IRANIAN WEAPONS, American lives.

POLITICAL COVER FOR PELOSI from the Associated Press?

DRAGON STORIES from Cornelia Funke.

LETTERS FROM THE SUBSCRIPTION DEPARTMENT: At Iowahawk.

DREW CURTIS OF FARK.COM has a new book: It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News. As I’ve noted before, quality news is the killer app for Big Media, but they don’t seem to care.

BUT OF COURSE, PARDNER: The only good cowboy is a French cowboy.

But if you’re gonna be a cowboy, you gotta ditch the accordion. Or at least start playing different tunes. . . .

THE NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN has published a list of CCW permit holders.

SayUncle is contacting their advertisers to complain.

UPDATE: Uh, oh. Now they’re getting pushback from Nashville talk-radio guy Steve Gill: “I bet they would freak out if we used the voter rolls and other public data to publish the home addresses of their reporters and editorial staff. After all, there are some nutcases who might try to do them harm if they knew where they lived and didn’t like what they wrote in their paper. But that would be irresponsible, wouldn’t it?”

This is no more a nasty attempt at intimidation than what the Tennessean has done. But I think that they’ll find this strategy unwise in an Internet age. What’s more, this is likely to encourage a talk-radio campaign designed to harm the Tennessean economically, something that it’s in no position to want. (Heck, it looks like it already has.) Wiser heads should have prevailed.

THE MOST ETHICAL CONGRESS EVER: I love this story, because it combines both “culture of corruption” and “greenhouse hypocrisy” angles all in one!

“Friends” can fly congressmen under new rules

Led by House Ethics Committee chair Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the House of Representatives on Wednesday unanmiously agreed to loosen strict rules on members’ acceptance of free airplane rides that were adopted when Democrats took over Congress in January.

The measure, adopted on a May 2 voice vote minutes before the House of Representatives adjourned at 11:59 p.m., was labeled as an effort to “clarify certain matters relating to official conduct” of the House of Representatives.

The change stipulated that members of Congress can fly their own airplanes on official business as well as accept “personal use of an aircraft … that is supplied by an individual on the basis of personal friendship.”

I wish I had some friends like that. Oh, wait, it’s not that hard:

“As long as you call a lobbyist your personal friend, it is apparently OK,” says Sloan, who believes the ethics enforcement process is crippled because only members of Congress can file complaints against their colleagues. “I don’t see a member filing a complaint against another member for flying on someone’s plane, saying they are not really friends.”

Somebody needs to compile and publicize a database of these trips.

SO WE KEEP FINDING PLANETS, BUT NO SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE: Where are they?

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE “DANGEROUS TERRORISTS ACT:” Has the ACLU opposed this? I couldn’t find anything on their website.

NIGERIA UPDATE:

Kidnapping in the Niger River Delta has become the second largest source of income (after stealing oil) for political and criminal gangs. But the government cannot afford to lose control of the oil production, and is just sending more troops and police to the region, to try and keep the criminal activity under control. So far, the criminals are winning.

I think you see this any time there’s oil wealth and a weak government. I suspect that Venezuela will look this way after Chavez craters.

OVEREMOTIONALIZING CLIMATE CHANGE? Der Spiegel looks at the IPCC:

There is hardly a newspaper article and hardly a TV or radio program that doesn’t conjure up images of “climate catastrophe,” prophesy floods of gigantic proportions, droughts and hunger. Indeed, the media have developed something akin to a complete apocalyptic program.

It’s the fault of the media, of course, but not exclusively. It’s also the fault of a new hero, an environmental activist who likes to introduce himself by saying: “Hello, I was once the next President of the United States of America.” . . .

This doesn’t mean that Gore should necessarily be taken to task for his statements. He is a politician. But it is odd to hear IPCC Chairman Pachauri, when asked what he thinks about Gore’s film, responding: “I liked it. It does emotionalize the debate, but it seems that it has to do that.” And when Pachauri comments on the publication of the first SPM by saying, “I hope that this will shock the governments so much that they take action,” this doesn’t exactly allay doubts as to his objectivity. When Renate Christ, the secretary of the IPCC, is asked about her opinion of reporting on climate change, she refers to articles that mention “climate catastrophe” and calls them “rather refreshing.” . . .

The problem is that the IPCC is not a political group whose goal is to exert pressure, but a scientific institution and panel of experts. Its members ought to present their results and analyses dispassionately, the way pathologists or psychiatrists do when serving as expert witnesses in court, no matter how horrible the victim’s injuries and how deviant the perpetrator’s psyche are.

Peter Weingart, a sociologist of science from Bielefeld, a city in northwest Germany, believes that the climate experts’ lack of distance has something to do with their training. Scientists usually learn only to reflect on the results of their work, not on their role within the social decision-making process. As a result, they join forces with politicians who share their views. And in this way they do harm to science.

Read the whole thing. (Thanks to reader Garth Godsman for the link.)

TERROR ARRESTS IN NEW JERSEY:

Authorities have arrested six people in an alleged terrorist plot targeting soldiers at Fort Dix.

The Newark Star Ledger is reporting six ethnic Albanians were plotting an armed attack on the Burlington County base.

FBI Agents arrested five of the suspects in Cherry Hill and a sixth suspect was arrested in a separate location. Officials said the men attempted to purchase AK-47s from an arms dealer secretly cooperating with law enforcement.

Will Collier wonders it the tip came from Tony Soprano.

HOW MUCH MOMS SHOULD BE PAID: An amusing take.

I could put together a similar job description for myself, of course, as could any dad. But the final paragraph says it all.

EXPANDING GUN-CARRY RIGHTS in Tennessee and South Carolina. “In light of the VA Tech shootings, it’s interesting that while the typically anti-gun media tries to fan the flames of the public to support additional gun control measures, quite the opposite is happening in some state houses.”

A TRIPLE-PARENTING CASE IN PENNSYLVANIA: Dale Carpenter’s analysis is more thorough, but Stanley Kurtz has a better title: Ma, Pa, and Ma in PA.

NO SURPRISE HERE: “A new study has found that adolescents who use condoms the first time they have intercourse do not go on to have more sexual partners than others, and that they have lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases than those who do not use condoms the first time.” Of course, part of this is probably that the type of person who uses a condom the first time is the type of person who tends to be more careful, and less impuslive, in general.

A “GREEN FUELS” REPORT CARD, from Popular Science. No silver bullets yet, alas. But then, you don’t always need a silver bullet to have something worthwhile.

AN EPIDEMIC IN CHINA: Seems to only be killing pigs, as far as we can tell. But the Chinese are keeping quiet about it, which is the real story:

The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potential global implications.

The Chinese government — and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, which is adjacent to Hong Kong — was criticized in 2003 for concealing information about the SARS virus for the first four months after it emerged in Foshan, 95 miles northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure. . . .

Hong Kong television broadcasts and newspapers were full of lurid accounts today of pigs staggering around with blood pouring from their bodies in Gaoyao and neighboring Yunfu, both in Guangdong Province. The Apple Daily newspaper said that as many as 80 percent of the pigs in the area had died, that panicky farmers were selling ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating in a river.

The reports in Hong Kong said the disease began killing pigs after the Chinese New Year celebrations in February, and is now spreading. But state-controlled news outlets in China have reported almost nothing about the pig deaths, and very little about the wheat gluten problem.

A man answering the phone at the city government offices in Gaoyao, 140 miles northwest of Hong Kong, confirmed late this afternoon that pigs were dying there. He declined to give his name.

Well, isn’t that comforting. The Chinese need to get their act together on this stuff, ASAP.

ANOTHER DOW RECORD: I think it’s because the Democrats are in power now.

THE GATEKEEPERS’ GAMBIT.

AND TODAY’S GREENHOUSE HYPOCRISY WINNER IS MARK ELLINGHAM: Publisher of the Rough Guide tourbooks that have made him rich off other people’s travel, he’s now attacking “Binge Flying”:

Alongside guides enticing travellers to fly, Ellingham also publishes environmental titles, including the Rough Guide to Climate Change which is nominated for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books award, to be announced next week. Even so, he is keenly aware of the incongruity of making pronouncements about how people should moderate their behaviour. ‘I acknowledge that I’m speaking about all of this from an apparently contradictory position but it’s a question of working with what’s realistic: if Rough Guides was to disappear overnight, I don’t think anybody would fly any less. I think it’s an entirely ethical position of mine to work with what’s realistic by encouraging people to moderate the amount they fly, rather than stop altogether,’ he said. ‘It’s up to people to make up their own minds about how they live their lives.’

While determined to encourage people to reduce the number of flights they take, Ellingham admits he has no intention of stopping himself, and he does not expect others to do so either. . . . Ellingham is aware of another contradiction in his position. While being hugely destructive, tourism also has so many positive effects that it would be disastrous to the economies of many nations if it were to stop or even be curbed.

In other words, he knows this is idiotic, but feels impelled by fashion to make a statement.

THOUGHTS ON THE DIFFERENCE between law reporting and law blogging.

HOW THE RIAA dodges RICO suits.

HUGH HEWITT IS ON THE WARPATH, on the Lileks subject.

UPDATE: A related post from Bill Peschel.