LIKE AN IPHONE, BUT WITH FANCY GPS: The Garmin Nuviphone actually sounds pretty cool. I’m looking at a cellphone upgrade sometime soon, so maybe I’ll consider this. Though I kind of like it that my current cellphone is basically, you know, a phone.

PROF. ADAM WINKLER ON THE D.C. GUN-BAN CASE AND STANDARDS OF REVIEW.

As I note in this piece, though — final version now posted, in print soon — I think that Winkler omits the most important of the state cases on the right to bear arms.

SARKOZY AND CARLA BRUNI marry.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Patient in Finland gets a new jaw made from his own stem cells. More like this, please.

THE DAYS ARE LONG, but the years are short. A lovely one-minute film by Gretchen Craft Rubin. (Via David Lat).

BOB KRUMM WONDERS if any media folks will ask Hillary and Obama for an opinion on Berkeley’s stance against the U.S. Marines?

UPDATE: Reader Richard Riley emails: “It would be fine to ask the Democratic candidates what they think about the Berkeley City Council’s dissing the Marines, but if Bob Krumm thinks this would generate some antimilitary waffling I think he’s wrong. Clinton and Obama have already stated they’ll enforce the Solomon Amendment.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts here: “This is more of an indictment of the media than it is of the Senators in question.”

BREAKING SPEED RECORDS, with railguns and more.

ZOMBIES!

KARL ROVE’S AGENTS IN BERKELEY continue to do their jobs.

THOUGHTS ON JUNO and gender relations.

AFRICAN-AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: Romney faces more prejudice than Obama.

HOW TO KEEP HEALTH COSTS DOWN.

“ARE YOU ONE OF THOSE ‘INSIDE JOB’ GUYS?” Hurrah for Bill Clinton.

THOUGHTS ON Jimmy Carter and morality.

RACHEL LUCAS ON JOHN MCCAIN:

I know some say that they’d rather ‘have the country ruined’ by a real liberal than by a RINO. You know what that sounds like? Something you’d read on DailyKos.” . . .

Don’t get excited. I don’t like a lot of his record, particularly a long list of quotes he’s given about class warfare and taxes. I think he’s nuts to want the Gitmo population put into American prisons. YEAH RIGHT. I think he’s an asshole for things he’s said and supported about gun shows.

And I don’t even have enough curse words in my brain to communicate my opinions about McCain-Feingold. Jesus on a muffin, that is some bad, bad stuff.

BUT.

Seriously, people. Seriously. You’d rather have Hillary? You’d rather have Obama?

I don’t even know you.

Read the whole thing, which is all expressed in Rachel’s own inimitable fashion. . . .

PUBLIC SAFETY AND THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS: An article by Bob Cottrol and Ray Diamond. I haven’t read it yet, but given their past work I’m sure it’s worth your time if you’re interested in the topic.

MICHAEL YON POSTS a new dispatch from Iraq.

GREG LUKIANOFF OF F.I.R.E. ON THE HINDLEY DEBACLE AT BRANDEIS:

Does something seem oddly familiar about the case of Donald Hindley at Brandeis? As Torch readers well know, Donald Hindley is a professor who has served Brandeis for over 46 years and was found guilty of “racial harassment,” apparently for criticizing and explaining use of the word “wetback” to deride Mexicans and other immigrants. I say “apparently” because, as Eugene Volokh so effectively has pointed out, Brandeis has not even been clear with Hindley what words got him in trouble. Still, all signs point to the use of the word “wetback,” which a single student apparently found so offensive that he or she filed a complaint, regardless of the context in which the term was used.

If the case seems to ring a bell, it should. Such tales of PC run wild have been with us in fiction for decades. The Hindley case reminds me of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, in which a professor’s career is turned upside down after he refers to two students who did not show up for class as “spooks.” The professor, of course, meant “ghosts,” but when the two missing students turn out to be black, the incident ignites a firestorm of identity and personal politics. (The professor, it turns out, is actually a light-skinned black man himself who has hidden his race all of his life, adding a nice Rothian touch.)

As Wendy Kaminer has pointed out, punishing someone for using an epithet in order to decry its use is right out of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry gets in trouble for using the n-word even though his point was that the n-word should not be used. Volokh also points out another similar situation, the famous moment in Monty Python’s Life of Brian when a crowd stones anyone who uses the word Jehovah even when they are trying to use the word to make the point that it shouldn’t be said! Such nightmarish due process violations and abuse of language always bring to mind Kafka and Orwell, and for me, of course, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin.

Read the whole thing. And you might want to peruse the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education website, and maybe even consider making a donation. They do good work.

SLASHDOT: ANOTHER WAYWARD ANCHOR, ANOTHER CUT CABLE, and now Iran has lost Internet connectivity. Seems like an odd constellation of events.

UPDATE: In the Slashdot comments, there’s some dispute as to whether Iran is really cut off. Meanwhile, Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club has thoughts on undersea cables.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Clint Hutchison writes:

Regarding your recent post about Iran being cut off from the net, if you browse to http://router1.iust.ac.ir/, the node used for a benchmark at http://www.internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm, you get asked for a username and password to connect.

Perhaps Iran isn’t cut off, but is battening down the hatches.

For what, I wonder?

ANDY MCCARTHY endorses Romney.

MORE ON PROBLEMS IN AFGHANISTAN, from Abu Muqawama. Michael Yon has been warning about this for months, but it doesn’t seem to have gotten enough attention.

RAND SIMBERG: 50 years of triumph and tragedy in space.

Plus, lessons from the Columbia disaster. And here’s my initial post on the disaster from five years ago.

BRATTLEBORO digs in.

MICHAEL JENNINGS HAS THOUGHTS on India’s Internet outage.

AN “AIR SURGE” IN IRAQ.