THE ISRAELIS are not buying the N.I.E.: “Israeli officials yesterday disputed the conclusions of Monday’s surprise U.S. assessment of Iran’s nuclear program, citing ‘clear and solid intelligence’ that Iran is continuing to develop nuclear weapons to threaten Israel and Europe.”

A LOOK AT Naomi Wolf, the Second Amendment, and “modern Minutemen.” From Megan McArdle, who observes: “I could have done better than this on a freshman composition, spotting Ms. Wolf three beers and an entire day wasted on Law & Order marathons.”

Some thoughts on the “state militia” theory here.

TIM BLAIR: “Australia’s environment minister may be the only politician on earth charged with such responsibility who is banned (by his own party!) from talking about climate change.”

THE FEDERALIST SOCIETY SPONSORS an online debate on Boumedienne v. Bush, which will be argued tomorrow. I had some thoughts on that case here.

MICKEY KAUS WONDERS why Hillary supporters are so down on Obama. And Rich Lowry wonders why Hillary is acting so worried.

TOMORROW IS THE ANNIVERSARY of the repeal of Prohibition. Happy Repeal Day!

INSIDE WIKIPEDIA’S inner circle. In any well-functioning anarchy you’ll find an old boys’ network.

DON SURBER: Iraq = D.C.

ANOTHER JOURNALIST WHO WANTS TO get rid of bloggers. I imagine we’ll be hearing more wistful thoughts along these lines.

FILLING MY STOCKING-STUFFER NEEDS: Roger von Oechs was nice enough to send me a box with six of his cool Ball of Whacks magnetic toys. Always a hit!

STEVE CHAPMAN: Are the Clintonites becoming protectionists? “Democrats yearn for the bounteous days of Bill Clinton’s presidency, when the economy was flourishing, there were good jobs at good wages, and poverty was on the wane. So it’s a puzzle that on one of his signature achievements—the North American Free Trade Agreement — the party’s presidential candidates are sprinting away from his record as fast as they can. It’s as though Republicans were calling for defense cuts while invoking Ronald Reagan.”

METICULOUS POLITICAL RESEARCH from Extreme Mortman.

HSU KNEW THIS WAS COMING: Norman Hsu indicted in New York:

The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan formally indicted one-time Hillary Clinton fundraiser Norman Hsu today, laying out what prosecutors described as a “massive fraud scheme” that allegedly left investors in Hsu’s fictitious clothing businesses taken to the tune of $20 million.

The indictment charges Hsu with six counts of mail fraud, six counts of wire fraud, and three counts of violating the Federal Election Campaign Act for allegedly squeezing contributions out of his investors, and in some cases, repaying donors who wrote checks to Hsu’s chosen political candidates.

Hillary doesn’t need the bad news right now.

UPDATE: Steven Malone emails:

You wrote in your post concerning Hsu that, “Hillary doesn’t need the bad news right now.” I don’t think she needs to worry about it. The WaPo blog ain’t exactly the WaPo front page.

True, though it’s linked on the WashingtonPost.com front page at the moment. Don’t know if it’ll make the front page of the print edition.

A BLAST FROM THE PAST: “Lest you think we live in uniquely perilous times, a violent era fraught with the threat of random terror: on this day 79 years ago, a car bomb went off in St. Paul and killed Dapper Danny Hogan. Wikipedia says it was ‘one of the first instances of death by a car bomb,’ which suggests other cities vie for the grim honor.”

TALKING TO Don Rickles.

BOB OWENS:

The TNR saga is slowly seeping into the media, with posts this morning at the Washington Post and the New York Times, in addition to last night’s mention in the New York Observer.

Not a single one of these outlets discusses the fact that Franklin Foer spent the better part of 13 pages alleging a military conspiracy spanning four bases in three countries involving dozens of soldiers, from privates to colonels.

I guess they didn’t want to discuss how nutty that explanation sounds.

Nor did they mention that Foer and The New Republic refused to apologize to those soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait they accused of atrocities.

Read the whole thing.

THE X-PRIZE: IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT SPACE: “Dr. George Church, one of the originators of the Human Genome Project and currently a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, has announced his intention to compete in the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics. . . . The Archon X PRIZE for Genomics is the second prize launched by the X PRIZE Foundation following the success of the Ansari X PRIZE for Sub-Orbital Space. To win the $10 million genomics prize purse, teams must successfully sequence 100 human genomes within 10 days for less than $10,000 per genome.”

WILL HUGO CHAVEZ kill the media next?

MY EARLIER BLOGGING ABOUT WET/DRY VACS led Matt Sullivan of Popular Mechanics to send this link to a six-way test of the gadgets.

UPDATE: For serious water problems, reader William Gillespie recommends the pump vac. Also, here’s another one. Cool.

ERIC SCHEIE ON THE N.I.E.: “What I want to know is simply, who is in charge of the contradictions?” Nobody. And nobody will lose his/her job over them, no matter what happens next.

HEARTBURN AND ITS TREATMENT: Some good news.

MORE WORRIES ABOUT HILLARY hurting down-ticket Democrats.

IN THE MAIL: Michael Barone’s indispensable tome on American politics.

COMFORTABLY DUMB at Fox & Friends. “In the whole hour-and-a-half I watched while I was drinking coffee and trying to avoid ESPN because of the awful Eagles game yesterday, there was absolutely no mention of the biggest story of the day and perhaps the month: The electoral defeat of Hugo Chavez’s bid to transform Venezuela’s democracy into a dictatorship. . . . As smart as Ailes is, he has to know that even conservatives can bail out to the Internet.”

THE SELF-TUNING GUITAR: Todd Steed emails: “You came up with this idea 28 years ago.” He’s right, but the computational requirements were too stiff back then.