FRANCE, BRITAIN, U.S. recognize Kosovo independence. Russia is unhappy.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt: “And stand by for Muslim nations to thank George Bush for standing by their oppressed fellow believers in Kosovo. Any day now.”

IN SEARCH OF “YOUTHS:” “More than 1,000 police, some wearing black hoods, raided housing projects outside Paris in a massive sweep Monday, kicking open doors and detaining 33 people in a search for rioters who led an outburst of violence last year, a prosecutor said.”

MORTGAGING THE FUTURE: Steve Chapman looks at Hillary’s economic policy. “Obama is not a staunch free marketeer, but he grasps the value of markets and shows some deference to economic laws. Clinton, however, tends to treat both as piddly obstacles to her grand ambitions.”

ROGER KIMBALL ON intellectuals and genocide.

POLITICO: CLINTON AIDE accuses Obama of plagiarism.

UPDATE: Defending Obama: “There are only so many ways to say nothing, after all.” My thoughts on plagiarism — including a defense of Joe Biden on pretty much those grounds — can be found here, and are excerpted online here. And read this, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: TigerHawk: “Politicians are not allowed to crib arguments from each other? I, for one, had literally no idea that principles of academic integrity applied to political speeches. . . . If this is the most potent stuff the Clintons have to throw at Obama, they are scraping the wood at the bottom of the barrel.”

LAURA MCKENNA on mocking the Eco-Moms.

IN THE MAIL: Singularity’s Ring, by Paul Melko. A post-singularity science fiction novel, well-blurbed by Charles Stross and John Barnes.

MICHAEL TOTTEN GOES inside Fallujah’s jail. Remember that he’s supported by reader donations, so if you like his work, consider hitting the tipjar.

SCIENTISTS: Human culture subject to natural selection. Well, duh. They do not, however, appear to have fully grasped the implications. . . .

MISSISSIPPI’S next exoneration?

KNEE PROBLEMS: Not just for old guys. “Now that almost every child with a hurt knee gets a magnetic resonance imaging, doctors are finding the ligament tears on a regular basis.”

WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE, on New York’s Obama vote undercount?

THE GENESIS OF tax-and-spend democracy.

BOSS SCHUMER.

WHY DOES OBAMA hate NAFTA?

NOW THAT’S INTENSE: “If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of a new laser beam made in a University of Michigan laboratory.” On the other hand, with a beam duration of 30 femtoseconds, it’s less like a “beam” and more like throwing photon-pies.

RAND SIMBERG IS AMUSED to see Democrats talking about Bill and Hillary Clinton the way Republicans did in the 1990s. “When it comes to the Clintons, it’s always about them, and they always come first, and the national Democrats are finally starting to realize it, sixteen years later.”

TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES: I continue to enjoy this series, and one of my students pointed out that you can see the episodes online for free — and with no commercials.

THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE: “Based on exit polls, among the approximately 16.3 million people who identified themselves as Democrats, over 678,000 more voted for Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama.”

ROBERT NOVAK: Why Torts Trumped Terrorism in Congress. “Big money is involved.”