LEAKAGE.

IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN! US Senators call for universal Internet filtering. “US senators today made a bipartisan call for the universal implementation of filtering and monitoring technologies on the Internet in order to protect children at the end of a Senate hearing for which civil liberties groups were not invited.” How about tar and feathers, instead?

ANOTHER CONGRESSIONAL REPORT ON THE SURGE: “I really expected the worst. Instead I am very encouraged.”

A MEMORABLE photo from Iraq.

AN ANTI-SAME-SEX MARRIAGE DECISION in Ohio. I don’t like the outcome, but it’s probably right on the law.

AN I.P.O. FOR IDLEAIRE: They’ve got a pretty cool product.

ADVICE TO THE HOUSE G.O.P.

MORE ON Albert Ellis.

TOYOTA SET TO TEST new plug-in hybrid vehicle. Not as potent as the aftermarket plugin Priuses, though in fact most of my errands would be all-electric with this.

TARNISHED INDUSTRY SPIKES COLUMN recommending improvements: “Imagine the outrage if this were RJ Reynolds or General Motors getting a column killed on the state of its industry, instead of the L.A. Times.”

As Mickey Kaus observes: “They’re in the business of killing stories these days, not publishing them, apparently.” Good luck with that.

Whole story here.

UPDATE: Steven den Beste emails:

“They’re in the business of killing stories these days, not publishing them.”

That has always been the most important power of gatekeepers. Not in deciding when to open the gate, but in when to close it.

And that’s the reason that the gatekeepers are so upset by the rise of blogs and other alternative media. They still have the ability to open the gate for stories they like, and to try to focus attention on those stories, but they no longer have the ability to close the gate because thousands of bloggers have dug tunnels under the fence.

Heh. Indeed.

IS THE AMERICAN LABOR MARKET MONOPSONISTIC? Not so much.

HOMELAND SECURITY: A politicized backwater?

Here’s an interesting point about the Eliot Spitzer scandal, which we noted yesterday: One of the aides to New York’s governor who was implicated in the improper use of state police to gather material for a smear campaign against state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno was William Howard, Spitzer’s assistant secretary for homeland security.

Readers may remember that three years ago, New Jersey’s Gov. Jim McGreevey declared himself a “gay American” and confessed to an affair with a male aide, whom the media described as his “homeland security czar.” (The ex-aide, Golan Cipel, denies the affair, accuses McGreevey of sexual harassment, and says “czar” overstates his role, which was to act “as a liaison between the governor’s office and the various state agencies responsible for law enforcement and homeland security.”)

Homeland security is the common thread linking these two very different scandals, both involving Democratic administrations in states that were among the hardest hit by 9/11. Democrats tend to talk a lot about homeland security, because by and large they aren’t wild about either military or intelligence operations. But this at least makes us wonder if they take homeland security all that seriously either.

It may be that this is a bipartisan problem, as evidenced by President Bush’s abortive nomination of Bernard Kerik as secretary of homeland security.

I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve been saying that homeland security is a joke for quite a while.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, on the Spitzer front, Professor Bainbridge is talking about Nixon: “My gosh. If Spitzer were a Republican, people would be making comparisons to Nixon and calling for impeachment.”

And Radley Balko comments: “Spitzer denies any knowledge of what his closes aide was doing, which seems improbable. But hang on. Even he didn’t know, isn’t this the same guy who wants corporate executives held criminally liable for the mistakes of their underlings, even if they had no knowledge of those mistakes? Isn’t this the guy who wanted to make not knowing about those mistakes a crime in and of itself?”

Lots more at Slate’s roundup.

FRED THOMPSON RESPONDS TO A 9/11 conspiracist. Video at the link.

SOME FOLLOW-ONS TO the YouTube debate.

THE FOLKS AT ATF NOW CLAIM AUTHORITY TO DECIDE who is an “authorized journalist.” Apparently taking pictures and reporting by non-authorized journalists constitutes “harassment.” Personally, I can’t see any legitimate reason for ATF personnel conducting a routine inspection not to be photographed. What possible problem is there with photographing public employees performing a public duty in a public place? Certainly if ATF agents were photographing ordinary citizens in such a setting, we’d hear that there was “no legitimate expectation of privacy,” right?

UPDATE: Reader Doss Hindman thinks they want to avoid pictures of agents with their hairdos covered in bubblewrap against the rain, like the one with this story. It’s embarrassing, I guess, but hardly a reason for censorship.

IT’S NOT TOO LATE to buy your Tesla electric sports car. I’m tempted, but not that tempted given the price.

“RENEWABLE” ENERGY: Worse for the environment than nuclear power?

WITH THE NEW SCHOOL YEAR NOT FAR AWAY, I should mention that the Insta-Daughter read The Smart Girl’s Guide to Starting Middle School last year before starting, er, Middle School and found it helpful.

A LOOK AT COAL, COAL MINING, AND ENERGY:

Few things seem as anachronistic as an underground coal mine. Black-faced miners in lamps and hard hats; coal trains and company towns — the images are seared in our brains and in our folklore. Images of an old smokestack economy that’s largely been supplanted by the industrial might of the semiconductor. Except that all those computers, HDTVs, groovy little iPods and other silicon-chip wonders would fall silent if it weren’t for coal. Wind, water, nuclear, oil, natural gas, solar energies — add them all up and together they barely produce as much electricity as coal.

Last year, America consumed more than 1 billion tons of the mineral. At the present rate, using existing extraction technology, the reserves will last 243 years. Coal is dramatically cheap to mine, too: In 2005 it cost $8.66 to produce a million BTU of oil; the equivalent energy from coal cost $1.19. About two-thirds of America’s favorite fossil fuel comes from surface mines (about 778 million tons); the rest is produced in underground mines, mainly in Appalachia.

But according to this Wall Street Journal story interest in coal is suddenly plummeting:

As recently as May, U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build as many as 150 new generating plants fueled by coal, which currently supplies about half the nation’s electricity. One reason for the surge of interest in coal was concern over the higher price of natural gas, which has driven up electricity prices in many places. Coal appeared capable of softening the impact since the U.S. has deep coal reserves and prices are low.

But as plans for this fleet of new coal-powered plants move forward, an increasing number are being canceled or development slowed. Coal plants have come under fire because coal is a big source of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming, in a time when climate change has become a hot-button political issue.

Just remember, the electricity has to come from somewhere. And when the brownouts and blackouts start, will people blame the environmentalists, or the power companies — and politicians?

DEMOCRATIC HOPEFULS snub party moderates: “Not a single one of the eight presidential candidates plans to attend the Democratic Leadership Council’s summer meeting, a snub that says less about the centrist DLC than it does about a nomination process that rewards candidates who pander to their parties’ hardened cores while ignoring everybody else. . . . That raises a challenge for Republican and Democratic presidential candidates: How do they win their parties’ nomination without appearing hostage to the kind of base politics that turns off swing voters?”

Well, when has the DLC ever produced a successful Democratic Presidency? Heh. But this certainly puts Kos ahead in his declared war on the DLC.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: More on Alaska, from Roll Call:

Leaders of the anti-tax, business-friendly Club for Growth like to demonstrate their independence from the Republican Party. Their recent moves — such as commissioning a new poll that purports to demonstrate the vulnerability of two GOP incumbents in Alaska — suggest they are preparing to poke Republican officials in the eye yet again.

But the conservative group also could stymie Democrats’ hopes of capitalizing on the widening federal probe of political corruption in Alaska that has touched both Sen. Ted Stevens (R) and Rep. Don Young (R).

In a July 18 news release, the club slammed Stevens and Young as “two of the Congress’ most notorious porkers, often threatening other lawmakers while they waste taxpayer dollars.” The release accompanied the results of a voter survey commissioned by the Club for Growth Political Action Committee.

“Like the rest of the country, Alaska taxpayers are fed up with runaway spending, wasteful projects, and the corruption that they can breed,” Club for Growth President Pat Toomey said in the statement. “Defending his pork career in 2001, Stevens told National Public Radio: ‘I am guilty of asking the Senate for pork and proud of the Senate for giving it to me.

“Clearly, the sentiment isn’t shared by Republican primary voters back home,” he said.

The now-infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” championed by Stevens has become the cause célèbre for politicians of all stripes who want Congress to cut back on earmarks.

The Basswood Research poll revealed that 66 percent of GOP voters disapproved of Stevens’ proposal to spend $223 million to build a bridge from Ketchikan to sparsely populated Gravina Island.

The notion that pork is popular with “the folks back home” is a myth. It’s mostly popular with a few fatcats back home. It’s also a major source of corruption.

GIULIANI: The Federalist Candidate.

A COOL PICTURE.

ALBERT ELLIS HAS DIED. The InstaWife has always been a fan, particularly of his How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable. We could use more of that in the blogosphere sometimes . . . .

Further thoughts from Ann Althouse.

IPHONE V. BLACKBERRY: A side-by-side comparison.