BILL FRIST: Running for Governor in 2010?

THE PROBLEM WITH TOM TANCREDO: He’s too liberal? Well, that’s a new slant.

BRYAN PRESTON: “Michelle and I spent four days patrolling the environs around Forward Operating Base Justice in north and west Baghdad last week. . . . This post is mostly about mistakes. The troops didn’t sit down with us and tick off all the mistakes that they think we have made in Iraq to date, so what follows isn’t their gripe list being published under my name. They did answer our questions forthrightly and we learned much from interviewing them and just talking with them over chow and listening to their crosstalk in the Humvees. So this post is made up of my observations after seeing the war up close and following it from afar, including mistakes, fumbles and ways forward to win–and what victory actually looks like.” Read the whole thing. He concludes: “Having said all of this, Iraq is still very winnable.” That’s what Michael Yon is saying, too.

And here’s a video report from Baghdad on Hot Air. Folks at CNN, et al., should be trembling.

UPDATE: Here’s audio of Michelle Malkin reporting from Iraq on the Laura Ingraham Show.

IN CHILD PORN CASE, technology entraps the innocent. This seems like a gross miscarriage of justice to me, and an abuse of prosecutorial discretion.

J.D. JOHANNES’ INDEPENDENT IRAQ DOCUMENTARY, OUTSIDE THE WIRE, IS NOW ON SALE. He’s got a blog, too.

AIRCONGRESS.COM is Daniel Glover’s new venture aiming to cover Congress in new ways. (He hasn’t quit his day job at National Journal, though.)

SERIOUSLY GOOD: Lots of food- and cooking-blogging from Kevin Weeks. I ran into him at Panera a while back and he was surrounded by very attractive women. Well, I advised one of my nephews that if he learned to cook well and to give good back rubs he’d never lack for girlfriends; Weeks has mastered at least one of those.

HERE’S ALEX POURNELLE’S REPORT from the Consumer Electronics Show.

BILL ARDOLINO interviews a Fallujan police officer.

TOM MAGUIRE: “Day One of the Libby trial has passed, and the sun did not stop in the sky – whew!”

ANGRY TALK: Stanley Kurtz looks at Internet excoriations, and reviews Peter Wood’s A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Today.

JOHN TIERNEY is blogging.

I’LL BE ON CAM EDWARDS’ SHOW in just a minute, talking about my NY Times gun piece.

UNSCAM UPDATE: Benon Sevan indicted in New York over oil-for-food scandal wrongdoing.

SO MUCH FOR FREE SPEECH: Kucinich wants to bring back the fairness doctrine. “Why would Kucinich want to reimpose the Fairness Doctrine and kill off the AM band and talk radio? Because his allies have proven less successful than conservatives at building a market for their broadcasts.”

Neal Boortz doesn’t like it.

STEM CELLS CREATE beating heart muscle.

MIKE RAPPAPORT AND JOHN MCGINNIS WRITE in defense of originalism. (Via Larry Solum, who says “get it while it’s hot!”).

CONFIRMING EARLIER REPORTS: Al Qaeda flees Baghdad. And some probably wish they’d fled this place a bit sooner.

HMM: Seems like good news to me: “Oil prices dropped below $52 a barrel to new 19-month lows Tuesday on a report that OPEC powerhouse Saudi Arabia said further production cuts aren’t necessary right now.”

Part of it’s warm weather, and I believe it. My December heating bill was less than half of last December’s. The greenhouse effect: reducing carbon consumption worldwide!

Meanwhile, Jay Leno’s garage is going green.

UPDATE: Reader Lou Minatti thinks it’s a new version of the Oil Weapon:

It should be obvious why Saudi Arabia won’t cut production. They fear Iran. Iran desperately needs oil revenue. Chavez and Ahmadinejad are touring the world announcing anti-American initiatives and kicking out foreign investors because in the past these were good ways to rile up the oil markets.

The world is awash in oil right now. Saudi Arabia intends to collapse the price and cause a great deal of damage to their enemies in Iran, and they won’t have to fire a shot. As a bonus, Chavez in Venezuela will also be gravely damaged. I believe this is all political strategy, and I believe the Bush Administration is coordinating it with the Saudis to eliminate two threats at once.

Hmm.

WITH MICHAEL YON REPORTING THAT “IRAQ IS VERY WINNABLE,” Dean Barnett wonders what if the surge works?

I think it won’t be allowed to work, at least in terms of media reporting and public perception, if the press has anything to say about it.

UPDATE: Or maybe some people who were for the surge before they were against it will be saying “I told you so” if it works! I can live with that eventuality, if it eventuates.

HEY, MY GUN PIECE MADE IT onto the New York Times’ most emailed list.

UPDATE: A reader points out that it’s number three on the “most blogged” list. Cool. I suspect that soliciting a piece from me was a bit of a stretch for them, so I’m glad it worked out.

DON SURBER ON THE A.P.:

I have got a great boss who lets me do my thing here. But some of my colleagues, privately, remain skeptical of blogs because there is no editor. Bloggers can write anything, blah, blah, blah. . . .

Given the stonewalling over the fake Captain Jamil Hussein — Iraqis have no police captain with that name and AP will not admit it used a pseudonym as a source — AP editors have forgotten to protect their agency’s credibility. They have to work to earn it every day.

Just like the bloggers.

Indeed.

ANNE APPLEBAUM OFFERS SOME SENSIBLE THOUGHTS on Afghanistan and the opium trade.

UPDATE: Ilya Somin comments: “I’m not sure I agree with all the specifics of the Applebaum’s proposed program, and I don’t know enough to evaluate some of the details. My own preference would be for a less heavily regulated legalization than what she describes. Be that as it may, the Turkish model, as described by Applebaum, is far preferable to the Bush Administration’s dangerously misguided poppy eradication campaign.” Yes, I think the drug warriors are seriously interfering with the real war.

NIFONG UPDATE:

District Attorney, Mike Nifong, is focusing on his upcoming ethics complaint preliminary hearing next week.

The state bar will decide this spring if his public comments about the case were a violation of the professional rules of conduct.

Mike Nifong stated in December 2006, “I’m not really into the irony of talking to reporters about allegations that I talked to reporters.”

Since the charges were announced the embattled D.A. has limited his comments to the media.

But legal experts say it may be too little too late considering he was warned early on.

Read the whole thing. And this sounds like an understatement to me: Duke case may hurt prosecutor’s career. Gee, do you think?

More developments here. And, as always, K.C. Johnson is on top of things.

IS NANCY PELOSI GETTING A FREE RIDE FROM THE PRESS?

I wonder if traditional feminists are at all uncomfortable with all this celebration of a stay at home mother who now can have it all. And how little mention there is of her very wealthy husband who perhaps made all this motherhood and rise in politics possible. I’ve seen more mentions of her father politician than her husband. Why is he getting shortchanged? As the San Francisco Chronicle wrote recently, he is deliberately keeping a low profile. I guess having a multimillionaire husband doesn’t fit the entire image. There’s nothing wrong with having a husband who has made many millions in investments, but it is part of the complete picture and some mention of him should belong in the media profiles.

If the genders — or parties — were reversed, we’d probably be hearing more about this.