STEVE SCHIPPERT: Dear Leader?

OHIO ELECTION UPDATE: Court casts doubt on Ohio voter rolls. “Late in the day – in a victory for Republicans – the full Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a decision made last week by three of its members. The result: Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner must create computer programs to cross check all new voter registrations so that county boards of elections can doublecheck new registrants. The Secretary of State will now have to verify new registrations by comparing information on them with data from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the Social Security Administration.” Plus, lots more ACORN news.

That we’re seeing this kind of thing is evidence that the voting system lacks a basic level of trustworthiness. As I’ve said before, this is a dangerous flaw that must be fixed.

RUSH LIMBAUGH INTERVIEWED SARAH PALIN TODAY: Here’s the transcript. The McCain campaign should’ve sent her to Limbaugh first, and made Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric wait.

Of course, the Glenn and Helen Show idea was a good one, too. But nooooo! . . . .

OIL FALLS, Hugo Chavez sweats.

UPDATE: If Chavez sweats, so does Putin. Oh, darn!

DO WE KNOW the real John McCain? Some troubling associations there. . . .

CAR LUST: Remembering the Pontiac GTO Judge.

PATRICK RUFFINI: Media blogs in Memeorandum lean left. Not a surprise.

AN ANTI-CANCER EFFECT FROM PECTIN? “An apple a day . . . .”

BRINGING BACK CRIMINAL LIBEL in Ohio?

OBAMA AND MCCAIN on genetics research.

FIGHTING TO SUPPORT Junior ROTC in San Francisco.

KATIE GRANJU NOTES a reporter at MSNBC covering for Obama. “I think McCain should find more meaningful things to talk about on the campaign trail. But to many Americans, the Ayers issue is not insignificant, and it’s not up to the reporter writing a supposedly straight news piece to take a point of view on the matter. I don’t see the biased reporting by the “liberal mainstream media” behind every tree that a lot of conservatives do, but I will call it when I do see it. And I see it here.”

I’m afraid that the way the media is covering for Obama is generating a lot of anger that will make it harder of Obama to govern if elected. Some may see this as a plus, but I see it as furthering the already excessive polarization in our society. I think the media tilt, and the ACORN controversy (which are connected, of course), will be for a lot of people on the right what the Florida recount was for a lot of people on the left.

ADAM SHEPARD’S Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream is now out. Our podcast interview with Shepard is here.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: There is no love for the United Nations in Kosovo. “Kosovo is the fourth country I’ve visited where the UN has or has had a key role, and in only one of them – Lebanon – is the UN not despised by just about everyone. In Lebanon the UN has so little power to make a difference one way or the other that any anger at the institution would largely be pointless.”

STILL MORE ON what ACORN is doing. “It is almost inconceivable that Barack Obama should not have been grilled on this –either by his opponent or the media.”

CHINA GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT Methanol fuel. (Thanks to Bob Zubrin for the link.)

KAREN PEASE SAYS there is no shortage of lithium for electric-car batteries. “Older reserves figures don’t include, for example, the Kings Valley in Nevada, a mine that’s now expected to produce 25 billion pounds of lithium carbonate. That’s what many ‘peak lithium’ advocates claim the world’s entire reserves of lithium comprise because they don’t include the deposit at all, despite the fact that 173 boreholes to a depth of 40 meters over 80,000 acres determined an average lithium content of 0.279% and a commercial recovery factor of 85%. This is just one mine we’re talking about, and that’s enough lithium carbonate to produce the cells for almost 800 million 10kWh (Aptera-sized) battery packs.”

IS THE PATENT SYSTEM stifling nanotechnology?

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Lack of vitamin D linked to Parkinson’s disease. Of course, it’s possible that people with Parkinson’s get less vitamin D as a result, or maybe that their bodies use more. Still, more interesting Vitamin D research.

CHANGE YOUR PUMPKIN, CHANGE YOUR WORLD: Barack O’Lanterns at YesWeCarve.com.

BOB LUTZ: Cheap Gas Would Be Bad. “We may hate high fuel prices, but they’ve been driving us in the right direction when it comes to fuel economy. If we suddenly went to $1 or $1.50 a gallon, that would be really bad.”

WOMEN WITH HEART PROBLEMS often diagnosed with psychological maladies instead. That’s what happened with the Insta-Wife, delaying her diagnosis by months.

IN THE MAIL: From University of Chicago Press, Carl Schmitt’s The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes: Meaning and Failure of a Political Symbol. Schmitt’s been getting a lot of attention lately. I’m not sure that’s a good sign.

MICKEY KAUS: “One of McCain’s problems is that voters aren’t paying much attention to Iraq–because it looks from our distant vantage point like the war is finally on a glide path to an honorable U.S. drawdown of troops. How much damage could Obama do?”