RUSSIA’S nanotechnology “Manhattan Project.”

SOME THOUGHTS ON RUSSIA AND GEORGIA from TigerHawk.

JITTERS: “Few people are more likely to need a holiday than Barack Obama. Yet as he heads off on Friday for his first week-long break since he launched his presidential bid 19 months ago, Mr Obama is dogged by rising angst about his campaign’s direction. . . . With polls showing him neck-and-neck with John McCain at a stage at which many Democrats expected he would be in the clear lead, they worry about the kind of stray image that helped to defeat John Kerry in 2004.”

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON PUBLIC CRITICISM OF JUDGES: “Public criticism of judges, moreover, is one of the limited avenues available to hold unelected judges accountable. Criticism of judges invokes the social sanction known as shaming. Society long has made use of shame as a sanction. . . . Insulated by life tenure and various other protections, federal judges—especially those who intrude themselves into controverted social issues—ought to expect to be held up to scathing criticism when they render decisions that affect the lives of millions.”

CNN RECYCLING AFGHANISTAN FOOTAGE FROM 2005? As Ted Baxter said, “Hey, the news doesn’t change that much!”

NOW THEY TELL US! L.A. TIMES: “Mainstream media finally jump on Edwards’ affair.”

And note this in relation to Byron York’s prediction: “While several newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, had been trying to pursue the story of Edwards’ affair, the sudden burst of attention Friday after he confirmed the relationship with Rielle Hunter, who produced documentaries for his campaign website, was in marked contrast to the way news organizations had tiptoed around the original reports.”

UPDATE: Charles Austin emails:

“Do or do not, there is no try.” Yoda nailed these weasel words from the L.A. Times (via your post) a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away:

Heh. Indeed. Though I don’t think there was even much of a “try” in this case.

AT THE OLYMPICS, a “rousing ovation” for Iraqi athletes.

CAN THE FEDERAL BENCH police itself?

BYRON YORK: “In the coming days, look for representatives of big media organizations to describe how aggressively they were reporting on the Edwards story — and how they were this close to having something to publish or broadcast when Edwards short-circuited the story by confessing to the Hunter affair.”

AS EFFECTIVE AS ALWAYS: “For the second time in less than 24 hours, the U.N. Security Council has been unable to agree on a course of action to stop the escalating violence in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia.” Is Russia spreading the bribes around?

UPDATE: What some Russians are saying.

BLOGGING AND TWITTERING from Beijing.

More from Tim Blair.

THE EDWARDS money angle.

MICKEY KAUS: Your MSM buddy system at work.

VICE PRESIDENT HEATH SHULER: Doing for America what he did for the Redskins!

MITSUBISHI IS testing its electric car in California. “Although it doesn’t look like much, the motor produces an impressive 63 horsepower and 133 pound-feet of torque. It’s said to be a quick and nimble runabout good for zero-to-60 mph in less than 9 seconds and a top speed of 82 mph. ” That’s more horsepower than my 1969 VW Beetle.

SEVEN YEARS OLD ON 8-8-08: Today is InstaPundit’s seventh bloggiversary. Here’s how it all started.

JOHN EDWARDS: 99% honest? “I have a hard time believing that Edwards is being 51% honest even now, let alone 99% or 100% honest.”

UPDATE: Plus, what Edwards was saying about Bill Clinton.

Plus, thoughts from Donald Sensing. “Edwards denies being the father of Rielle’s baby. If true (coff), then while Edwards was cheating on Elizabeth, Rielle was cheating on him. You just can’t make this stuff up.” And, sadly, you don’t have to.

MORE: TigerHawk: “Cancer is enormously stressful both for its direct victims and their families. While it is obviously easy to condemn Edwards for cheating on his sick wife and putting his political party in great jeopardy and I normally delight in piling on with the rest of the righties, this once I am going to refrain. There are emotions here that we do not understand and can never understand, and I lack the stomach to sit in judgment of them.”

That hardly gets his enablers in the press off the hook, though, does it?

STILL MORE: The Anchoress:

I think I did mention somewhere, in passing, that once again, the press has been curiously incurious about the behavior of a Democrat when they would have taken a similarly-behaved Republican to the cleaners. And then they wonder why the press polls lower than the congress, which is standing at an approval figure of 9%

John Edwards’ betrayal of his wife is a private affair – to a point – once it’s out there, though, it’s “out there.” In refusing to report a story once it was “out there” the press committed a kind of betrayal, too – one that breaks the public trust just as surely as Edwards broke a private one. That, to me (and many others) was always the bigger story.

Indeed.

A MONTY PYTHON cover art contest.

OMAR AND MOHAMMED FADHIL: British Deal With al-Sadr Betrayed Iraqi People:

The news about a secret deal between the British and anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr did not come as a surprise to us. Britain’s war policy has been clear for the past several years: the country demonstrated no readiness to make sustained efforts in a prolonged war, nor did it act as a serious partner determined to win the conflict.

And yet, they’re clearly the best ally we’ve got.

GEORGE MCGOVERN: My Party Should Respect Secret Union Ballots.

A JOHN EDWARDS VICTORY LAP FOR MICKEY KAUS — but he’s promising more to come.

TEST-DRIVING the Nissan Cube electric car.

EDWARDS ADMITS THAT HE LIED ABOUT AFFAIR: But the real story is how the mainstream press, despite knowing or strongly suspecting that he was lying, covered for him.

There are two Americas — the real one, and the one the press tries to fob off on us.

UPDATE: Big roundup here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire: “I guess this means the LA Times is free to report on it.” Better ask Tony Pierce, just to be sure!

Plus, from Ann Althouse:

Imagine if he’d gotten the nomination. What a selfish bastard — to run for the nomination while parading his cancerous wife about and knowing that if he won this story could have come out at any time — maybe in October — screwing up his party’s chances!

Indeed.

MORE: Byron York:

Wow. The Edwards story has suddenly appeared on the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the networks — everywhere. John Edwards has somehow become newsworthy again.

Yeah, go figure.

THIS TIME THEY DIDN’T LEAVE OUT ED WOOD: A list of essential biopics.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: “Barack Obama is a real candidate running for the real presidency, not a fictional character, and I am not optimistic about his world view. Dreams from My Father suggests a deep-seated belief that economic and social dynamism inevitably and unrelievedly produce chaos, disorder, and despair.” This is from a while back, but I had missed it when it appeared, and it’s still timely.