A LOOK AT Russia’s re-emerging nightmare.

A VERY DIVERSE press conference in Prague.

BUT WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO when these guys get too old?

LIVEBLOGGING THE REPUBLICAN DEBATES. More debates? Did I know about those? I had forgotten, if so.

More from Dave Weigel: “Hasn’t John McCain been tortured enough?”

The more of these debates they have, the smarter it is for Fred Thompson to stay out as long as possible.

More liveblogging at The American Spectator and at Jim Geraghty’s place.

UPDATE: The McCain people are on top of things — they’ve already sent this YouTube video of McCain on Iraq.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lots more liveblogging rounded up here.

Plus, a debate highlight reel at Hot Air.

IT’S AN Assault on Seasons.

Plus, global warming criminals identified.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN AMERICA: A COMPARISON AND CONTRAST.

LISTEN TO the experts!

INDECENCY AT THE FCC.

MORE ON THE OPPOSITION TO WIND POWER, here.

CAN YOU MAKE A CAMPAIGN COMMERCIAL ON THIS? I’ll bet someone can, and I’ll bet someone will. But not yet.

THE PERFECT LAPTOP (FOR NOW): The sunlight-friendly lcd display, though, isn’t new — my old NEC Versa Daylite had that, and it was great. It was also thin and got great battery life.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER in Prague.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER in Prague.

IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN:

House Democrats, in their first draft of new energy legislation, would wipe out California’s landmark global warming law — despite their California speaker’s promises that her party would use the state as a model to combat climate change.

The legislation would pre-empt California and 11 other states from implementing laws requiring automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across their fleets. The bill would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from granting the states waivers to put their climate change rules into effect.

California officials, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s top environmental aides, blasted the legislative proposal.

They keep retrenching. Though it sounds like this won’t last.

A TRULY OPEN LETTER ON SPACE POLICY, to Gregg Easterbrook from the National Space Society. You can’t get much more open than that.

VIDEO: Freeman Dyson on global warming.

MARC AMBINDER joins The Atlantic’s stable of bloggers.

MORE ON THE DEPRESSION AND THE NEW DEAL from Arnold Kling.

Kling seems to be getting a lot out of Amity Shlaes’ new book.

BRITAIN’S NANNY STATE GETS MORE NANNYISH:

Middle-class wine drinkers will be the focus of government plans to make drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking, The Times has learnt.

Under the plans published today, a fresh audit is to be conducted by the Government into the overall costs of alcohol abuse to society and the National Health Service.

A return to the era of tar and feathers is probably the only way to stop this sort of thing. It’s warranted, I think.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CIVIL WAR AND ‘FACTIONAL FIGHTING,” explained.

NO LOVE FOR JOE SCARBOROUGH: No, really, no love: “I have to once again ask the ‘Don Imus’ question: Does anyone at MSNBC watch its own programming?”

ERIC SCHEIE looks at “gun violence.” “Yeah, but it’s all the fault of the gun. It made this ex-con possess it, and file the serial numbers off, and shoot people.”

NOW HERE’S A POWER TOOL that most dads would like. Moms, too!

Well, it’s a power tool of sorts. Though not quite like these.

UPDATE: How did I find this? The Insta-Wife asked if I wanted one for Father’s Day. I declined, even though it looks cool, for the same reason I didn’t get the Kegerator.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bradley Burris emails: “I bought one for my wife. Quick and easy ‘rita’s. It’s definitely increased our tequila purchases. The ice shaver could be a little better, but close enough to restaurant quality for us.”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Meet the new boss, yada, yada:

At this point, “Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify ‘earmarks’ — lawmakers’ requests for specific projects and contracts for their states — in documents that accompany spending bills,” The Associated Press reported Monday.

And there’s more unhappy editorializing here:

The new game that House Appropriations Chairman David Obey intends to play with budget earmarks this year is worse than the usual hide-and-seek. He is taking the whole thing underground, as though he is to be trusted as a one-man auditor for congressional pork. If this is to be the new ethic that Democrats promised, voters might want their ballots back. . . .

The result, then, is that the earmark projects will receive almost no public scrutiny and no congressional debate. This is precisely the kind of environment in which convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff thrived, the kind of place he fondly called the “favor factory.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to drain this swamp, of course, but Democrats attached enough pork to the Iraq appropriations bill this spring to render that commitment a fraud. Neither the House nor the Senate has delivered on its promise to fully expose and limit the special-interest earmarks.

As budgetary gambits go, though, Obey’s is particularly insidious. It is what Democratic caucus chairman Rahm Emanuel last fall called “earmark abuse” when he introduced an amendment that sought to prohibit “the inclusion of earmarks and other provisions in conference reports without the language having first been in either the House or Senate legislation’s original language.”

That was when the Republicans were in charge. Now the Democrats run the bank, and it appears open for withdrawals again.

Could this kind of thing have any connection to the Democrats’ massive slide in the polls? Nahhh.

UPDATE: More backsliding here.

MICHIGAN CRAVES CORN, AND I DON’T CARE: Howard Lovy on ethanol and Jennifer Granholm.