IS THE WAR LOST? Three inconvenient truths about Iraq.

IN THE MAIL: John McCain’s new book, Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them.

THE L.A. TIMES has a big report on the Mojave / Scaled Composites explosion. Basically it’s a fairly standard industrial accident, made sexier for news purposes because it’s space-related:

Rutan said the suspected culprit, nitrous oxide, normally is “not considered a hazardous material.” Commonly called laughing gas, it is found in dental offices and is used by hot-rodders to boost the horsepower on their vehicles’ engines.

According to Rutan, company employees were examining the rate at which the propellant flows through an opening. He emphasized that the test, conducted at room temperatures, did not involve igniting the rocket motor or sparking any fire.

Probably something led to a spark in an unforeseen, and perhaps unforeseeable, way.

GOOD NEWS:

In a prison cell south of Cairo a repentant Egyptian terrorist leader is putting the finishing touches to a remarkable recantation that undermines the Muslim theological basis for violent jihad and is set to generate furious controversy among former comrades still fighting with al-Qaida.

I’m in favor of that.

CREATURES FROM The Abyss.

JUNK SCIENCE AND CONGRESS: A firsthand account from Todd Zywicki:

The study’s central findings were that 54½ percent of all bankruptcies have a “medical cause” and 46.2 percent of all bankruptcies have a “major medical cause.” Even if this were true, bankruptcy law already provides adequate safeguards for the special problems posed by medical bankruptcies, as one of us (Mr. Zywicki) testified at the hearing. But it is not true. And the only way to make such a claim is to gerrymander the definition of medical bankruptcies to generate the desired results — true junk social science.

For example, the study classifies uncontrolled gambling, drug or alcohol addiction, and the birth or adoption of a child as “a medical cause.” There are indeed situations in which a researcher may legitimately classify those conditions as “medical,” but a study used to prove Americans are going bankrupt as a result of crushing medical debt is not one of them.

A father who has gambled away his family’s mortgage payment is not the victim of crushing medical bills.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A response from Elizabeth Warren.

ARGUMENTS ABOUT A MARS SAMPLE RETURN MISSION:

At the Mars conference, placing an expensive sample return activity on the exploration agenda, perhaps at the expense of other projects, sparked some anxieties.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” said Philip Christensen, a leading Mars scientist and professor in the Department of Geological Science at Arizona State University in Tempe. “I am concerned that the sample return mission would take over the Mars program. If you put that mission too far into the future, with not much in between, then you lose a lot of momentum … a lot of young talented scientists and engineers,” he said.

Christensen added that he sees “a real serious challenge” in carving out enough money in the near-term to pay for Mars sample return and still maintain a dynamic program.

“It’s going to take a careful, delicate balance to be able to afford the sample return and yet maintain some measure of a program,” Christensen told SPACE.com at the Mars meeting in Pasadena. “I have no expectation that the program will be as dynamic and vigorous as it has been if we’re going to pay for a sample return. Something’s got to give. But at the same time you can’t just give up everything.”

Plus, of course, there’s the issue of back contamination.

U.S. ATTORNEY declines contempt prosecution.

OBAMA CALLS HILLARY “Bush-Cheney lite?” Hmm. Who’s the Cheney? Bill?

GOOD NEWS: “The economy snapped out of a lethargic spell and grew at a 3.4 percent pace in the second quarter, the strongest showing in more than a year. A revival in business spending was a main force behind the energized performance.” I credit the new Democratic Congress!

MARRIAGE MAKES YOU HAPPIER: Especially if you start off depressed.

NOBODY LOVES ALBERTO: “Gonzo has managed to do something no one else in Washington has managed in years: create a spirit of true bipartisanship. ”

He’s a uniter, not a divider. The Bush Administration wouldn’t have had this problem if they’d listened to me and made Randy Barnett Attorney General! But maybe they’ve been saving him for the Supreme Court . . . .

UPDATE: Ouch: “Gonzales has lost so much credibility that he’s no longer believed even when he is telling the truth.”

VOTER-FRAUD IN WASHINGTON STATE: “King and Pierce County prosecutors filed felony charges today against seven people who allegedly committed the biggest voter-registration fraud in state history. The defendants, who were paid employees and supervisors of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, concocted the scheme as an easy way to get paid, not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections, King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg said. . . .

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history of the state of Washington. There has been nothing comparable to this,” state Secretary of State Sam Reed said at a news conference with Satterberg, King County Executive Ron Sims and Acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan.

It’s not comforting. (Via NewsAlert).

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Richard Milhous Spitzer: “At least Nixon waited a little while before using the tools of state against his political enemies.”

MICKEY KAUS: “Will L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa hold up NBC-Universal’s giant $3 billion development plan if it doesn’t reinstate his honey at its Telemundo subsidiary? If NBC does take care of Mirthala Salinas, does that mean Villaraigosa owes the company? At last, some irresponsible bloggish speculation from the Los Angeles Times.”

AN ELECTRIC-POWERED SPORT PLANE: Range is not extensive.

THE NIGHT SHIFT: From StrategyPage. “There’s a war going on in Iraq that you rarely hear about. It goes on at night, and has been very successful. While U.S. infantry and tank units make raids all over central Iraq, the other war, fought largely at night, by engineers and non-infantry troops (often artillerymen) serving as infantry, to catch and stop teams of terrorists trying to set up roadside bombs.”

A ROCKET EXPLOSION at Mojave Airport. Scaled Composites is there, but so are a number of smaller rocket companies; not clear yet what happened. Explosions are a part of the rocket business, alas.

UPDATE: Jeff Foust posts that TV reports say that it was an accident at Scaled Composites.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Rand Simberg.

MORE: Meanwhile, reports of sabotage and drinking at NASA.

STILL MORE: Via Rand Simberg, a Friday morning update. It was a “cold flow” test using nitrous oxide that appears to have accidentally ignited; since no ignition system was present it was probably a spark or something. They’re now saying three dead, all Scaled Composites employees. May they rest in peace.

In truth, this is a pretty routine industrial accident, of the sort that’s basically inevitable when you’ve got activity of any significant size using things that can explode — it’s just the space connection that gets it the attention. Let’s hope the various bureaucrats and politicians don’t see this as an opportunity to make themselves feel important at the expense of the industry. (Bumped).

ETHICS COMMISSION BEGINS review of Spitzer’s office.

More here.

And Professor Bainbridge adds: “Can you imagine what Attorney General Spitzer would have done to a corporate CEO who told two of his executives to stonewall and who tried to fight off an investigation?” He’s got lots more — just keep scrolling.

A VICTORY FOR FREE SPEECH: “Rep. Mike Pence sponsored an amendment prohibiting the Justice Department from spending any money to enforce the most controversial part of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law: the part regulating political advertising in the run-up to an election. . . . The amendment passed on a voice vote; then Chris Shays (R., Conn.), one of the two main House sponsors of McCain-Feingold, demanded a recorded vote. It passed again, 215-205.”

PILOTS: “Our entire approach to airline security is almost completely ineffective.”

I DON’T GET SEASICK, but please don’t book me on this cruise.

STUDENT-LOAN FOLLIES:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, fresh from an investigation of the student loan industry, is out with a plan he says will “help reverse the crisis in college affordability.” Kennedy’s Robin Hood approach takes $18 billion from lenders and applies it to reducing loan repayment costs for students, among other purposes.

The student loan business is a lucrative one. But the senator is going after the wrong folks if he’s trying to rein in the biggest “fat cats” in academe. That mantle should rest on the shoulders of colleges and universities themselves. Legislators setting policy with regard to higher education should realize that colleges and universities are our nation’s richest — and possibly most miserly — “nonprofits.”

Colleges and universities are sitting on a fortune in tax-free funds, and sharing almost none of it. Higher education endowment assets alone total over $340 billion. Sixty-two institutions boast endowments over $1 billion. Harvard and Yale top the list with endowments so massive, $28 billion and $18 billion respectively, that they exceed the general operating funds for the states in which they reside. It’s not just elite private institutions that do this; four public universities have endowments that rank among the nation’s top 10. The University of Texas’ $13 billion endowment is the fourth largest nationwide, vastly overshadowing most of the Ivy League.

These endowments tower over their peers throughout the nonprofit world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is America’s wealthiest museum. But the Met’s $2 billion endowment is bested by no less than 26 academic institutions, including the University of Minnesota, Washington University in St. Louis, and Emory. Indeed, the total worth of the top 25 college and university endowments is $11 billion greater than the combined assets of their equivalently ranked private foundations — including Gates, Ford and Rockefeller.

Higher education endowments also are growing much faster than private foundations. The value of college and university endowments skyrocketed 17.7 percent last year, while private foundation assets increased 7.8 percent. Just 3.3 percent of the increase in academic endowments is attributable to new gifts. Most of the gain is a result of stingy, outdated endowment payout policies that retain and perpetually re-invest massive sums. This widespread practice results in a hoarding of tax-free funds.

Yeah, I was doing some math on Yale, trying to figure out if they could abolish tuition entirely based on their endowment earnings. I’m pretty sure the answer is yes, which makes me less interested in donating when they call.

WELL, YES: “Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.”

I’ve posted on this before.

WHEN I LINKED MY BROTHER’S NEW CD the other day, it quickly went out of stock at CDBaby. But if you were one of the ones who missed out, it’s back in stock now. And their hometown paper, the Cincinnati Post, calls it “stellar.”