HILLARY – OBAMA: Sucking all the cash out of the Democrats?

MEDIA SLANT, TERRORISTS, AND the emboldenment effect. “Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a measurable ’emboldenment effect’ on insurgents there.”

HOW REAL ARE videogame weapons? The tradeoff between accuracy and playability.

FREEDOM NEVER CRIES: Watch this cool video and John Ondrasik’s charity will raise money for Operation Homefront, which supports troops’ families. (Bumped, because it’s important.)

TOM MAGUIRE SAYS THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN needs a subscription to Google. Or at least, they’ve been reading the wrong blogs; maybe they should branch out from Kosworld.

MAKING A manly diaper bag.

UPDATE: Reader Betsy Gorisch emails: “Right. Because nothing else says ‘man’ quite like a skull and crossbones.”

Arrh!

A LAWYER’S THREATENING LETTER AS EXTORTION? I’ve mentioned before that we’re overdue for backlash on some of the stuff that lawyers send out to nonlawyers. This may indicate that such a backlash is beginning.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Professor Bainbridge.

THE STORY HEATS UP: Clinton: Wright ‘would not have been my pastor’.

OUCH:

In comments to yesterday’s post, RobK asked how come we weren’t being told how many enemy KIA we had inflicted.

Well, see, because that would be a “body count”, and it would be ghoulish and wrong. It’s only decorous and proper to trumpet your own death totals on the front page.

(Via Michael Silence).

RON BAILEY ON the Vatican’s confused relationship to biotechnology.

GETTING BEYOND RACISM: The national conversation continues.

MICHAEL TOTTEN MAKES A DIFFERENCE IN IRAQ. Who says bloggers don’t do real reporting?

The U.S. military says it is taking steps to alleviate conditions at the Fallujah city jail in Iraq after recent visitors found a filthy, overcrowded facility. . . . Kelly’s visit followed a report on conditions at the jail by independent journalist Michael Totten. Totten found a facility built to hold 120 prisoners housing 900 without even minimal provision for sanitation or hygiene.

Read the whole thing.

LIFE AS A tall girl.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of this weekend’s book reviews.

GOOD QUESTION: Why Do Palestinians Get Much More Attention than Tibetans?

THOMAS SOWELL ON BARACK OBAMA and choosing your friends. (Via Ann Althouse).

MICHAEL YON EMAILS: “It’s important to contextualize the fighting in Basra. That the Iraqi Army apparently is fighting JAM is important; a largely Shia Government of Iraq is in command of the Iraqi Army. The Iraqi Army is fighting Shia militia. This is not bad news.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: “If they wanted to live in the New York that I liked–the one with the Dominicans hanging out on the street corner, the little hole-in-the-wall pizza joints and the improbable shops with ancient leases that sold scavenged junk alongside ticky-tack imports–well then, I could understand their celebration. But they want to live in the New York that the bankers created without the bankers. This is like wanting to go to heaven, but not wanting to die.”

THE BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC of Massachusetts?

HARD TO ARGUE WITH THIS: “While the Republicans warm up their veepstakes, the greatest show in town is still the Democratic primary race.” But is that sucking all the oxygen out of McCain’s campaign? I’d say not yet, but . . . .

SOUNDS LIKE HATE SPEECH TO ME: Ezra Levant reports on email from an admirer.

TEXAS BEATS BUSH in the Medellin decision just handed down by the Supreme Court. That should make some people happy, though the fact that international law loses along with Bush may make some people less happy. “The decision, aside from its rebuff of presidential power, also treats the World Court ruling itself as not binding on U.S. states, when it contradicts those states’ criminal procedure rules. The international treaty at issue in this dispute — the Vienna Convention that gives foreign nationals accused of crime a right to meet with diplomats from their home country — is not enforceable as a matter of U.S. law, the Roberts opinion said. ” Those worried about international law sneaking into U.S. law will be relieved, however.

FROM THE EXAMINER, an editorial on those half-cocked D.C. gun searches:

If the U.S. Supreme Court seemed on the verge of finding the D.C. government guilty of violating its citizens’ First Amendment rights, would the D.C. police be going door to door looking for printing presses to confiscate? Of course not. It would be unthinkable. Civil libertarians would be — to use an apt phrase (figuratively speaking) — up in arms. But when the civil liberty at issue is the right to bear those arms, as protected by the Second Amendment rather than the First, District officials seem determined to leave no gun unturned in. . . .

The program has drawn criticism not just from gun-rights lobbies such as the National Rifle Association but also from the National Black Police Association and the American Civil Liberties Union. No matter how much respect and support police officers deserve, there is still an intimidation factor involved any time an officer is on one’s doorstep, such that the “permission” may not seem as voluntary as police mean it to be. So where does this end? How long before Lanier sends police into selected neighborhoods — selected by whom and on what basis? — asking to search homes for marijuana, terrorist literature, evidence of intent to commit a crime, fireworks or Cuban cigars? Lanier is establishing a precedent that would have horrified the founders of this republic.

They would have responded with tar and feathers.

OBAMA RELEASES HIS TAX RETURNS: TaxProf has ’em, and some thoughts.

A MAJOR NANOTECHNOLOGY MILESTONE: Protein catalysts designed for non-natural chemical reactions.