DOUG KMIEC on the Comey testimony.responds. And Orin Kerr comments:

In my view, Kmiec is plainly right that nothing in Comey’s testimony suggests anything like another Watergate. Consider how little we know about the facts. We don’t know what the program was that Comey and Ashcroft wouldn’t authorize, or why they wouldn’t authorize it. And as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the President intentionally violated a known legal duty or participated in some kind of cover-up. (Note that when Comey met with the President one-on-one, according to his testimony, the President backed him.)

At the same time, the test for whether the Comey story deserves attention surely can’t be whether it’s as bad as Watergate. I’m sure there’s room in there for political news that doesn’t quite hit Watergate break-in and Nixonian cover-up levels. And just as we don’t know the facts to make the Watergate comparison stick, we also don’t know the facts to suggest, as Kmiec does, that this was just some sort of routine disagreement within the Executive branch.

In fact, we don’t know much at all, though that certainly hasn’t kept it from becoming a big story.

DEFINING “PERSECUTION” DOWN.

GREG POLLOWITZ: “So, why exactly was Mayor Villaraigosa in town anyway? Would you believe he was actually in town meeting with Clinton and other mayors to discuss ways to lower carbon emissions? Hmm. What can we do as individuals to lower our carbon emissions? How about eating cows from the United States and not ones flown in from Tokyo? Would that help?”

HERE’S MORE ON THE CHANNON CHRISTIAN / CHRISTOPHER NEWSOME KILLING, from the Associated Press. Trial has been set for later this month. next year.

UPDATE: More coverage here.

A LOOK AT what’s newsworthy today.

JENNIFER RUBIN writes that Rudy is already running against the Democrats, rather than his Republican primary opponents. That seems right.

IOWA VOICE: “This is what I hate about politics. What average man just ‘isn’t aware’ he happens to have some ‘holdings’ in Sudan? Oh, really, I do? I had no idea! Where else do I have ‘holdings’? Then, of course, we see that they (the candidates) are all kagillionaires (naturally).”

UPDATE: Reader Chris Arfaa points out that these were 401k and mutual fund investments, meaning that actually lots of Americans might have similar holdings.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG INSPIRES A gun giveaway in Virginia.

A MEMO TO PAJAMAS MEDIA, from Fred Thompson.

UPDATE: No wonder Thompson’s paying attention to the Internet: “As of Wednesday afternoon, Thompson’s video, in which he suggests that Moore might look into a mental institution, drew 598,600 viewers on Vimeo, YouTube and Google Video. That dwarfs the most views from any moment during the debate.”

It was easier, too. It probably took a half hour or less to make that video. People sometimes say that Thompson’s lazy, but I’m put in mind of the Robert Heinlein short story, The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail.

And it’s quite impressive. Heck, he’s beaten my Cayman dive video and almost caught up to my Saturn video!

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts on Thompson from Peggy Noonan.

DAVE HARDY:

50 heavily armed men abduct 7 police: four them of them found dead, three missing, gun battles leave 20 dead. About a thousand people so far this year shot or decapitated.

Iraq? No, northern Mexico, about a hundred miles south of here. Betting is that the gang was a drug lord’s entourage.

And yet Mexico has strict gun laws.

“‘YOU CAN’T FIGHT CITY HALL.’ Unless you have a blog.”

THE POLITICO: “Democrats are wielding a heavy hand on the House Rules Committee, committing many of the procedural sins for which they condemned Republicans during their 12 years in power. . . . If this sounds familiar, it is. Republicans made similar promises in 1994, only to renege when they took control of the Congress in 1995.” Meet the new boss, yada yada.

UPDATE: More:

Powerful Democrat Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania threatened to deny any further spending projects to a Republican who challenged him over an earmark, his antagonist has charged — a potential violation of House rules.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) had challenged money Murtha inserted into an intelligence bill last week.

Rogers turned the tables later that night by saying he would propose a reprimand of Murtha for violating House rules.

Read the whole thing.

AN INSURGENT VICTORY at Dartmouth:

University of Virginia Law Professor Stephen Smith has been elected by alumni to the Dartmouth board of trustees. Professor Smith is the fourth petition candidate in a row to be elected to the board.

Here’s a column I wrote about Smith’s candidacy.

HOWARD LOVY: A mashup is not a survey.

WOLFOWITZ RESIGNS.

This should just be the start of a cleanup at the World Bank.

UPDATE: More thoughts from Professor Kenneth Anderson:

One of the many ironies in the Wolfowitz affair, however, is that in many respects, the target of the Bank staff seems to be as much Riza as Wolfowitz – she is a true believer in feminism, and as a true believer, she seems to believe that so many, many things can be traced back to misogyny – and, as a true believer in misogyny, was more than willing to throw fits to get her way by playing the gender card. She deserved, in my view, her raises as compensation for the ending of her career at the Bank, but it is clear that she played the gender card even there – everyone, starting with the Ethics Committee and the human resources department, caved rather than face a scene, and in some respects it was the unwillingness even to face, even to have a meeting with, an angry Muslim feminist whose career, after all, was being sacrificed on the altar of her paramour that is a central reason why that political hack (now hacking away at UNDP, but then the two deserve each other) Ad Melkert would not meet with her and dumped the whole thing back on Wolfowitz. . . . So the rest of the world may talk the gender talk, but it doesn’t mean it, at least not in the way that Americans, following conditions laid down by a combination of Mackinnon and the US Supreme Court, understand it. Maybe they’re right and the Americans are wrong – I’m not a feminist and see many problems with how the United States has evolved on these things. But in any case, in an international organization these rules seem on a collision course with the fact, among other things, of the acceptability of extramarital and other affairs at the Bank and the UN and all sorts of places – unless the institution reconciles them with a large, large dollop of hypocrisy and double standards. That is the usual attitude I have found at international organizations.

Read the whole thing.

FRED THOMPSON on the immigration bill. Plus, a roundup from Mickey Kaus.

And I take no comfort in this report, which suggests that nobody has an actual bill yet, and that the text won’t be available until after it’s voted on.

UPDATE: Dadvocate is invoking Al Gore.

A LOOK AT WIND POWER from Tyghe Trimble.

OUR PODCAST on The Dangerous Book for Boys led people to suggest some other books along the same lines. I haven’t read them, but you might check out The American Boy’s Handy Book, 211 Things a Bright Boy Can Do, and The Boy Mechanic.

I’ve given The Dangerous Book for Boys to my 8-year-old nephew. I think he’ll like it. Meanwhile, reader Tom Royce emails:

After reading your initial post on “The Dangerous Book for Boys” I promptly ordered it for my 5th grade son.

I have to say it has been most interesting. The book is never far from him and Mom is getting driven crazy for the requests for parts and tools every afternoon.

I must say that it is very refreshing to see him diving into the book and projects with such relish. The world is not set up for little boys to be little boys anymore and it is gratifying to see him have the right tool to help him.

Oh, and Dad is loving the book also.

That’s nice to hear.

UPDATE: Reader John Surratt emails:

Glenn you got me fired up. I found my uncle’s old copies of The Boy Mechanics vol’s 1 through 4 (copyrighted 1913,1915,1919,1925). I have 10 and 8 year old boys and now that cub scouts are over for the year I know how we will spend the summer. Speaking of dangerous I liked the baseball game with a pocket knife for rainy days and the 1925 Land Yacht for cruising in the summer – with a bathtub! I also noticed the sail powered motor for powering a work shop which seemed especially current now.

Sounds like fun. Let me know if the sail-power thing works.

WHILE EVERYONE’S TALKING IMMIGRATION, this passed: “Congress gave final approval on Thursday to a $2.9 trillion budget plan that promises big spending increases for education and health care and a federal surplus in five years.” It lets the tax cuts expire, too.

A DIVERSITY PROBLEM at the Associated Press.

BILL FRIST ON THE IMMIGRATION DEAL.

UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt is not happy. Just keep scrolling. Whether or not this is a good bill — which I’m not sure of one way or another — it’s likely to be political disaster for the GOP. Can you say “death wish?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Morrissey counsels calm: “As I wrote yesterday, this is about as good as we will get in this Congress. In fact, the Democrats probably had enough votes to pass something much more like a wide-open amnesty, given a few Republican votes in support of that and the relaxed attitude of the White House on immigration reform. The GOP did a pretty good job of holding the line and forcing the Democrats to include the border-first triggers, the reduction of the family interest, and the rest of what Kyl managed to retain. It’s not great, and it’s not even very good. It’s not bad, though.”

The big problem is the GOP leadership’s loss of credibility on this subject in recent years. As reader C.J. Burch emails: “Various boosters would have been better off explaining to the boostees that the fence should have come first. Would a fence have been merely a symbolic gesture? Probably, but its construction would have been a sign that Repubs weren’t cynically saying one thing and doing another…like they’re doing now. Like they did on the judges. Like they did on spending. Like they did on pork. Like they did on ethics reform. Like they’re doing with Iran. Like some of them are hoping to do with their support for the troops. Etc., Etc. ad infinitum. ” Indeed.

And Ace seems a bit upset.

CASSANDRA HAS THOUGHTS on democracy.

POSTURING AT THE PUMPS: George Will on gas prices.

A LOOK AT THE SITUATION IN IRAQ, from StrategyPage.

A SKEPTICAL LOOK at Barack Obama’s energy policy.