THE ETHICS AND ECONOMICS of American legal education today.

SPEAK OUT IN FAVOR OF LOWERING THE DRINKING AGE, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving will flood you with spam.

As I’ve said before, M.A.D.D. has morphed from an anti-drunk-driving organization to a modern Temperance Movement.

THAT’S NOT VERY GRACIOUS: Clinton Advisers Skipping Obama Speech.

UPDATE: Hillary won’t instruct her delegates to vote for Obama.

KEEPING ACCUSED CRIMINALS’ NAMES OFF THE WEB?

A judge has today taken the unprecedented step of banning news websites from naming two men charged with murder while allowing newspapers, radio stations and TV networks to reveal who they are.

Judge David Harvey said online media could not use the names, or publish images of the accused, to prevent the public searching for the information when the case comes to trial.

He said he was “concerned about someone Googling someone’s name and being able to access it later”.

He was also “concerned about the viral effect of digital publication”.

Hmm. This sentence makes me think that the usual press-freedom crowd may not object: “To find out who the men are you can buy tomorrow’s New Zealand Herald.”

LIFE IS SHORT. Have an affair?

IOWAHAWK ON OBAMA’S new voter outreach program. It’s a sure winner! “‘Unlike Iraq, this is one surge that is actually going to work,’ said Obama campaign manager David Axelrod.” Of course, there’s a downside.

THAT WAS FAST: Here’s a George Obama ad from the Texas GOP. I told you it was a bad idea for the Obama campaign to bring up houses.

NATO ALLIES: Not ready for prime time: “Over a decade of shrinking budgets has meant less money for realistic training. There are also equipment shortages. The net result is several layers of leadership that are really not well prepared for a shooting war. The leaders of these nations have also been warned about this by their own special operations troops, who have seen combat in Afghanistan. Most of these operations have been kept secret, as is normal for this sort of thing. But the commandos from these different nations had opportunities to exchange notes, and it was generally agreed that most post Cold War European nations had let most of their combat troops down.”

AT DARPA, A fake cat brain project. Well, we don’t want a fake-cat-brain gap.

IN CONTRAST TO THE DEMONSTRATIONS IN DENVER, a very different sort of demonstration in Pennsylvania.

KEVIN DRUM HAS MOVED, from The Washington Monthly to Mother Jones.

DRIVING THE 2009 Ford Escape Hybrid. Plus, in California, a bill to make hybrids noisier. This could be a profit opportunity for carmakers, like ringtones for cellular providers. I want my hybrid to sound like George Jetson’s flying car.

THE AIMEE MANN VIDEO that I posted yesterday led to some comments about how great she looked. But why shouldn’t she? She is — like me — the same age as Barack Obama, meaning that she has to be youthful and dynamic!

THIS PLUS THAT: A blog of unintentional wisdom.

NOT REALLY BALD, but not fully wall-to-wall. “It is a fraying, combed-back helmet that barely covers a longtime fact of Washington life.”

THIS SEEMS LIKE GOOD NEWS: “American natural gas production is rising at a clip not seen in half a century, pushing down prices of the fuel and reversing conventional wisdom that domestic gas fields were in irreversible decline.”

UPDATE: Contra Nancy Pelosi, however, natural gas is not an “alternative to fossil fuels.” Actually, natural gas is a fossil fuel. . . .

MARC AMBINDER: A flare-up between Hillaryland and Denver.

IN THE MAIL: Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander’s War in Iraq The author, Peter Mansoor, was General Petraeus’s executive officer, and one of the authors of the Surge; he was also the commander of the brigade covered in this history, when things weren’t going so well.

LOADS OF PHOTOS from the DNC protests, with more to come.

IT MUST BE BECAUSE THEY’RE RACIST! USA Today: Poll: More than half of Clinton backers still not sold on Obama. Who knew the Democratic party still had so many anti-black members?

ANOTHER EXCITING INSTA-POLL!

CHARLIE MARTIN reports from Denver.

VIRGINIA POSTREL IS BLOGGING at Deep Glamour, where the power of appearances is dissected.

AT THE OIL DRUM, a report from the 33d Intl. Geology Congress in Norway.

SAVINGS BONDS and the world that fails. Add this to the new lower limits on savings-bond purchases and you have to wonder if someone at Treasury just doesn’t like savings bonds.