ALL THE GOVERNOR’S MEN: The Spitzer scandal news just keeps on coming. You have to wonder if this fast-and-loose approach to the law suddenly started when he became Governor, or if it characterized his behavior as a prosecutor, too. Governor Nifong?

ROB LONG on the future of the entertainment industry. (Via Kaus). And reader John Hoberg emails:

Hey there. I’ve been reading your site for years, and I’m a big fan. I’m also a TV writer/producer on the NBC show “My Name Is Earl.” So guess what this is about? That’s right, the writers strike.

I don’t know if you’ve seen this YouTube video, but it’s pretty amazing when you consider that the Producers’ insistence there is no money in digital media is the reason thousands of people will lose their jobs in Los Angles in the coming months.

Plus, rebuilding Hollywood in Silicon Valley’s image. But right now, I think the governing philosophy comes from Governor LePetomaine: “Gentlemen, we’ve got to protect our phony-baloney jobs!”

BEWARE THE ice-fishing frenzy!

EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT tortures blogger in prison:

Abdel Karim Soliman, famously now known as Karim Amer, who got jailed for “disdain for religion” and “insulting the president” on his blog, is reportedly getting tortured by the Prison authorities.

Contact information for the Egyptian embassy:

The Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt
3521 International Ct. NW
Washington DC 20008
Phone (202) 895 5400
Fax (202) 244 5131
(202) 244 4319
Email:

HIX NIX PEACENIX PIX.

MICKEY KAUS: “I bristled at Chris Matthews’ breathless pumping up of Obama’s Jefferson-Jackson speech on MSNBC yesterday. Then I read it. It’s a very skillful speech.”

MORE ON SURVIVAL GEAR, from SayUncle.

PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR MY COOKWARE POSTS: There are a lot of ’em. Here’s the one on kitchen mixers. Here’s one on pots and pans. Here’s one on kitchen knives. Here’s one on nonstick pans. And if you want more, try entering “cookware” in the search windows – you should find most of ’em that way.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE Jena 6 money that was raised? “Just weeks after some 20,000 demonstrators protested what they decried as unequal justice aimed at six black teenagers in the Louisiana town of Jena, controversy is growing over the accounting and disbursing of at least $500,000 donated to pay for the teenagers’ legal defense.”

More here.

HILLARY CLINTON attacked by American flags! Video at the link. Alternative spin: Hillary Clinton saves the flag from collapse!

REPORTING LIVE FROM THE LAUNCH OF LAPHAM’S QUARTERLY: What a party! Once again, I was lucky and my flights to and from New York were perfect. The party was lavish, though I thought the larger-than-life nude ice sculptures of Lapham were in questionable taste. Lapham roused the crowd with a stirring speech including this unforgettable line: “One of the problems with contemporary media is it’s without context. In the eternal now of 24-seven, there is no past and no future. The news comes in short phrases or paragraphs, and it’s without the back-story. Without that, how can you write the front story?”

I like to write the front story in advance, from the press release. There’s no past and no future anyway! Lewis should understand. It was the most unforgettable November 14th any of us had ever experienced! Finding the present in the past, and the past in the present. And the future in the present!

SOME BAD P.R. for the Ron Paul campaign.

A POTENTIAL KINGMAKER: Is Lou Dobbs running for President?

READER SCOTT WELSH EMAILS:

I may have missed it but have you posted anything on SCOTUS potentially hearing the DC gun ban case?

If so, can you repost a link because that could be a huge case and it will make the blogosphere explode.

It could be huge. Here’s a story. I did write something about the case in this article for Cato over the summer.

UPDATE: Here’s Linda Greenhouse’s take.

HUFFINGTON POST: Hillary’s planted question — in 1999.

THE UNITED NATIONS: Grabbing for the Internet, in Rio, according to Claudia Rosett.

“TALK TO YOU LATER, BUCKWHEAT!” (Via JWF).

RAND SIMBERG looks at clone confusion.

RON PAUL: TRIMMING HIS SAILS? Well, more like trimming the tree, as he’s not really changing his message, just, um, decorating it. But driving home this afternoon I heard a Ron Paul radio commercial on XM and he’s downplaying the war issue, which was his big schtick not long ago. Now it came third, after “amnesty” on immigration and uncontrolled federal spending. And the commercial never used the words “Iraq” or “war” — it was all about opposing “nation-building” in foreign countries.

Apparently the Paul campaign shares my view that the improving situation in Iraq can be turned into a plus for Paul’s candidacy, not a minus, if the issues are pitched right.

Meanwhile, note this sensible antiwar take from AlterNet, which notes that it’s hard to be against a war that seems to be drawing to a successful close:

All in all, violence in Iraq has dropped precipitously since late summer. With Al Qaeda declared dead, former Sunni resistance fighters wearing American-supplied uniforms, and the Mahdi Army lying low, killings in Iraq are way down. The security situation in Iraq is far better than it’s been at any time since 2005. Many American antiwar critics, who are invested in the notion that no good news can come out of Iraq and who (secretly or openly) revel in the Bush administration’s Iraqi failures, are reluctant to admit that things are getting better.

Perhaps they worry that, if the situation in Iraq improves, the prospect of Democratic gains at the polls next November will diminish. Perhaps they’ve convinced themselves that Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian divide is so enormous that partition is the only solution, and that Iraq doesn’t deserve to be a country anyway. Perhaps their distaste for President Bush (which I share) is so all-consuming that they fear any improvement in the situation will be credited to the President — something they can’t tolerate.

If so, that’s perverse. The fact is: There is a critical window of opportunity opening for the United States to withdraw and for Iraq to hold itself together and rebuild. To the extent that things are getting better, that’s good news.

Yeah, it is. Nice that people are noticing. But it’s also, paradoxically, bad news for the Republicans in that those who have held their nose and stuck with the GOP because of the war are likely to feel freer to vote for people they agree with on other issues. And while it’s true that Iraq is not the war on terror, it’s also likely that the post-2009 phase of the war on terror will involve less outright war and more spying, backstabbing, subtle undermining, bribery, extortion and cooptation. Hmm. What candidate might be good at that sort of thing?

CAN TEEN SEX prevent delinquency?

BILL CLINTON ON THE CHINESE: “When was the last time you got tough on your banker?”

Heh. Indeed.

MY IS DICK CHENEY UNCONSTITUTIONAL? PIECE has been published by the Northwestern University Law Review in its Colloquy section. You can get a PDF of the final version — with the benefit of their editing, which was quite good — right here if you’re interested.

It’s also available in HTML form, and in a PDF version that doesn’t require you to go through SSRN, if that’s giving you problems, at the Northwestern University Law Review’s Colloquy site. There’s a lot of other interesting stuff there, if you’re legally inclined. (Bumped).

A UNIQUE NEW APPROACH TO household economics! (Via Volokh.)

POLITICO: “‘Betray Us’ backer to lead pro-Dem group.” It’s worth noting that the ad was not only a shameful attack on patriotism — that’s supposed to be bad, right? — but also factually wrong insofar as it claimed that things in Iraq weren’t improving. Pretty much everyone admits otherwise, now.

JONAH GOLDBERG on Hollywood’s anti-war box-office bust.