COLLEGE TODAY: “…girls strip to their underwear and get wet sliding through water on a plastic sheet.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on Obama’s disrespect for Clarence Thomas. “I don’t know why Obama chooses to insult a Supreme Court Justice at a religious forum, but his comments that Justice Thomas was not qualified to be on the Court were revealing. Why would Obama think, given his own credentials, that he was better qualified for President than Clarence Thomas was for the Supreme Court?”

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from Roger Simon. “John McCain is the single most prepared person to be President in my lifetime – and I ain’t young.” I would prefer him to have had more experience in the private sector, but yeah.

VICTIMS OF BARBARISM:

Saira Liaqat squints through her one good eye as she brushes a woman’s hair. Her face, most of which the acid melted years ago, occasionally lights up with a smile. Her hands, largely undamaged, deftly handle the dark brown locks. A few steps away in this popular beauty salon, Urooj Akbar diligently trims, cleans and paints clients’ fingernails. Her face, severely scarred from the blaze that burned about 70% of her body, is somber. It’s hard to tell if she’s sad or if it’s just the way she now looks. . . .

Liaqat and Akbar are among Pakistan’s many female victims of arson and acid attacks. Such tales tend to involve a spurned or crazy lover and end in a life of despair and seclusion for the woman.

Read the whole thing. It’s nice that there’s a foundation to help these victims. But one to hunt down and kill the attackers would be better, if not “nicer.”

FOOD POLICE: Michael Phelps vs. Michael Jacobson.

IN THE MAIL: Michael Novak’s No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers.

STRATEGYPAGE:

Russian troops beat the Georgians on the ground, not so much because of superior numbers, but because the Russians had more troops with combat experience, and very recent experience in fighting this kind of war. The Russians got this way by fighting a successful campaign just across the border, in Chechnya. . . .

The Georgians did better in the air and at sea, even though they were greatly outnumbered there as well. Georgian warplanes shot up the Russians pretty badly (killing the commander of Russian ground forces, for example) before the Russians were able to shut down the Georgian air force. But in the process Russia lost at least four aircraft destroyed, and a number of others badly damaged.

At sea, Georgian missile boats hit several Russian warships, which had not been equipped with equipment, or crews, that were capable of dealing with this kind of threat. Two Russian warships were damaged sufficiently that they had to withdraw from the area. Within a few days, however, Georgia’s miniscule navy and air force were destroyed, largely by the much larger Russian air force.

The Russians ran a large scale Information War campaign, shutting down Georgian access to the Internet for several days, and blanketing the world media, and Internet, with Russian spin on what was going on in Georgia and why.

Read the whole thing.

MY TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Drug Task Force falsely arrests 2 separate people:

Twice in the past 18 months, agents from the 4th Judicial District Drug Task Force have moved to prosecute an innocent man or woman.

In both cases, agents mistakenly identified the accused as having sold drugs. In addition to what the wrongly accused have endured, the mistakes – along with the recent guilty plea of a task force agent who developed a drug habit and stole cash from suspects – have forced prosecutors to drop numerous charges against drug defendants in the district, which includes Sevier, Jefferson, Cocke and Grainger counties.

Attempts to interview the drug task force’s director, Mack Smith, have been unsuccessful.

Sigh.

BUY AMERICAN? Dan Riehl is unimpressed. Tom Maguire is puzzled. “Huh? John McCain is not American?”

DOG BITES MAN: Buffalo Police batter their way into wrong house. “Pennyamon alleges that after wrongly breaking into her apartment, police proceeded to strike her epileptic husband in the head with the butt end of a shotgun and point shotguns at her young children before admitting their mistake and then raiding the right apartment.”

Strict liability and no official immunity; that’s what we need in these cases.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE stands against class warfare.

VIA BOB ZUBRIN, a link to this conference on open fuel standards. Our interview with Zubrin on the subject is here. Plus, more on non-corn biofuels.

ARMANDO VALLADARES: Twenty-Two Years in Castro’s Gulag. (Via Ilya Somin, who notes: “I discussed the Cuban government’s massive human rights violations (the scale of which is still rarely appreciated) in this series of posts, where I also explained why its mostly mythical successes in providing health care do not come close to offsetting the harm caused by its political and economic repression.”)

A BLU-RAY SALE at up to 45% off.

PRETTY MUCH AS SOON AS IT’S NOT FOUR DOLLARS ANYMORE: Will the Power of 4 ($4 Gas) Fade?

A ROUNDUP OF REACTIONS to last night’s Obama-McCain event.

UPDATE: More: What exactly is Barack Obama’s problem with Clarence Thomas?

Was it that Barack Obama didn’t like Justice Thomas’s vote on the recent child-rapist case, Kennedy v. Louisiana? No, that couldn’t be it. Barack Obama agreed with Thomas on that decision. Justice Ginsburg, meanwhile — a liberal favorite on the Court, whom John McCain listed as one of his least favorite justices during the same forum — opposed giving child rapists the death penalty. So what’s so wrong about Thomas and so right about, say, Ginsburg, Senator Obama? . . .

Did Obama disagree with Justice Thomas on the recent cross-burning case, Virginia v. Black? Obama’s favorite justice, Justice Ginsburg, wrote that cross-burning bans are constitutionally suspect. Justice Thomas disagreed and wrote a passionate dissent.

(Via RedState).

MORE: Dan Friedman emails: “The Rick Warren Show is being positioned as a ‘forum aimed at evangelicals.’ The media, and the Obama campaign, should be so lucky. Check the ratings. Millions of American Jews, pagans, lapsed Catholics, Buddhists, atheists, Presbyterians, Hindus, Muslims, Shintos, and none-of-the-aboves were tuned in too because it was as close as we’ve come to a side-by-side demo so far.”

MORE NEWS ON FAY, at Weather Nerd.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Optimizing drug delivery with shaped nanoparticles.

BUT I THOUGHT THE ICE WAS DISAPPEARING? A Push to Increase Icebreakers in the Arctic.

IS CHINA HEADING FOR A HOUSING BUST? “Over the last five years real estate prices in China, in dollar terms, doubled on average to $50 per square foot and the country added 20 billion square feet of new residential property. But the once seemingly limitless real estate boom is going into reverse.”

MICKEY KAUS remains on the Edwards/Hunter trail, noting all the people who aren’t buying the story. Including Andrew Young’s mother!

BRIAN WANG: How long can Uranium last for nuclear power? A long time, he says.

EARTH2TECH: Wasn’t T. Boone Supposed to Be Earning Money Off Green? (Thanks to Jack Lail for the tip.)

CHEERING ON THE DICTATORS: At least they’re not Bush.

UPDATE: I suppose it’s worth pointing out that Bill Keller’s economic points are as weak as his political claims: “US currency notched up its 11th consecutive day of gains – its longest uninterrupted rise in more than 35 years – as markets became increasingly convinced that the US was best-placed to weather the global downturn.” Yet according to Keller we’re the globe’s economic basket case. Good grief. Oh, well, if Obama’s elected everything will be sunshine at the Times.

TOM MAGUIRE: “A powerful state-sponsored gymnastics program can get fake state-issued passports to document the eligibility of its athletes – who could have seen that coming?”

REMEMBER, IF YOU OPPOSE BARACK OBAMA, you’re a racist. Just ask Colbert King.