AN OVERSPENDING SCANDAL INVOLVING THE Washington, D.C. metro system? Who’d have thought it?

THIS IS INTERESTING: A Serenity and Firefly Fan DVD, with all sorts of outtakes, commentary, etc. It’s kind of like the reels that Star Trek cast members used to show at conventions, only better produced and actually for sale. I have to say that Joss Whedon and Tim Minear certainly managed to get a lot out of a TV series that was only on for one season. And so have the fans!

A “POWERFULLY CORROSIVE INTERNAL CULTURE” at the BBC.

THE DANGERS AND BENEFITS OF DRIVING A GAY CAR:

RON GEREN, an actor in Los Angeles, commutes to auditions and jobs throughout Southern California in a sleek black Mazda MX-5 Miata convertible. But for a recent date with a woman, he rented a Cadillac Escalade because he was so used to friends saying his Miata is “gay.” . . .

Meghan Daum, an op-ed contributor to The Los Angeles Times, wrote about a promising first date with a man that never led to a second one because, she later learned, the guy saw that she drove a Subaru Outback station wagon and concluded she must be a lesbian.

And when Joe LaMuraglia, the founder of Gaywheels.com, an informational site modeled on the likes of Autoweb.com, told his partner he wanted to buy a Mini Cooper convertible, the boyfriend joked that he would not be seen in it because the couple “would look like such a gay cliché,” Mr. LaMuraglia said.

Shockingly, it turns out that actual gay people drive pretty much the same cars as everyone else, though. And is the electric Mini Cooper gay, too, or just nerdcore? Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

DON SURBER: “Am I alone in being disturbed by Barack Obama’s call for firing a broadcaster over something he said? This off-with-his-head mentality is unpresidential.”

UPDATE: “Racism and sanctimony. Is there some way to get them to stop feeding off each other?”

ROB HUDDLESTON HAS MORE THOUGHTS on the JL Kirk / King & Ballow libel demand. He thinks they chose unwisely:

Yes, the practice of issuing demand letters as a way of getting what a client wants without having to resort to actual litigation is widely used. However, you can’t treat every case the same. You need to know when something is going to be attractive to media – local, state, or (in this case) global. This goes for civil suits (as the one being threatened against Kat), criminal suits, and even juvenile cases (because the media can request access on certain hearings there, too). If this case is going to make the media take notice (taking into account that mainstream sources oftentimes are agitated to action by bloggers), then you have to be perfect in your actions.

I agree that this was ill-conceived. It has certainly done more harm to JL Kirk’s reputation than the original post could have. And there’s this: “Now, if you use Google Blog Search or Technorati, there are between 65 and 75 blogs posting on the incident and that’s only using the search term JL Kirk and Associates. . . . This whole thing wouldn’t have even been a blip on Google, but look where it is now.”

I could have predicted that. Come to think of it, I did! And more than once.

UPDATE: There’s nothing on their site yet, but I hear that the Media Bloggers Association is getting involved. This would seem to underscore Bill Hobbs’ point that a demand letter making threats “will, almost with a certainty, generate severe blowback and damage the company’s reputation far worse than the blog post that initially offended them.” Likewise Justin Levine: “In my experience, the bigger the law firm, the less likely they are to understand how blogging culture has changed the landscape. These people don’t understand that a legal threat is far more likely to damage their client’s reputation, rather than repair it.”

Indeed. Why, you could write a whole book on how this stuff has changed . . . .

Further thoughts from Rex Hammock. And, via Rex, this Better Business Bureau report on JL Kirk.

Still more here.

A PLUG-IN ELECTRIC MINI COOPER that you can buy right now if you like.

And no, it’s not likely to pay for itself in gas savings. But it’s kind of like getting a personal computer in the early 1970s — you’re doing it to be ahead of the technological curve, not because it really makes sense yet.

A LOOK AT THE DUKE CASE AND THE POSTMODERN NARRATIVE: “With the final outcome of the Duke rape idiocy, it is finally and fully apparent that the Duke faculty and administration have made fools of themselves. . . . It was obvious to normal people without an agenda a year ago that there was something fishy about the Duke story.”

UPDATE: A good point from Howard Kurtz:

As long as we’re talking about how the Rutgers women were unfairly disparaged as “ho’s,” consider the nightmare that the three Duke lacrosse players have lived through.

But in all the coverage you read and see about the clearing of these young men, very little of it will be devoted to the media’s role in ruining their lives. I didn’t hear a single television analyst mention it yesterday, even though two of the players’ lawyers took shots at the press.

It was an awful performance, no question about it. News organizations took one woman’s shaky allegations and turned them into a national soap opera, pillorying the reputations of the players. Reade Seligmann, Colin Finnerty and David Evans were presumed innocent in a legal sense, but not in the court of media opinion.

We will now read 100 stories about how an obsessive prosecutor overreached in bringing the indictments in the first place, and that’s fine. But keep in mind that the Duke case was all over the network newscasts, the morning shows, the cable channels and the front pages. Newsweek put two of the defendants’ mug shots on the cover. “I’m so glad they didn’t miss a lacrosse game over a little thing like gang rape,” Nancy Grace said on Headline News.

Nancy Grace’s behavior was particularly bad — and justly parodied on Saturday Night Live — but she was merely one of a miserable herd. And, as noted above, the story was obviously weak.

Kurtz continues:

What made this a case of aggravated media assault is that news outlets weren’t content to focus on the three defendants. Attorney General Roy Cooper said there was a “rush to condemn a community and a state.” Remember all the “trend” stories about “pampered” and “privileged” student athletes being “out of control”? Remember how the lacrosse players’ homes were shown on TV? How the coach lost his job? How this case was depicted as being about the contrast between a white elite institution and a poor black community? All of that was built on what turned out to be lies.

Once discrepancies surfaced in the account of the accuser–who has still not been identified by the MSM, even though she’s now been exposed as a liar–some news organizations did a good job of pursuing them. But just about everyone joined in the original frenzy over race and sports. And given the media’s track record going back to Richard Jewell, I have zero confidence that this won’t happen again.

Imus will probably lose his show. Nancy Grace won’t.

MORE: A lefty blogger wonders why people care. Aside from the obvious — it’s a manifest injustice in a case that got loads of publicity — I think it underscores that the political/media system isn’t living up to the standards of fairness it sets. In the conventional imagination, it used to be — see To Kill a Mockingbird or reports of the Scottsboro rape trial — that it was the noble fairness-obsessed lefties who supported due process against the ignorant right-wing hicks who tried to lynch people out of a mixture of racism, political opportunism borne of racism, journalistic sensationalism, and sheer meanness. Now the hats have switched. That’s worth noting.

STILL MORE: Radley Balko:

But the reason why the narrative for most of the last century has been that of noble, left-wing ACLU and NAACP lawyers coming to the aid of black people wrongly accused by racist white people is because for most of the last century, that’s the way it has actually happened. Over and over and over. . . . The right-wingers just happened to be right this time.

He’s right about the history — but I’m not sure this incident is as isolated as he suggests. And Jonathan Gewirtz comments: “My hunch, and this relates to my original point, is that while abuses of police and prosecutorial power probably happen everywhere, they are more likely to go unremedied in entrenched, one-party political cultures like those that exist in some of the so-called blue states.”

SUICIDE BOMBER KILLS 3 at the Iraqi Parliament building.

STRATEGYPAGE: “More evidence is piling up that Iran has, as many intel specialists have long suspected, been supporting some Sunni Arab terrorist groups, as well as Shia Arab ones. . . . The movement of thousands of terrorist personnel from Baghdad resulted in many of them being caught or killed. In the last two months, three senior al Qaeda leaders have been caught, and over 500 terrorists killed or captured.” Read the whole thing, and note the problems with corruption in Baghdad, which have been pointed out here before. While the Iraqi Army is doing much better, the police remain a problem.

EXTENDING COMBAT TOURS IN IRAQ: Austin Bay comments. When we talked to Army Secretary Francis Harvey about recruitment, retention, and combat stress issues he sounded pretty positive, but I was worried then and I remain concerned. The latest National Journal has an article suggesting that strains are worse than Harvey allowed, and that higher-ups in the military don’t want to say so. It seems like a bad time to play games with — and pork up — the supplemental appropriations bill. Perhaps some of that sugar-beet money should go to equipment and retention bonuses.

MEGAN MCARDLE: “The real question about CEO pay is . . . who cares?”

And read this item on CEO pay, too. And is it just me, or is that reference to “young Ezra Klein” a bit patronizing?

AND I THOUGHT THE JUSTIFICATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING WAS THAT IT WOULD BE BRAVER:

The producers of “Islam vs. Islamists” say their taxpayer-funded film has been shelved by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in “an ideological vendetta,” and because the production team includes conservative columnist Frank Gaffney Jr., founder of the Center for Security Policy. . . .

“I am incredulous that PBS would invest so much of our tax money into contracting professionals for a documentary on a subject — the struggle for the soul of Islam — which is one of the most vital debates of the 21st century and then censor its release,” said Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the Arizona-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy who is featured in the documentary.

“Until mainstream media and mainstream America understands the need to help this debate and expose the plight of moderates who push back against the Islamists within the Muslim community, we will continue to lose ground against militant Islamism,” Dr. Jasser said. “The censorship of this documentary tells us a great deal about the level to which our government is facilitating the ideology of Islamism which runs directly counter to our foundations of Americanism.”

I haven’t seen the film, but sadly the notion of PBS caving to political correctness here isn’t too hard to swallow. I hope that the film will air soon, and prominently.

JOE BIDEN ON DARFUR:

”I would use American force now,” Biden said at a hearing before his committee. ”I think it’s not only time not to take force off the table. I think it’s time to put force on the table and use it.”

In advocating use of military force, Biden said senior U.S. military officials in Europe told him that 2,500 U.S. troops could ”radically change the situation on the ground now.”

I agree with the sentiment, though we’re a bit busy at the moment. Perhaps Biden should make pushing for a larger military a top priority.

UPDATE: Reader Ed Stephens writes: “Tell Joe Biden to ask the Europeans. . . ‘Why don’t they have 2,500 troops to send to Darfur?’ If an area w/300 million people can’t raise that many troops, then perhaps it’s time we have a discussion about ‘free riding’ with them.”

Meanwhile, The Mudville Gazette characterizes his position as “Screw Iraq, Invade Darfur:”

The harsh reality is that once we abandon Iraq we’re going to have to put all the newly available troops in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda certainly will, and their recruiting is going to soar. Ultimately we’ll lose that one, too, because they won’t quit knowing full well that we will.

Then we can go to Darfur.

Behind much of the absurd talk of the impact of Iraq on military “readiness” there’s a Democratic talking point: “Because we are in Iraq, we aren’t capable of waging a war somewhere else.” That’s valid to an extent (but absurd to a greater one), but a more complete translation is that “because we are in Iraq we aren’t capable of executing a war that Democrats could hypothetically support, because Democrats are tough on national defense, by golly, and there are plenty of wars in places other than Iraq we’d prosecute to prove it”.

That’s disturbing, I’m concerned they would do so a bit too eagerly given the opportunity. Biden seems to be going that route – but he could just be paying lip sevice to it to earn the “hawk” (or “tough guy realist”) appellation the media bestows on guys like Murtha. (The actual “go to guy” for Dems when it’s time to cut-and-run. See Somalia, for example.)

I’m all for doing things about Darfur. But I don’t believe Biden.

THE DEFINITIVE PLACE for followups on the Duke Non Rape Case is, of course, K.C. Johnson’s blog.

UPDATE: Stuart Benjamin comments: “A defense lawyer (or a libertarian) treating this as a cautionary tale about the awesome power of a ‘rogue prosecutor’ to run amok is not a surprise. But an attorney general framing the case that way is more striking. Not that Nifong didn’t deserve this drubbing — just that I wasn’t betting on it.”

DEBATING free speech on campus at the University of Wisconsin.

A FOLLOWUP ON BLOGS AND CIVILITY, from Tim O’Reilly.

TRANSFORMING IMUS INTO A CONSERVATIVE: But of course.

UPDATE: This was fast.

TOXIC PSYCHOLOGY.

I WAS ON HUGH HEWITT talking about immigration just now with Mickey Kaus. Some further thoughts can be found here.

But if you want to kill an immigration amnesty bill this year, there’s an easy way — get Lou Dobbs to run for President as a Democrat.

TENNESSEE BLOGGER THREATENED WITH LIBEL SUIT. The text of the demand letter is here. Some thoughts on why threats like this are usually a bad idea can be found in this article on libel in the blogosphere.

Brittney Gilbert, meanwhile, has a characteristically pungent response.

This statement in the demand letter suggests a lack of familiarity with federal law on the subject: “As the ‘publisher’ of your blog, you control, and are responsible for, the content appearing in it. References by persons posting to your blog to JL Kirk Associates as ‘crooks’ and its services as a ‘scam’ are equally false and defamatory as your own.” If, as it seems to be, this is a reference to posts by blog commenters, it appears inconsistent with the Communications Decency Act’s immunity provisions. Perhaps, however, I misunderstand the argument.

UPDATE: SayUncle thinks this was a bad move: “They’ve probably done more damage with this than her original post did.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Hobbs: “As for JL Kirk Associates, if I was in the job market – and, as it turns out, I am – I wouldn’t use them. Not because of what Katherine Coble wrote, nor because of what I found about them via Google, but because they and their law firm decided that threatening to sue a blogger to squelch criticism was a better business tactic than addressing problems that may exist with how they do business.”

It’s already made the News-Sentinel.

MORE: Uh oh.

ORIN KERR ON THE WALTER MURPHY NO-FLY STORY:

I realize that Professor Murphy honestly and genuinely feels targeted. And it’s true that Professor Murphy is an academic giant; he’s he author of many major and important works, including one of my favorite books, Wiretapping on Trial. At the same time, I’m increasingly finding this story rather embarrassing. At this point it sounds to me like much ado about nothing, perhaps just a story of miscommunication or what happens when bored American Airline clerks in Albuquerque decide to have fun with a distinguished gentleman flying to Newark.

Walter Murphy sounds like 2007’s version of Nancy Oden to me. More on that story here.

NOW HERE’S AN IDEA: “Of all the possible Chrysler Group buyers with billions of dollars burning holes in their pockets, there is only one who has a chance of saving the troubled automaker AND our greenhouse-gassed planet: Al Gore. . . . He should buy Chrysler, which parent DaimlerChrysler put up for sale in February, and make it the greenest automaker on the planet.”

(Via Tom Elia).

DUKE CHARGES DISMISSED: Hot Air has the press conference video. And a transcript. Key bit: “We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations. Based on the significant inconsistencies between the evidence and the various accounts given by the accusing witness, we believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges.”