INTERESTING: “Federal prosecutors have named three prominent Islamic organizations in America as participants in an alleged criminal conspiracy to support a Palestinian Arab terrorist group, Hamas. Prosecutors applied the label of ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Islamic Trust in connection with a trial planned in Texas next month for five officials of a defunct charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.”

Read the whole thing. And stay tuned.

I’M SURPRISED IT TOOK THIS LONG:

A federal grand jury will issue an indictment today against U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, accusing the New Orleans Democrat of multiple counts of bribery in connection with a web of business deals in Africa, a federal official said. . . .

The indictment pulls back the cover on a government investigation that became public when the FBI raided the congressman’s Capitol Hill townhouse in August 2005, finding $90,000 stashed in his freezer. Prosecutors say the cash was part of the $100,000 that an informant had handed Jefferson days earlier in a northern Virginia parking garage.

I wonder how many other members of Congress may figure in this investigation.

AT THE POLITICO, some reports on voter suppression efforts.

A LOOK AT LAW SCHOOLS AND THE U.S. NEWS RANKINGS, from William Henderson and Andrew Morriss. There’s a longer treatment of the subject by the same authors here. (Via Jonathan Adler).

BRITISH SOLDIERS IN IRAQ: A new dispatch from Michael Yon. “On three consecutive missions with three different British units, their soldiers killed roughly 40 enemy in combat action that also saw two British soldiers killed in action, and three wounded. The enemy apparently is attempting to paint a perception that the long-planned draw down of British soldiers in southern Iraq is actually the result of a successful “rout,” and they are stepping up the tempo of attacks.”

Read the whole thing. He’s got lots of photos, too.

CHEW THE FAT WITH CHEWBACCA: Adventurecon is in Knoxville. Also here, and perhaps more interesting to InstaPundit readers, Ron Glass (Shepherd Book from “Firefly”).

IN THE MAIL: Jeanne Giraldo and Harold Trinkunas’ Terrorism Financing and State Responses: A Comparative Perspective. Looks quite good; I plan to use this in my National Security Law class next time.

JOHN FUND has thoughts on Fred Thompson. “Mr. Thompson will run an unorthodox campaign, one that will challenge the conventional wisdom about how to run for president. Even if it proves unsuccessful, it’s useful for a candidate to occasionally come along and ask if the rules everybody is following were made for a different time and new approaches are appropriate.”

GREG MANKIW on federalism.

SMOKING OUT ANOTHER SECRET HOLD:

Today, the Sunlight Foundation launched a new campaign to reveal which senator is blocking passage of the Senate Campaign Disparity Act (S. 223). If you’ve been following this story here you know that twice this bill – which would require senators to file their campaign finance reports electronically – has been blocked by an anonymous Republican senator who is being hidden by Sen. Mitch McConnell. In his home state of Kentucky we are launching a billboard and a Web site to force McConnell to reveal the name of the anonymous senator. The Louisville Courier-Journal and the Politico have already picked up the story.

Note that — as took me a bit to realize — this is a different secret hold from the one on the FOIA expansion legislation. You can’t tell the secret holds without a scorecard these days.

A “NIGHTMARE SCENARIO” at the New York Times.

OUR SYNTHETIC FUTURE:

Scientists in the last couple of years have been trying to create novel forms of life from scratch. They’ve forged chemicals into synthetic DNA, the DNA into genes, genes into genomes, and built the molecular machinery of completely new organisms in the lab—organisms that are nothing like anything nature has produced.

The people who are defying Nature’s monopoly on creation are a loose collection of engineers, computer scientists, physicists and chemists who look at life quite differently than traditional biologists do. Harvard professor George Church wants “to do for biology what Intel does for electronics”—namely, making biological parts that can be assembled into organisms, which in turn can perform any imaginable biological activity. Jay Keasling at UC Berkeley received $42 million from Bill Gates to create living microfactories that manufacture a powerful antimalaria agent. And then there’s Craig Venter, the legendary biotech entrepreneur who made his name by decoding the human genome for a tenth of the predicted cost and in a tenth of the predicted time. Venter has put tens of millions of dollars of his own money into Synthetic Genomics, a start-up, to make artificial organisms that convert sunlight into biofuel, with minimal environmental impact and zero net release of greenhouse gases.

Bring it on — with due care.

RICK MORAN is asking for help.

ISLAMISM ON CAMPUS: A video interview with former PLO terrorist Walid Shoebat.

“THAT BERGER DIDN’T FIGHT SPEAKS VOLUMES:” Ron Cass on why Sandy Berger gave up his law license.

ANDREW KEEN’S NEW BOOK on how the Internet is bad for children and other living things gets a frosty reception from Larry Lessig. I’ve got a review of the book coming out this week, too.

HETERODOX CLIMATOLOGY.

Well, “heterodox economics” is chic these days, so. . . .

ARE “GENIUS” AND “MISFIT” SYNONYMS? Well, obviously not: Most misfits aren’t geniuses. But I agree that life is easier for misfits, and especially misfit geniuses, than it used to be.

MORE ON THE DECLINE OF MANUAL SKILLS: Reader Scott Methvin emails:

For the last 13 years I’ve been an over-the-road truck driver, although I was trained as an aircraft pilot and aircraft mechanic. It’s been my impression for some time now that there is an epidemic of un-handy-ness among automobile drivers. I don’t mean “I never learned how to gap spark plugs” type of mechanical non-competence. I mean “my tire went flat and I will sit on the shoulder of the road for 3 hours waiting for AAA to arrive, open my trunk, and install the spare tire” type of non-competence. It always seemed obvious to the people I grew up with and went to school with that every driver should know how to change a flat tire, even if they chose not to get dirty doing it.

The number of nearly new, and presumably mechanically sound cars and SUVs I see parked on the emergency shoulder with just a flat tire seems to grow every year.

As a professional driver, it’s not that the rampant ignorance of the motoring public has surprised me recently. Your mention of growing ignorance of the most basic and likely to be needed skills reminded me of this observation. Hey, when did “Keep Right except to pass” become “Keep Left until you hear gunfire or see your exit?”

Yeah, I wonder about that, too.

HOW TO SAVE NEWSPAPERS? Government subsidies, of course!