JOHN TAMMES ROUNDS UP news from Afghanistan that you probably missed.

GOTH DAY at Disneyland.

WHAT THE NEW YORK TIMES doesn’t think worth publishing. It’s all about the narrative, remember.

MEN: THREAT, OR MENACE?

When children get lost in a mall, they’re supposed to find a “low-risk adult” to help them. Guidelines issued by police departments and child-safety groups often encourage them to look for “a pregnant woman,” “a mother pushing a stroller” or “a grandmother.”

The implied message: Men, even dads pushing strollers, are “high-risk.”

Are we teaching children that men are out to hurt them? The answer, on many fronts, is yes. Child advocate John Walsh advises parents to never hire a male babysitter. Airlines are placing unaccompanied minors with female passengers rather than male passengers. Soccer leagues are telling male coaches not to touch players.

Child-welfare groups say these are necessary precautions, given that most predators are male. But fathers’ rights activists and educators now argue that an inflated predator panic is damaging men’s relationships with kids. Some men are opting not to get involved with children at all, which partly explains why many youth groups can’t find male leaders, and why just 9% of elementary-school teachers are male, down from 18% in 1981.

People assume that all men “have the potential for violence and sexual aggressiveness,” says Peter Stearns, a George Mason University professor who studies fear and anxiety. Kids end up viewing every male stranger “as a potential evildoer,” he says, and as a byproduct, “there’s an overconfidence in female virtues.” . . . One abused child is one too many. Still, it’s important to maintain perspective. “The number of men who will hurt a child is tiny compared to the population,” says Benjamin Radford, who researches statistics on predators and is managing editor of the science magazine Skeptical Inquirer. “Virtually all of the time, if a child is lost or in trouble, he will be safe going to the nearest male stranger.”

If you stereotyped on race the same way, you’d be regarded as a hopeless bigot. More here.

HEH: “Warner: Show Qaeda U.S. Commitment Not Open-Ended.”

ANDREW BREITBART TALKS TO PAT DOLLARD ABOUT embedding with the troops in Iraq, and talks to a caller about the relationship between radical Islam and radical Christianity.

STRATEGYPAGE: “But the most compelling bit of news on al Qaeda’s demise in Iraq is the changing composition of the hostiles there. At the beginning of the year, about 70 percent of terror attacks were by al Qaeda, and their Sunni Arab allies. Now, only about fifty percent of , a lower number of, those attacks are al Qaeda. The rest are Iranian supported Shia Arab groups, who are also trying to establish a religious dictatorship in Iraq (one run by Shias, not by Sunnis, as al Qaeda wants.) . . . Iran has backed Shia Arab militias even before the 2003 invasion. Iranian involvement goes back to the 1980s war with Iraq (and even earlier).”

OUR NEW PRIVILEGED CLASS:

So I guess once you’re elected to Congress, you’re immune from drunk driving laws; you can stash the evidence that you’ve committed a crime in your office, because investigators aren’t allowed to search it; if you kill someone because you’ve got a lead foot and blew a stop sign, the taxpayers will cover your financial liability; and, we learn today, you can commit whatever Internet-related crimes you please, because the police aren’t allowed to search your computer.

Meanwhile, the same Congress that has immunized itself from much of the law is also responsible for the ever-expanding federal criminal code, which we can thank for our shamefully enormous and still-soaring prison population, which is by far and away the largest in the world.

You have lawmakers who feel they’re above the law. And who at the same time are criminalizing anything and everything they find tacky, repugnant, or immoral.

No wonder they’re polling so badly. But what are we going to do about it?

A PREVIEW of the new Nikon D3. Sounds extremely cool. Price is a bit out of the InstaPundit range, though.

BRIAN MAY completes his doctorate. Congratulations! More here.

AARON HANSCOM: Confessions of a perpetual adolescent.

AND HE SAID IT, NOT ELIZABETH: “Sen. John Edwards, in a campaign theme speech about the culture of Washington, became the first Democrat to refer to the correlation between major Democratic fundraisers circa 1995 and their subsequent overnight stays in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.”

It’s the people vs. the powerful.

DAVID CODREA wonders why the tracing reports don’t show all those “assault weapons” allegedly used in crime. More interesting trace data here.

DON SURBER: “I am amused by how often the Brits get the obvious things about America that we Americans cannot see.”

VIRGINIA POSTREL on Science glamor and DNA style.

BERKE BREATHED: CENSORED? “The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus’ host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com.”

MY BROTHER’S BOOK is now out in China.

ILYA SOMIN WRITES ON Systematic shortcomings of broad Executive power in times of crisis.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF Middle Eastern civilization. “They are ‘unknowingly making themselves look like homosexuals.'”

And this is pretty funny.

MICHAEL TOTTEN LOOKS AT the worst terror attack since 9/11.

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN LOOKS AT Hugo Chavez and his enablers.

TRUE CONFESSIONS.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: “He is now actively courting the Russian Gay Vote. Bless.”

THOMPSON’S CAMPAIGN: Looking shaky? They’ve had a rough summer; it’ll be interesting to see how they do over the next month or so.

HEH: “With Bloomberg out, candidates vie to woo his supporter.”