FROM “DISASTROUS” to part of the plan.

GLENN LOURY on deregulation.

FLIPPING A PAIR OF ATOMS BACK AND FORTH using nanotechnology.

COMING SOON: Halo 3: Recon.

WORST CONGRESS EVER? Mark Foley’s successor has a sex scandal. “ABC News says Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-Fla., had an affair with one of his aides and then agreed to a $121,000 settlement when she threatened to file a sexual harassment lawsuit . . . Mahoney replaced Rep. Mark Foley after the Palm Beach Republican resigned amid allegations that he had exchanged sexually explicit messages with underage male pages on Capitol Hill.”

ILYA SOMIN: “I served with Gandalf in numerous D&D campaigns; I knew Gandalf from reading the Lord of the Rings umpteen times; Gandalf was a friend of mine. And John McCain is no Gandalf.” Among other things, not nearly enough hair.

MICKEY KAUS looks at the card-check legislation and wonders if “McGovernite” might become a term of praise.

KYOTO WHO? “Representatives of German business have called for a moratorium on any European Union legislation that would impose higher costs on companies at a time when they are grappling with the fallout from the financial crisis. . . . Meanwhile, heavy industry has stepped up its condemnation of proposals endorsed last week by the European parliament’s environment committee that would force businesses to pay for the carbon dioxide they emit.”

Plus, Efforts on global warming chilled by economic woes. Also, Fiscal woes could delay climate change efforts. But relax. A recession will do more to reduce emissions than any government program anyway.

ED DRISCOLL OBSERVES the proper Victorian gentleman at work.

THE ROAD TO HELL: A new dispatch from Michael Yon in Afghanistan. Remember, he’s supported by reader donations, so if you like his work, consider hitting the tipjar.

WELL, THIS IS ENCOURAGING: Chrysler CEO Nardelli: U.S. Auto Industry About to Collapse. But “Carmageddon?” Ouch.

Meanwhile, Toyota stops pulling its punches.

MCCAIN VS. OBAMA on preparing for a flu pandemic. Obama comes off better.

THE PEOPLE BEHIND THE APTERA ELECTRIC CAR have a survey they’d like you to fill out. (Via Autoblog).

WHERE WE’RE GOING, we won’t even need lithium.

IN THE MAIL: Ted Gup’s Nation of Secrets: The Threat to Democracy and the American Way of Life. It seems to me that we have too many secrets, but that we don’t keep the important ones well enough. There may even be a connection.

BUT VOTER FRAUD IS A MYTH: A newspaper investigation finds more than 30,000 felons who should have been stripped of their right to vote are still registered in Florida.

HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY: Many in the West will demonstrate their fierce originality and intellectual independence today by condemning Christopher Columbus using the same shopworn cliches they used last year. For those of a different bent, I recommend Samuel Eliot Morison’s Admiral of the Ocean Sea : A Life of Christopher Columbus, which takes a somewhat different position. Here’s an excerpt:

At the end of 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. . . .

Yet, even as the chroniclers of Nuremberg were correcting their proofs from Koberger’s press, a Spanish caravel named Nina scudded before a winter gale into Lisbon with news of a discovery that was to give old Europe another chance. In a few years we find the mental picture completely changed. Strong monarchs are stamping out privy conspiracy and rebellion; the Church, purged and chastened by the Protestant Reformation, puts her house in order; new ideas flare up throughout Italy, France, Germany and the northern nations; faith in God revives and the human spirit is renewed. The change is complete and startling: “A new envisagement of the world has begun, and men are no longer sighing after the imaginary golden age that lay in the distant past, but speculating as to the golden age that might possibly lie in the oncoming future.”

Christopher Columbus belonged to an age that was past, yet he became the sign and symbol of this new age of hope, glory and accomplishment. His medieval faith impelled him to a modern solution: Expansion.

Morison’s book is superb, and I recommend it highly as an antidote to the simplistic anti-occidental prejudice of today — which, as Jim Bennett has noted, has roots that might surprise its proponents:

This is primarily an effect of the Calvinist Puritan roots of American progressivism. Just as Calvinists believed in the centrality of the depravity of man, with the exception of a miniscule contingent of the Elect of God, their secularized descendants believe in the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization, with their own enlightened selves in the role of the Elect.

Indeed. Nonetheless, Bennett thinks that a different Italian deserves the real credit. (Reposted from 2005, but it still fits.) [Doesn’t this leave you vulnerable to charges of recycling too? –ed. I prefer to think of it as “They came at us in the same old way, and, you know, we beat them in the same old way.”]

OBAMA SHOULDN’T RELAX Just yet. Why not? According to everything I read the actual election is just a formality now.

TAXPROF: Hundreds of economists (including Nobel Prize winners Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Vernon Smith) have signed letters opposing Barack Obama’s economic and tax plans.

UGH: “A highly drug-resistant germ has become a common cause of meningitis, pneumonia and other life-threatening conditions in young children. The culprit — a strain of strep bacteria — can conquer almost all antibiotics in pediatrics, and has dodged a vaccine otherwise credited with causing the number of serious infections in children to plummet.”

MASSACHUSETTS’ HIGHER EDUCATION FOLKS don’t like the income-tax repeal initiative.

FIRST AL GORE, NOW THIS: A Nobel Prize for Paul Krugman. Well, it’s for his economics, not his punditry. Back when I used to do international trade law, his economic work was very well-regarded.

UPDATE: Reader Bruce Jacobson emails with a question that makes a good Insta-Poll.

IN RESPONSE TO MY TOOL POST yesterday, reader Tim Gowder writes: “You should try out the Leatherman Skeletool. I have used all of these tools and this is the best, for me, so far.” I haven’t tried one of these, but it looks kinda cool. Adopting it, though, would mean giving up in the longrunning Swiss Army vs. Leatherman rivalry I have going with my brother . . . .

MORE ON OBAMA AND AYERS: “But Ayers’ distant past isn’t the only reason to distrust him. He has a present, as well – and Obama is a part of it. The two of them have worked hard to radicalize Chicago’s public schools.” Yes, this is the point Kaus has been making. Ayers’ past isn’t as politically troubling as his present.

UPDATE: Two words: “Tanning bed.”