HOWARD KURTZ writes about the Arkin affair, but his column must have gone to bed before the latest developments.

IN LIGHT OF MY OCCASIONAL POSTS ON DISASTER PREPAREDNESS, I thought that some people might be interested in this, which I found via the magic of Amazon recommendations: Apocalypse Chow: How to Eat Well When the Power Goes Out. Recipes for improvised meals using improvised heat sources! Plus, they’re offering it bundled with The Storm Gourmet: A Guide to Creating Extraordinary Meals Without Electricity. Both look pretty useful. And they combine two InstaPundit interests — cooking, and disaster preparedness. Now if they could just work in nanotechnology!

UPDATE: A reader suggests this book for your blackout-entertainment library. But I say: Why wait until the power fails? . . .

JOHN HOWARD, BARACK OBAMA, AND OSAMA BIN LADEN: Richard Fernandez has a roundup.

A tempest in a teapot, mostly, but Obama demonstrated that he could use a bit of seasoning — though in truth, calling one of America’s closest military allies a chickenhawk will probably play well with the netroots crowd.

TOYOTA’S HYBRID SPORTS CAR sounds too good to be true. Especially at that price. But I hope I’m wrong!

QUAGMIRE ALERT: “The new crackdown — targeting 11 gangs — might suggest that the Los Angeles Police Department is trying again where it has failed before.”

GEORGE SOROS VS. MARTIN PERETZ.

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS is back!

THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS WEEKEND, if you were off having, you know, a life:

The Washington Post’s major unforced error and subsequent correction on the Doug Feith story.

Thoughts on Rudy Giuliani, federalism, and abortion.

Michael Yon’s report from General Petraeus’s takeover in Iraq.

Women fleeing morning TV.

Crushing dissent at YouTube.

Of course, you can just scroll, too.

ARNOLD KLING: The Five Big Questions About Health Care.

HEY, HERE’S SOME EVIDENCE for the thesis in my Is Democracy Like Sex? paper:

Republican lobbyists for some of the biggest legal and lobbying firms say that being locked out of the majority leadership offices is hurting their business. “We can no longer meet with the speaker and other leaders, so the business for now isn’t so good,” says one. Another said that some clients aren’t wowed yet by the backbone of the House GOP leadership, so they might be holding off pushing pet projects Democrats might object to. As a result, some Republican lobbyists are expected to make fewer performance bonuses, which, in turn, will mean fewer donations to GOP candidates and lawmakers. “Republican lobbyists are cutting fewer checks for this crowd,” says one.

Reshuffling things does make life tougher on parasites.