SUBPRIME SIX UPDATE: At HousingWire, not buying Kent Conrad’s defense: “What we’re seeing this Monday morning from North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad is nothing less than either blind stupidity or record-setting hubris.”

Plus, Let me call you sweetheart … loans: “We’re not talking graft on the level of the Whiskey Ring or Teapot Dome or Halliburton. But consider this: Countrywide was one of America’s primary purveyors of subprime mortgages, the dubious, lucrative loans that got the country into our current housing crisis. Almost no one paid attention. . . . Campaign cash registers and the politicians who love them rule.”

SALON: Why Clinton voters say they won’t support Obama. Among other reasons: “They are mad that everyone believes them to be old, white and racist. They are mad at the people they thought were supposed to be progressives for treating them badly.”

COLUMBIA FIRES “NOOSE PROFESSOR:” For plagiarism.

CAN TANNING prevent cancer?

MEGAN MCARDLE: “There are places where outrage is appropriate. But the level of outrage in the blogosphere has made outrage meaningless.”

BONNIE ERBE: Barack Obama, Serial Flip-Flopper.

BORDER FENCE CHALLENGE Rebuffed By Supreme Court: “The government’s plan to build a 670-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border took another step forward Monday when the Supreme Court turned away a legal challenge from environmentalists. The court’s action clears the way for U.S. officials to press ahead with the project with little worry that judges will be able to stop it. . . . . Fourteen House Democrats and a group of law professors had urged the Supreme Court to take the case.”

UH OH: Papers Facing Worst Year for Ad Revenue.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll offers some context.

IN NASHVILLE, a triumph over attempted censorship.

THE BELMONT CLUB moves to Pajamas. Welcome aboard, Wretchard!

THE GROWING POPULARITY OF Rube Goldberg machines in software. As in games, not as in Windows Vista.

STORM TROOPERS IN CLOWN SHOES (CONT’D):

James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

Sure, right after we try all the apologists for communism. Jesus, these people are pathetic.

UPDATE: Reader David Fleeger emails:

If it turns out (as it seems increasingly likely) that global warmi-, ah- climate change is a phony, can we put James Hanson and Al Gore on trial instead? I just want to know if this “high crimes against humanity and nature” thingy works for everyone, or only those who get invited to the Oscar Awards.

I dunno, but given that a UN special rapporteur has called food policies promoting ethanol “crimes against humanity,” I guess that Barack Obama should be worried, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails: “In the year of our Gore, 2008 . . . No one expects the climate inquisition!”

I WISH THEM ALL SUCCESS: New Battery Player Creeps in on Heated Race for Chevy Volt Power.

FABIUS MAXIMUS: “The scarcity of potable water is a big story in the news. The actual problem does not resemble what we see in the stories. Rather, in much of the world water is under-priced, and underpriced goods are usually scarce.”

JOURNALISM, and small betrayals.

GETTING RICHER COLOR PROFILES in Firefox 3. I haven’t upgraded to 3 yet — I generally wait a bit so that any obvious bugs have a chance to emerge.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I regret ever installing the FF3 update. Most of my themes don’t work, just about every one of my current add-ons aren’t supported, the new suggestion box in the address bar is a pain…if I could, I’d go back to the last version.”

So I’ll hold off a while longer.

DON’T MESS WITH THE NEW MISS TENNESSEE: “Ellen Carrington, 21, who was crowned Miss Tennessee on Saturday night, has a concealed weapons permit.” (Via Katie Granju).

SO WHY HASN’T HE ENDORSED THE ZUBRIN PLAN? Obama Camp Closely Linked With Ethanol. Note, though, that there’s a big difference between corn-based ethanol pork and what Zubrin has in mind. That may be the answer!

UPDATE: Interestingly, John McCain — who’s not in the pocket of the ethanol lobby — has endorsed the Flex-Fuel requirement.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. Our podcast interview with Zubrin, by the way, is here.

THE POSSUM SLEEPS TONIGHT: Obama Campaign Drops Faux Presidential Seal.

By the way, though the faux-seal was a mark of both hubris and poor taste, Dr. Weevil emails that contrary to some blogger claims, Obama’s Latin was fine:

It may be that ‘certe’ is a more likely choice than ‘vero’ for a native speaker to use in this context, but they’re all dead, and Romans didn’t really have standard words for yes and no. Usually they would repeat the verb: the usual answer to “would you like another slice of pie?” is “I would like” (one word in Latin), and the answer to ‘can we?’ (‘possumusne?’) would just be ‘we can’ (‘possumus’). ‘Vero’ will certainly do.

As I put in a comment over at Beldar’s Blog, ‘possumus’ is just right for ‘we can’, and ‘vero’ basically means ‘truly’ and is also used for ‘yes’ or ‘but, however’, or ‘moreover’, depending on context.

By the way, I never got around to posting on the Spitzer hooker’s tattoo, which was (a) perfectly good Latin, (b) metrical, and (c) amusingly ambiguous (‘I stay strong/healthy with protection’ = ‘by insisting on condoms’? or ‘with the help of a brutal pimp’? or ‘with the help of friends in high places’?) Best of all, the professors at well-known Classics Departments weren’t particularly accurate, but the professor at Ave Maria School of Law and the Canadian middle-school history teacher (‘Rogue Classicist’) got it exactly right.

So there.

SPENGLER: “Muslims are in dialogue with a pope who evidently does not merely want to exchange pleasantries about coexistence, but to convert them. This no doubt will offend Muslim sensibilities, but Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them. There are 100 million new Chinese Christians, and some of them speak of marching to Jerusalem – from the East.” (Via ChicagoBoyz).

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Media to America: Disaster Seen as Catastrophe Looms.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: “I remember reading a few years back that the majority of Americans don’t think that anyone should pay more than 1/3 of his income in taxes. A campaign issue for John McCain?”

IS OBAMA losing his teflon in the wake of flip-flops on campaign finance and FISA? Er, and the race bit. Oh, and that fake-Presidential-seal thing . . . “Obama has done what weeks, if not months, of McCain ads and speeches could not: scuff up almost beyond recognition the veneer of superior political virtue which Obama heretofore enjoyed.”

MATT EDENS: Our deteriorating infrastructure is a bigger problem than gas prices.

IN THE MAIL: Shuja Nawaz’s Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within.