DAVE KOPEL ASKS IF NEWSPAPER ENDORSEMENTS MATTER. A commenter replies: “The importance of ‘endorsements’ by media outlets has declined as the quality of the media has declined.”

MARK STEYN HAS THOUGHTS on what the world should be giving thanks for.

ADRIANA LUKAS remembers the Velvet Revolution. “A couple of weeks ago I was visiting Eastern Europe and despite the trickle of bandwidth available where I was staying, I found myself watching old clips from the communist era on YouTube. The most surreal was not the absurdity of their content, the ridiculous gravitas of the communist propaganda but the memory of this rubbish being taken seriously and accepted as the norm.”

Some of the things she links remind me of a song I used to listen to a lot: “Czech This Out,” by Frequency X. (Real names: Nicolai Vorkapich & Ray Castoldi). It takes a phrase from Moscow radio in 1968, “The defense of socialism in Czechoslovakia is more than the concern of the Czechoslovak people,” and gradually remixes it to “The defense of Czechoslovakia, the defense of people, the defense of the Czechoslovak people.” Subversive. And you can dance to it!

MICKEY KAUS NOTES a Sid Blumenthal-related coincidence.

TAYLOR OWEN: “Why is it that flying is seen as a license to drink at truly disturbing hours of the day?”

(Had this as David Adesnik earlier, but it was just the dreaded co-blogger confusion.)

THOUGHTS ON GUNS AND CIVILIZATION. I understand that Neal Boortz read this essay on the air yesterday.

IT’S A QUAGMIRE: Troops have kept the violence down, but the political solution is still a mess. In Kosovo.

SEARCHING FOR GUNS IN BOSTON: “Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms. . . . In the next two weeks, Boston police officers who are assigned to schools will begin going to homes where they believe teenagers might have guns. The officers will travel in groups of three, dress in plainclothes to avoid attracting negative attention, and ask the teenager’s parent or legal guardian for permission to search. If the parents say no, police said, the officers will leave.”

BUSH NOT A COMPLETE FAILURE IN IRAQ! Reuters ladles out the praise!

WHO IS CNN KIDDING?

Themselves, mostly.

UPDATE: They’re certainly getting attention.

DEBATING Hillary Clinton’s datability.

THOUGHTS ON MEDIA BIAS, from Oliver Kamm.

TOAD LICKING: Seems like a crime that is its own punishment.

SOME THOUGHTS ON VETERANS AND PTSD, at Blackfive.

MAJOR STEM CELL PROGRESS? Bring it on!

MEGAN MCARDLE reports on Cambodia: “Even the older generation seems to think that what we did wrong was not invading, but leaving after we had.”

MARK AMBINDER ON free trade flipflops.

JEEZ, THIS SUCKS: Bangladesh cyclone toll tops 1600. If you’d like to help, you can probably find some charities that are responding here.

INTERESTING PROPOSAL: A constitutional amendment barring courts from relying on foreign law.

OUCH: “Even The New York Times and Daily Kos are reporting on the CNN imbalance in the post debate analysis.”

VIDEO UPDATE: Following up on my earlier video post, I was at the mall this afternoon and picked up a copy of Final Cut Express 4 HD, and installed it on my Macbook Pro. Once I figured out that the files came in via “log and transfer” rather than “import” or “capture” it was fine — brought over a couple of clips from the camera and fiddled with them a bit. I’m not as fluent in Final Cut as in Vegas or Premiere, but it seems to work well. Helen thought the video looked better in Final Cut than in Vegas, though that may just be a function of the different monitors.

Note, by the way, that you must have an Intel-based Mac to handle AVCHD in Final Cut. Don’t ask me why.

AN INTERVIEW WITH Roger Daltrey.

HILL SHILLS HINT AT ‘BAM SLAM.

ANNOUNCING Lawyers for Fred Thompson. They’ve picked up some big names, including a few folks I’m surprised to see.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, Don’t turn on Ethiopia:

A new war in the Horn of Africa would destabilize the region and bolster radical Islam’s push to build a Muslim caliphate.

Sadly, Congress is poised to fuel the march toward war by passing a bill that threatens to cut off technical assistance to Ethiopia, one of our closest allies, if it does not, among other things, release political prisoners, ensure that the judiciary operates independently and permit the news media to operate freely. Ethiopia has already freed opposition leaders, reformed parliamentary rules to give opposition parties greater legislative responsibility and approved a new media law that meets international standards. By singling out Ethiopia for public embarrassment, the bill puts Congress unwittingly on the side of Islamic jihadists and insurgents.

The new Congress seems to be putting itself unwittingly on these guys’ sides pretty often.