AT THE NEW REPUBLIC: Mistaking Vietnam movies for real life. “To read the Thomas pieces was, simply, to doubt them. And to wonder if its editors had ever actually met a soldier on his way to or from Iraq, or talked to any human being involved in the modern military.”

UPDATE: What goes around, comes around.

JEFF EMANUEL: Does independent journalism from Iraq really make a difference?

TOM MAGUIRE: “Does the John Edwards campaign have a death wish? To the litany which includes the 28,000 square foot home, his job with a hedge fund (to learn about poverty!) and the $400 haircuts we can now add a story about the decision by the Edwards campaign to locate their campaign headquarters in the poshest part of posh Chapel Hill, North Carolina. And the death wish? Well, the location of his campaign headquarters was a non-story until the Edwards people got a bit heavy-handed with a UNC professor.”

GATEWAY PUNDIT ROUNDS UP more news from Iraq.

IN KNOXVILLE, A RED-LIGHT CAMERA TRAVESTY IS FINALLY FIXED:

For months, citizens accused of running camera-monitored red lights in Knoxville were told they’d have to pay $67.50 just to have a hearing to contest the charge.

“The city acknowledges that was a mistake, having that incorrect language in the notice,” attorney Michael S. Kelley told U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips at a hearing Thursday.

Neither Deputy City Law Director Ron Mills nor Municipal Court Administrator Rick Wingate could say how long it took city officials to discover that error.

The whole thing has pretty much been outsourced: “Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., a private company tapped to administrate the camera-based enforcement program, was responsible for fashioning those citation forms.”

And the city officials could have discovered the error by reading InstaPundit back in 2006.

BLOGLIGHT: The best disinfectant.

IN THE MAIL: A novel by Harold Coyle and Barrett Tillman, Prometheus’s Child.

SO MUCH FOR THAT WHOLE “LEGAL TENDER” THING: Apple refusing to accept cash for iPhones.

LEARNING ABOUT THE BBC from Facebook.

HOUSE OF PAIN: John Baden on the housing market and why pain is important.

HERE’S A ROUNDUP ON THE NEW APPLE LEOPARD RELEASE, but there are some problems being reported.

UPDATE: Reader Scott Kelly sends this link on Leopard installation problems.

D’OH! House Judiciary Committee reveals whistleblowers’ email addresses.

Although the panel said it would not accept anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity would be held in the “strictest confidence.”

But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the “to:” field — instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or “bcc: . . .

Compounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second email attempting to recall the original email; it, too, included all recipients in the “to:” field, according to a recipient of the emails.

That’s gonna make people want to come forward. Meanwhile, how about some remedial education in “how to use email” for the Judiciary staff?

IN THE VALLEY OF ENNUI. That’s pretty much my reaction.

IF THE FU HSITS: “I confess. I’ve been just waiting for the opportunity to write that.”

TNR digs in deeper.

UPDATE: Heading for the Earth’s core.

NOBODY TELL LOU DOBBS: MECHA CLAIMS CREDIT FOR CALIFORNIA FIRES: But in fact, the story is a fake.

Meanwhile, on Air America, a claim that Blackwater started the fires.

Plus, is “climate change” a new synonym for arsonists?

WORRIED ABOUT DRUG-RESISTANT BACTERIA? Wash your hands.

I notice that my local mall now features hand-sanitizer dispensers everywhere. This is a public-health trend that I wrote about a while ago.

STUPID HUMANS: Ralph Kinney Bennett observes that people insist on doing what they want, not what planners think they should.

THOUGHTS ON swinging the war-fatigued, at RedState.

RON ROSENBAUM on Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Putin.

THE JOYS OF spiked coffee.

A LOOK AT SPACE TETHERS: Promising cheap, efficient Earth-space transit, if they just unspool right.

VOTE: The ten worst automobiles of 2007.

IT’S A QUAGMIRE: America can’t win the war on fire.

IN THE MAIL: Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman’s Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World.