THE INSTAWIFE: Profiled at Normblog. So that’s like, a profiler profiled.

KIDS TODAY: Michael Barone assesses William Strauss and Neil Howe’s Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069 in light of recent events.

GENDER CONFUSION at Salon?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Another editorial on pork:

Shedding light on how members of Congress spend taxpayer money is the common-sense aim of earmark reform. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., is advancing that worthy cause again this week by shedding light on how some prominent members of the Senate are blocking the attainment of that goal.

Sen. DeMint has worked long and hard to end the inherently flawed practice of allowing the addition of “earmark” projects to appropriations bills during the conference-committee process. That tactic has long let legislators pile on the pork in virtual anonymity. Ending that shadow spending would reduce waste by increasing scrutiny. It also would reduce the temptation to feather the nests of special interests.

Sen. DeMint and bipartisan partners finally succeeded last month in the push for the Senate to make earmark spending far more transparent, with an ethics bill provision mandating disclosure of which senators back which earmarks — and certification that they have no financial interest in the appropriations.

Unfortunately, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., now insists that the Senate-House conference committee be given a chance to dilute, or even eliminate, that overdue earmark rule as the panel works out differences in the two chambers’ ethics bills. . . .

So why can’t the Democratic leadership, which promised both lobbying and earmark reform while winning control of Congress in last year’s elections, deliver both?

Good question.

VETERANS WHO WANT TO WIN THE WAR: If 3 veterans want a pullout, they’ll be on TV everywhere. These guys could put a thousand on Capitol Hill and get ignored.

JOHN MCINTYRE: Rudy derailed McCain’s train.

EDWARDS’ HEADQUARTERS BECOMING A NUISANCE TO NEIGHBORS: Bob Owens makes snide remarks, and who can blame him — but these fake-anthrax scares are hardly Edwards’ fault.

On the other hand, since Edwards likened the war on terror to a bumper-sticker slogan, there’s some irony here somewhere.

NIFONGING IN GEORGIA: Here’s more. We need much closer scrutiny of prosecutors, it seems.

DEBATING THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE in the Senate.

MORE OUTRIGHT FAKERY AT THE BBC. And I agree with this: “If it transposes a picture sequence like this to sex up a story about the Queen by transmitting an outright falsehood, just think what it is doing in the Middle East.”

JONAH GOLDBERG: “What’s refreshing about this is that Yglesias is honestly and correctly admitting that liberals have no problem imposing their morality on others via a powerful and intrusive state. I wish that most liberals were as honest.”

IN THE MAIL: Orson Scott Card’s Shadow Puppets, in audiobook format. I never listen to audiobooks, but maybe I should give it a try.

You can hear our podcast interview with Card here.

A BLOW TO BLOOMBERG:

A key Congressional committee dealt a major blow to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign against illegal firearms yesterday, refusing to allow police departments broader access to data that tracks guns sales.

The bill restricting release of the information, approved by the House Appropriations Committee, must still be passed by the full House and reconciled with a similar Senate measure. But since the Senate bill is considered even more beneficial to the gun industry, the Bloomberg administration appeared resigned to defeat.

A loss for Bloomberg on gun control is always good news.

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

RICK MORAN: Hypocrisy all around.

I WANT ONE: A 40 gigabit per second Internet connecton. It should be easy: “Apparently ‘the hardest part of the whole project was installing Windows on Sigbritt’s PC.'”

“FREE GENERAL VANG PAO!”

JAMES BENNETT posts a review of Michael Barone’s new book. Excerpt: “In the two decades prior to 1688, virtually every phenomenon of modern electoral politics could be discerned, at least in embryo. Even modern bloggers were presaged by the network of pamphleteers on both sides, mostly vicious, libelous, and highly partisan rumor-mongers. Sound familiar? Even sock-puppetry was not unknown.”

RUDY GIULIANI: Not so much Swiftboated as Dan Rathered?

Between this and the silly stuff about Fred Thompson, Democrats are looking more nervous about 2008 than you’d expect.

UPDATE: Dave Weigel thinks I’m confusing “Democrats” and “journalists.” That’s easy to do.

NIFONG’S CHILDREN: Another grandstanding District Attorney.

Who may be liable for distributing child pornography.

More here: “For the prosecutor to just hand this tape out, which seems to clearly fit the definition of child pornography, should result in a criminal prosecution.”

BEWARE THE “Informational Vermin”!

AARON HANSCOM: “Rosie O’Donnell might do well to remember – before declaring radical Christianity as threatening as radical Islam – that homosexuality is punishable by death under Islamic law . . . Around the world, Moslem governments and individuals aren’t just talking about physically harming gays. They’re actually doing it.”

I MIGHT BE WRONG about the Ice Age thing.

ERIC SCHEIE: “Are the Bush critics suggesting that his administration has been the most hostile to the right to keep and bear arms? For that matter, are they suggesting Guantanamo is worse than FDR’s Japanese internment camps? . . . Has Bush really been more hostile to the 9th and 10th Amendments than any other president?”

I wish he’d stop quartering those troops in the guesthouse, though. Cholmondeley is tired of tidying up after them.

HAPPY Friday the Thirteenth.