MICKEY KAUS: “I’m willing to be convinced that the instinct to keep up Petraeus’ ‘surge’ (as long as it’s showing promising results) is wrong. But the recent Podesta/Korb/Katulis op-ed–‘Strategic Drift: Where’s the Pushback Against the Surge’–didn’t come close to doing the trick.”

MELISSA SCHWARTZ LOOKS BACK on seven years of blogging with thoughts of what came before: “How did anybody meet anybody and how did we learn things?”

LONG-ARMING the libel tourist.

I’M CRITICIZED FOR MY defeatist rhetoric. I say, pull out now.

HEH: A gunslinger pope?

I HAD MISSED THIS: 100 enlist at UT/Vanderbilt game.

AN ARMY OF RON JEREMIES: Porn industry losing out to amateurs. “They’re giving porn away. You can’t make money on this.”

TED KENNEDY IS unhappy with Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

EUGENE VOLOKH ON THE MEANING OF “necessary to the security of a free state.”

UPDATE: Plus, the Second Amendment and the “living Constitution.” And, from Dave Kopel, some background on the D.C. handgun and self-defense bans.

ILYA SOMIN: “Various people have asked me what I think of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, and whether it will be good for libertarianism. Here’s my take.”

IS THE IPHONE AN electronic snitch?

UPDATE: Or maybe it’s a bogus rumor.

AN IGNORED EARLY WARNING ON THE HOLOCAUST: Probably wouldn’t have mattered. As we’ve seen in more recent years, the world doesn’t actually mind genocide all that much.

DENIAL.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT TERM? Read these comments from Prof. Mike O’Shea. They’re from last summer, but they’re totally on point.

And there are multiple posts at The Volokh Conspiracy that are worth your time.

UPDATE: Rudy Giuliani weighs in: “I strongly believe that Judge Silberman’s decision deserves to be upheld by the Supreme Court. The Parker decision is an excellent example of a judge looking to find the meaning of the words in the Constitution, not what he would like them to mean.” This should help him with the gun-rights folks.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fred Thompson comments: “The Second Amendment does more than guarantee to all Americans an unalienable right to defend one’s self. William Blackstone, the 18th century English legal commentator whose works were well-read and relied on by the Framers of our Constitution, observed that the right to keep and bear firearms arises from ‘the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.’ This view, reflected in the Second Amendment, promotes both self-defense and liberty.”

MORE: David Hardy has thoughts on the question presented.

LOVING THE PORSCHE CAYMAN: I find it much more attractive than other Porsches, especially the rear end treatment.

GOOD QUESTION: “Why should the courts spare the government from the harsh effects of laws that are written at a high level of generality? Private citizens and business get stuck with the application of general laws, which they don’t write.”

“YES.” That’s Ron Bailey’s answer to Arthur Caplan’s question about whether it would be a good thing if stem cell breakthroughs let people live longer. I’ve written about the problem at more length here.

PARASITE VS. HOST: “In evolution, host and parasite can engage in a kind of arms race. One side adapts and evolves; the other side adapts and evolves to keep up. At the end of the day, neither side is necessarily better off than the other. . . . The phenomenon helps illustrate why sexual reproduction is important: by producing genetically varied offspring, a slower-evolving organism can defend itself against a faster-evolving one.”

As I’ve suggested elsewhere, the same may be true in politics, though regarding that contest as a Red Queen’s Race would, alas, be rather optimistic.

ANNIE JACOBSEN: Homeland security remains a joke. Just not a very funny one. More criticism here.

JAMES LILEKS ON the death of Mr. Whipple.

Also, he’s got a new book coming out next week, just in time for Christmas. Lileks, that is. Not Mr. Whipple.

ERIC SCHEIE: “Pry what from my cold dead hands?”

BIG SECOND AMENDMENT NEWS: “The U.S. Supreme Court said on Tuesday it would decide whether handguns can be banned in the nation’s capital, a case that could produce its first ruling in nearly 70 years on the right of Americans to bear arms.”

Lots of background information on the Second Amendment here, and there’s some discussion of this particular case here — scroll down toward the end. (It starts at p. 347 in the journal, or p. 14 in your Adobe reader.)

Also, Helen and I interviewed Bob Levy, the brains behind the case, for The Glenn and Helen Show this morning; it’ll be up tomorrow.

UPDATE: More at SCOTUSBlog. And here’s a copy of the order. The question is phrased as follows: “Whether the following provisions — D.C. Code secs. 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 — violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

ARE SCIENTISTS PLAYING GOD? It depends on your religion. “Therapeutic cloning in particular jibes well with the Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation.”

Plus, anti-science religious fervor:

“Many Europeans, as well as leftists in America,” Dr. Silver says, “have rejected the traditional Christian God and replaced it with a post-Christian goddess of Mother Nature and a modified Christian eschatology. It isn’t a coherent belief system. It might or might not incorporate New Age thinking. But deep down, there’s a view that humans shouldn’t be tampering with the natural world.”

Hence the opposition to genetically modified food.

I say, tell the theocrats to shut up and let science remain free. Luckily, the stem-cell debate, at least, may turn out to be obsolete.

OUCH! “With exquisite timing, Boeing chooses a travel weekend that could go down in the annals of airborne horror to deliver a top-of-the-line Boeing Business Jet that will be assigned to Congress – those folks who have charged billions in air travel taxes over the decades and left us with 1930s blind-landing technology. . . . Funny how nobody in Washington ever mentions these $70 million jets as an example of wasteful defense spending. Or as an example of an unjustified Air Force mission that doesn’t support our soldiers on the ground.”

WHO WAS THAT DOG I SAW YOU WITH LAST NIGHT? “That was no dog, that was my pundit!”

But is Boris available on Kindle?