A $1 BILLION CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT against TurboTax, TaxCut, and the Free File Alliance.

UPDATE: Link was broken before. Fixed now. Sorry!

BOSTON GLOBE: On TV, Men Are The New Weaker Sex. (Via Ed Driscoll).

BOY SCOUT DONATION BOXES TAKEN DOWN for “implied pro-war message.” Jeez.

UPDATE: More here. But they support the troops!

ABC: “Hillary Clinton Takes Cash From Recipients of Husband’s Controversial Pardons.”

Plus, new Clinton questions at The Nation.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus flips the emphasis on the pardon story: “Out of 177 recipients of Bill Clinton’s last-minute pardons, Jake Tapper could find only 3 who’ve contributed to Hillary’s campaign? Ingrates! “

THE POLITICO: Immigration is the new affirmative action.

SOME THOUGHTS ON HUMANITARIANISM, from Alvaro Vargas Llosa.

IN THE MAIL: America, An Illustrated History, from the folks at Time. A lovely coffee-table book with pretty pictures, though the text is a bit vapid.

REP. WILLIAM “FREEZER CASH” JEFFERSON’S creative bribery defense. Hmm. Can Congress’s approval go to single digits?

WOLF BLITZER’S BIND: If he doesn’t pound on Hillary tonight, it’ll look like he’s given in to intimidation. If he does, of course, Clinton fans will call him names, or say that he should be shot.

DREW CAREY ON Eminent Domain gone wild:

CHINA’S ANIME-BASED online porn police.

THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE IN IOWA is heating up.

MEGAN MCARDLE is blogging from Vietnam, where Americans are beloved and capitalism is in the air.

A REPORT ON the world’s most powerful railgun:

The lab version doesn’t look particularly menacing—more like a long, belt-fed airport screening device than like a futuristic cannon—but the system will fire rounds at up to Mach 8, drawing on tremendous amounts of electricity to generate the current for each test shot. That, of course, is the problem with rail guns: Like lasers, they’re out of step with modern-day generators and capacitors. Eight and 9-megajoule rail guns have been fired before, but providing 3 million amps of power per shot has been a limitation. At 32 megajoules, this new system appears to be the most powerful rail gun ever built, and the Office of Naval Research is installing additional capacitors at the Dahlgren facility to support it. The planned 64-megajoule weapon, if it’s ever built, could require even more power—a staggering 6 million amps.

According to Dr. Amir Chaboki, the program manager for Electro-Magnetic Rail Guns at BAE Systems, “The power is available. The challenge is how you use it.” The Navy’s electrically-propelled DDG 100 Destroyer, Chaboki says, is a prime candidate for the final 64-megajoule system. Around 72 megawatts (MW) of the vessel’s power can be used for propulsion. But during combat, the destroyer’s speed could be brought down, freeing up energy for a rail gun. Chaboki calculates that firing the 64-megajoule weapon six times per minute would require 16 MW of power, which would be supplied by either onboard capacitors or pulsed alternators. The more daunting challenge is the force of the rail gun itself: A few shots can dislodge the conducting rails—or even damage the barrel of the gun.

It’s the future.

FAKE JOURNALISM, CONT’D; More on the Al-Dura trial, from Nidra Poller.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR CONGRESS from the latest Gallup poll. Plus, why Republicans shouldn’t get cocky.

INDOCTRINATE U. will be showing in Cleveland this Sunday at 4 p.m. at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

EARTH FROM LUNAR ORBIT, in high-definition.

EARTH FROM LUNAR ORBIT, in high-definition.

LARRY LESSIG endorses Barack Obama.

ANOTHER CLIMBDOWN: Spitzer abandons Amazon tax: “In a second major policy reversal in less than a day, Governor Spitzer is backing down from a plan to require Amazon.com and other online retailers to charge state and local sales taxes on all purchases from New York.” Jeez, it’s just one stumble-and-reverse after another for this guy.

UPDATE: “Spitzer’s Latest Flop.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Indeed: “What the hell is it with Elliot Spitzer? Every time I turn around, he’s trying to implement another insanely stupid idea.”

YOU MUST BE A LEGAL RESIDENT TO GET A DRIVER’S LICENSE, in Mexico.

Maybe we should just cut a deal for strict reciprocity. . . .

MARY KATHARINE HAM interviews your favorite bloggers.

CUTTING AND RUNNING on cutting and running. Well, some of ’em, anyway. More here.

JOHN LEO wonders why the media aren’t so anxious to report on campus PC problems.