I LIKE THE ONE ABOUT MEAT: A roundup of this year’s award-winning cookbooks.

FRED HIATT: “Bush Lied? If Only It Were That Simple.”

But dive into Rockefeller’s report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

On Iraq’s nuclear weapons program? The president’s statements “were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates.”

On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president’s statements “were substantiated by intelligence information.”

On chemical weapons, then? “Substantiated by intelligence information.”

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.” Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? “Generally substantiated by available intelligence.” Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? “Generally substantiated by intelligence information.”

As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you’ve mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in the section on Bush’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s alleged ties to terrorism.

But statements regarding Iraq’s support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda “were substantiated by intelligence information.”

Democrats like the “Bush lied” meme because it gets Democrats who voted for the war off the hook with their antiwar constituencies. The problem is that it’s more politically convenient than, you know, true. It’s rather convenient for the intelligence services, too . . . .

(Via The Anchoress.) More thoughts here: “What does all this prove? That once again Congressional Democrats are playing politics with the Iraq war in an effort to gain more traction in an election year – probably in an attempt to help out their anti-war nominee, even when they know that the prior administration made almost identical claims about the threat from Iraq, and even though they have to know that their own report repeatedly points out that Bush’s claims were ‘generally substantiated by available intelligence.'”

Then there’s this: The US knew that Al-Qaeda and Al-Zarqawi had a “good relationship” with Saddam Hussein officials before the war. Hmm.

LIVEBLOGGING THE UNVEILING OF the new iPhone.

SQUASH THIS STUPID IDEA FAST! Is it time to return to the double nickel?

Some better ideas for energy-saving can be found here.

UPDATE: Also here.

I GOT A LETTER FROM MAZDA EXTENDING THE ENGINE WARRANTY ON MY RX-8 to 8 years and 100,000 miles. New RX-8s will have the longer warranty, too. Cool.

AN IPHONE LOOKALIKE, from Samsung. I wonder if you’ll be able to replace the battery yourself.

MARC AMBINDER: James Johnson: A problem.

HOWARD KURTZ: Blogging without warning. It seems to me that despite her open partisan leanings, Mayhill Fowler’s reporting is more honest than most of what we see from the political press.

TRANSLATING THE LAW INTO art you can eat off of.

IN THE MAIL: From Patrick Rooney and Dan Perrin, America’s Health Care Crisis Solved: Money-Saving Solutions, Coverage for Everyone. It’s impressively blurbed.

I’D LIKE A VENTI SNOOTY LATTE, PLEASE: Because, dammit, I’m special.

TYLER COWEN ON GLOBALIZATON: This Global Show Must Go On. He’s right, of course. Meanwhile, Al From is asking, “Where are the pro-trade Democrats?” He’s also right that “America won’t increase middle-class incomes and create jobs without them.” They seem to be in hiding, though.

JEFF JARVIS on spectrum wars and the prospect of “wi-fi on steroids.”

DAVID FOSTER: Duz Web Mak Us Dumr? In the comments, a more serious problem: “While watching with my children popular entertainment aimed at children, in both the programs and commercials, I have noticed a repeated theme that children have the right to expect constant entertainment. They shouldn’t have to do things that are tedious and boring. Everything should be exciting or fun every single second or it’s actually unjust.”

IOWAHAWK REPORTS ON HIS PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN:

For your information Mr. / Ms.Smarty Pants, instead of bombarding you with attack ads and TV spin doctors and donation pleas, I’ve been quietly doing the precise thing a Presidential candidate should do — working on the issues that matter to snide ingrates like you. Yes, while you were mesmerized by the hubbub and fooferaw of the so-called “major party” nominating races, I was with my hand-picked ‘trailer cabinet’ of key policy advisors, putting together our 400-point specific Change Contract For Hopeful American Greatness Renewal.

His “energy policy” is a bold one:

As the only remaining viable presidential candidate with a bitchin’ hot rod, I know all too well the “pinch at the pump” that has affected so many American motorists. Basic Economistry 101 tells us that prices are a function of “supply” and “demand.” Drilling and exploration are important, but this only addresses the “supply” side of the equation. We must also tackle our insatiable “demand” for energy. Thanks to my Piranha Doctrine foreign policy, America’s military will be freed up to go after America’s worst energy demand scofflaws — the celebrity asshole community. Under my administration the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be directed to treat as hostile all private jets flying into Los Angeles airspace, backed up with coordinated pinpoint bombing of mansions and Priuses within the Malibu triangle. Not only will this reduce prices at the pump, it will increase the supply of much needed scrap metal and lumber.

I think it’s polling at around 90% approval.

THE VIEW FROM EUROPE: Gasoline at $4 a gallon? If only.

NOAH POLLAK: It’s not time to talk to Syria.

DUDE, WHERE’S MY SUMMER JOB? “According to economist David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, employment for high school dropouts and young black adults and teenagers falls by 8.5 percent. In the past 11 months alone, the United States’ minimum wage has increased by more than twice that amount. So it should be no surprise to see teen jobs disappearing or to hear bleak testimony from employers across the country that make these hiring decisions.”

Related item here.

DOMESTIC ENERGY PRODUCTION — Not a goal, apparently:

You’d think with gas prices topping $4 and consumers crying uncle, Congress would be moving fast to spur development of a domestic oil resource so vast – 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil shale in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming alone – it could eventually rival the oil fields of Saudi Arabia.

You’d think politicians would be tripping over themselves to arrange photo-ops with Harold Vinegar (whom I profiled in Fortune last November), the brilliant, Brooklyn-born chief scientist at Royal Dutch Shell whose research cracked the code on how to efficiently and cleanly convert oil shale – a rock-like fossil fuel known to geologists as kerogen – into light crude oil.

You’d think all of this, but you’d be wrong.

Last month, the U.S. Senate’s Appropriations Committee voted 15-14 to kill a bill that would have ended a one-year moratorium on enacting rules for oil shale development on federal lands (which is where the best oil shale is located). Most maddening of all – at least to someone like myself not steeped in the wacky ways of Washington – the swing vote on the appropriations committee, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., voted with the majority even though she actually opposes the moratorium.

“Sen. Salazar asked me to vote no. I did so at his request,” Landrieu told The Rocky Mountain News. . . . Salazar says he’s simply trying to slow things down in order to ensure environmental considerations don’t get trampled in the rush to turn western Colorado into a new Prudhoe Bay. But, ironically, his bid to extend the moratorium comes at a time when his fellow Senate Democrats have been blasting Big Oil for not reinvesting enough of their profits into developing new sources of energy.

Read the whole thing.

FROM RON BAILEY, a bad review for Ben Stein’s Expelled! “Ben Stein’s Expelled is all worldview and no evidence.” Sounds like Stein’s got the Michael Moore approach down pat.