MICKEY KAUS:

Joe Klein says Matt Drudge is a “disgrace” because Drudge used the headline

HEALTH INSURANCE PROOF REQUIRED FOR WORK

for a link to a piece on Hillary’s health plan. And if you read the AP story in question, it’s clear that … well, it’s clear that Hillary is thinking about requiring health insurance for work! She says it could be “part of the job interview–like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination.” If your kid doesn’t show the proof, he can’t go to school, right? So what, exactly, is wrong with the headline? Am I missing something?

Howard Kurtz notes a general love for Hillary in the press, which is shown in all sorts of ways . . .

DOGS IN SPACE: A look at Laika.

CONGRESS FOCUSES LIKE A LASER BEAM on ancient NFL legends who aren’t feeling well. As John Kerry said: “Most Americans would look at this and say, ‘Wow, what is Congress doing getting into this?’”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Some suspicious correlations on Murtha’s earmarks, according to Roll Call:

Every private entity that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) favored with an earmark in this year’s defense bill recently has given political money to the lawmaker, according to an analysis of House Appropriations and federal elections records by Roll Call and Taxpayers for Common Sense.

PACs and employees of those 26 groups together have contributed $413,250 to Murtha since the beginning of 2005. He collected nearly a quarter of the sum — $100,750 — in the two weeks leading up to March 16, the original deadline for lawmakers to file their earmark requests. . . .

Murtha’s record of receiving at least some campaign cash from every one of his private earmark beneficiaries makes him a rare, but not unique, case on the Defense Subcommittee. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) also got some political money from each one of the private entities he helped to win federal dollars, the analysis found.

I’m sure it’s all just a coincidence. But I’ll bet the return on investment is excellent. More here.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS in the Al Dura trial.

JOHN LEO on the University of California Regents and Larry Summers.

TASER COPS GONE WILD: But you can see Erik Sofge getting tasered here. He didn’t like it. Perhaps cops could be discouraged from overly macho behavior by being forced to carry pink tasers.

MICHAEL YON POSTS another dispatch from Iraq. Remember that he’s supported by his readers, so if you like his work, you might want to hit the tipjar.

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER: Bill Lerach and John Edwards?

MORE HSUNANIGANS: The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating investments associated with prominent Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu, people familiar with the matter said.

The SEC started its preliminary investigation after a Wall Street Journal article last week said a New York fund couldn’t account for $40 million it had invested with Mr. Hsu. Both agencies also are investigating losses reported by others who have invested with Mr. Hsu, including a complaint from investors in California who claim they are missing more than $30 million. . . .

Mr. Hsu also is under investigation by federal prosecutors for potential violations of federal election laws.

The latest probes center on a case also being looked into by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Two weeks ago, Source Financing Investors, a fund started by Joel Rosenman, a founder of the Woodstock music festival, told the district attorney’s office it was concerned about $40 million it gave recently to Mr. Hsu to invest in 37 deals, its partners told investors last week.

I’ll be interested to see what they find.

MOCKING THE EMINENTLY MOCKABLE NAOMI WOLF: “It’s not enough to be just iconic or just a turning point anymore. It’s a turning point among turning points. Few turning points reach icon status. But this — this is that turning point.”

MR. MUKASEY goes to Washington.

IN THE MAIL: Paul Brown’s The Rocketbelt Caper: A True Tale of Invention, Obsession and Murder.

LARRY SUMMERS AND ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, IN THE L.A. TIMES:

The saga of controversial liberal law professor Erwin Chemerinsky’s on-again, off-again deanship at the new UC Irvine law school was highly unusual in two ways. First, the pressure to enforce political orthodoxy at Chemerinsky’s expense came from the right, not the left, and second, academic freedom and 1st Amendment values won a resounding victory when Chemerinsky was ultimately rehired. A more typical example of how academic freedom remains in jeopardy across the country is the UC Board of Regents’ treatment of Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard University. . . .

The hostility to Summers reflects the growing influence of professors who see their primary mission not as advancing human knowledge but as promoting a “progressive” political agenda.

Entire academic departments are often overtly ideological and politicized, even at schools not normally thought of as hotbeds of activism. Loyola Marymount’s women’s studies department, for example, proclaims as its mission “to call attention to the androcentric nature of society, propose alternatives and strategies that honor women’s human rights, and promote a vision of society where gender hierarchy, as well as other forms of social injustice, are eliminated.” In universities across the United States, conservative scholars are about as welcome, and as rare, in women’s studies programs as Nazis in B’nai B’rith.

Students also suffer from academic intolerance. . . . The Chemerinsky episode, disturbing though it was, should not distract us from the primary challenge facing academic freedom in American universities: the rise of an academic far-left establishment that seeks to use universities as a base for political activism, and is perfectly willing to violate accepted standards of academic freedom to achieve that goal.

Read the whole thing.

JERRY BROWN ON JERRY BROWN on global warming.

EXTREME MORTMAN: The Washington Post lags behind Pete Seeger in its understanding of Soviet horrors.

REMEMBER JESSICA CUTLER? She’s still around.

FRED THOMPSON posts a video on HillaryCare.

Plus, video of Rudy Giuliani in London.

HUGO CHAVEZ’S salami-slice tactics.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY’S FILM INDOCTRINATE U. will have its World Premiere next week.

HOW HOT IS IT IN IRAQ? Jeff Emanuel offers a physics lesson.

But which way do these observations cut in the global warming debate? Is David Sessions a denialist?

UPDATE: Greyhawk weighs in from the field.

Official temperature is taken IN THE SHADE, using very damned expensive equipment. Official temperatures for Baghdad (taken by US Air Force meteorologists at the Airport in the shade) in late July and early August peak in the late afternoon between 115-120 EVERY DAY – IN THE SHADE. The record temperature in the shade is indeed 124 degrees. Now that September is here it’s a bit more variable, highs ranging from as low as 102 to about 108 over the past week or two. In the early morning hours we shiver as the temperatures plunge into the upper 70s.

Did I mention the shade part? Out in the desert or the middle of a city in the direct sunlight in July? Or in the back of a closed vehicle or an aircraft? There it’s really hot, and 130 on a cool day, maybe.

But here’s what I call hot: when you step out of a porta potty after a 5 minute visit into the direct sunlight of a July afternoon in Iraq and think “gosh it’s nice and cool out here” – then you know that inside that porta potty was the HOTTEST EFFING PLACE ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH.

I’ll bet it doesn’t smell very good, either. I hope Sessions doesn’t blog about that.

THIS MEANS HAROLD KOH WILL BE HITTING ME UP FOR MONEY AGAIN: 2d Circuit Upholds Denial of Federal Funding to Yale Law School for Violating Solomon Amendment. Really, I think it’s time to give this one up, guys.

K.C. JOHNSON ON DUKE’S GROUP OF 88:

While the Group of 88 led a faculty rush to judgment against the lacrosse team, the most striking aspect of the Duke faculty’s reaction to the lacrosse case came in the professors’ utter closed-mindedness as Mike Nifong’s case collapsed in late 2006.

Read the whole thing.

HSU BUYING THIS STORY?

A spokesman for disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu (shoo) says Hsu may have mistakenly boarded the wrong train after missing a court date in California, ending up in Colorado. . . . His spokesman Jason Booth says Hsu was “sick and confused” and may have thought he was boarding a Bay Area Rapid Transit train when he instead caught an Amtrak train to Colorado.

Do BART trains have sleeping compartments?

AL QAEDA, squeezed.