BRENDAN LOY ON Obama’s 3. a.m. text message:

It’s 3:00 AM, and your children are safe and asleep…

…but there’s a cell phone in the other room, and it’s ringing. Must be one of your a**hole friends drunk-dialing you, or perhaps a wrong number from a different time zone. Wait, no: it’s Barack Obama!

Plus, scripting the McCain ad. “It’s like Obama just drunk texted you because you’re special and he was up late and just got back from the traveling, and he’s got to head to Springfield tomorrow, but if you’re awake maybe he could just come over, and maybe bring his friend Joe, you up for that?”

GREG FORSTER: Schools are not social service centers.

ABC NEWS: Obama Decries Lobbyist Cash; Biden Has Reaped It In. Well, the Biden pick has people talking. But . . .

“Maybe it’s a death wish.”

Plus, “Awesomely awesome.”

IT’S PHOTOWALK DAY. I think that Brendan Loy is going, but I won’t be able to make it.

TALKLEFT: “I think that given Obama’s stubborn and wrongheaded unwillingness to pick Hillary Clinton and put a lock on the election, Biden was the best choice politically that Obama was willing to make (imagine the political disaster if he had picked Sebelius). But the rollout of Biden was disastrously bad, unless the idea is to make sure as few people know as possible.”

TOM MAGUIRE: “It’s interesting how far off the table the war in Iraq has fallen as an issue for the Democrats – Biden voted for the fateful resolution in 2002 (isn’t this all about judgment?) and has not been much of a proponent of willy-nilly withdrawal, and yet here he is.” Much more background, plus this upside: “The inevitable gaffes from Biden should distract nicely from the inevitable gaffes from Obama.”

FLASHBACK: Biden sneers at gun owner.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg: “This isn’t going to help him with the bitter gun clingers.”

IS THE FDA getting too cautious in drug approvals? If it is, people will die who shouldn’t. But it’s less likely to get blamed.

The problem has been magnified in recent years as the number of new drug approvals has fallen dramatically. The FDA approved just 16 new drugs last year, and is on pace to approve only 18 this year. That’s down from a high of 53 in 1996 and 39 in 1997.

After a few high-profile drug scares, such as the 2004 withdrawal of Vioxx from the market, FDA officials have become gun-shy about approving new products. After all, the agency receives scathing criticism from Congress and the press when an approved drug turns out to be more risky than expected — but rarely for keeping beneficial ones off the market.

Last year alone, the FDA rejected five new cancer drugs, including a breakthrough treatment for prostate cancer called Provenge. A panel of cancer experts that advises the FDA on new drug approvals unanimously agreed that Provenge was safe, and voted 13-4 that it was effective enough. But the FDA demanded still more testing that may delay approval for three years.

In three years, a lot of people will die who might otherwise be saved; quite likely more than would die from even a “dangerous” drug given today’s standards. But the politics are different.

IN PREPARATION FOR THE DNC, the Obama Drinking Game: “The rules are, every time Obama says the word ‘change,’ you take a shot. And every time he says the word ‘hope,’ you take a double shot.”

Sounds like fun, but I’ve only got one liver. And I’m still using it.

JOE BIDEN’S “REFRESHING” racial remarks. So that’s the line?

THE CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES is up!

3 A.M.: A “juvenile jab at Hillary?”

BECAUSE PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING IS ONLINE NOW: The rare Webb Wilder Human Cannonball video. Arty! Althouse will no doubt have something to say about the Freudian imagery of Webb in the cannon barrel. Now blast off. I said, blast off!

MICHAEL SILENCE: If my pick were Biden… …I’d wait until late Friday night to leak it, too.

Plus, “Looks like the Obama Campaign laid an egg.” More or less literally . . . .

UPDATE: A.P.: Biden Pick Shows Lack of Confidence. “The candidate of change went with the status quo.”

IN THE MAIL: From Mark Rippetoe (author of Starting Strength, which many readers praised when I mentioned it a while back) Strong Enough? Thoughts from Thirty Years of Barbell Training.

HMM: University to release Obama records. Of course, some will say that the delay was just so that the files could be vacuumed of any embarrassing information.

SUE JOHN EDWARDS FOR LYING TO CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS? Warren Buffett thinks it’s a good idea, but Mickey Kaus responds: “Maybe businesses have to live with this sort of uncertain class-action threat when they dissemble. Politicians will never stand for it.” Yeah, it would threaten their whole business model.

SHOULD AMERICA BE more like China?

OBAMA PICKS BIDEN: So Much for Change? That’s unfair. He’s at least as fresh a face as Madeleine Albright.

Plus, an epic text message failure? Micah Sifry: “From a tech point of view, the mass txt message seems to have failed.” On the other hand, while people who signed up may not have gotten their text messages, Obama got their names for his mailing list.

UPDATE: Not winning over Katie Granju: “‘I’m not excited by Obama’s choice of Biden. He’s got a long record of aggressively supporting the consumer debt machines that have created so much of the subprime lending mess we find ourselves in today.And in a campaign that has succeeded in large part on the idea of change and progress, he’s simply a throwback.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Richard Miniter: “Biden is almost a ‘neocon’ in his foreign policy views. He voted for the Iraq War in 2002. . . . Does his elevation by Obama signal that that the Obama campaign is backing away from its timetable to withdraw from Iraq? Does Biden’s position differ significantly from Mc