C.J. BURCH EMAILS: “Did Bill Quick take over Hugh Hewitt’s blog?“

HERE’S A REPORT ON the blogger conference call with John McCain.

And here’s another from Mary Katharine Ham, who notes that McCain says he’d continue to hold blogger conference calls as President.

Hey, the path to the Presidency leads through the blogosphere!

UPDATE: Another report from Ryan Sager.

And here’s a review of McCain’s speech on the war at VMI, and the conference call. David All blogged the conference call, too.

Plus, Ed Morrissey and New Hampshire blog GraniteGrok. And the Bull Dog.

NOTE: Mary Katharine Ham link was bad before; fixed now. Sorry!

STILL MORE: Another report, from Fausta. And a roundup, here.

THE REST OF THE STORY:

Monty Johnson was heading home Monday with a cooler full of catfish when he learned his new neighbor had turned him into a minor celebrity.

The first calls on his cell phone came from two lawyers asking to represent him in a slander case. Elizabeth Edwards, they told him, had called him a “rabid, rabid Republican.” That wasn’t all. The Democratic presidential candidate’s wife also told The Associated Press she didn’t want her children near Johnson because, she said, he once pulled a gun on workers investigating a right of way on his property.

Johnson, a 55-year-old retired landscaper with arthritic knees, said he’s not interested in suing.

“I’d just like to know why she has such hard feelings to me,” he said. “They say they’re for poor people.” . . .

Johnson thinks the Edwardses don’t like him because he put up a sign along Old Greensboro Road that reads: “Go Rudy Giuliani 2008.” The couple has to read it every time they pull into their winding driveway.

He also left an abandoned house facing their property. But he said he was born there and doesn’t have the money to fix it up or the heart to tear it down. . . . “I think she owes me an apology,” he said. “And I won’t feel right until I get it. If this is how they treat people in the White House, America is in for a helluva time.”

Another not-so-smooth PR move from the Edwards operation.

COMPARING THE DUKE NON-RAPE CASE with the Imus imbroglio.

TWO OF MY FAVORITE PEOPLE: Ed Driscoll has a big Don Imus / Katie Couric roundup.

A MAJOR MCCAIN SPEECH ON THE WAR will be streamed live here at 1:30 Eastern today.

JOHN ONDRASIK interviews Mike Huckabee. Our earlier efforts to win Ondrasik over to the podcasting world seem to have worked.

THREATENING SPYWARE DISTRIBUTORS with prison.

Just turn ’em over to their victims . . . .

XENI JARDIN IS BLOGGING FROM WEST AFRICA, and she lists some African blogs that were new to me.

MAX SAWICKY: Clinton saves, but Nixon invests.

IN THE MAIL: Harry Helms’ Top Secret Tourism: Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases and Other Places in the United States You’re Not Supposed to Know About.

FRED THOMPSON LYMPHOMA: Elephantbiz has a roundup. Doesn’t sound like a very big deal, but stay tuned.

TIM MINEAR’S NEW SERIES DRIVE premieres on Fox Sunday. We talked to him about it, along with lots of other things, in this podcast.

SPACE: THE NEXT FRONTIER FOR ADVERTISING?

California Rep. Ken Calvert, ranking Republican on a House Science subcommittee overseeing NASA programs, surprised an industry conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., by announcing plans to introduce a bill that would make “NASA space assets available for commercial advertising and marketing opportunities.” If that ever becomes law, companies and universities might be able to market themselves by plastering logos on equipment or sponsoring equipment such as cameras on the International Space Station.

The revenues, ultimately reaching perhaps $100 million, would be used to build up a self-sustaining prize fund to honor space innovations by entrepreneurs. Calvert said his aim is to increase public awareness of manned space exploration programs without spending taxpayer money. The congressman suggested it could evolve into “an advertising system” similar to those used by public radio and the Smithsonian Institution “which have long-term, dedicated and tasteful sponsorship” arrangements.

Interesting idea.

IMUS WITHOUT MOURNING: But with a David Gregory angle! “When he comes back, Imus will be on a short leash. So, does this mean he will never vex another NBC Newser with questions about their role in the Plame debacle? That is great news for Tim Russert and David Gregory. . . . So, will a newly chastened and compliant Don Imus let this topic go?”

Plame? I vaguely remember something about that. . . .

THERE’S STILL LOTS GOING ON IN UKRAINE, and Veronica Khokhlova continues to write about it.

HAVE THE DEMOCRATS FINALLY FOUND a rogue regime they won’t negotiate with?

UPDATE: Ouch: “When congressmen place a ‘fisheries disaster mitigation fund’ — that is protecting fisheries — at the same level as protecting our soldiers in the battlefield, we have problems bigger than pork barreling. Far bigger.” And don’t forget sugar beets!

HOWARD KURTZ: “Katie Couric did a one-minute commentary last week on the joys of getting her first library card, but the thoughts were less than original. The piece was substantially lifted from a Wall Street Journal column. CBS News apologized for the plagiarized passages yesterday and said the commentary had been written by a network producer who has since been fired.”

So Katie didn’t plagiarize, because the piece that appeared under her name was actually written by someone else, not her! “Genelius said it is ‘very common’ for the first-person commentaries to be put together by staffers without Couric’s being involved in the writing, but that she does participate in topic selection.”

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER, but this should have happened many months ago: “The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper will announce that he is dismissing all charges against three Duke Lacrosse players, ABC News has learned from sources close to the case.”

LaShawn Barber has some thoughts.

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY’S BOOMSDAY gets a positive review over at The Politico.

NORM GERAS defends political blogging.

JONAH GOLDBERG: “Conservatives, don’t ignore McCain.” I don’t know if conservatives will listen or not.

I liked McCain personally, but it’s hard to forgive him for McCain-Feingold. That’s hurting him with a lot of people. On the other hand, his stance on the war is helping him with a lot of people.

HEALTH CLASS WITH Professor Obama.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON NUCLEAR POWER AND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY:

The environmental movement has so far utterly failed to develop a coherent approach to replacing carbon producing power sources. Wind and solar are not such a coherent response without a massive breakthrough in battery technology, because variable sources are inadequate to provide base-load power. Also, they too have negative externalities: wind kills birds and destroys views, and many solar panels are loaded with gallium arsenide, a highly toxic substance that is apparently rather tricky to dispose of.

All this wouldn’t be so bothersome if the environmental movement merely failed to provide realistic alternatives, but in fact, many environmentalists actively move to block new wind installations (I’m looking at you, Robert jr.) and nuclear power plants, spread hysteria over nuclear waste, and otherwise actively work against the cause they are trying to advance. As such, it is perfectly legitimate to demand why they are blocking the only things that have any realistic chance of replacing carbon-emitting power plants.

The answer, in my opinion, is that too many environmentalists flunk basic and economic knowlege, which is why so many people believe it is practical to replace a coal-fired turbine that pumps out 1,000 megawatts with a solar installation that will, in peak sun conditions, produce about 1 kilowatt per 150 feet of space, twelve hours a day; or wind farms, which average less than 1 megawatt per turbine in prime spots.

Read the whole thing.

EVERY SINGLE TALK-RADIO PROGRAM I’VE LISTENED TO over the past couple of days was talking about Imus. Seems like overkill to me, but Jonathan Martin at The Politico makes a good point:

More than anything, though, the incident strikes me as a set piece not unlike many of our recent political firestorms. In fact, it feels eerily similar to the scandal Sen. Trent Lott found himself in in 2002.

Like Imus, Lott made racially-charged, if at least more subtle, comments in a very public setting that few picked up at first. But, fueled by blog attention, the story made its way into the mainstream media. Lott, like Imus on Thursday’s show, was also initially dismissive of those who were offended and the lag between the incident and the story prompted many allies to also stick with their leader. But after the heat intensified, and the story became “a story,” Lott’s friends in the GOP went south. Just the same, MSNBC and CBS issue tsk-tsk statements on Friday, only after the AP became interested in the matter, but made no attempt to dump their star. As Rev’s Sharpton and Jackson dialed up the outrage, though, the network folks suddenly became more outraged.

I was an early Lott critic in that affair, but I have to say that nothing he said compared to Imus’s remarks — and if Trent Lott had talked about “nappy headed hos” and the like, I think it would have become a scandal a lot faster. But read the whole thing.