MICKEY KAUS on politicians who drive 100 miles per hour: “Isn’t this a pretty basic violation of social equality?”

Er, yes. Lots of people drive fast — I was going to visit my brother a while back, zipping along in the left lane at what I thought was the highest prudent speed for the road in my Mazda RX-8, only to find an endless array of minivan-driving soccermoms coming up on my rear bumper and signalling me to move over. Everybody drives awfully fast nowadays — but the rest of us face tickets if we do it. As Kaus points out, Bill Richardson wouldn’t even pull over when a cop tried to ticket him.

UPDATE: Reader Joe O’Rourke emails:

Though not environmentally responsible or safety conscious, most cars nowadays are more than capable of holding speeds in excess of 80mph comfortably. This is noted by your minivan experience.

20-30 years ago, cars would shake a lot while doing 75mph, or they would feel “floaty”. Chassis and suspension engineering and good quality tires have eliminated these sensations, and superior engine technology means the car doesn’t strain to hold the speed.

I think it’s time for our longer highway systems, at the least to begin raising speed limits. When a supermajority of the populace does not obey the law, is that not a mandate for increasing the limit of the law?

The problem with that is that highways would need to be maintained to a level consistent with high speeds…and, at least in the northeast, no state ever maintains their roads to a level of safety consistent with modern day speed limits…

True on all counts.

YEAH, I CAN IMAGINE things worse than polygamy, too.

HERE’S AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN ROBB, whose book, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization, I mentioned a while back.

SOME THOUGHTS ON character and the Presidency, from Ross Douthat.

BLAMING THE AUDIENCE for Katie Couric’s failures.

A NEW AP-IPSOS POLL: “People think the Democratic-led Congress is doing just as dreary a job as President Bush, following four months of bitter political standoffs that have seen little progress on Iraq and a host of domestic issues. . . . The survey found only 35 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job, down 5 percentage points in a month. That gives lawmakers the same bleak approval rating as Bush, who has been mired at about that level since last fall.” Upside for Nancy Pelosi — she’s still more popular than Congress as a whole, which means she can spin it that she’s more popular than Bush!

FRED THOMPSON ON THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

Giuliani on the Second Amendment.

Barack Obama on the Second Amendment. Or, well, gun control anyway.

K.C. JOHNSON NOTES that despite the utter collapse of the Nifong prosecution, members of the Duke faculty are continuing to make fools of themselves. Sounds like more of that “rhetorical will to power by way of narrative control” that I’ve been hearing about.

This is not academia’s finest hour.

CENSORING ART IN RICHMOND:

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama hasn’t been elected and already his campaign is engaged in a cover-up of sorts.

Before the Illinois senator spoke Tuesday night at a Richmond art gallery to about 500 Democrats, an Obama advance woman asked the gallery to cover one painting deemed potentially offensive and to remove another.

Artist Jamie Boling said he first was offended by the censorship but now has mixed feelings. In today’s political and cultural climate, the pictures could have been used against Obama, he said.

They told me that if George W. Bush was reelected we’d see objectionable paintings taken down. And they were right! (Via Don Surber, who comments: “Shades of John Ashcroft and the nekkid statue.” Hey, thanks to Alberto Gonzales, Ashcroft is acquiring a retroactive glow!)

ARE OPIE AND ANTHONY imperiling an XM/Sirius merger? Wired’s Epicenter Blog thinks so.

VETERAN SOUTHEASTERN ROCKERS will probably remember the seminal ’70s punk band Balboa. Lynnpoint Records has put a bunch of their songs up online for free download now — from a compilation I put together with Balboa guitarist Terry Hill in 2001 shortly before he died. You can get the tunes here. My personal favorites are Live Like This, The Big Sleep, and Writer and the Artist. (Bumped).

2019 UPDATE: The Lynnpoint site is long gone, but you can hear Balboa here.

RADLEY BALKO LOOKS AT hypocrisy as a driving force:

Corzine isn’t the only one. There’s an increasing hubris among many elected officials that their job is so important, their time so much more precious than ours and their position in public life so privileged, that they can zip by us on the road, pushing everyday folk aside so they can get to their far more important destinations.

This is about more than just traffic laws, of course. It’s about the arrogance of power. These politicians not only assume their lives, meetings and fundraisers are more important than everyone else’s to the point that they don’t have to follow the rules, they’re willing to put other people on the road at risk to prove their point.

In 2003, The Washington Post reported that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson routinely ordered his driver to whip down public roads at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. Even after those reports, when a police officer attempted to pull over Richardson’s car for speeding in 2005, the governor’s driver refused to stop. In the last two years, Richardson’s lieutenant governor has also been caught running a red light and parking in a fire zone.

For his part, Richardson refused to apologize for his law-breaking. He said he’d instruct his drivers to slow down, but cited his busy schedule as governor and said he wouldn’t promise not to speed again. By April 2006, his car was seen pushing 90 again.

In 2003, South Dakota Rep. Bill Janklow blew through a stop sign while speeding and killed a man on a motorcycle. Janklow had been previously pulled over 16 times for speeding, but never ticketed.

Though Janklow was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the accident, in 2004 prosecutors determined he was officially “on the job” when he struck the motorcyclist, meaning federal taxpayers will have to foot the bill for the $25 million lawsuit filed by Janklow’s victim’s family.

Press reports in 2004 revealed that Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s car had been clocked traveling over 100 miles per hour on nine separate occasions. Rendell subsequently admitted to giving his drivers permission to speed to get him to meetings, though he did promise to stop giving those instructions in the future.

After Corzine’s crash in April, Rendell acknowledged that despite his prior assurances, his drivers do sometimes still exceed the speed limit to help him make appointments, but he assured Pennsylvanians that he always wears his seat belt. Well. Good thing he’s keeping himself safe.

Yeah, it makes me feel better. I think we should allow citizens to arrest politicians they find breaking traffic laws, since ordinary law enforcement officials have a conflict of interest. That’ll pass!

DIVORCE RATE lowest since 1970.

WOW. Today’s podcast on advertising is underscored by this piece I just ran across in Advertising Age:

Since 88% of Audi buyers spent a significant amount of time on audiusa.com before purchase, Audi is spending dramatically more online this year, Mr. Keogh said, though he declined to reveal details.

88%. Wow.

KEITH HENSON UPDATE: Surprise arrest for Scientology critic. I swear, it’s safer to confront the mob — and they like it that way, I think.

JACOB SULLUM: “To me, it seems kind of strange that someone arguing in favor of hate crime legislation would single out people for criticism based on their race and age.”

To me, it seems entirely predictable.

BILL HOBBS: Tax cuts don’t shrink government. A.C. Kleinheider agrees.

WALMART ON CFLS:

Wal-Mart announced Thursday that its suppliers of compact fluorescent light bulbs have agreed to dramatically reduce the amount of mercury in the energy-saving bulbs. . . . The company said its CFL suppliers — GE, Royal Philips, Osram Sylvania and Lights of America — “committed to achieving a greater reduction in mercury content than the 5 mg standard set by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association earlier this year. These suppliers will also adhere to clean production techniques that will minimize mercury pollution from factories manufacturing CFLs.” . . .

The mercury content in the average CFL — now about 5 milligrams — would fit on the tip of a ballpoint pen, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and manufacturers have committed to cap the amount in most CFLs to 5 milligrams or 6 milligrams per bulb.

The majority of Philips Lighting’s bulbs contain less than 3 milligrams, and some have as little as 1.23 milligrams, said spokesman Steve Goldmacher.

Read the whole thing.

THE EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY of Lou Dobbs.