FRED THOMPSON UPDATE:

Fred Thompson, the “Law & Order” actor and former senator from Tennessee, has moved beyond pondering a bid for the White House and begun assembling the nucleus of a campaign should he decide to run, according to people involved in the effort.

Thompson has not yet decided to seek the Republican presidential nomination. But “he is getting more serious every day,” said an adviser familiar with Thompson’s plans.

Thompson’s coming-out as a candidate-in-waiting will be a May 4 appearance at the 45th annual dinner of the Lincoln Club of Orange County in the heart of Ronald Reagan country in Southern California. The invitation was widely sought by aspiring Republicans, and his advisers expect considerable media attention around the visit. But there are no plans now for an announcement then.

He’s probably better off waiting as long as he can, and letting people get tired of the candidates who are already hogging the newstime.

PUSHING FOR CORPORATE GOVERNANCE CHANGES, at the New York Times.

IT’S FOR A GOOD CAUSE: On April 20th, the Philip Fulmer Golf Classic will raise money for the Boys and Girls Clubs.

DOES ROSIE O’DONNELL want to get fired?

FUNNIEST AMAZON RECOMMENDATION YET: I’m invited to “be part of the man-scaping trend” with a Norelco bodygroomer. Plus, a video on why I should “shave everywhere!” The guy in it kind of reminds me of Troy McClure. Only less hairy . . . .

UPDATE: Yes, the visual effects are amusing, too, in a cheesy Troy-McClure sort of way.

JULES CRITTENDEN: “If it’s wrong for the president to fire political appointees over their politics, doesn’t that make it wrong for senators to oppose political appointees over theirs? Wait a minute. I’m getting confused. The president fired them over their performance, but the Senate only gave a damn about Fox’s politics. So much crap flying around these days, its hard to sort out what’s what. But I think the Dem Cong might need to start holding hearings about itself.”

OUCH: “Anybody would want a second chance after having worked as an assistant to Jimmy Carter. But Zbig has been so marginalized that even the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies refused to give him a real professorship. So he haunts the corridors of power and whatever television shows will have him.”

This is unfair. The Olympic boycott was a masterstroke of strategy.

AN ELECTION ’08 PROTEST MANIFESTO from The Anchoress: “I resent like hell that these politicians – all of them, but I seem to recall it was Hillary who started early, forcing everyone else to do so, as well – began their stumping and fund-raising two years before an election. . . . I’m not participating in this, yet. I’m not going to allow myself to be suckered into paying attention to these people – and giving them either my money or my time – before I deem it practical and intelligent to do so, and that will be sometime around November of ‘07.”

SOLDIER’S LIFE SAVED BY IPOD. In the old days, we had to use Bibles for that.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “Iran has pulled off a tidy little success with its seizure and release of those 15 British sailors and marines: a pointed humiliation of Britain, with a bonus demonstration of Iran’s intention to push back against coalition challenges to its assets in Iraq. All with total impunity. Further, it exposed the impotence of all those transnational institutions — most prominently the European Union and the United Nations — that pretend to maintain international order. You would think maintaining international order means, at least, challenging acts of piracy. No challenge here. Instead, a quiet capitulation.”

Seeing the impotence of the EU and the UN demonstrated, however, is not entirely bad for the United States, or for the Bush Administration, whose critics often seem excessively enamored of those unimpressive institutions.

UPDATE: Impotence, corruption, whatever. No one in his right mind would rely on either institution to do anything against the immediate financial and political self-interest of its players, regardless of the stakes. The Mafia has more principles. And a longer-term perspective . . . .

THE SUPREME COURT GOES NUCLEAR:

The irony is that the beneficiary of Monday’s ruling won’t be wind power, solar power, or any of the other renewable technologies favored by the Green establishment. Their economic and technological limitations are too severe for them ever to occupy more than a small niche in the American energy economy. Instead, one of the winners from Massachusetts v. EPA just may be something that many of the environmentalists who brought the suit have long abhorred: nuclear power. Like renewables, nuclear power generates electricity with no pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions. But unlike renewables, nuclear is capable of generating reliable power on a massive scale, which is what our country’s future energy demands will require.

Nuclear power is on the verge of making a comeback in the United States. Thanks to several favorable provisions in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, as well as a streamlined licensing process, it is possible we could see the construction of new plants start within several years. The economics for new plant construction are still being worked out, particularly with regard to financing and federal loan guarantees. But there can be no doubt that federal efforts to hamstring coal can only help nuclear. Moreover, any future regulatory scheme allowing nuclear power plant operators to earn credits for generating emissions-free electricity would enhance nuclear’s attractiveness to investors.

Building more nice, clean, greenhouse-friendly nuclear plants seems like a good thing to me.

PROTESTING AGAINST AN EXTREMIST MADRASSA, in Pakistan.

AN UNFORCED ERROR at ABC.

ISLAMIC RADICALS BEATEN by a bunny!

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE importance of compromise.

VETERANS AND HARRY REID.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Nuts in Damascus.

CONFUSION REIGNS: “So, Bush invaded Iraq to steal the oil from what could possibly be the 4th largest producer of oil in the world, trailing the United States, which, last time I checked, Nancy Pelosi was president of.”

ANGER UNLEASHED.

Of course, it cuts both ways.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON:

There is a major disconnect in the 2008 Democratic race for the White House.

While all the top candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote, they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those constituencies: the failed War on Drugs, a war that has morphed into a war on people of color.

The “Drug War” is a colossal disaster, and it’s even undermining the real war. The unwillingness of candidates in both parties to oppose it is a disgrace.

PLACING THEIR SEVERED HEADS on those bamboo poles would seem a preferable response, but I suppose you can’t have everything. Still, it wouldn’t take much of that to nip this in the bud, I imagine.

A LOOK AT secular piety and the new age orthodoxy.

MICKEY KAUS: “Larry King is only 73?”

DEAN BARNETT ANSWERS READER QUESTIONS. Though his answer about the Harry Reid land deal is excessively cynical. Isn’t it?

THE DOWNTOWN GRILL AND BREWERY: A nice place.