ED MORRISSEY: “Richardson could be ’08’s most dangerous candidate.”

BUMPER-STICKER WISDOM: “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.”

ADVICE TO HILLARY CLINTON’S ADVISORS: “Come on, you fools, just humanize her. Don’t tell the press you’re trying to humanize her!”

It’s good advice. A major weakness in the Clinton Administration was the tendency of staffers to brag to the press about how they were spinning things, thus undermining their own spin. That seems to have carried over.

AGAINST NET NEUTRALITY:

Robert Kahn, the most senior figure in the development of the internet, has delivered a strong warning against “Net Neutrality” legislation.

Speaking to an audience at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California at an event held in his honour, Kahn warned against legislation that inhibited experimentation and innovation where it was needed.

Kahn rejected the term “Net Neutrality”, calling it “a slogan”. He cautioned against dogmatic views of network architecture, saying the need for experimentation at the edges shouldn’t come at the expense of improvements elsewhere in the network.

(Kahn gently reminded his audience that the internet was really about interconnecting networks, a point often lost today).

Read the whole thing. I’ve been generally favorable toward net neutrality, but here’s the other side.

BUT THEY SUPPORT THE TROOPS:

An American GI assigned to one of the harshest posts in Iraq had a simple request last week for a Wisconsin mattress company: send some floor mats to help ease the hardship of sleeping on the cold, bug-infested ground.

What he got, instead, was a swift kick from the company’s Web site, which not only refused the request but added insult to injury with the admonition, “If you were sensible, you and your troops would pull out of Iraq.”

Army Sgt. Jason Hess, stationed in Taji, Iraq, with the 1st Cavalry Division, said he emailed his request to Discount-mats.com because he and his fellow soldiers sleep on the cold ground, which contains sand mites, sand flies and other disease carriers.

Jeez.

UPDATE: Be sure to read this followup post, which corrects a minor error and provides some additional background.

THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT: Owned by the recording industry?

DRAWING THE WRONG LESSONS from the Duke debacle.

MICAH SIFRY LOOKS AT WHO’S AHEAD ON MYSPACE among the Democrats.

A SURGE SCORECARD, from Robert Haddick.

VIRGINIA POSTREL OFFERS suggested reading for Alan Wolfe.

HOWARD KURTZ ON BILL RICHARDSON:

BILL WHO?

On paper, Bill Richardson would seem like a reasonably strong Democratic candidate.

He’s a governor. Four of the last five men to win the White House have been governors, not Senate bloviation types. But as a former congressman, he understands the Beltway culture. . . .

But you could be forgiven if you missed the fact that Richardson jumped into the presidential sweepstakes on Sunday. He made the announcement on ABC’s “This Week,” but a number of papers ran wire stories yesterday.

One reason is that Richardson barely registers in the polls. But the other is that most journalists care only about Hillary and Obama at the moment. That’s their script, and they’re sticking to it. Which suggests a chicken-and-egg problem not just for Richardson, but for Chris Dodd, Tom Vilsack, Sam Brownback and a slew of others: How do you get media attention when you’re nowhere in the polls, even though if you got some media attention, you’d probably rise in the polls, thereby warranting more media attention?

He also lacks charisma. Obama has it. Hillary Clinton even has it, though in a form that turns a lot of people off — but negative reaction is still reaction. Richardson doesn’t, and the press picks up on that. That isn’t necessarily fatal (and charisma is overrated, though Bush is suffering now from his own lack thereof) but it definitely shows up in the form of less excitement in the press.

MORE VIOLENCE IN LEBANON: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

DAVE KOPEL RATES Presidential candidates on the Second Amendment.

“THE STATE OF THE UNION IS A DISASTER:” Jules Crittenden pens — er, types — the speech that George W. Bush should give tonight.

UPDATE: Bill Quick: “It’s too late for words, Jules. Unless they happen to be: ‘My fellow Americans. Today I ordered elements of our military to attack the regime in Iran that has been killing our men and women in Iraq and elsewhere, and seeking to obtain the nuclear weapons that will allow them to threaten our friends and allies in the Middle East, and give them a stranglehold on the world’s energy supplies….’ Tell me about it afterwards. President Bush. No more bombastic promises that nobody believes you will ever carry out.”

PUSHING DIVERSITY in Virginia.

UPDATE: But not in D.C.

IN THE WAKE OF THE NIFONG DEBACLE, K.C. Johnson has some suggestions for the North Carolina legislature.

CHRIS ANDERSON: “I’m here in Cannes for MIDEM, the big European music conference/market, and can’t help but reflect on how, in 2007, the music industry still treats consumers not just like criminals but also idiots.”

But maybe they’re changing their ways, and thinking about ditching DRM?

FIGHTING WRINKLES WITH NANOTECHNOLOGY? “A Michigan State University chemical engineer has discovered that nanoparticles can stop thin polymer films from buckling and wrinkling. It’s a new solution to a critical problem as thin films become more important in new technology such as electronic monitors. The cosmetic arsenal to fight human wrinkles embraces technologies that seems crossed with science fiction – from microdermabrasians to lasers to Botox injections – and nanoparticles are poised to join the war by warding off dreaded buckles in human skin.”

Once it starts curing wrinkles, I predict that people will lose their ignorance of nanotechnology with shocking celerity.

MICKEY KAUS: “Obama does better among whites than blacks.”

JOE CONSUMER: DRM Beta-Tester.

MARK STEYN’S AMERICA ALONE is reviewed by Christopher Hitchens.

RUSH LIMBAUGH ON THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL FIELD: “To be honest with you, there’s nobody out there that revs me up, so why should I pretend that there is?” (Via The Corner).

UPDATE: There’s also this bit:

CALLER: What do you think about Brownback’s chances?

RUSH: (Laughs.)

Ouch.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Yes, it’s an ouch for Brownback. It’s also an ouch for the GOP — if Limbaugh can’t get excited about their field, who will?

EUGENE VOLOKH responds to a critic.

THE CONVERSATION CONTINUES: Bill Frist has some questions for Hillary:

Do you favor personal savings accounts as a voluntary part of Social Security Reform?

Do you favor an increase in retirement age as part of Medicare reform?

Should Medicare have an element of means testing?

Do you favor opening up Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration?

How do you propose expanding Health Savings Accounts?

Do you favor giving citizenship to those who are in this country illegally?

Should the United States send troops to stop the genocide in Darfur?

Follow the link for more.

BEING INTERVIEWED: I was interviewed by a reporter last week, and I must say the tone of the emailed questions gave me pause. I was surprised that he didn’t think about how they would come across.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

As a recovering journalist, I think that few people pay attention to the tone of their questions. There is such an institutional bias, reporters rarely think about how their questions sound. The questions sound fine to them. If the questions didn’t sound fine to them, they would have written the questions differently.

The lack of competing ideologies in the newsroom creates tone deaf reporters. And they serve to reinforce the, by now cliche, image of an out of touch mainstream media. Just my two cents.

I think that’s right.