A BLOGGING FIRST: Captain Ed is liveblogging his wife’s kidney transplant. Send your prayers and best wishes.

WE HAVEN’T HEARD MUCH OF THIS, but finally someone is complaining that the Iranians are violating international law by parading prisoners on TV.

International law is rapidly becoming a joke because of double standards. And, as noted, because of its enforcement problem. At a guess, we’re likely heading toward a regime of strict reciprocity, as that’s all that can work in such a degraded environment.

UPDATE: A few emailers are suggesting that there’s some sort of contradiction here in my pointing this out, as if I’d never discussed the Geneva Conventions before. But, of course, the point is the double standard: the Geneva Conventions never seem to do our guys any good. Our enemies don’t obey them, and our critics use them — even when they don’t apply — as a way to call American troops and their friends torturers and war criminals. That’s what I meant by “degraded environment,” which aptly describes the political and intellectual environment in which such critics operate. As I’ve observed in the past, we don’t operate in an environment of reciprocity now. As Professor Kenneth Anderson has noted, the Geneva Conventions tend to serve more as a source of urban legends for anti-American and anti-Bush writers who often don’t even know, or care, what the Conventions say.

A LOOK AT YOUR IMMINENT ROBOTIC FUTURE, from Daniel Wilson. Upside: Less dog poo!

ANDY BOWERS, ET AL., review Rudy Giuliani’s first campaign ad.

COOKWARE UPDATE: I mentioned this nonstick pan that’s cheap and allegedly metal-utensil safe a while back. Months later, it remains unscratched despite the Insta-Wife’s regular use. That’s pretty much a miracle, so I thought I’d note it.

HEH: A look at the RIAA’s lawsuit decision matrix.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE:

The federal agency that tracked pork-barrel spending during the 12 years of the Republican congressional majority has discontinued the practice since Democrats took power, riling lawmakers suspicious of the timing and concerned about the pace of fat being added to bills.

“To me, something doesn’t smell right,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican. “I just hope no one is pressuring” the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

While not blaming the Democratic leadership, Mr. DeMint added: “I guess if you’re looking for a motive, you’d have to look in that direction.”

CRS, a nonpartisan agency of the Library of Congress created to conduct research for members of Congress on legislative issues, changed its policy in February — a month after Democrats took control of the Congress and vowed to curb the number of special-interest projects inserted into spending bills or even reports that don’t require a vote.

Seems pretty fishy to me, and I wonder why it’s not getting more attention.

MORE GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS, from Jules Crittenden.

A ROSIE O’DONNELL MELTDOWN: “I’m not exaggerating when I say that this is the video against which all future Rosie clips will be compared.”

CRITICISM OF KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON’S BILL to repeal the D.C. gun ban.

THE LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA NEWSPAPER ASKS: “Tell us, Sen. Webb, do you pack heat on the floor?”

Would a “yes” really hurt him with voters? I doubt it . . . .

JOHN TAMMES ROUNDS UP more news from Afghanistan that you may have missed.

“PRISSY AND PURITANICAL.” Best line in the comments: “If they were only drunks, at least a few of them would become more pleasant.”

IF THIS IS TRUE, IS THE BLOGOSPHERE DOOMED? “Nobody wants to read a fisk of a fisk, I assume.”

MICHAEL TOTTEN MEETS UP with Iran’s revolutionary liberals.

JAMES JOYNER: “Glen Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies* has announced the results of a telephone survey conducted for the Republican National Committee of 800 registered voters from March 25-27, 2007. They found a majority opposed to the provisions of the Iraq War Supplemental Spending bill that just passed both Houses of Congress but faces an almost certain veto by President Bush.”

AUSTIN BAY ON IRAN’S KEYSTONE KOPS MOMENT: “Iran initially gave coordinates (the correct coordinates) that placed the action in Iraqi waters. Iran later provided new coordinates, conveniently inside Iranian territory.”

IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL . . . er, until the long haul actually, you know, happens. Here’s what Chuck Hagel and Joe Biden said in 2002:

Although no one doubts our forces will prevail over Saddam Hussein’s, key regional leaders confirm what the Foreign Relations Committee emphasized in its Iraq hearings last summer: The most challenging phase will likely be the day after — or, more accurately, the decade after — Saddam Hussein.

Once he is gone, expectations are high that coalition forces will remain in large numbers to stabilize Iraq and support a civilian administration. That presence will be necessary for several years, given the vacuum there, which a divided Iraqi opposition will have trouble filling and which some new Iraqi military strongman must not fill.

So, it was a project for a decade then. But now it’s cut-and-run. (Via The Corner).

FRENCH LITERATURE ON liberty and the right to arms.

RICHARD MINITER IS IN TURKEY, and reporting on the Turks, Iraq, and the PKK.

MICKEY KAUS ON GERRYMANDER REFORM: “Two-thirds of California “likely voters” support a plan to turn over redistricting to “an independent commission of citizens.” That seems to be slightly higher than previous polls. [Via Bill Bradley’s New West Notes]. We’ll see if Bill Clinton moneybuddy Stephen Bing and Nancy Pelosi can find a way to block reform this time.”

THOUGHTS ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT, from Jonah Goldberg:

Of course, there has always been a minority of liberals who’ve shown a willingness to admit, often reluctantly, that the Constitution can approve of something they disapprove of. Liberal journalist Michael Kinsley famously quoted a colleague as saying, “If liberals interpreted the Second Amendment the way they interpret the rest of the Bill of Rights, there would be law professors arguing that gun ownership is mandatory.” And in 1989, Sanford Levinson penned a Yale Law Review article tellingly titled “The Embarrassing Second Amendment.”

Such honesty has proved contagious. As Brookings Institution scholar Benjamin Wittes chronicles in the current edition of The New Republic, various liberal legal scholars have come to grudgingly accept that the Second Amendment’s meaning and intent include the individual right to own a gun. “(T)he amendment achieves its central purpose by assuring that the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification,” writes no less than the dean of liberal legal scholars, Laurence Tribe. Tribe had to update his textbook on the Constitution to account for the growing consensus that — horror! — Americans do have a constitutional right to own a gun. It’s not an absolute right, of course. But no right is.

Read the whole thing. And law professors arguing for mandatory gun ownership? Don’t be ridiculous!

SATURN’S HEXAGON:

The best theory I’ve come up with so far, after brushing up on von Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods,” is that it’s the Hex Nut of the Giants, affixed to the end of a massive bolt that’s holding the planet together. I haven’t worked out yet how a race of titanic engineers managed to insert the bolt at Saturn’s south pole. Nor have I identified the location of their hardware store, but we need to start looking for it right away, because NASA’s video shows that it’s swirling counterclockwise dangerously near what looks to me like the end of the bolt. If this thing keeps unscrewing . . . .

I think it’s the walls of an alien base.

CHARLIE ROSE ON the science of longevity.

MAKING YOUR HOME RELATIONSHIP-READY: Though the barber chair sounds kind of cool.