MORE VETOES ON STUFF THAT MATTERS, PLEASE: Bush vetoes stem cell bill.

FLEMMING ROSE, of Muhammad cartoon fame, is now blogging for Pajamas Media.

IF ONION RINGS STAND IN FOR VAGINAS, then to what symbolic use can we put an Awesome Blossom?

IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHAT THE MEANING OF “EVENTUALLY” IS, I guess.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Going on the offensive in the fight against earmarks:

Sensing a major shift in the political winds, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) is zeroing in on groups that receive earmarks to help businesses win even more federal dollars.

And he’s not making any exceptions: Flake’s targets include a pet project of Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.).

Unlike some of his rank-and-file peers, Flake isn’t afraid to confront powerful appropriators who wield the ability to grant or withhold money from members’ districts. Flake doesn’t request earmarks for his district so he’s free to go on the attack.

Flake last year made waves by taking aim at an earmark of Rep. Jerry Lewis’s (R-Calif.), who headed the spending panel at the time. But that vote, as well as all of his efforts to kill earmarks, went down in flames.

All of sudden, however, Flake has plenty of friends joining his anti-pork crusade. Republican leaders last week challenged Obey for not wanting to disclose earmarks in spending bills until the final stage of the legislative process. Republicans declared victory when Obey reversed course, but Democrats claimed that GOP lawmakers were acting like reborn reformers because last year most failed to support Flake’s earmark challenges.

How Republicans respond to earmark challenges this year will test their commitment to transparency and reform. And Flake isn’t wasting any time. Last week, while Republicans were busy fighting Obey’s proposed earmark policy, Flake was taking issue with the chairman’s earmarks to a group known as the Wisconsin Procurement Institute (WPI), whose main purpose is trying to help the state’s businesses obtain more federal contracts and grants.

To Flake, the idea of providing federal money to subsidize the process of trying to obtain more federal money is absurd.

Absurd, yes. Surprising, no.

BILL ROGGIO HAS MORE ON what’s happening in Iraq.

And Bob Owens notes some media recycling.

IN THE POST, an interview with Evan Coyne Maloney, about his documentary film Indoctrinate U., which universities don’t seem to like much. Follow the link to the film site if you’d like to have a screening in your area. Maybe Evan should hold screenings for alumni groups and state legislatures. . . .

Here’s our podcast interview with Evan and his partner Stewart Browning.

NAVY SEAL MARCUS LUTTRELL has a new book out, Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10. He talks about things here, on Breitbart TV.

CHEERING THE TERRORISTS ON: “As the fighting in Gaza reached its horrific fever pitch last week, it was hard to know which side to cheer for.”

UPDATE: Or not.

BRENDAN LOY recounts more problems with Comcast. They seem kind of unpopular.

Honestly, my earlier experiences with them have been okay — the service guys they’ve sent out over the years have been decent. But I’m pretty unhappy at the moment.

NORM GERAS LOOKS AT THE FEEBLE RESPONSE FROM THE LEFT to riots and threats over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood: “Two days ago I argued that the left should cleave to the epithet ‘liberal’, on account of the importance of the values liberalism has stood for historically. I did not then enter the reservation that I will enter now: which is that if the word is sometimes held in low esteem, part of the reason for this is the kind of ‘liberalism’ that will lose sight of the need to defend some crucial liberal value in the light of obfuscating considerations. You may be opposed to the honours system, or you may think that Rushdie wasn’t worth a knighthood for literary or personal reasons; but ambiguity about how much respect is owed to the outrage over the award there should not be. None is.”

Meanwhile, lots of thoughts at Sepia Mutiny.

REMEMBERING THE FATHER OF THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION.

SO I LINKED TO THIS MARGARITA MAKER a couple of weeks ago, but I think the folks at BoingBoing have got me beat. In spades!

IT’S NATIONAL ICE CREAM SODA DAY, but I completely missed World Sauntering Day, which was yesterday. I think I managed to saunter a bit around Market Square, though it bordered dangerously on a mere stroll. If only I had known!

IS IT THE END OF TV as we know it? I feel fine. Er, except about my skyrocketing cable bill.

KERRY HOWLEY LOOKS AT Barack Obama and trade as treason.

AN INTERESTING PARALLEL:

Imagine this: In a Southern town, a woman accuses several men of rape. Despite the woman’s limited credibility and ever-shifting story, the community and its legal establishment immediately decide the men are guilty. Their protestations of innocence are dismissed out of hand, exculpatory evidence is ignored.

The Duke rape case, right? No, the Scottsboro case that began in 1931, in the darkest days of the Jim Crow South.

The two cases offer a remarkable insight into how very, very far this country has come in race relations, and alas, in some ways how little. For race is central to why both cases became notorious. In Scottsboro, Ala., of course, the accusers were white and the accused was black. In Durham, N.C., it was the other way around.

Read the whole thing. One constant factor — the news media’s performance sucked both times.

NOW THAT CONGRESS HAS BEEN BOUGHT AND PAID FOR, let’s start renting out the staff!

Uncle Chuck Wants You!

That’s the message jumping out of the latest fundraising letter sent out from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, chaired by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). [Click the image to the right to see the full text.]

This invite first appeared (in print only) in Jeffrey Birnbaum’s K Street column in Tuesday’s Washington Post, but Capitol Briefing can add a few notable details. Read the fine print and you’ll see that senators aren’t the draw at this event, slated for July 10 at the DSCC’s Mott House across the street from the Capitol.

Officially, lobbyists are asked to give or raise $2,000 to be a “host” or $1,000 to be a “DSCC friend” in order to meet “individuals representing” Senate Democrats. That’s code word for chiefs of staff and staff directors of committees, according to lobbyists who received the fundraising pitch. The image of the invite that was e-mailed to Capitol Briefing included the file name of “chiefs invitation”.

It’s part of what some lobbyists say is an emerging technique in fundraising by the campaign committees — gathering a group of top advisers to lawmakers rather than the principals themselves. Lobbyists say they’ve heard that later this year House Democratic chiefs of staff will be the draw at a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

It’s legal, but it’s just more evidence that they’re all for sale. Or rent. What’s next? Congressional puts and calls?

I’m actually in favor of this. With members of Congress spending most of their time fundraising, most actual lawmaking work has devolved to the staff. So if we can get the staff busy fundraising, too, maybe we’ll just see less legislating overall. Which, based on recent performance, would pretty much have to be an improvement.

THE HOLY GRAIL OF STEM-CELL SCIENCE?

Only a few days ago an article in the leading journal Nature brought amazing news. A Japanese team at Kyoto University has discovered how to reprogram skin cells so that they “dedifferentiate” into the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell. From this they can be morphed, theoretically, into any cell in the body, a property called pluripotency. It could be the Holy Grail of stem cell science: a technique that is both feasible and unambiguously ethical. . . .

This is mainstream research, not an eccentric theory from a Romanian naturopathy journal. Yamanaka’s work has been confirmed by two other teams affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles — both of them headed by ardent supporters of embryonic stem cell research.

They say that the reprogrammed cells meet all the tests of pluripotent cells — they form colonies, propagate continuously and form cancerous growths called teratomas, as well as producing chimaeras. “Its unbelievable, just amazing,” says Hans Schöler, a German stem cell expert. “For me, it’s like Dolly. It’s that type of an accomplishment.”

I have no qualms about embryonic stem cell research, but this is obviously a big deal if it pans out.

BLOOMBERG’S BEEN ANGLING for a third-party run for at least a year, and now he’s taking the next step.

I’d like to see a third-party candidate, but I’d like one who stands for more freedom, not less, and the nannyish Lee Kuan Yew-wannabe Bloomberg clearly doesn’t fit that description.

IF YOU’RE NOT FOLLOWING THE DAWN PATROL over at The Mudville Gazette, you’re missing a lot of military news.

RANDY BARNETT’S NOT JUST A ROCK STAR, he’s now a movie star. I still think he belongs on the Supreme Court.

STILL MORE on the Duke rape hoax. And a reminder that not everyone got it wrong.

SO THIS MORNING I LINKED TO A PIECE ON ComCast fleecing its customers, and later the same day I got a cable bill that had, with no explanation at all, gone up by fifty bucks a month. We obviously need more competition in this field.

The Insta-Wife called them and they were rude and inept. Plus if we want to quit they say we’ll have to drive all the way across town to return the boxes. Regardless of this rather lame barrier to quitting, I think we’ll be switching to something else. Any recommendations?

UPDATE: A poll!

ANOTHER UPDATE: View results here.

THE INSTA-DAUGHTER had a medical appointment downtown, and so I took her and a visiting cousin to Market Square for lunch. Since Knoxville expats are always asking for pics, here’s one of the Tomato Head above. And here’s one of Market Square below.

The drought has its downsides, but the weather has been delightful so long as you’re not my lawn — not too hot, and with lower humidity than we usually get this time of year.