SEN. BOB CORKER (R-TN) will vote against cloture on the immigration bill.

WHAT’S WRONG with HDMI?

ROGER DALTREY: “The last thing the planet needs is a rock concert.”

TENNESSEE IS AWASH IN REVENUE, and Frank Cagle doesn’t like what it’s doing about taxes.

POISONED TOOTHPASTE IN PANAMA: It seems to have come from China, natch. If China’s economic bubble bursts, it may be because things like this hurt its export markets. And they should. As Carole Borges at Knoxviews writes: “What’s up with China?” An economy that’s growing so fast nobody can keep track, plus rampant official corruption. I’m not sure that will last. In his book, Brave New War, John Robb predicts the fragmentation of China as corruption destroys governmental legitimacy. If that’s coupled with an economic slide as exports fall off, it could happen, and it could be extraordinarily ugly. I suspect that the Chinese government is keenly aware of this risk, but it’s not in a position to do much, I’m afraid.

LOSS OF CREDIBILITY:

Prosecutors across the country are seeing fallout from the Duke case, as defense attorneys use it to discredit other criminal cases and paint them as overzealous prosecutors with something to prove.

In Texas, one defense attorney recently cited the case during voir dire, and again in closing argument, in an assault case involving a teacher accused of pinning down a female student while other students beat her. The lawyer reminded jurors about what happened at Duke. The defendant was found not guilty in three minutes.

“Prosecutors should be worried,” said defense attorney Edmund “Skip” Davis, the Texas attorney who cited the Duke case in the recent assault trial and plans to cite it in a rape trial next week.

In the teacher assault case, Davis asked jurors during voir dire if they were familiar with the “tragedy” that happened in the Duke case and whether they thought it was a shoddy investigation. At closing, he reminded jurors not to rush to judgement to avoid “that tragedy that nearly fell upon those kids at Duke.”

“I told them, ‘Just because someone hollers out that a crime has been committed just does not make it so,'” Davis said. “And the Duke case made a perfect example of that.”

Read the whole thing.

I MENTIONED that I sent my 8-year-old nephew a copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys, and my sister emailed that he loves it. “He and Wilson even put off playing xbox to look it over.”

Put off playing XBox? This thing is huge! Actually, it really is huge, as it’s currently #2 on Amazon. I wonder if it will break into the New York Times bestseller list? I don’t know how much bookstore display space it’s getting.

UPDATE: Oh, I looked in the wrong place — it’s #2 on the New York Times advice list.

A LOOK AT ROMANIA’S REFERENDUM, over at Transatlantic Politics.

MUMS WITH GUNS:

The mother of an 18-year-old son, she keeps a Springfield semiautomatic in her purse and a Beretta pistol at home or in her glove box.

“I think it’s more important for women with small children to own a gun because you can’t run when you have children,” she says.

Two years ago, one in 10 of Shoot Straight’s students was a woman. Now, ladies make up about 40 per cent of its gun classes, says Larry Anderson, manager of the Shoot Straight in Apopka.

Read the whole thing.

FRANK TIPLER has worries about the way physics is taught.

UPDATE: They’ve been talking about this over at Rand Simberg’s place.

DANIEL GLOVER LOOKS Inside the Blogway.

TOM MAGUIRE LOOKS AT JOHN MCCAIN and the truth about torture.

HERE’S ANOTHER POSITIVE REVIEW of Evan Coyne Maloney’s film on higher education, Indoctrinate U.

MCCAIN TALKS TOUGH, and that’s okay:

I want a President who says “f*ck you” and calls things that are chickenshit “chickenshit.” Not where the kids can hear him, of course. But this was a closed meeting and Cornyn was apparently trying to disqualify his opinion because he dares to go off and run for President. McCain was entitled to push back. I say it’s nothing.

On the other hand, it confirms some worries that McCain has too short a fuse.

UPDATE: Reader Dart Montgomery thinks I’m wrong: “The real point – once again, it shows that McCain regards the real enemy as his fellow Republicans.”

I think that this will hurt him more.

MAX BOOT POSTS AN EMAIL from a soldier in Baghdad.

BRINK LINDSEY TALKS ABOUT HIS NEW BOOK, on The Daily Show. Video here.

I have to say that I enjoyed Brink’s book very much.

THE E.U. VS. PUTIN:

European Union leaders criticized Russia’s human rights record—and were faulted in return—at the end of a summit Friday that produced no formal agreements but helped illustrate the widening political chasm between Moscow and the West.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel complained that opposition activists were being prevented from traveling to a planned protest in the Volga River city of Samara, near the site of the EU-Russia summit.

“I’m concerned about some people having problems in traveling here,” Merkel told reporters. “I hope they will be given an opportunity to express their opinion.”

Among the activists kept from boarding flights was former chess champion Garry Kasparov, now a leading political foe of President Vladimir Putin. Officials confiscated activists’ passports and tickets at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, and held them for about five hours. Activists in Samara also said they were harassed.

Russia’s democratic freedoms and its treatment of critics are two of the most sensitive issues haunting Russia-EU relations. Merkel’s remark came during a sometimes fractious exchange over the topics between Putin and EU leaders at a news conference.

Given that his critics have a way of being assassinated, that shows some degree of courage. Don Surber thinks this may indicate that there’s still hope for Europe. Let it be so.

TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE: Nominate Alberto Gonzales to head the World Bank!

MORE ON MURTHA:

Republicans will seek a House vote next week admonishing a senior Democrat who they say threatened a GOP member’s spending projects in a noisy exchange in the House chamber, Minority Leader John Boehner said Friday.

Their target is Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., a 35-year House veteran who chairs the appropriations subcommittee on military spending. Murtha, 74, is known for his gruff manner and fondness for earmarks _ carefully targeted spending items placed in appropriations bills to benefit a specific lawmaker or favorite constituent group. . . .

According to Rogers’ account, which Murtha did not dispute, the Democrat angrily told Rogers he should never seek earmarks of his own because “you’re not going to get any, now or forever.”

“This was clearly designed to try to intimidate me,” Rogers said in an interview Friday. “He said it loud enough for other people to hear.”

House rules prohibit lawmakers from placing conditions on earmarks or targeted tax benefits that are based on another member’s votes.

Goading Murtha into doing stupid things seems like a winning — and eminently achievable — strategy.

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “The people that oppose porkbusters tacitly empower people like Murtha.”

Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Murtha here.

EDITED BY JOHN LEO, Minding the Campus is a new site dedicated to monitoring what’s going on in academia.

HERE’S AN ARGUMENT that claims the Christian/Newsom murder should have gotten more press are wrong. Meanwhile, Knoxville’s Channel 10 is shutting off reader comments on the murders. Apparently people got a bit overheated.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

MORE BIG MARKET NEWS: “The Dow Jones industrial average registered its 24th record close this year and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index came within striking distance of its record high.” I think it’s because the Democrats are back in power.

YEAH, THIS’LL WORK: Requiring ISPs to block Internet pharmacies?

A QUAGMIRE IN BALTIMORE:

A city council leader, alarmed by Baltimore’s rising homicide rate, wants to give the mayor the power to put troubled neighborhoods under virtual lockdown.

“Desperate measures are needed when we’re in desperate situations,” City Council Vice President Robert W. Curran told The (Baltimore) Sun. He said he would introduce the legislation next week.

Under Curran’s plan, the mayor could declare “public safety act zones,” which would allow police to close liquor stores and bars, limit the number of people on city sidewalks, and halt traffic during two-week intervals.

Police would be encouraged to aggressively stop and frisk individuals in those zones to search for weapons and drugs.

This “surge” approach sounds novel. Perhaps if it works we can try it elsewhere. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Charles Rutt emails: “Obviously, we need to just leave Baltimore. We’ve been there for almost 200 years and still don’t have it under control. I think we should cut off funding to the city to teach them that we mean business and be out of there by the end of summer. I’ve got 29 Senators who agree with me…. ”

Only 29?

Meanwhile, Brian Noggle notices something missing from the story. Okay, he’s being sarcastic. But sadly it echoes a lot of the kind of stuff we’ve been hearing from the left.

IS IT A CIVIL WAR?

Fighting between rival Palestinian factions continued in Gaza today, and Israeli troops and fighters of the Hamas faction again exchanged rocket fire across the Israel-Gaza border.

The two main Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, fought in Gaza City, where witnesses said that three rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the Islamic University campus, Reuters reported.

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Presidential Guard accused Hamas of using the university as a fire base for attacks on nearby police stations, according to the news service. The university is pro-Hamas, while the Palestinian police force is under Fatah control.

The factional fighting continued today despite a cease-fire agreement between the two factions earlier this week.

They don’t keep ceasefires with each other any more than they do with Israel, apparently.