MICKEY KAUS: “I’ve been looking for the fabled ‘darker postings’ of now-fired, cease-and-desist-lettered New Republic leaker Robert McGee, but I haven’t been able to find them. Maybe they don’t exist! … The best I can do is a now-unlinked blog reference to an ‘interview with Jeff Gannon’s penis.’ But really, doesn’t everyone’s penis blog these days?” I know mine does. And it’s a big blog! But that goes without saying, I guess.

UPDATE: A blog named Blunt Instrument — hmm. Is he trying to tell us something?

THE EXAMINER: “Now, other Democrats are injecting some much-needed realism into their party’s debate on the war.”

MEGAN MCARDLE’S BLOG: The Peyton Place of the blogosphere! But with health care economics thrown in!

AL QAEDA’S LATEST PROPAGANDA EFFORT: threats against David Beckham and Justin Timberlake just may be working. . . .

ELVIS’S STOLEN HANDGUN RECOVERED in a portable toilet.

HEY, THEY’RE RIGHT: The rich really are getting richer in the Bush economy:

Harvard University’s endowment earned a 23.0 percent return during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2007. With FY07 being one of the best performance years since the inception of Harvard Management Company in 1974, the overall value of the University’s endowment grew to $34.9 billion. . . . The endowment stood at $29.2 billion on June 30, 2006.

Obviously, this obscene wealth should be subjected to windfall profits taxes.

ASIA TIMES: THE U.S. HAD BETTER GET ITS ACT TOGETHER: Its competitors are.

FOREIGN LEADERS? Swapping Harper & Calderon at MSNBC.

FRANCE SHIFTS ITS STANCE ON IRAQ: Will this amount to anything?

UPDATE: Reader Jane Meynardie emails: “If I were an Iraqi political player, I’d play along with the French at least long enough to enjoy a nice junket to Paris.” But of course!

A COLD DAY IN NEW YORK: Fifty-nine degrees in August? As the high? Was Al Gore visiting?

He sure wasn’t here, where it flirted with triple digits again.

FRED THOMPSON GOES AFTER RUDY ON GUN CONTROL. This is strong ground for Fred.

UPDATE: A weak ad hominem response from the Rudy camp. This round goes to Fred.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Curtis Overbo emails:

I appreciated the post regarding Fred Thompson’s statement about Rudy on Gun Control. I also agree that the response from Rudy’s team is basically useless as something those guarding 2nd Amendment rights, for example, might take comfort with. It’s “little things” like this that can cost Rudy so very much among the voters who maybe want to believe his heart & policies are good, while already having disagreed with some or many of them. Fred makes it even clearer to them, me included, that it’s a “leap of faith” to go with Rudy if the end point of Fred’s statement isn’t actually addressed — that point is Federalism.

Rudy can side-step the discussion, but he knows his own record offers very little to address Fred’s observations, which resound with many.

Rudy was quick to invoke federalism on abortion, but he’s missed the point here. And this issue will hurt him if he makes more responses as weak as this one.

EUROPE AND CARBON EMISSIONS: “Since 2000, emissions of CO2 have been growing more rapidly in Europe, with all its capping and yapping, than in the U.S., where there has been minimal government intervention so far. As of 2005, we’re talking about a 3.8% rise in the EU-15 versus a 2.5% increase in the U.S., according to statistics from the United Nations.”

WATCH OUT, TIM BLAIR: John Birmingham, better known to InstaPundit readers as a science fiction author, now has an Australian newspaper blog gig.

Today’s topic: “Who’d have thought a drunken night at a strip club could be so much fun!”

WELL, DUH:

A CIA inquiry has accused the agency’s ex-chief George Tenet and his aides of failing to prepare for al-Qaeda threats before the 9/11 attacks on the US.

“The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner,” the CIA inspector general wrote in a scathing report.

The document was completed in June 2005 and kept classified until now. Its release was ordered by Congress.

One of Bush’s biggest mistakes was not firing Tenet, and others, early on. (See older posts on that here and here). Plus, fighting accountability at the CIA?

UPDATE: On a related front, dysfunction in high places.

SECRET BALLOTS ON ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES: Not so secret. Can I say I told you so? Well, kinda sorta, anyway.

DEAN HITS MEXICO HARD, but no death reports initially. The oil industry faces some problems, though.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS JOINS THE CROWD complaining about misleading incomes reporting:

“More Americans making ends meet with less money,” was the headline atop a Boston Globe story Tuesday morning. The newspaper went on to tell its readers that Americans in 2005 earned a smaller average income, when adjusted for inflation, than in 2000, $55,238 vs. $55, 714.

What the story notably failed to tell readers is that incomes have been on the rise since 2002, a fact I gleaned from a different version of the story on the New York Times website. (The original version of the Times story had a misleading headline “Average Incomes Fell for Most in 2000-05,” but it was later changed to “2005 Incomes, on Average, Still Below 2000 Peak.” The Globe story also said that Americans’ total income in 2005 was $7.43 billion. I’m pretty sure it’s “trillion,” not “billion.”)

It might have also been nice had either story mentioned the great likelihood that the Internal Revenue Service data the newspapers relied on will show further income gains for 2006 and 2007, given the state of the economy and the continuing rise in real wages.

Read the whole thing. And there’s more stuff here.

SO I GUESS M.A.D.D CAN QUIT ASKING FOR MONEY: “Incidentally, if you adjust for only those accidents where a clearly drunk driver caused the death of someone else, the real number has traditionally been about a fourth of what NHTSA reports. So figure the real number of drunk driving deaths to be around 3,000.”

IN THE MAIL: Nathalie Mallet’s The Princes Of The Golden Cage.

GUARDING AGAINST KILLER SPACE ROCKS: A report from Popular Science.

FIGHTING GOLIATH: An eminent domain success story.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: How to Spy in Iraq.

POPULAR MECHANICS INVESTIGATES 9/11 MYTHS, and posts responses to frequently asked questions. It’s a followup to their book debunking 9/11 myths. Check out our podcast interview on that topic, here.

WESLEY MORGAN IS BLOGGING WITH GENERAL PETRAEUS IN IRAQ. (Via Rightwingsparkle).

IN THE SUMMER WE GRILL, and cook a lot of light meals featuring fish, etc. The Insta-Daughter, however, is a fan of soups and stews, and last night was looking forward to me firing up the crock-pot. (Excuse me, the “slow cooker” — mustn’t violate trademarks). Anyway, while I like my recipes I want to try some new stuff, so I ordered this cookbook on soups and one-pot meals, which looks pretty good. Here, for those who are interested, is my recipe for lamb and guinness stew. And, of course, you can do the Insta-Chicken in a crock pot slow cooker, too. They’re pretty good recipes, but I’m looking for something fresh for the coming year.