ANOTHER BUBBLE? Surely not.

G.I. JILL: Miss Utah, combat medic.

FIGHTING THE E.U. “REFORM” TREATY in the House of Lords.

HEH. John Edwards seems the most natural, somehow. (Via Mellow-Drama).

MICKEY KAUS: “Hillary’s supposed to be the experienced one who can handle foreign policy crises. Yet in the current campaign it’s Hillary who seems panicked and Obama who projects calm.”

CRUSHING OF DISSENT, in Bali.

ANOTHER BLAGOJEVICH SCANDAL, in the Chicago Tribune: “Federal agents are investigating real estate deals involving Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s wife as part of a three-year corruption probe into allegations of favoritism and fraud within his administration.” (Via NewsAlert).

UPDATE: Name that party! Will Collier emails: “The Chicago Tribune story on Blagojevich you linked to does not contain the word ‘Democrat.'” Yeah. Chicagoans know, of course, but the Trib is supposed to be a national paper. And I had to stop and think myself.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Harmon Ward emails: “Won’t leaving ‘Democrat’ or ‘Democratic’ out of the articles that also contain the word “Corruption” reduce the instances of finding those articles when they are Googled?” Good point. I doubt that’s their goal, but it is still significant.

GREENHOUSE UPDATE: Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year. I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis. Like, you know, substituting videoconferences for tropical-island junkets.

MORE ON CONGRESS’S DUMB WI-FI BILL from Glenn Fleishman:

The bill, as written, was rushed into session using an expedited procedure that avoided the usual review. Declan McCullagh writes at Cnet that the legislation also changed substantially before being brought to a vote. So reasonable opposition didn’t form before its passage. The Senate could approve a similar view, but it’s hard to know how enforceable it will be.

The bill, as written, would probably kill free wi-fi nearly everywhere. Could EVDO providers be behind this? Or is Congress just this stupid? I guess the two hypotheses aren’t mutually inconsistent.

TRACKING THE Ron Paul spam botnet. See, I think this kind of thing hurts him more than it helps him.

ZIGGING WHILE ROMNEY ZAGS: Fred Thompson — I’m not a churchgoer.

Asked about his religious beliefs during an appearance before about 500 Republicans in South Carolina yesterday, Fred Thompson said he attends church when he visits his mother in Tennessee but does not belong to a church or attend regularly at his home in McLean, Va., just outside Washington. The actor and former senator, who was baptized in the Church of Christ, said he gained his values from “sitting around the kitchen table” and said he did not plan to speak about his religious beliefs on the stump. “I know that I’m right with God and the people I love,” he said, according to Bloomberg News Service. It’s “just the way I am not to talk about some of these things.” . . . And he did not seem particularly concerned that his admission would hurt him with voters. “Me getting up and talking about what a wonderful person I am and that sort of thing, I’m not comfortable with that, and I don’t think it does me any good,” he said. “People will make up their own mind about that, and that’s the way I like it.”

I like that, too.

ERIC SCHEIE: “But is a take-off on a Renaissance painting blasphemy? Should Nancy Pelosi condemn it? I don’t know. Did she condemn the Mohammad cartoons?”

AP EXCLUSIVE: Blagojevich and extortion.

MY EARLIER POST ON FREE SHIPPING and Amazon Prime produced this email from reader Travis Corcoran:

I’m an entrepreneur (I launched SmartFlix.com and grew it to about $1 million/year in revenue…with no venture capital!), and last month I launched HeavyInk.com: sort ofan Amazon.com for comic books, graphic novels, etc., crossed with the social networking aspects of Facebook.

I’ve been insistent from the get-go that we offer free shipping on everything. You can come in, order a comic book for $1.99, and you get a 20% discount, and free shipping.

Yeah, we lose big money on the person who orders one comic book.

…but the value proposition is so simple and compelling, that we get tons of customers, who soon start buying enough stuff that it’s, on average, worthwhile.

Bezos was/is right!

And reader Kathleen Hay emails: “Surprisingly, new parents tell me Amazon Prime for diapers is the cheapest possible and great because you don’t have to leave the house.” Plus, as I’ve noted in the past, it’s environmentally friendly!

UPDATE: Reader Fred Butzen emails: “I was sold on Amazon when I found I could go on it, and with a few clicks of the mouse send stuff to my son, who at the time was with the Army in Iraq. It still amazes me. I’ve heard a genius defined as ‘the man who has a profound grasp of the obvious’. That sure sounds like Jeff Bezos.” I’m a fan. And so is Cranky Greg, even though he’s, well, cranky.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Chris Farley emails: “I second DRJ. He told my EXACT story, except I finished all of my Christmas shopping, plus birthdays for my wife and twins, well before Thanksgiving. Heck, I’ve got everything wrapped and ready to put under the tree and it isn’t even decorated yet!”

I wonder if this tends to appeal more to men, who tend not to enjoy shopping for its own sake?

MORE: Reader Kimblerly Stresing emails:

After reading your feedback from men on Amazon, and your statement “I wonder if this tends to appeal more to men, who tend not to enjoy shopping for its own sake?” I felt I just had to respond.

I have been using Amazon as my primary source for Christmas shopping for quite a few years now. I love shopping just as much as the next woman, and I find that shopping Amazon is a far more satisfying “shopping experience”.

For instance, I needed to purchase the new Steve Martin biography, for my Father-in-Law. In the “related items” area (which I ALWAYS check out) there was a children’s book by Steve Martin. I had no idea he had written a children’s book! Well, needless to say the book ended up in my cart, for all of the toddlers on my list!

For a person who enjoys shopping that “related items” category is pure heaven!

There are many reasons that I rely on Amazon for my shopping, and the shopping for shopping sake is definitely part of it!

I stand corrected.

PHOTOS OF THE Bolivian plane stoning mentioned below. Heh.

DON SURBER: We invade Iraq and Iran gives up WMD.

ONE MONTH LATER, the Rebecca Aguilar story is back, with a fairly friendly treatment at Poynter. Not seeing anything about her at the KDFW website, though.

MICKEY KAUS: “Sell your studio stock: The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has hired Chris Lehane, according to Hollywood-writers-strike-must-read Nikki Finke.” That’s no way to win over Kaus, anyway!

I HEARD NEAL BOORTZ holding forth on the Omaha mall shooting this morning on the way to work, and I realized I haven’t posted on it. I don’t really have anything to say that I haven’t said before. But it’s worth noting — since apparently most of the media reports haven’t — that this was another mass shooting in a “gun-free” zone. It seems to me that we’ve reached the point at which a facility that bans firearms, making its patrons unable to defend themselves, should be subject to lawsuit for its failure to protect them. The pattern of mass shootings in “gun free” zones is well-established at this point, and I don’t see why places that take the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed should get off scot-free. There’s even an academic literature on mass shootings and concealed-gun carriage.

Perhaps we need legislation. If it saves just one life, it’s worth it.

CONGRESSWOMEN QUIT PAGE BOARD over scandals. Shouldn’t we just get rid of pages and hire actual, paid adult workers to do this stuff?

NO LOVE FOR THE BURY-SQUADS at Digg.

IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM, this week’s edition of PJM Political is now online.

HELEN THOMAS: These newfangled blog things are dangerous.

HUGO CHAVEZ IS HAVING A BAD WEEK: “In a violent show of anti-Venezuela sentiment, a crowd of about 200 Bolivians hurled stones at a Venezuelan military plane and prevented it from refueling after it landed on Thursday, local radio reported.” (Via JWF).

UPDATE: More here.

FROM THE FRIENDLY AMAZON MAILBOTS: Recommended gifts for geeks.