STANLEY FISH’S ADVICE TO PROFESSORS: Save the World on Your Own Time.

More on that here. “Whether anyone notices it or not or comments on it or not, the teaching of writing in universities is a disaster. [There is] the conviction on the part of many composition teachers that what they are really teaching is some form of social justice, and that the teaching of writing … takes a back seat. And in fact in many classrooms the teaching of writing as a craft as something that has rules with appropriate decorums … is in fact demonized as an indication of the hegemony of the powers that be. This happens over and over again in classrooms and it’s an absolute disaster.”

FRANK GAFFNEY ON fighting OPEC with flex-fuels. I hadn’t realized that Obama had gotten on-board with the Zubrin plan too. Good for him!

GOOD QUESTION: “Why didn’t Hillary Clinton use this material more effectively?” My guess is that she didn’t think she needed an opposition research department for the primary; by the time she saw her mistake, it was too late.

AHMADINEJAD’S WIFE IS A BABE: It’s like a Monty Python skit.

HERDED BEHIND A FENCE: Protesters at the Democratic National Convention.

THOMAS LIPSCOMB: Why Running “On the Record” Is Harder Than You Think.

IT’S FINE AS LONG AS they’re not Muslim. Then it would be racism, or something.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Google and the Anti-Obama Bloggers.

UPDATE: Reader Darin S. Morley writes: “Just another example of Google’s corporate policy: Don’t Be Evil.“

SOME TASKS ARE “INHERENTLY MORE OFFENSIVE TO WOMEN.”

YOU JUST CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Sens. Larry “Wide Stance” Craig and David “Diaper Boy”* Vitter have signed on to co-sponsor yet another federal bill that would amend the Constitution define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

‘Cause who has more reverence for the institution of marriage than these guys?

GET READY FOR THE OBAMA IRAQ PIVOT: It’s got to come soon, when you can read this kind of thing in The New Yorker:

In February, 2007, when Barack Obama declared that he was running for President, violence in Iraq had reached apocalyptic levels, and he based his candidacy, in part, on a bold promise to begin a rapid withdrawal of American forces upon taking office. At the time, this pledge represented conventional thinking among Democrats and was guaranteed to play well with primary voters. But in the year and a half since then two improbable, though not unforeseeable, events have occurred: Obama has won the Democratic nomination, and Iraq, despite myriad crises, has begun to stabilize. With the general election four months away, Obama’s rhetoric on the topic now seems outdated and out of touch, and the nominee-apparent may have a political problem concerning the very issue that did so much to bring him this far.

It’s about time, since it’s nearly July.

UPDATE: Reader David Fleeger emails: “It was interesting that the author of the article in The New Yorker claimed that the US success in Iraq was mostly the result of luck. Even when trying to walk Obama back from the edge of disaster, the MSM is still stuck on stupid.”

ABC: How the FBI Botched the Anthrax Case.

DUMB LAWS is a blog devoted to just that. No shortage of material!

I’VE MENTIONED DAVID WILLIAMS’ The Mirrored Heavens before, but now here’s an interview with Williams.

UPDATE: Bill Quick emails:

So I’m out on my bike today – it’s gorgeous in SF – and I stop by the Bay for a breather and just to sit and watch the sailboats gliding under the Bay Bridge.

I open my backpack and drag out my 3 lb Lenovo with builtin EVDO, fire it up, and check my blog. Then yours – and see your post about The Mirrored Heavens. I click the link and check it out at Amazon. Sounds right up my alley. So I open my Sony eReader, connect it to my laptop, and buy the book for ten bucks, download it, and watch it join the 400 or so other books sitting in my reader.

It’s next on the “pile,” after I finish crunching my way through Peter Hamilton’s endless, but fascinating trilogy.

Speaking as a SF writer, I can tell you that intellectually this shouldn’t amaze me (and intellectually, I expect the process to be a lot more seamless in a couple of years), but as a 62 year old person who can remember when phones were black, tvs had tiny round screens, and the “network” was The Lone Ranger on CBS radio, there are times it seems downright miraculous.

Thanks for the recommendation.

Yeah, we’re not just reading science fiction. We’re living it! Hey, it’s the 21st Century, you know.

ROBERT MUGABE: The Anti-Mandela.

With Thabo Mbeki in the role of Best Supporting Actor.

MCCAIN’S MILITARY RECORD: Reader John Lunde emails: “Well, he served in Vietnam… and then he married a rich woman and got elected to the Senate. Are the Democrats now telling us these things don’t make for a good candidate?”

Heh. Plus, I must disagree with charges that McCain is being “Swift Boated.” For this to be a “Swift Boating,” people who stayed at the Hanoi Hilton would have to say that McCain was lying about what he did there — or perhaps that his repeated claims that events there were “seared, seared” in his memory are false, and he was never actually there at all — and those people would have to be telling the truth.

ROBERT NOVAK: Obama’s Dodge on Handguns:

While Scalia’s opinion for now saves Obama from defending a court that had emasculated gun rights, one inconvenient truth confronts the candidate. He has made clear that as president he would nominate Supreme Court justices who agree with the minority of four that the Second Amendment is meaningless. Would he want a reconstituted court to roll back the D.C. decision when the Chicago case gets there?

Yes he would.

ARTHUR SILBER IS CREEPED OUT by the messianic zeal of Obama fans.

Hey, it’s not as if they’re taking his name or anything!

DON’T CALL ME SHIRLEY. “Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy that has as its core value some variation of ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ is antithetical to American values and, therefore, unpatriotic. Surely, I can state categorically that any political philosophy makes the ‘world’s’ feelings a priority over American interests or sovereignty is antithetical to American values or survival and, therefore, unpatriotic.”

And don’t forget mean-spirited.

MORE ON THE TUNGUSKA ANNIVERSARY: “Monday marks the 100th anniversary of the moment when something roared through the empty skies over Siberia and exploded, blasting forests for hundreds of square miles. More such incoming space rocks are inevitable. Are we ready? No.”

I BLAME KARL ROVE: Obama’s for Equal Pay, Yet Pays Female Staffers Less Than Males. “That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.”

THOUGHTS ON THE PRACTICE OF ETHICAL CONSUMERISM.

Meanwhile, reader A.L. Harris writes: “I cancelled my Chicago Tribune today. I will not economically support their position in Friday’s editorial on repealing the second amendment. But though they used their first amendment rights to propose stripping me of my second amendment rights, I would still use my second amendment rights to defend their first amendment rights. It’s an odd symbiotic relationship.” Indeed.

UPDATE: Reader Shane Blake writes: “This analogy isn’t quite right. A symbiotic relationship, by definition, benefits both organisms. The relationship above could only be called parasitic.”

STEVE CHAPMAN:

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, lamenting the decision overturning his city’s handgun ban, said Thursday, “More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence.” That’s a dangerous statement for a politician to make–an empirical claim that can be judged against empirical data.

I emailed Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, one of the nation’s leading gun scholars, to ask if the proposition Fenty set out is true. Surprise: It’s not.

Falsehoods in support of gun control? Stop the presses.

PINK GUNS as rape prevention devices.

THOUGHTS ON PATRIOTISM AND SACRIFICE.

UPDATE: Another flip-flop?