CELEBRATING THE FOURTH, in San Francisco.

A WIN FOR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION as wiretapping survives a court challenge:

A federal appeals court Friday ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging President Bush’s domestic spying program, saying the plaintiffs had no standing to sue. . . .

U.S. Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons, one of the two Republican appointees who ruled against the plaintiffs, said they failed to show they were subject to the surveillance and therefore do not have standing for their claims.

U.S. Circuit Judge Ronald Lee Gilman, a Democratic appointee, disagreed, saying he felt the plaintiffs were within their rights to sue and that it was clear to him that the surveillance program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

You know, reporting who appointed judges this way makes everything seem rather political. Orin Kerr has more, and observes that the opinions in the case “neatly match a political narrative.”

Too much of that and people will start wondering why we don’t just elect federal judges, if it’s all political anyway.

AN ARMY OF DAVIDS, homebrew division.

A LOOK AT NASA’s new Mars Rover.

UPDATE: Apparently it’s a lander, not a rover, despite the headline.

IN THE MAIL: Harry Turtledove’s The Gladiator, part of his Crosstime Traffic series of Heinleinesque junior novels. There are no gladiators in this story — it’s the name of a gaming shop that’s part of an effort at subversion in a world where the Soviet Union won the Cold War. These books are pretty good — the InstaDaughter read Curious Notions and liked it a lot, even though she’s not much of a science fiction fan.

JAMES LILEKS:

I’m confounded by the fact that no one in America has invented Fried Chicken Pizza. It would seem to be a rather obvious twist on a classic.

Well, I’d better google that, just to be sure . . .

I stand corrected.

Heh.

LOCAL POLITICS SEEM TO ECHO NATIONAL POLITICS: “There was a time in our political discourse that the two parties kept each other honest. The Democrats would watch the Republicans, and the Republicans would watch the Democrats. We now seem to have a culture of incumbency protection.”

WITH HIS 100th BIRTHDAY COMING TOMORROW, here’s more on Robert Heinlein.

My favorite Heinlein book? Probably The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or possibly Stranger in a Strange Land. And as Michael Belfiore notes in his forthcoming Rocketeers, Heinlein’s series of junior novels in the 1950s — Rocket Ship Galileo, Space Cadet, Red Planet, etc. — influenced most of the people behind the current private-space flowering.

A BLOGSWARM on Al Qaeda atrocities.

MICHAEL YON POSTS A NEW REPORT FROM BAQUBAH: There’s lots of interesting news, and you should read the whole thing, but this paragraph struck me:

Media coverage went from a near monopoly (Michael Gordon from New York Times and me) to a nearly capsized boat as journalists flooded in from other parts of Iraq to see the fight. They managed to miss most of it. Today, I’m told, there are now only 3 journalists remaining, including one writer (me.)

As with the Battle for Mosul, which I held in near monopoly for about five months during 2005, the most interesting parts of the Battle for Baqubah are unfolding after the major fighting ends. But as the guns cool, the media stops raining and starts evaporating, or begins making only short visits of a week or so.

With short attention spans and limited coverage, it’s hard for the press to give us an accurate picture of what’s going on. Some related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Checked my other email account and found this email from Michael Yon:

Baqubah has so quieted down that it’s nothing like I have ever seen it. Practically no fighting. . . . It’s Friday so there will likely not be much happening downtown today, so I stayed on base to write about the goings-on. I wrote about the lethargy of the local Iraqi leadership a couple weeks ago, but the energetic leadership of U.S. Army seems to be catching. The Iraqis are much more into the fight than they were back on 19 June with Arrowhead Ripper kicked off. We are now D+17 (17 days since Arrowhead Ripper kicked off), and the changes in Baqubah are remarkable. I am cautiously optimistic. Very cautious, and very optimistic.

It’s all about the momentum.

ONE IN FOUR LAWYERS want to quit. And the other three want a raise.

IN THE SMALL WARS JOURNAL, a connection between counterinsurgency and Neal Gershenfeld. More on Gershenfeld here.

A LOOK AT AMERICA’S MILITARIZED POLICE DEPARTMENTS, from Radley Balko.

RAND SIMBERG ON THE DOCTORS’ PLOT: “By the way, it would also be nice if this latest development finally puts to bed the ongoing “progressive” myth that terrorism is caused by poverty and alienation, or by our foreign policy.”

Plus, a different plot by Muslim doctors: “A group of 45 Muslim doctors threatened to use car bombs and rocket grenades in terrorist attacks in the United States during discussions on an extremist internet chat site.”

As Rand puts it: “We continue to deny moral agency to Muslims, and act as though we really are responsible for all bad things in the world, and they have no responsibility for their own behavior. If we don’t understand what we are at war with, and chase after solutions to problems that don’t really exist, and continue to foolishly ask questions like ‘why do they hate us?’, we can never win.”

MARCHING AGAINST TERRORISM in Colombia.

Somebody tell Carl Levin and Nancy Pelosi.

HUGH HEWITT: “What had been a very bad week for al Qaeda with the foiled attacks in England and the desperation in Zawahiri’s recent video just got a great deal better with proof that their strategy of defeating the U.S. in the United States Senate is working.” I’m not sure it’s that bad, but the Senate is a soft target.

DE VILLEPIN LIKELY TO FACE CONSPIRACY CHARGES: Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

MORE ON THE PRESIDENT’S BIOETHICS COUNCIL, from Ron Bailey. I remain unimpressed. Some earlier thoughts of mine can be found here.

NOW IT’S A $1,250 HAIRCUT? “It is some kind of commentary on the state of American politics that as Edwards has campaigned for president, vice president and now president again, his hair seems to have attracted as much attention as, say, his position on health care.” I don’t think he’ll be much of a cost-cutter. . . .

BRIAN DOHERTY: “The science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein was born in Missouri, and his fiction was mostly set in the future and on distant planets. But there’s no question that Heinlein—born 100 years ago this week—was one of Southern California’s great prophets. . . . In a sense, the industrialists, pilots and dreamers who gathered at California’s Mojave spaceport in October 2004 watching SpaceShipOne win the X Prize for sending a private craft to space and back were living out Heinlein’s dream.”

DANNY GLOVER EXPLAINS the John Edwards Blogger Rule.

SPEEDING URBAN EVACUATIONS WITH better software.

MISSING CANADIAN NUCLEAR DEVICES: Ed Morrissey is worried.

WHEN DOES A MASSACRE MATTER: A question for the Associated Press.

INDEED: “Nothing like a mid-week holiday to demolish your enthusiasm for Thursday, eh?” Fortunately, I’m on vacation and hence immune!