MORE ON POTENTIAL LAMAR ALEXANDER CHALLENGER Mike McWherter. Hmm. Didn’t Lamar become less friendly to the immigration bill about the time people started talking about this?

IN THE SUPREME COURT, a big win for campaign finance deregulation. Good.

I’VE LINKED BEFORE TO STUDIES showing that circumcision reduces AIDS risk. But here’s a new report suggesting that it’s more complicated than that:

Male circumcision, which had previously been found to lessen the risk of contracting HIV, is largely irrelevant, suggests a new study. Rather, it is the number of prostitutes in a country that determines the spread of HIV infections, says researcher John R. Talbott, in the journal PLoS ONE.

After conducting statistical empirical research across 77 countries, Talbot contends that prostitute communities are typically very highly infected with the virus, and because of the large number of sex partners they have each year, can act as an “engine” driving infection rates to unusually high levels in the general population.

He adds that while male circumcision may indeed reduce the risk of transmission by around 50 percent in each sexual encounter, reducing single encounter transmission rates alone cannot control the epidemic. Why? Because individuals in highly infected countries have multiple contacts with the infected, so reducing transmission rates only defers the inevitable.

Hmm. Read the whole thing.

MICKEY KAUS’S YOUTUBE REQUEST bears fruit.

WAITING FOR SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE: A crime against humanity? It’s not enough to have scientific consensus, you have to have it when the politicians think you should have it.

UPDATE: Related item here:

In his new book, “The Assault on Reason,” Gore denounces what he sees as today’s politics of fear. Yet his own campaign of mass persuasion — any such campaign — is not amenable to contradiction and uncertainty. It’s about fright and absolutes.

Yes, even the scientific consensus isn’t consensus-y enough for Gore.

BRING IT ON! A fast-track approach to terraforming Mars.

JOHN WIXTED HAS MORE on the effort to downplay Al Qaeda in Iraq.

UPDATE: Related item here.

A REALITY CHECK FOR THE ANTIWAR CROWD: “As an Iraq war veteran who participated in combat operations and political reconciliation efforts, I take issue with some of the arguments repeatedly being made on Capitol Hill. Most recently I was bothered by statements from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who cited three common antiwar arguments in his June 21 op-ed, ‘Lincoln’s Example for Iraq,’ all of which run counter to realities on the ground in Iraq.”

BLADE RUNNER, 25 YEARS LATER: An appreciation.

IN THE MAIL: Michael Makovsky’s Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft. Fouad Ajami likes it.

MICHAEL YON POSTS ANOTHER REPORT FROM BAQUBAH. Excerpt:

On the evening of the 24th I spoke with a local Iraqi official, Colonel Faik, who said the Muftis would order the severance of the two fingers used to hold a cigarette for any Iraqis caught smoking. Other reports, from here in Diyala and also in Anbar, allege that smokers are murdered by AQI. Most Iraqis smoke and this particular prohibition appeared to have earned the ire of many locals. After an American unit cleared an apartment complex on the 23rd, LTC Smiley, the battalion commander, reported that residents didn’t ask for food and water, but cigarettes. In other parts of Baqubah, people have been celebrating the routing of AQI by lighting up and smoking cigarettes.

Other AQI edicts included beatings for men who refused to grow beards, and corporal punishments for obscene sexual suggestiveness, defined by such “loose” behavior as carrying tomatoes and cucumbers in the same bag. These fatwas were not eagerly embraced by most Iraqis, and the taint traveled back to the Muftis who sat in supreme judgment. Locals, who are increasingly helpful in pointing out and celebrating the downfall of AQI here, said that during the initial Arrowhead Ripper attack the morning of the 19th, AQI murdered five men. Townsend’s men found the buried corpses behind an AQI prison, exactly where they’d been told to look for the group grave. Locals also directed Townsend’s men to a torture house. Peering through a window, American soldiers saw knives, swords, bindings and drills. AQI is well-known for its macabre eagerness to drill into kneecaps, elbows, ribs, skulls, and other parts of victims.

As always, read the whole thing. Only don’t tell Mike Bloomberg about the finger-cutting for smokers. It might give him ideas . . . .

UPDATE: This kind of undercuts those lefty bloggers who have been trying to downplay the Al Qaeda presence.

And via email, Michael Yon writes: “The attack continues to unfold here. I’m told that there are reports that the attack in Baqubah is over. If there are such reports, they are untrue.”

IMPEACH CHENEY IF YOU WANT, but do bear in mind that he’ll preside over his own impeachment trial.

No, really. The Senate has the sole power to try impeachments. The Vice President is the President of the Senate. He presides. The Constitution provides for only one exception in cases of impeachment: “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” That’s because of the obvious conflict-of-interest of having the VP preside when the President is tried. But there’s no similar provision for having someone else preside if the Vice President is impeached.

Presumably that’s because no one could imagine a Vice President doing anything significant enough to warrant impeachment, which was certainly an accurate reflection of the office’s character for the first two centuries or so of our nation’s history. And it’s another argument against the VP being given extensive executive responsibilities, now that I think of it.

THE QUESTION FOR CANDIDATES: Ban or embrace blogs?

FIGHTING WORDS, TO SOME: “Five days to the iPhone. If you care. I don’t.”

JOHN LEO RECOGNIZES dubious achievement in higher education.

HOW GREEN IS MY . . . chainsaw?

THOUGHTS ON OBAMA AND RELIGION. Plus, does Giuliani have a John Kerry problem?

N.Z. BEAR RESPONDS TO MAX SAWICKY in defense of porkbusting.

MEGAN MCARDLE: “I find the argument that the problem with immigrants is illegal immigration pretty uncompelling. . . . It is far from clear to me that being an illegal alien is a morally wrong, as opposed to legally wrong, act.”

I certainly agree that we’re talking about malum prohibitum rather than malum in se here. Just like if you don’t pay your taxes. But it seems to me that most of the anger out there isn’t about the immigrants at all, but about the arrogance of, and the transparently disingenuous arguments made by, Trent Lott and the other folks in Congress and the White House in support of the bill.

UPDATE: Readers wonder if we’ll have an amnesty for people who don’t pay their taxes? Well, we’ve seen that kind of thing before, actually. Of course, moral arguments aside there’s a good argument that the already-swamped federal immigration bureaucracy can’t possibly handle the demands that the immigration bill would impose. And there’s the question of assimilation, which to me is most important: We’ve assimilated big waves of immigrants before, but that was back when the folks in charge of education and government thought assimilation was a good thing — as we see in Britain, when the dominant ideology is PC-ish and multi-culti, we tend to see a sort of reverse-assimilation instead.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A look at one-time tax amnesty: The sequel.

MORE: Speaking of Trent Lott . . . .

MICKEY KAUS FACT-CHECKS TIM RUSSERT: “I guess these are the sort of complex nuances that can only be communicated on talk radio!”

NO BIAS HERE: At PBS.