“IT WAS AL GORE who made it a judicial question . . . What are we supposed to say — ‘Not important enough?'”

STAFF SERGEANT DAVID BELLAVIA, author of the excellent House to House, is now running for Congress.

Here’s his website.

UPDATE: Reader John MacDonald notes another veteran running, Lt. Col. Allen West.

BARNES & NOBLE RANKINGS don’t get as much attention as the ones on Amazon, but it’s good news that Michael Yon is up to #3 there.

KATHLEEN PARKER ON racism, sexism, and the Democratic primaries.

IN THE MAIL: Phillip London’s Our Good Name: A Company’s Fight to Defend Its Honor and Get the Truth Told About Abu Ghraib. Can’t see the press being too receptive to this effort until at least November.

WANT TO HELP NEW ORLEANS? Support free trade!

Is there any city for which congressional Democrats claim more concern than New Orleans? So why are they denying the Katrina-ravaged city a major opportunity for recovery by shutting out Colombian free trade? . . . The mayor of the hurricane-hit city made an impassioned plea to Congress to pass the Colombia free trade agreement for New Orleans’ sake. He knows how badly his city needs every break it can get, three years after the biggest disaster to ever hit a U.S. metropolitan area. . . .

“New Orleans is becoming an even greater international city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,” Nagin wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last November, “and we are making every effort to capitalize on trade liberalization that will flow from these FTAs (free trade agreements). Our port system is ideally situated to take advantage of the Latin American FTAs.”

Congress is unmoved because free trade produces less graft than massive aid projects. But it’s funny that this hasn’t gotten much attention from the press.

COMMAND STRUCTURE CHANGES IN AFGHANISTAN? The Captain’s Journal thinks it’s good news.

HEH: “After 30 years of railing for separation of church and state, Bill Moyers comes to the aid of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.”

FABIUS MAXIMUS says we’re seeing political peak oil. Regardless of what this means globally — to the extent you can distinguish Saudi reserves from global reserves, I guess — this offers some support to the notion that the Saudis have been overstating their reserves for a while. Or maybe they’ve caught on to the Malcom S. Forbes strategy. I guess it was a mistake for me to have mentioned it a couple of weeks ago . . . .

NBC IS GOING GREEN FOR G.E.: “Amid its calls for individual sacrifices in the name of the environment and paeans to ‘green’ legislation, the network once again failed to disclose prominently that its parent company stands to get rich off of ‘environmentalist’ laws.”

PHOTOBLOGGING THE INDIANA BRANCH OF THE GLOBAL RICE PANIC. The horror!

FLYING IN THE FACE OF THE CONVENTIONAL NARRATIVE: Esteem for US rises in Asia, thanks to Iraq war:

THE US war in Iraq has strengthened its strategic position, especially in terms of key alliances, and the only way this could be reversed would be if it lost the will to continue the struggle and abandoned Iraq in defeat and disarray.

Read the whole thing. (Via Don Surber). Plus this: “More generally, in a world supposedly awash in anti-US sentiment, pro-American leaders keep winning elections.”

GRILL RECOMMENDATIONS FROM READERS: They’re coming. I was overwhelmed with the response volume and just haven’t had time to go through it all. I should have known . . . .

DON’T COUNT YOUR BARRELS BEFORE THEY’RE PUMPED, but here’s promising oil news from Brazil.

TAKE YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS TO WORK? How about putting them to work instead?

BICYCLING 758 MILES for equal parenting.

MICKEY KAUS: “What exactly is so terrible about that North Carolina GOP ad?” Seems like a pretty typical political ad to me, too. Watch it yourself and see what you think.

UPDATE: David Fleeger emails: “It seem that this is just a continuation of the Democrats’ hysterical “Don’t question our patriotism” nonsense of the past few years. Don’t question their patriotism, don’t question their economic policies, don’t question their tax policies, don’t question their record in office, don’t question their character, don’t question their shady business and political deaings, don’t question, period. Will the GOP be chicken enough to obey? Probably.” Luckily for McCain, McCain-Feingold allows this stuff . . . .

HEH: “In point of fact, we have not had unrestrained capitalism in the United States for at least a century – as Reich, as a chief constrainer, should damned well know.”

IN TODAY’S WALL STREET JOURNAL, a call to arm Zimbabwe’s opposition.