JOHN MCCAIN: Boot Burma out of ASEAN.

THOUGHTS ON FREE SPEECH AND ACCOUNTABILITY, from Adam Blinick.

Plus, it’s always the bloggers’ fault when you get caught. “My Jihad plan would have worked, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids!”

ENTITLEMENTS FOR THE UNBORN? Greg Mankiw has some questions about Hillary’s baby-bond proposal: “How might this be funded? There are only three groups that could be asked to pay for the new entitlement with higher taxes (or lower benefits): the current elderly, those currently of working age, or the same future generations who are getting the new benefit and are slated to pay for existing unfunded entitlements. Which group do you think Senator Clinton has in mind?”

IN THE ATLANTIC, Robert Kaplan defends Blackwater: “For all the notoriety of private military contractors like Blackwater, they represent an important aspect of the future of war. And that future is not all bad.”

PARKER V. D.C.: I’ve got a modest essay on cases that may come before the Supreme Court this term, in the latest issue of the Cato Supreme Court Review. InstaPundit readers are likely to be most interested in my discussion of Parker v. District of Columbia, the case in which the D.C. gun ban was overturned by the D.C. Circuit.

You can download the essay for free right here. The Parker discussion starts on page 13.

VACLAV HAVEL: “The international community’s failure to act means watching helplessly as victims of repression in Burma are consigned to their fate.”

I’d feel better about things if he were Secretary-General of the UN.

WEALTH AND POVERTY:

Even though the wealth gap is a positive in most economies for driving the economic creativity of those not-yet-rich, much is made of it in the media and among politicians who worry about individual wealth consolidation even more than they do the corporate kind. A quick look at the Forbes 400 would surely assuage some of their fears.

Indeed, of the charter members of the first Forbes 400, only 32 remain today. Far from a country where only the rich get richer, the wealthy in the US are very much a moving target. While there are 74 Forbes 400 members who inherited their entire fortune, 270 members are entirely self-made. Though many attended Harvard, Yale and Princeton, there are countless stories within of high school and college dropouts, not to mention others who grew up extremely poor. Politicians who regularly engage in class warfare would do well to keep the Forbes 400 out of the hands of their constituents, because it makes a mockery of the kind “Two Americas” rhetoric suggesting the existence of a glass ceiling that keeps hard workers at the bottom of the economic ladder. To read the Forbes 400 is to know with surety that the U.S. is still very much the land of opportunity.

(Via Greg Mankiw).

WOMAN STUCK IN CAR FOR EIGHT DAYS, as authorities dawdled in the face of her husband’s missing-person reports. It seems they were more interested in seeing if he’d killed her than in finding her:

“I basically hounded them until they started a case and then, of course, I was the first focal point, so I tried to get myself out of the way as quickly as possible. I let them search the house. I told them they didn’t have to have a warrant for anything, just ask,” he said.

Thursday morning, detectives asked him to come in to sign for a search of phone records. They also asked him to take a polygraph test.

“By the time he was done explaining the polygraph test to me, the detective burst into the room with a cell phone map that had a circle on it,” he said.

His wife’s car tumbled about 20 feet down a ravine and lay buried below brush and blackberry bushes. The air bags deployed, but she was injured and trapped. Rescuers had to cut the roof off to get her out.

“I know there were delays (in finding her) because of red tape,” Tom Rider said.

Nice work, King County. Reader Tom Gunther reports something he saw that’s also bad:

During the segment report on GMA it was mentioned that her husband did not notify authorities until four days after she was last scene. The husband then appeared live with (I believe) a King County police officer, and Diane Sawyer asked the husband about this. The husband responded to the effect that the report was not accurate he called earlier but was told by the authorities that her wife is an independent woman and can go where she pleases. Sawyer did not press the King County official about this issue.

After eight days trapped in a wrecked vehicle, I’m sure she appreciates their concern for her freedom.

INSTEAD OF DONATING MONEY TO YALE, I wish I could invest it with them.

EMERGENCY TEXT-MESSAGING.

AT BLACKFIVE, some big news in the world of lawfare.

WELL, DANG: I missed National Punctuation Day.

OUCH: “One could glean a more accurate and comprehensive view of Latin American economic conditions by renting Evita.”

ANDREW BREITBART on Hollywood’s hostile work environment.

ILYA SOMIN looks at federalism and politics in the United Federation of Planets.

A HYDROGEN HYBRID TOYOTA. With excellent range between fillups.

A “PERFECT STORM OF DISGRACE.”

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Find out what it means to me.

AL GORE: Missing in Action?

THE SUNSTEIN/REYNOLDS DISCUSSION CONTINUES, at the University of Chicago Law Faculty Blog.

SLOW-COOKER DOWNSIDE: I’m making the Lamb and Guinness Stew, and I’m home, and it smells so good it’s hard not to eat some early. The Insta-Wife has been ravenous all day.

REPORT: Bionic Woman lives up to the hype.

THOUGHTS ON ADVANCING WIND POWER, from Jonathan Adler.

I’D BUY IT! Nanotechnology-enhanced food:

Scientists at Rice University in Houston raised their fruit flies on a diet of yeast-and-nanotube paste, and then used an infrared camera to watch the progress of the tubes as they passed through the flies’ digestive systems, and in some cases were absorbed into the flies’ organs. The study found that nanotube-fed flies grew just as big and lived just as long as flies fed plain yeast, adding another data point to a simmering debate.

Some previous studies have found that inhaling nanotubes causes inflamed tissue in mice and rats, and causes cell death in lab tests. But other tests have found no evidence of toxicity, leading to claims of faulty experimental design on both sides.

But not until they can make it taste like steak. Related item here.

BURMA BLOWBACK FOR CHINA: Boycotting Lenovo Thinkpads.