DIRTY WEB POLITICS: Obama’s site hacked.

A REPORT ON SWITCHGRASS ETHANOL RESEARCH at the University of Tennessee. If biofuels are ever going to amount to anything, it’ll be using this kind of waste biomass, not by turning food into fuel.

THE INSTAWIFE SUGGESTS THAT “RELATIONSHIP” COLUMNIST LESLIE BENNETTS is a poor role model for wives. Rachel Lucas agrees.

HOW OLD IS JOHN MCCAIN? “When John McCain was born, any first ladies visiting Bosnia would have been dodging sniper fire in the ‘Kingdom of Yugoslavia.'”

JOURNALISTS: The herd of independent minds!

Plus, unhinged!

MORE CANADIAN “HUMAN RIGHTS” FUN: Under oath.

UPDATE: Much more here.

WHERE NEWS BREAKS: This map suggests that it has a lot to do with where reporters are already hanging out.

WHICH IS BETTER? An inflatable Bucky Badger? Or an inflatable Uncle Sam?

SHOCKINGLY, RIGOBERTA MENCHU IS NOT INVOLVED: Fake covers for fake books by a fake writer.

WALTER SHAPIRO: Bill Clinton’s Golden Oldies Act. “At 61, Bill Clinton — even though he is a decade younger than John McCain — makes more self-deprecating comments about age than anyone this side of Phyllis Diller.” It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.

BANNING CELLPHONES DOESN’T STOP THE VIOLENCE: It just keeps it off of YouTube and makes life easier for school administrators. A perfectly rational bureaucratic response!

AN IMPORTANT POINT: Aging Doesn’t Just Kill People, It Kills Them Horribly.

EVOLVING STANDARDS of decency.

“I KNEW NOBODY WHO OWNED A GUN:” Eugene Volokh on preference falsification, with a gay-rights analogy.

MOTHER JONES: A Tale of Clintonian Spin: Trying to Blow Past the Weathermen Question.

GM SENDING THE HYBRID ESCALADE to China.

IRAQ: After the bombs, the tomatoes.

WHERE NO ONE LOOKS AT THE PROFESSOR: Still more on the classroom laptop debate.

IN THE MAIL: Andrew McCarthy’s Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.

JOHN FUND ON the press’s favorite candidate.

UPDATE: This isn’t kindergarten.

IN THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Steve Chapman on Obama’s terrorist associates:

It’s not as though Ayers and Dohrn have denied or repudiated their crimes. After emerging from years in hiding, they escaped federal prosecution because of government misconduct in gathering evidence, but they don’t pretend they were innocent. In 2001, Ayers said, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Dohrn has likewise rationalized the explosions, claiming that “our acts of resistance were tiny and symbolic.” She even went to prison for refusing to testify about an armored-car robbery involving her confederates. That crime was not tiny or symbolic to the two police officers or the security guard who were shot to death in the process.

All this is public record, and Barack Obama would have to be in a coma not to know it. Yet he showed no qualms about consorting with Ayers and Dohrn.

It’s hard to imagine he would be so indulgent if we learned that John McCain had a long association with a former Klansman who used to terrorize African-Americans.

Indeed.

UPDATE: Reader Darin S. Morley echoes the thoughts of a lot of other emailers: “Hasn’t McCain had a long association with former Klansman and fellow Senator Robert Byrd?”

Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dem reader Nick Foresta emails:

I think this Ayers thing is pretty thin rope to hang Obama with. They just served on a community board together. Obama didn’t put him there. He was already there when Obama joined. And I’m no fan of Obama’s. I ain’t voting for him but who happened to be seated next to him on some community board a couple of decades ago isn’t the reason.

I think the connection was a bit closer than that makes it sound, but this is a fair point — except that, as pointed out above, it seems highly likely that the press wouldn’t cut a Republican that sort of slack. In fact, I think that a lot of anti-Obama sentiment stems not so much from Obama himself, as from the press’s over-the-top support of his candidacy. I wonder if, in the long run, that will hurt him more than it helps?

MORE: Why Bill Ayers matters.

THOUGHTS ON ART, P.R., AND YALE, from Roger Kimball. And I’m somehow reminded of this piece from Reason. Does the Yale story refute its theme, or reinforce it?

DETERMINED BUT DESPERATE: Omar Fadhil on Al Qaeda in Iraq. Sounds like we’ll see another attempt at a “terrorist Tet,” perhaps in conjunction with the remaining Sadrists. I doubt it will succeed.

MICHAEL YON’S AGENT EMAILS that they’ve fixed the Amazon problem and that Michael’s new book will be shipping again shortly.