BY THE WAY, here’s my interview with Mother Jones on blogs, the Netroots, and the 2008 elections.

A MASSIVE PROTEST FOR PRESS FREEDOM in Venezuela.

NOT A DISNEY STORY: A memoir of autism and adoption.

MORE ON MURTHA:

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) will recuse himself should the House ethics committee review Rep. John Murtha’s (D-Pa.) earmark activities. . . .

Doyle is a longtime ally of Murtha, the dean of the Pennsylvania delegation. They also share some campaign contributors; many lobbying firms that donate heavily to Murtha and whose clients are recipients of millions of dollars in earmarks from him are also among Doyle’s top contributors.

Murtha’s relationship with the two lobbying firms, KSA Consulting and the PMA Group, came into question on Monday following a report about earmarks he obtained for the firms’ clients.

Stay tuned.

THE POLITICO: “The bitter fight over a comprehensive immigration overhaul has pushed President Bush and his fellow Republicans to the brink of divorce — and, for the first time, the opportunities for reconciliation appear severely limited.”

Positive spin: This is so suicidal, Bush must be acting out of conviction!

MEXICAN IMMIGRATION: A problem that will solve itself?

There has been a stunning decline in the fertility rate in Mexico, which means that, in a few years there will not be many teenagers in Mexico looking for work in the United States or anywhere else. If this trend in the fertility rate continues, Mexico will resemble Japan and Italy – rapidly aging populations with too few young workers to support the economy.

Read the whole thing.

PROBLEMS WITH the virtual fence.

MORE ON MOLLOHAN: “A $1 million earmark request by Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) would allow the Interior Department to expand a wilderness area neighboring properties the Congressman owns.”

MOTHER JONES: Running dog of reaction! That’s pretty much Jay Rosen’s take, anyway.

BLOGGING at the Nashville City Paper.

DAVID ADESNIK: Stop paying attention to Michael Moore.

Who?

UPDATE: On the other hand, this is kind of funny:

“There’s an elephant in the room, and it is you,” PETA president Ingrid Newkirk wrote in a letter to Moore.

Maybe his next work will be Downsize Me after all . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Blair notes that for someone who cares about animals, Ingrid Newkirk seems rather ignorant: “As it happens, elephants are vegetarians.”

READER TOM BROSZ ON THE IPHONE: “Give me a call when they make one you can drop on the sidewalk, carry in your pocket with keys and change, or plop it into a tide pool (done this), without destroying it. Only in recent months have Verizon and others finally started selling “ruggedized” phones. Years overdue, IMO.”

Good point.

A RALPH BAKSHI ENDING to the Harry Potter series? I’d love that, actually, but I imagine a lot of other people wouldn’t.

BRENDAN NYHAN:

The Wall Street Journal editorial board warns that the immigration debate threatens to make the GOP a minority party. They’re right. It splits the Republicans right down the middle, demoralizes the base in advance of 2008, and is prompting a conservative counter-mobilization that could make Latinos a Democratic constituency for years to come.

Ironically, the issue was not pushed to the top of the legislative agenda by Democrats. As John B. Judis points out, Democrats haven’t been able to push through any legislation that splits Republicans and forces a Bush veto (for now, at least, GOP party loyalty is too strong to overcome a filibuster).

Instead, Bush has been doing the Democrats’ work for them.

Yes, this is why it seems so odd to me that they would do this — particularly as it’s also hurting them with supporters they’ll soon need on the war. if Bush loses on the bill, it’s a big loss with lots of collateral damage. If he wins, it may be even worse.

HERE’S A CHRONOLOGY OF attacks on the oil industry in Nigeria. Plus this: “Gunmen have kidnapped the three-year-old son of a lawmaker in southern Nigeria’s Rivers State, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on Wednesday.”

IT’S NOT PAY FOR PERFORMANCE: “Despite record-low approval ratings, House lawmakers Wednesday voted to accept an approximately $4,400 pay raise that will increase their salaries to almost $170,000. . . . The pay raise would also apply to the vice president – who is president of the Senate – congressional leaders and Supreme Court justices.”

UPDATE: An alternative proposal from Keith Milby: “I propose we pay them say $2,000 multiplied by their average approval rating. So according to the Real Clear Politics average congressional ratings, which is currently 25% that would be approximately $50,000.”

T.V. NETWORKS HIT a new ratings low.

JEFF SESSIONS: Talk radio knows the bill better than we do.

I think Senators should read bills before they vote on them. Yes, I realize this would bring Congress to a near standstill. . . .

MAKING PODCAST ADS more nimble.

MORE ON THE RIAA AS A DEFENDANT.

COMPETING CLOCKS ON IRAQ: “the military clock in Baghdad, the Iraqi government clock, and the US political clock in Washington.” Biggest strategic bind: “the U.S. political cycle.”

FRED THOMPSON ON LOBBYING, at Ed Morrissey’s place.

AMAR BAKSHI IS TRAVELING THE WORLD, asking people what they think of America on video.

A LOOK AT CHINA’S WAR IN SPACE:

Every industrialized country relies on satellites every day, for everything from computer networking technology to telecommunications, navigation, weather prediction, television and radio. This makes satellites especially vulnerable targets. Imagine the U.S. military suddenly without guidance for its soldiers and weapons systems, and its civilians without storm warnings or telephones.

Some satellites, however, are at greater risk than others. Most spacecraft — including spy sats — are in low Earth orbit, which stretches 1240 miles into space. As the Chinese test proved, such targets could be hit with medium-range missiles tipped with crude kill devices. GPS satellites are far higher, orbiting at about 12,600 miles. Many communications sats are in the 22,000-mile range. Destroying them requires a much more powerful and sophisticated long-range ballistic missile — yet it can be done. “You’d need a sky-sweeping capability to comprehensively negate a space support system that is scattered all over,” says John Pike, a space analyst at GlobalSecurity.org. “You’d need ICBM-size boosters — hundreds of them.”

Such an all-out satellite war would render space useless for decades to come. “There’d be so much debris up there,” Clark says, “that it wouldn’t be safe to put anything up in space.”

I’d be very upset if that happened.

MORE VIDEO OF protests in Tehran.

UPDATE: Also, Iran’s self-sanctions.