EMINENT DOMAIN: Poor, Minorities Hardest Hit.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN: “The time has come to point out certain of the less than charming rhetorical ploys being clumsily attempted by my critics.”

KEEPING YOUNG with nanotechnology.

BOB ZUBRIN corrects Hugo Chavez’s math.

WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE 10% of a watermelon, or 90% of a grape? Depends in part on which you like, and which you’re allergic to . . .

VIDEO: Michael Yon on Fox News, talking about his book, and the situation in Iraq.

OUCH: “Print circulation continues on its steep downward slide, the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed this morning in releasing the latest numbers for some of the country’s largest dailies in the six-month period ending March 31, 2008. When a full analysis appears it is expected to find, according to sources, the biggest dip yet, about 3.5% daily and 4.5 for Sunday. . . . The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday. Circulation on that day fell a whopping 9.2% to 1,476,400. The paper’s daily circulation declined 3.8% to 1,077,256.”

Circulation at the WSJ, meanwhile, is up. USA Today, too. What could be the difference?

HILLARY TALKS TRADE: Ed Cone posts bootleg audio from her closed-to-the-press briefing. Among other things, she endorses McCain’s “gas tax holiday.”

DANA MILBANK ON JEREMIAH WRIGHT: For Obama, the Voice of Doom? “Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks (‘God damn America’) and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.” I don’t see how this can help him.

UPDATE: Joe Klein: “I’ve been to dozens and dozens of African-American church services over the years, including the investiture of one of my friends as an AME minister two years ago, and I have very rarely, if ever, heard the kind of rants that are part of Reverend Wright’s canon. . . . Wright’s purpose now seems quite clear: to aggrandize himself–the guy is going to be a go-to mainstream media source for racial extremist spew, the next iteration of Al Sharpton–and destroy Barack Obama.” Yeah, if Wright’s not trying to sabotage Obama’s candidacy, what is he doing?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some useful background here. Doesn’t today’s speech mean that Bill Moyers wasted his time and reputation in trying to walk Wright back from the brink?

MORE: Ouch: “Frankly, it’s as selfish of a move as we’ve seen in some time. Imagine, for example, if Norman Hsu or Vicki Iseman were doing publicity tours right now.”

STILL MORE: Ron Coleman says the chickens are coming home to roost. And here’s more from The Telegraph.

MORE STILL: Andrew Sullivan finally catches on: “But what he said today extemporaneously, the way in which he said it, the unrepentant manner in which he reiterated some of his most absurd and offensive views, his attempt to equate everything he believes with the black church as a whole, and his open public embrace of Farrakhan and hostility to the existence of Israel Zionism, make any further defense of him impossible. This was a calculated, ugly, repulsive, vile display of arrogance, egotism, and self-regard. This is an outright attack on the stated beliefs and policies and values of Barack Obama in a secular setting.”

Yes, Wright’s views certainly contradict Obama’s stated beliefs, policies, and values. Andrew adds: “Obama needs not just to distance himself from Wright’s views; he needs to disown him at this point. Wright himself, it seems to me, has become part of what Obama is fighting against.” Become? I don’t see that Wright has changed. People have just noticed. And if this is what Obama is fighting against, then . . . where’s the fighting against part?

FINALLY: Eric Scheie on Pastor Wright’s fantasy world of hyperbole. Some of that hyperbole is deflated by this comment from The Volokh Conspiracy:

“Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains. He did not put me in slavery. And he didn’t make me this color.”

Nobody put Wright in chains.
Nobody put Wright in slavery.
Wright’s color is due to his Negroid and Caucasian genes.

People can be so literal. Or is the whole thing being cleverly staged to give Obama the all-time greatest Sister Souljah moment?

RANDY NEAL NOTES A BIT FROM OBAMA’S FOX NEWS INTERVIEW, and observes:

Free markets work, and are more efficient. It’s about time serious Democrats acknowledged this and started bringing the conversation back from the far-left fringe into the mainstream center with the DLC and the Blue Dogs where the business of America is business.

Only I’m not as sure as Michael Silence is that he’s serious . . . .

JAMES TARANTO: “Democratic front-runner Barack Obama was supposed to unite the country, overcoming racial and even partisan division. How’s that working out?”

OMAR FADHIL: Are Sadr and al-Qaeda Teaming Up in Iraq? “Reports of serious negotiations taking place between Sadr’s movement and al-Qaeda were followed by suspiciously coordinated threats from both groups.”

WHY GENERATION Y IS BROKE: “No one had ever taught me to make a budget or balance a checkbook.”

They taught me that in High School, by which point I had already learned it at home. The Insta-Daughter, meanwhile, had already learned it from The Sims before I even tried to teach her.

SYRIANA: Noah Pollak isn’t optimistic about the prospect of flipping Syria.

BETTING MORE THAN IT SEEMS ON THE KINDLE? Amazon is touting on its main page that the Kindle is now shipping right away, after months of being backordered because of insufficient production to meet demand. And they’re even publicizing their letter to shareholders which is pretty much all about the Kindle. Seems like Jeff Bezos has big plans for going all-electronic, and not just in some hazy might-happen future.

HAROLD FORD, JR. gets married.

We interviewed him a couple of years ago. Nice guy.

WRIGHT IS wrong on Sudan. Among many other things.

HEH: “If Hillary picks the person who saved her campaign then her press secretary will be Rush Limbaugh.”

BILL BRADLEY: Obama, Clinton, McCain and the ‘Wright Stuff’.

AUSTIN BAY ON Mexico’s revolution on our border. Judging from Austin’s take, it seems that Mexican President Felipe Calderon deserves more credit than he’s getting from Americans on either the left or the right.

SCALZI OFFERS HEADLINE-WRITER SNARK:

“The Poor Suffer the Most”

Used, for example, in this news header today in a story about food shortages: “As a brutal convergence of events hits an unprepared global market, and grain prices go sky high, the world’s poor suffer most.”

Really? The poor suffering the most? It’s hard to imagine. Because, you know, usually when there’s a major global crisis of any sort, it’s the poor sitting there on the sidelines, going whew, dodged that bullet.

Indeed. But it’s not all beer and skittles for the rich, as evidenced by “The Great Davos Lobster Bisque Inconvenience of ‘04.” Some still shudder at the memory.

OKAY, I THINK THAT JEREMIAH WRIGHT MUST BE TRYING TO SABOTAGE OBAMA’S CANDIDACY: How else to explain yammering on about black brains vs. white brains. Echoing The Bell Curve?

Then there’s this bit:

“Barack HUSSEIN Obama,” he said, emphasizing the Illinois senator’s middle name dramatically, “Barack HUSSEIN Obama, Barack HUSSEIN Obama. There are Arabic-speaking Christians, there Arabic-speaking Jews, Arabic-speaking Muslims and Arabic-speaking atheists. Arabic is a language, it is not a religion. Stop trying to scare folks by giving them this Arabic name like it’s some disease.”

Uh huh. That’ll help in Indiana.

MORE: Tom Maguire: “I would have guessed that clapping on the downbeat was a social construct, but I am not as well educated as Jeremiah Wright. That said, I am trying to imagine the reaction if a white figure announced that black brains were different.”

SOMETHING OF A GAFFE, I’D SAY: Hillary compares outsourcing to the Holocaust. Well, kind of, anyway.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN on the colonialization of Kong.