JIM MEIGS IN POPULAR MECHANICS: Why Offshore Drilling Can Bridge Gap to U.S. Energy Future. Read the whole thing.

JAMES LILEKS IS blogging from Denver.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, ye who convention here.

ZOMBIETIME! More reporting from Denver, with many amusing photographs.

WIND ENERGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE:

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.

That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

But building new infrastructure is hard, and limited by NIMBY efforts, regulatory gridlock, and money. The money part is easy — cut entitlements by ten percent across the board — but the other parts are hard.

RESEARCH: Red-light Cameras Don’t Work. Except at enriching municipalities, which is all they’re really about anyway.

VIDEO: THE PROBLEM WITH CROP-BASED BIOFUELS. I think that non-crop-based biofuels are the way to go.

The Nebraska Guitar Militia are working on a new album, and I have to write some songs. The old stuff was mostly about depression in the farm belt; I’m thinking about writing a new version of “Waves of Grain” in which ethanol is celebrated as a source of income, rather than inebriation . . . . And, of course, “Farming the Government” would hardly need any changes at all!

PILLS TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE: A drug to cure cancer. Another to halt aging. In the not-so-distant future, these six drugs—already in the works—will change how we live, and even how we die. Faster, please.

IN THE MAIL: From the University of Chicago Press, James Hasik’s Arms and Innovation: Entrepreneurship and Alliances in the Twenty-first Century Defense Industry.

MCCAIN AND OBAMA on fixing Homeland Security.

INSTA-POLL: Following up on yesterday’s drinking-age poll, a reader suggests this one:

A SENATE SEAT THE REPUBLICANS RICHLY DESERVE TO LOSE: “The corrupt and contemptible Republican senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, who first burst onto the political scene shortly after the land bridge between North America and Asia disappeared, is in fine form after winning his GOP primary. Stevens is up on federal charges that he hid more than $250,000 in freebies and whatnot from proper disclosure, but his entire career is a case study in the more acceptable form of graft that characterizes American politics.” He should have been eased out a long time ago.

THE REAL Ayers problem.

TO SOME PEOPLE, I think betraying one’s party is worse than betraying one’s country: Olbermann: Hillary’s Howard ‘Tokyo Rose’ for Working for Fox. “Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann put their own feud aside to agree on something tonight. Hillary honcho Howard Wolfson is a puppet, nay, a Tokyo Rose traitor, for going to work for Fox News. It was the McCain campaign’s use in its ads of Hillary’s anti-Obama statements that triggered the outburst.”

MEGAN MCARDLE AND ANN ALTHOUSE: “Dangerous seductresses?”

PROTESTING BIRD PORN IN DENVER: No, really. “John McCain is an admitted bird-watcher.”

“ANTI-ZIONISTS” shut down Harry’s Place — but only temporarily. Someone should start filing complaints about them.

SOME INTERESTING POLL DATA: From Rasmussen: Confidence in War on Terror and Iraq at Highest Level Ever.

From Gallup: Conservative Democrats Peeling Away From Obama. They must be racists! Or maybe they don’t like faux-Greek temples. Which would make them homophobes, I guess . . . .

OUCH: McCain Aide Mocks Obama: ‘Is This From the Onion?’

It is kinda mockable: “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.”

BRIAN MICKLETHWAIT: “One of the things that irritates me about propagandists on my side is that they are often reluctant to spot a great victory, even when they have just won one.”

DOES TYRA BANKS doom Barack Obama? So far she’s batting .666!

STRATEGYPAGE IS ranking armed forces and noting the relative decline of Russian naval power, which has left the United States with over half the world’s naval power. “We are now in the third century of either Britain or the United States as the dominant naval power in the world.” Jim Bennett emails that they’re channeling his recent book.

THE EXAMINER: Does Obama Support Free Speech or Not?

UPDATE: Here’s the ad the Obama folks are trying to silence:

Seems fair to me. “William Ayers, who was a founder of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground, told FOX News correspondent James Rosen in a candid 2004 interview that he still believed he was ‘on the side of justice’ years after the group’s wave of attacks.”

IN CALIFORNIA, A PUSH TO protect scientists from animal-rights terrorists.

A LOOK AT the aging immune system.