DEMOCRATIC SUPERDELEGATE DOESN’T WANT TO ENDORSE OBAMA:

The rise of Sen. Barack Obama, to become the Democrats’ presidential nominee has put most of his party’s faithful on his bandwagon — but not Lincoln Davis, a rural Tennessee Congressman with gubernatorial ambitions.

Davis (D-Pall Mall) is not yet endorsing the presumptive nominee in Obama, saying he’ll wait until the late August Democratic Party national convention.

In Davis’ sprawling 4th Congressional District — which ranges from as far west as Hickman County to as far east as the upper Cumberland Plateau — less than a quarter of Democrats in the largely rural district voted for Obama, the nation’s first African-American presidential candidate nominated by a major party, in Tennessee’s presidential primary. . . .

Fred Hobbs, a state Democratic Party Executive Committee member representing part of Davis’ district, said he understands why Davis is not endorsing Obama and is “skeptical” of the Illinois senator himself.

“Maybe [it’s] the same reason I don’t want to — I don’t exactly approve of a lot of the things he stands for and I’m not sure we know enough about him,” Hobbs said when asked why he thought Davis wasn’t endorsing Obama. “He’s got some bad connections, and he may be terrorist connected for all I can tell. It sounds kind of like he may be.”

Davis was not made available for comment.

His chief of staff, Beecher Frasier, said he doesn’t know for sure if Obama is “terrorist connected” but he assumes he’s not.

Well, that’s a relief. Sounds like there’s still some healing to do in the Democratic party, post-primary. Here’s much more from A.C. Kleinheider.

MICKEY KAUS: “I kind of hope Obama’s election will kill off much of hip-hop, at least the gangsta-inspired parts. But just killing off bling and gangsta fashion would be a start.” It’s those off-the-rack Burberry suits that are the key.

Plus, grilling Michelle: “According to Time, when the Obama camp ‘got wind’ of the ‘whitey’ rumor, his aides took it so seriously they confronted Michelle and ‘grilled her on the particulars.’ So why can’t bloggers and reporters do the same thing?”

JENNIFER RUBIN: Does the Obama Campaign Foreshadow His Presidency?

HAPPY NATIONAL PIGEON DAY!

IN THE MAIL: The China Diary of George H. W. Bush: The Making of a Global President.

THAT SHOULD ENHANCE HIS CREDIBILITY ON THE DEFICIT: McCains report more than $100,000 in credit card debt.

MORE ON SPACE TOURISM, at Popular Mechanics.

SATELLITE IMAGERY AND HUMAN RIGHTS:

Now satellite images of villages there show clear evidence of the destruction of villages, with gray smudges all that is left in many cases. The analysis was done by the Science and Human Rights Project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Under a MacArthur Foundation grant, Lars Bromley, a geographer, and others there have been following up on eyewitness accounts gathered by Human Rights Watch and other private groups. Mr. Bromley and his team collect and analyze images from DigitalGlobe and other purveyors of satellite-gathered data to assess the claims.

Note that this involves actual human rights, not the phony Canadian variety.

THE STORY ON GOOGLE AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS MAKES SLATE, where it gets a rather dismissive treatment from Chris Thompson. I think he gets it wrong with the Does Google Hate America? headline, though. Google’s problem is that it’s not living up to its own “Don’t be evil” hype. Instead it’s acting like any other big-bucks transnational corporation; honoring U.S. patriotic holidays might be bad for its business, so it doesn’t. That focus on business is of a piece with its cooperation with Chinese censorship, something that I noted at the time:

Google has come under criticism from people on the left — and right — for its cave-in to Chinese demands for censorship. From “don’t be evil,” Google’s motto has seemed to be “don’t be evil unless there’s a really big market at stake.”

They’ve also come in for criticism from people on the right for alleged censorship in Google News, with charges that Google is purging itself of conservative news sites. And many people complained that Google, which puts up special logos for all sorts of other holidays, didn’t do anything to recognize Memorial Day.

That last point seems minor, but for some people it seems to have been the last straw. . . . Jeff Jarvis notes that Google’s ad business isn’t doing especially well, and says that the reason is trust. So what, exactly, does Google have that will protect it from a sudden shift in consumer sentiments?

A few years ago Google lost its position as an outfit that people trusted because they thought it was run by friendly well-meaning geeks, and became just another big corporation out for the money. I think that’s hurt them, and I also think it’s sad, if perhaps inevitable.

LARRY LESSIG ON THE KOZINSKI KERFUFFLE: “The real story here is how easily we let such a baseless smear travel – and our need is for a better developed immunity (in the sense of immunity from a virus) from this sort of garbage.”

IT’S NICE TO BE A MEMBER OF CONGRESS: Everyone loves you and wants to help:

Two influential US senators got “VIP” loans from a leading subprime mortgage lender that saved them tens of thousands of dollars, it was reported last night.

The Democratic pols, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota, both received the highly favorable loans under the designation “Friend of Angelo,” a reference to embattled Countrywide head Angelo Mozilo, Condé Nast Portfolio reported.

Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, while Conrad is chairman of the Budget Committee and a member of the Finance Committee. The two senators refinanced properties through the VIP program in 2003 and 2004, the report said.

But it wasn’t just them: “Others who received ‘FOA’ loans include Alphonso Jackson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Bush who resigned in April, and Donna Shalala, who was secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration.”

You know, government conflict-of-interest rules can be pretty exacting where worker bees are involved, but these guys didn’t see anything wrong with taking “VIP loans”? Jeez.

I CERTAINLY HOPE THAT THIS IS TRUE: Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern says substantial vote tallies across the country show the European Union Lisbon reform treaty has been rejected.

MORE EVIDENCE THAT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS DOESN’T GET IT. Links to your stuff are good. That’s why reporters for newspapers send me links to their stories.

A.C. KLEINHEIDER: Al Gore Veep Talk.

GREGG EASTERBROOK:

Democratic attacks on Mr. McCain and Republican attacks on Mr. Obama both seek to punish impermissibly positive thoughts. At a time when there exists a sense of crisis over the economy, fuel prices and many other issues, this reinforces the odd, two realities of life in the United States today: The way we are, and the way we think we are. The way we are could use some work, but overall, is pretty good. The way we think we are is terrible, horrible, awful. Possibly worse.

Read the whole thing, which offers some useful perspective.

UPDATE: Fabius Maximus continues to stoutly maintain that media pessimism about the economy is a myth.

THE VENDOR DEATH PENALTY: A new concept, but easy to grasp.

IT BEATS TRYING TO TEACH LONG DIVISION: Lesson plan: Teachers fake deaths of several students.

ANDREW BOLT: Bugger whales. Save Zimbabweans.

INDEED: “Brutality is pretty much the norm for most of human history; as we’ve gotten richer, we’ve gotten less violent in all sorts of ways–we’ve stamped out (mostly) once common practices like infanticide, torture, wife beating, and the stoning of adulterers. Hunter gatherers are vastly more likely to die from homicide than people living in the developed world. Goodness is, in some sense, a luxury good. The most valuable luxury good we have.”

GLENN FLEISHMAN ROUNDS UP THE LATEST on airborne wi-fi. Plus, the busborne kind!

IS AMERICA FACING A summer vacation crisis? No doubt we can look to the French for guidance.

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME: Clearwire promises a fully-open, “third pipe” WiMAX network.

MARY JACKSON: Muslim ‘No-Go Areas’ in Britain? Just Go There!

CANADIAN KANGAROO COURT UPDATE: Ed Cone has thoughts.