MICHAEL MALONE WRITES that working at home isn’t as glamorous as you might think:

There’s a video of me, when my kids were young, sitting in a rented house in Oregon on vacation. Barney is on the television, my boys are having a pillow war all around me, my wife is vacuuming, and I am on the couch with my laptop writing a New York Times column, oblivious to the noise, flying objects and general chaos around me. Somehow, over the years, I learned how to focus — despite almost having flunked out of college because I was incapable of studying while wearing music headphones. Can you do that?

Read the whole thing. But the photo accompanying his article is certainly glamorous! Oh, wait, he addresses that: “In truth, real life working at home is to those glamor stories as real life home offices (empty coffee cups, magazines on the floor, overstuffed waste baskets) are to the photos that illustrate those articles.”

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS looks at what (Fred) Thompsonomics might look like.

A LOOK AT FRED THOMPSON’S FUNDRAISING RESULTS so far.

A LOOK AT IRAN’S “secret cells” in Iraq, from Bill Roggio.

THE POLITICO: immigration deal collapses. Is it fully dead? Or just mostly dead? Because mostly dead is still slightly alive. So it may not be time to go through its pockets and look for loose change yet..

Kaus agrees: “Of course, the bill isn’t dead. Just resting.”

ANOTHER MYTH BUSTED? “He’s the ultimate symbol of radical chic but was Che Guevara really a homophobic, racist square who personally ordered the jailing and executions of innocent men, women and children?”

“GREEDY LITTLE PIMPS’ EYES:” It does seem to be a transatlantic phenomenon.

INTERNET CENSORSHIP IS SPREADING, partly because big companies are collaborating. Perhaps some shareholder pressure is in order.

GUNS ON CAMPUS: Law enforcement officials are split on the subject.

AND THAT’S A BAD THING: “The story according to which politically connected industries block economic developments that would be beneficial overall but redound to the detriment of the big players is one expounded mostly by cranks in the U.S., but is commonly accepted in Europe. This results from the fact that in Europe, this kind of thing happens.”

Of course, the United States is not immune to politically connected efforts to block new technologies.

TAUNTING ME with Kegerator blogging.

BATTERED COLUMNIST SYNDROME.

QUESTIONING THE TIMING of questions about the timing.

UNSECURE SECURITY AT THE F.B.I. Homeland Security remains not ready for primetime.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: David Obey is getting home-state flak:

In six months David Obey has gone from hero to villain.

Late last year the Wisconsin Democrat who heads the powerful House Appropriations Committee helped to spark an effort to save taxpayers billions of dollars by reining in pork-barrel spending.

But Obey is now dodging the very reforms he helped to generate. . . . He announced that because more than 30,000 earmark requests had been made so far this year, it was impossible to determine which had merit.

His solution was to wait until the end of the lawmaking process, where earmarks would be submitted in closed-door sessions of the committee that negotiates the differences between House and Senate versions of bills.

With this maneuver, Obey would enhance his own power but prevent the public and most lawmakers from questioning earmarks until it is too late.

Read the whole thing. Especially if you’re Obey, or live in his district.

HAPPY SUMMER VACATION: E. Coli in beach sand.

HOW TO REVIVE A FADING CAREER: Israel-Bashing! It’s the Boost Plus of politics!

IN THE MAIL: Dr. Grattan Woodson’s The Bird Flu Preparedness Planner.

A couple of other avian flu items here and here. As I’ve noted before, regardless of whether avian flu ever becomes a deadly human pandemic, the likelihood is fairly high that we’ll see some sort of deadly pandemic in the next decade or two. And most flu preparations will also help in the case of some other dangerous disease outbreak.

Also, on a not entirely unrelated subject, Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. Overall, the world is getting richer, even most of the world’s poor. But there are still a lot of dirt-poor people out there, and that raises the risk of disease outbreaks.

WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY FOOTPRINT: And bills!

Plus, summer lawn-prep. Mine consists of praying for rain. Hey, we got some!

SPEAKING OF FLOATING ADVANTAGEOUS RUMORS: “A man has sued the maker of the health drink Boost Plus, claiming the vitamin-enriched beverage gave him an erection that would not subside and caused him to be hospitalized.”

What do you think: Does this hurt Boost sales or help them?

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE looks at pirates and the law.

STUCK IN virtual reality. Didn’t that plot start with Tron?

TURNING SKIN CELLS INTO STEM CELLS: “In a surprising advance that could sidestep the ethical debates surrounding stem cell biology, researchers have come much closer to a major goal of regenerative medicine, the conversion of a patient’s cells into specialized tissues that might replace those lost to disease.”

Bring it on!

YOU’VE GOT TO FIGHT, FOR YOUR RIGHT to leer.

Hey, they said that if George W. Bush were reelected people would be trying to turn the clock back to the 1950s. And they were right!

BILL ROGGIO TAKES A LOOK AT the state of Iraqi security forces.