STEVEN DEN BESTE: “Even after all these years, I still get fan-mail about USS Clueless. After nearly four years you’d think people would give up on the idea of me starting to blog continuously about politics again, but I get letters asking me to start. Forget it. Not gonna happen.” Heh. I understand.

IN KNOXVILLE, Barbara Oakley, author of Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother’s Boyfriend, will be speaking at the Carpe Librum bookstore tonight at 6:30. Helen and I had a very interesting dinner with her the other night, and I suspect people will find the talk fascinating.

OBAMA: Not much of a paper trail.

QUESTIONS OBAMA WON’T ASK IN RAMALLAH.

BRIAN MICKLETHWAIT: Has the tide turned on the right to forceful self-defence?

BOB OWENS: “While the Media Slept… …another province, Diwaniyah, was handed over to Iraqi government control.”

Old media line — “Of course we’re losing — that’s why we have to talk about it all the time.” New line: “Of course we’re winning — so it isn’t news!”

THE WII IS NOW THE Number One selling game console in the U.S.

ANDREW MALCOLM: The secret hidden within John McCain’s campaign schedule.

MORE ON BLOOD DONATION: In response to yesterday’s post on blood donations, reader Nancy-Anne Potts emails to note that the Red Cross has relaxed some of the restrictions on giving blood — most notably lowering the minimum age and allowing some former cancer patients to donate now.

A NOVEL MEDIA PROPOSAL: “Wouldn’t it be nice, he said, if there was some enterprise in the Twin Cities area whose business it was to research matters of interest to the public, write up and edit reports on such, and print such things on inexpensive paper that could be sold in newsstands?” . . . . Naaaah!

SAYUNCLE: “Since assault weapons are weapons of war, designed to be sprayfired from the hip as a bullet hose to kill as many people as quickly as possible, why are police in Chicago getting them?”

UPDATE: People sending me email mocking SayUncle’s knowldge of firearms are missing his sarcasm here. Trust me, this guy knows his assault weapons . . . .

HOPE AND CHANGE: Basic right of self-defense restored in Britain.

TIM CAVANAUGH fact-checks Thomas Frank by using an ingenious modern appliance. “But it’s not what I think or Tom Frank thinks that matters. It’s what Dickey Flatt thinks. I called up Flatt Stationers Inc. to find out, and I found the 66-year-old printer to be not only the essence of Lone Star cordiality but a staunch supporter of his former senator. . . . So have things gotten tough enough to make even Dickey Flatt doubt Phil Gramm’s free-market policies? You be the judge: ‘I think the government ought to stay out of it,” Flatt says.'”

OIL PRICES IN “EXTENDED FALL” at below $130/barrel. Will it last? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone else does, either. But at least it’s nice to see people wondering why it’s going down instead of wondering why it’s going up.

JAMES JOYNER: D.C. Bans Guns With Red Tape. It’s that “massive resistance” I was talking about . . . .

THOMAS LIFSON: “Pinch Sulzberger has taken perhaps the most recognizable media brand in the country and run it into the ground. Can the Gray Lady be saved?”

FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC have spent millions on lobbying. Now that they’ve been bailed out by the feds, and turned into de facto federal entities, shouldn’t that be stopped?

DUDE, HERE’S YOUR RECESSION: “A mood of fear and pessimism is starting to descend on Europe. It now seems the region could head into recession even before the United States.”

VIDEO: Obama on Iraq.

HERE ARE THE EMMY NOMINATIONS, for anyone who’s interested.

PROTEIN WISDOM: Sorry, America is not getting an Extreme Makeover. But it’s interesting who thinks it needs one.

HMM: Top Clinton Donors Meet with McCain Camp.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO and senior adviser to Sen. John McCain, met with a group of 25 prominent supporters and fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Clinton at a private home in Westchester County, NY. The group included several so-called “Hillraisers,” each of whom have raised in excess of $100,000 for Clinton’s failed primary campaign. The meeting was repeatedly sought by the Hillary supporters and is at least the second such meeting between backers of Clinton and the McCain campaign.

An organizer of the meeting, Amy Siskind, said that the pro-Hillary groups represented pledged to help deliver, “hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of votes,” to McCain if the groups find areas of agreement between themselves and his campaign.

Apparently the healing isn’t complete.

BRIAN WANG HAS THOUGHTS on Al Gore’s Clean Energy Challenge.

UPDATE: John Tierney has three questions for Al Gore.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More charges of Gore hypocrisy: “Gore didn’t ride his bike or take public transporation to the event. He didn’t even take his Prius! Instead, he brought a fleet of two Lincoln Town Cars and a Chevy Suburban SUV! Even worse, the driver of the Town Car that eventually whisked away Gore’s wife and daughter left the engine idling and the AC cranking for 20 minutes before they finally left!” Video at the link. (Via MM).

WELL, THIS IS CHARMING: “A police lieutenant in Daytona Beach was fired over accusations that he threatened slower emergency response times if he was not given complimentary specialty Starbucks coffee drinks. An internal police investigation found that Daytona Lt. Major Garvin received free coffee for about two years from a city Starbucks coffee store. However, when recently denied free coffee from new management, Garvin allegedly told managers that he could change the police department’s response time if they refuse to give him complimentary drinks.”

VIDEO: The online trailer for Terminator: Salvation. Plus, The Sarah Connor Chronicles will be out on Blu-Ray in a couple of weeks.