCRACY ACTIVISTS WANT.

HARRY REID’S HOME-STATE APPROVAL RATINGS have plunged. Another Daschle in the making?

MICHAEL YON POSTS another dispatch from Iraq.

THE EXAMINER: Why the silence on Google’s censorship?

Nothing is so fundamental in a republican democracy as freedom of speech and thought, yet the reaction among folks who normally go ballistic over the slightest restraint on political speech is strangely mute. . . . Google claims its policy is to stay out of trademark disputes by removing any ad that is judged by the trademark holder to be a violation. Aside from questions about ideological bias or inconsistency in how Google enforces its policy, a more fundamental issue is at stake here — enabling abuse of a commercial trademark as a means of squelching dissident political speech. . . . If Google maintains this policy, it will be handing a powerful tool for crushing dissent not only to political groups like MoveOn.org but to every corporation with a trademarked name.

Indeed.

WINNING ARGUMENTS, the Frank Rich way!

FROM MAURICE STUCKE, some thoughts on antitrust law in the 21st century.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Howard Lovy on the untold story of dendrimers.

IN THE MAIL: Bill Katovsky’s The World According to Gore: The Incredible Vision of the Man Who Should be President. You’ll never guess who blurbed it!

Plus, Paul Slansky’s Idiots, Hypocrites, Demagogues, and More Idiots: Not-So-Great Moments in Modern American Politics.

A NANOTECHNOLOGY OPPORTUNITY — AND MORE: I used to be on the Board of the Foresight Nanotech Institute, and still write about nanotechnology quite a bit. This has paid off in that InstaPundit readers are now invited to attend the Foresight Vision Weekend, a high-level gathering normally only open to Senior Associates. More on that get-together here. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in the subject, or in rubbing shoulders with a lot of very high-level tech-types you’d find it hard to meet in one place otherwise. I’ve been many times (I may attend this one, though it involves air travel, which I’m a bit sour on at the moment . . . ) and it’s always been a terrific experience.

AGREEING WITH AHMADINEJAD: The Columbia professor who also thinks there are no gays in the Middle East.

MICHAEL YON EMAILS:

All the talk back in America of partitioning Iraq is a mistake. There is some desire by the Kurds, but overall Iraqis seem very much against the idea of partition.

On another note, during a CNN interview this weekend, I reiterated what I have been saying for some time:

“I’ve seen a very serious change in the seas. I’m not predicting this but I would not be at all surprised to see a precipitous drop in violence in Iraq in general over the next six months or so. I just would not be surprised based on the things that I’m seeing in Nineveh province, out in Anbar, up in Baghdad and out in Diyala and out here. Will it last, nobody knows, but it’s certainly, the indicators are starting to look better and better.”

Let’s hope that continues. This seems like good news, too.

UPDATE: In a followup email, Michael writes:

Al Qaeda is in trouble in Iraq. The civil war that was growing in 2005, and then began erupting in 2006, is now on the decline. I was extremely worried during 2006 that al Qaeda would succeed by engulfing Iraq in civil war, but the Iraqis I speak with in various provinces are now smart about what AQI was up to. AQI tactics are backfiring — hugely backfiring. Strangely, al Qaeda, who nearly caused a complete meltdown, is becoming helpful in uniting Iraq. Strange world, Glenn!

AQI is still dangerous, but they are losing ground month by month. This is a good article.

And here’s much more on that subject, rounded up by Fausta Wertz. (Bumped).

“WIRE LAW” FAILED LOST G.I.: “U.S. intelligence officials got mired for nearly 10 hours seeking approval to use wiretaps against al Qaeda terrorists suspected of kidnapping Queens soldier Alex Jimenez in Iraq earlier this year, The Post has learned.”

RAISING MONEY AT the Lifeboat Foundation. David Brin gave!

A CHART THAT DESERVES MORE ATTENTION: Average income tax rates by income group. Over time. Note that taxes on the bottom 75% have dropped significantly, while taxes on the top 1% are the same as 1990.

ERIC SCHEIE VENTURES INTO KREMLINOLOGY, and also manages to find a Che t-shirt that looks like it could create all sorts of amusing commotion.

CANCER DEATH RATES ARE dropping faster than ever. Well, good.

UPDATE: More here, and without the offensive reader comments. Meanwhile Art Fougner, MD emails: “It’s Bush’s fault!”

A BRAIN DRAIN at the legacy media.

GEORGE WILL:

In 1943, the Supreme Court, affirming the right of Jehovah’s Witnesses children to refuse to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag in schools, declared: “No official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” Today that principle is routinely traduced, coast to coast, by officials who are petty in several senses.

Indeed.