TESTDRIVING THE AIRBUS A380: It’s a probably-irredeemable financial disaster, but it’s apparently a pretty cool plane.

LONDON BOMBING UPDATE:

LONDON, England (CNN) — Three men have been arrested in connection with the July 7, 2005, bomb attacks on the London transport network, British police said in a statement.

Two men, aged 23 and 30, were arrested at Manchester airport in northern England shortly before 1 p.m. GMT on Thursday as they were due to catch a flight to Pakistan, New Scotland Yard said.

A third man, aged 26, was arrested hours later at a house in Leeds. Police were searching five addresses in the Leeds area, the statement said.

“The three men were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000,” it read.

Pakistan. It just keeps coming up.

STILL “INSURGENTS” after all these years.

MORE FINANCIAL TROUBLES for the Boston Globe.

WRITING ABOUT THE “NO IMPACT” LIFESTYLE: “I hope that book isn’t going to be printed on, you know, paper.”

ELIZABETH EDWARDS’ CANCER HAS COME BACK, but the Edwards campaign will continue. Please send Elizabeth Edwards your best wishes for a full recovery.

LOSING FAITH in the Los Angeles Times.

UPDATE: More here: “I suppose this would be a bad time to bring up former Times editor and Martinez mentor John Carroll’s pompous lecture on the rise and dangers of pseudo-journalism.”

JAMES LILEKS DEFENDS GARRISON KEILLOR against charges of anti-gay bigotry. Somehow I had missed this kerfuffle.

IN THE MAIL: Hugh Hewitt’s new book, A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney.

Shockingly, not all of them involve his religion.

MORE PORK PUSHBACK:

An Iraq spending bill Congress will vote on Thursday has an Eagle Mountain mother angry, but not about war spending. The huge, 124.1 billion dollar appropriation bill also contains billions of dollars in spending that has nothing to do with the war. . . .

“I understand this is the way our legislature works, but I think it’s just sickening,” Michelle Matthews of Eagle Mountain told ABC 4 News. She’s upset because one of the earmarks reimburses California spinach farmers $25 million for losses they suffered. The losses came when they were unable to sell their crops last fall after Americans got sick and died from e-coli bacteria in a batch of tainted spinach.

Some of that spinach found its way to the Matthew’s dinner table. Michelle got sick, but her daughter, Arabella, almost died. Arabella was just two-years-old when she came down with e-coli. She spent nine days at Primary Children’s Hospital, had an operation and was on kidney dialysis.

The Matthews have about $60,000 in medical bills now, mostly covered by insurance. She says the family has been assured the spinach grower’s insurance company would pay the bills, but no money has arrived. Then Mrs. Matthews read that the spinach farmers stand to gain $25 million from the Iraq war spending bill.

“To reimburse them for making people ill is just inappropriate,” Mrs. Matthews said. “It’s insane that my tax dollars and the tax dollars of my family are going to pay these spinach farmers for their bad spinach for things that were their fault in the first place.”

Bailing out an industry that makes children sick, with taxpayer dollars! Now that’s smart politics!

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: USA Today editorializes:

With the House poised to vote as early as today on a $124.1 billion budget bill that would end U.S. involvement in Iraq next year, you’d think House leaders would let such a critical decision ride strictly on its merits.

But Democrats are having trouble rounding up votes for the measure. So the leaders are trying to buy votes the old-fashioned way — by luring wavering members with billions of dollars for parochial projects.

These range from providing “risk mitigation” at Mississippi’s Stennis Space Center to storage fees for peanut farmers in Georgia.

It’s hard to say which is worse: leaders offering peanuts for a vote of this magnitude, or members allowing their votes to be bought for peanuts. These provisions demean a bill that, if enacted, would affect the lives of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the balance of power in the Middle East and America’s long-term security.

The provisions also violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the new majority’s promise to cut back on “earmarks” — provisions slipped into bills that direct your tax dollars to a specific locale or politically favored project.

Last January, as soon as Democrats took control of Congress, the House passed new rules designed to curb earmarks, which had exploded under years of Republican rule. Yet here they go again, just 10 weeks later, including an assortment of dubious expenditures in “emergency” legislation to finance the war in Iraq and the wider war on terror. . . .

A spinach emergency? A peanut storage emergency?

Please.

Such arguments ignore what voters, fed up with corruption and ethical lapses, wanted when they threw Republicans out in November and helped Democrats take control of Congress.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Here’s a big roundup of the pork that’s included in this bill.

MORE: Ed Morrissey emails:

Isn’t it interesting that the Democrats — who ran on an anti-corruption, anti-war platform — now offer us a porked-up supplemental to fund the Iraq war?

Low as my expectations tend to be, they’re once again going unmet. . . .

And that the war isn’t a winning issue for the Dems is demonstrated by their eagerness — actually “desperation” is a better word — to get it off the table before November of 2008.

“GONZO-GATE”?

Shouldn’t there be a bat involved? “The bat is my attorney general, Carl Laszlo.”

UPDATE: Don Surber responds: “Just my marketing strategy for my book, Fear and Loathing in Poca.” It’ll sell!

A FEW FRINGE ACTORS in the anti-war movement.

A STUDENT REBELLION IN RUSSIA:

The New York Times reports today that a group of students calling themselves “OD” (that’s their logo above) at Russia’s version of Harvard, Moscow State University, is actively engaged in a protest against shoddy teaching standards and virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism at their college.

Maybe it’ll spread to San Francisco State University . . . .

IN THE PAST I’VE MENTIONED THE INDEPENDENT FILM BURNING ANNIE, which I liked very much. It’s now available on DVD. Here’s a trailer:

MICKEY KAUS has updated his compact fluorescent bulb post, and I’m pretty sure his problem is the dimmer switches. But as a CFL booster, I found this observation rather troubling: “Note the hectoring get-with-the-program, you’re-an-idiot-if-you-flicker, there-is-no-more-debate tone of some of the Fluorescers.”

It’s just a light bulb, people, not a moral crusade. I think that there must be a genetically programmed desire for moral crusading, hardwired into various people to various degrees. If you don’t have religious stuff to crusade about, then you just make up something else to satisfy the need. But . . . light bulbs?

240 YEARS IN JAIL, for a hate crime.

UPDATE: Reader Patrick Hajovsky emails: “I think you got wrapped up in the headline. Attempted murder and assault are among the charges.” Er, yes. That’s what’s odd about the headline.

HOW AFRICAN LEADERS protect Robert Mugabe.

And read this piece by Austin Bay, too.

BURNING U.S. SOLDIERS IN EFFIGY, in Portland, Oregon.

“Anti-war?” Or just on the other side? Your call.

UPDATE: Read this, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Video here.

MORE: It’s all because of frustration.

DANIEL DREZNER: “I’m simply more pessimistic about Europe’s ability to alter its domestic institutions and overcome its long-term demographics to continue to rise. The EU has staved off this problem in part by increasing expansion, but the fact is they’re going to be running out of viable countries soon.”

Me, I worry that Claire Berlinski got it right. (More on that here.) Question: Who’s willing to die for the EU? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?

Okay, forget that. Who’s even willing to take a 10% cut in pension benefits . . . .?

A BETTER POLITICIAN THAN WRITER? Claire Berlinski on Nicolas Sarkozy.

THE POLITICAL OPERATIVE BEHIND THE HILLARY 1984 YOUTUBE AD has been revealed, and it’s about who you’d expect: “a Democratic operative who worked for a digital consulting firm with ties to rival Sen. Barack Obama.”

IT’S A DUMB IDEA ON EITHER COAST: A proposal to ban incandescent bulbs in North Carolina.

UPDATE: Or maybe it’s an effort to boost a North Carolina business! Thanks to reader Daniel Moore for the tip.

CAMPAIGNING AGAINST SHOPPING? Not a winning platform for 2008.

HEH:

U.S. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma asked Gore to pledge to reduce his personal home energy to the national average within a year.

That was in reaction to reports of Gore’s large utility bill at his Nashville home.

Gore responded that he lives a “carbon neutral life” by buying carbon offsets to compensate for his energy use.

Inhoffe called the offsets “gimmicks” used by the wealthy.

That may be too strong, but they don’t sit well with moralistic messianic crusading. There’s more here:

Former Vice President Al Gore refused to take a “Personal Energy Ethics Pledge” today to consume no more energy than the average American household. The pledge was presented to Gore by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, during today’s global warming hearing.

Senator Inhofe showed Gore a film frame from “An Inconvenient Truth” where it asks viewers: “Are you ready to change the way you live?”

It has been reported that many of these so-called carbon offset projects would have been done anyway. Also, carbon offset projects such as planting trees can take decades or even a century to sequester the carbon emitted today. So energy usage today results in greenhouse gases remaining in the atmosphere for decades, even with the purchase of so-called carbon offsets.

“There are hundreds of thousands of people who adore you and would follow your example by reducing their energy usage if you did. Don’t give us the run-around on carbon offsets or the gimmicks the wealthy do,” Senator Inhofe told Gore.

“Are you willing to make a commitment here today by taking this pledge to consume no more energy for use in your residence than the average American household by one year from today?” Senator Inhofe asked.

A gimmick? Yes. A stunt? Yes. But it’s one that Gore has opened himself up to. That’s the problem with moralistic, messianic crusading — people expect you to live up to it.