GLOVES OFF: “Clinton: Obama ‘Irresponsible and Naive.'”

ANOTHER UNFORTUNATE bear / automobile encounter, courtesy of reader Chris Greer. It doesn’t say whether the Volvo was totaled, but in these encounters Mutual Assured Destruction seems to apply . . . .

POLLING SHOCKER: “Rasmussen Reports polled Ron Paul’s strength against the Democratic frontrunners and the news is not good: Paul would lose to Hillary Clinton by 19 points and Barack Obama by 20 points.”

So I guess if the GOP nominates him they’re in trouble. Another poll shocker here.

GOP FUNDRAISER TO FEATURE Machine-Gun Shoot.

A SLOW HURRICANE SEASON: “The 2007 hurricane season may be less severe than forecast due to cooler-than-expected water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic, private forecaster WSI Corp said on Tuesday.” I hope so.

A DAY’S WORK in Iraq.

THOMPSON CAMPAIGN SHAKEUPS?

As I said last week, he ran a masterful pre-campaign, but the transition to officially running has been sloppy.

TRIPOLI SIX UPDATE: “Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor flew to freedom Tuesday after more than eight years in a Libyan prison, receiving a presidential pardon and bouquets of flowers at an emotional arrival ceremony in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.” It was basically a kidnapping for ransom.

TOPLESS PROTESTERS crash Hillary event.

THIS IS KIND OF EMBARRASSING:

A convicted felon who worked as a volunteer research assistant for a Yale Law School professor allegedly capitalized on his Yale connection to swindle millions of dollars out of undocumented Irish immigrants. Posing as an attorney who worked for the Yale Immigration Law Clinic, investigators say, Ralph Cucciniello promised to fix his victims’ immigration problems and get them green cards for a fee of around $5,000.

One of the strong points of the Yale Law School is that it’s a functioning anarchy. But that has its downside, as this illustrates.

SUPPORTING BUSSARD FUSION in California.

UPDATE: Or not.

SOME THOUGHTS ON “SCOTT THOMAS” from John Barnes. (Thanks to reader C.J. Burch for the link). It’s all speculation, but it’s interesting, and clearly labeled as such.

WARD CHURCHILL has been fired. “University president Hank Brown, in a news conference, said ‘the decision was really pretty basic’ based on the board’s findings. Churchill was accused of plagiarism, falsification and other infractions.”

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has a roundup. And there’s much more here.

IF DICK CHENEY IS A LEGISLATIVE OFFICIAL, then it seems clear that this behavior violates separation of powers:

During Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing, a freshman Democratic Senator stumped Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on how Vice President Dick Cheney, his chief of staff, and counsel, had been granted authority parallel with the President on intervening in pending matters at the Justice Department.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) questioned the Attorney General about the independence of the Justice Department and communications with the White House on pending cases or investigations.

He then pointed to a May 4, 2006 memorandum signed by Gonzales which showed that the Office of the Vice President had been granted parallel privileges with the Executive Office of the President on communicating directly with the Justice Department’s staff on criminal and civil matters.

Yeah, I know Cheney’s office has dropped this argument, but still . . . .

STOCKS DROP SHARPLY: No gloating from Kudlow tonight; I’m watching his panel and they’re blaming the anti-business sentiments in last night’s Democratic debate. Kudlow doesn’t seem fully persuaded.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: ” Imagine if top aides to President Bush ordered the FBI to produce damaging but false information about Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader. Now that would be a scandal.”

JOHN KERRY LIMERICKS? Life is too short.

MORE ON NORMAN BORLAUG. “Fame is not needed to justify or validate the life and achievements of Norman Borlaug. But fame and respect are due to him nevertheless for the astonishing contribution he has made to the quality of life around the world. And yes, more people should know about him. If they do, they’ll know more about his insights, and more lives will be saved thanks to the spread of that knowledge. That would be a better idea than fawning profiles of Lester Brown and Paul Ehrlich, wouldn’t it?”

BUSH’S NEW ANTI-TORTURE ORDER: Phil Carter says there’s less — or is it more? — to it than meets the eye. Either way, he doesn’t like it.

IT’S TIME TO PLAY ANOTHER ROUND OF name that party!

MORE ON THE SURGE:

The surge has basically been chasing the terrorist and criminal gangs around the suburbs of Baghdad, or even into northern or western Iraq. This has taken its toll. Time spent in flight cannot be spent planting IEDs or killing people. Putting all these guys on the road, also makes them more susceptible to capture. A lot of important terrorists have been captured this way. The chief liaison between al Qaeda headquarters and al Qaeda in Iraq was nabbed, as well as many mid-level terrorist cell leaders.

What most of the troops, and Iraqi civilians, notice is the lower level of violence. Since the surge offensive began four months ago, Iraqi (military and civilian) deaths have declined by more than 50 percent, and American casualties are down by over a third. U.S. troops are still taking the lead in moving into hostile areas, and being exposed to ambush and IEDs. But U.S. tactics and training have made enemy efforts much less lethal. This has helped demoralize an increasing number of terrorists. Many are tired of killing Iraqi civilians, and the increasing difficulty at getting at American troops. Look at this from the Iraqi perspective. In a very good month, Iraqis make a hundred or more attacks a day on American troops, and kill, on average, about four of them. While the terrorists make a big deal out of every American killed, they know that most of their attacks were not only failures, but got a lot of their buddies killed. On average, 10-20 terrorists die for every American killed. This has been going on for years, and an increasing number of Iraqi fighters are demoralized and quitting. Many either become informers, or surrender and speak freely. This is resulting in fresher intelligence, and raids that are catching terrorist cells preparing for operations, and in possession of weapons, bombs and incriminating documents.

Well, good.

TRANSVISION 2007: Ron Bailey reports on life-extension, and more. “One might think that longer, healthier lives should be an easy sell, but, in fact, there are people who believe that dramatically extending human lives would be a bad idea.”

EUGENE VOLOKH LOOKS AT bloggers and campaign finance law.

UPDATE: Related item from Rogers Cadenhead.

DAVE KOPEL ON ARMED RESISTANCE TO THE HOLOCAUST: It’s a PDF file of a law review article, but it’s reasonably short by law-review standards. And here’s a shorter related item that Kopel and I wrote back in 2001.

IN THE WAKE OF THE SURGE: Michael Totten patrols with the troops in Baghdad:

Everyone was friendly. No one shot at us or even looked at us funny. Infrastructure problems, not security, were the biggest concerns at the moment. I felt like I was in Iraqi Kurdistan – where the war is already over – not in Baghdad. . . .

“This is not what I expected in Baghdad,” I said.

“Most of what we’re doing doesn’t get reported in the media,” he said. “We’re not fighting a war here anymore, not in this area. We’ve moved way beyond that stage. We built a soccer field for the kids, bought all kinds of equipment, bought them school books and even chalk. Soon we’re installing 1,500 solar street lamps so they have light at night and can take some of the load off the power grid. The media only covers the gruesome stuff. We go to the sheiks and say hey man, what kind of projects do you want in this area? They give us a list and we submit the paperwork. When the projects get approved, we give them the money and help them buy stuff.”

Not everything they do is humanitarian work, unless you consider counter-terrorism humanitarian work. In my view, you should. Few Westerners think of personal security as a human right, but if you show up in Baghdad I’ll bet you will. . . .The soldiers were talking and acting like aid workers, not warriors from the elite 82nd Airborne Division.

“Man, this is boring,” one of them said to me later. “I’m an adrenaline junky. There’s no fight here. It won’t surprise me if we start handing out speeding tickets.” So it goes in at least this part of Baghdad that has been cleared by the surge.

“When we first got here,” said another and laughed, “shit hit the fan.”

It was all a bit boring, but blessedly so. I knew already that not everyone in Baghdad was hostile. But it was slightly surprising to see that entire areas in the Red Zone are not hostile.

Anything can happen in Baghdad, even so. The convulsive, violent, and overtly hostile Sadr City is only a few minutes drive to the southeast.

Read the whole thing. He has lots of photos, too. Like Michael Yon, he’s an independent journalist supported by his readers, so if you like his reporting, consider hitting the tipjar.

UPDATE: Reader Kjell Hagen emails from Norway:

It is interesting to read/listen to Michael Totten and Michael Yon. It is so incredibly different from here, where all commentators, from left to right, take it as a given that the US has lost the war, with no proof of their assertion, of course. It will be interesting to see when, or if, a more nuanced picture gets out.

The US has certainly lost the media war in Europe. Luckily, that is not a critical arena. I think the war is about to turn the right way. The ugliest year in WWII was the last. People tend to demand that wars should get gradually more peaceful. They don´t. They usually get more and more ugly, and then one side collapses. There are clear signs of Al Qaeda getting desperate and a lot weaker now.

Let’s hope. I don’t know if the “media war in Europe” was ever winnable, as there are plenty of people in Europe — and some in America, alas, for that matter — who would like us to lose in Iraq, because it would advance their own political agendas. Let’s hope that they’re proven wrong, though I think so many people are so invested in failure that even the greatest success won’t be allowed to be portrayed as a success for years.

Meanwhile the surge seems to be polling a bit better in the United States.