LAYING THE HATE ON HYBRIDS: I dunno, though — my Highlander Hybrid is pretty fun to drive, for an SUV. And I say that as a guy whose other car is an RX-8, so it’s not like I’m comparing it to a Yaris.

THE GROWING THREAT OF antibiotic-resistant bacteria. “You might think this doesn’t have anything to do with you. But you are one car accident away from being in a hospital. Also, the drug resistance mutations found in bacteria in hospitals will likely swap genetic material with other species of bacteria that are found more widely outside of hospitals.” Yes, this is an extremely urgent matter that’s being treated as a not-very-urgent matter.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES PAYING ATTENTION to developing clean energy via nanotechnology.

ANOTHER NO-KNOCK RAID GONE BAD:

When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. A mayor sat in his boxers, hands bound behind his back. His handcuffed mother-in-law was sprawled on the kitchen floor, lying beside the body of one of the family pets that police had killed before her eyes.

After the raid, Prince George’s County police officials who burst into the home of Berwyn Heights’ mayor last week seized the same unopened package of marijuana that an undercover officer had delivered an hour earlier.

What police left behind was a house stained with blood and a trail of questions about their conduct. No other evidence of illegal activity was found, and no one was arrested at Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home in this small bedroom community near College Park.

This week Prince George’s police arrested two men for orchestrating a plot to deliver marijuana to the addresses of unsuspecting recipients — among them, Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic.

Yet neither county Police Chief Melvin C. High nor Sheriff Michael A. Jackson have apologized to him, his wife or her mother, Georgia Porter, for the raid that traumatized the family and killed their black Labrador retrievers, Payton and Chase.

Thursday, Calvo called on the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate the raid and other similar actions by Prince George’s law enforcement. He said officers burst into his house without knocking or announcing themselves, in violation of the warrant they had.

We need federal civil rights legislation stripping officials of immunity in cases like this. Maybe now that they’re raiding politicians’ houses, we’ll see some action.

UPDATE: Radley Balko has much more. Plus this: “I guess I’d just add that the national media coverage of the Berwyn Heights raid seems to be predicated on the assumption that the most troubling aspects of the raid—the killing of the dogs, the violent tactics, the lax investigation, the likely innocent victims, and the police obstinacy after the fact—are unusual. They aren’t. The only thing unusual about this raid is that its victim happened to be an elected politician.”

KATHY SHAIDLE: Ezra Levant 1, Canadian Thought Police 0.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: ONE THING OBAMA GETS RIGHT:

The underreported economic news of the week is that Barack Obama favors a stronger dollar. Even better, he thinks a stronger greenback would help to reduce oil prices.

That at least is what the Democratic Presidential candidate told a town hall forum in Parma, Ohio, on Tuesday. “If we had a strengthening of the dollar, that would help” reduce fuel costs, he said, according to a Reuters dispatch ignored by most of the media.

This ought to be a bigger story. . . . We don’t know who is whispering in Mr. Obama’s ear about the dollar, but he’s on to a rich political vein. Americans know instinctively that something is wrong when the Canadian loonie is worth more than the greenback. Over to you, John McCain.

I wonder if this means he’s getting advice from Austan Goolsbee again.

REPUBLICAN SENATORS blowing it on energy.

NECK AND NECK: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday again shows Barack Obama attracting 44% of the vote while and John McCain earns 43%. When ‘leaners’ are included, it’s Obama 47% and McCain 46%. With leaners, the candidates have been within one point of each other for eight straight days.”

HILLARY CLINTON as Ronald Reagan?

GEORGIA UPDATE: McCain on “Russia’s Aggression.”

UPDATE: ” Georgia ‘under attack’ as Russian tanks roll in.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Background at Strategypage.

RAND SIMBERG: I guess it really is all about the “O.”

Plus, a complaint from TigerHawk: “It discriminates against one-handed people. I think the Obama campaign needs to make a reasonable accommodation for people who have lost one, but not two, hands.”

THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER gets ready to fire up.

A JOHN TIERNEY TRAFFIC QUIZ. The book sounds interesting, too.

IN THE MAIL: None of the Above: Why 2008 Is the Year to Cast the Ultimate Protest Vote. The front-cover blurb from Michael Savage suggests that I’m not his target audience.

IN LIGHT OF THE EARLIER ITEM about “killing all the rich Westerners,” I think it’s time for another poll.

MORE ON GEORGIA, from Transatlantic Politics.

DAVE KOPEL AND BOB LEVY: What next for D.C.’s gun laws?

The Supreme Court ruled in June that provisions of Washington, D.C.’s gun laws are unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the city has responded with new regulations that are a flagrant attempt to circumvent the court’s decision.

It’s time for Congress to use the power granted to it in the Constitution to “exercise exclusive legislation” in the District and uphold its residents’ constitutional rights. It can do so by passing the District of Columbia Personal Protection Act now pending in Congress, with a few adjustments. This bill, introduced on July 31 with 57 cosponsors, would prevent D.C. from passing regulations that discourage the private lawful use of firearms or otherwise suppress residents’ Second Amendment rights. . . . Over the years, our elected representatives have adopted a court-centric view of the Constitution — a view that decisions about constitutionality are properly left to the judiciary. But members of Congress also swear to uphold the Constitution. Congress can make good on that oath by restoring the right of Washington, D.C., residents to possess functional firearms in their homes.

Read the whole thing.

DON SURBER: “The Saudis’ protest against Nissan is ironic.”

OIL CONSUMPTION DROPS IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES: “The Western countries will continue to cut back while Asian demand continues to grow. Eventually Western demand destruction won’t be able to balance Asian demand growth. Then things will get ugly.” Which is why we need to be working on developing new supplies — especially from oil shale, and coal-liquification — while we also work on longer-term replacements.

ANN ALTHOUSE: “When you set out to destroy someone’s good name, are you responsible to the other people who happen to have that name?”

POPULAR MECHANICS: As Iran Tests Missile Fleet, Experts Map High-Tech Israeli Attack.

IT WAS THE BLOG THAT DID IT: Campfield wins despite being outspent 2-to-1. If he used spellcheck it would help even more . . . .

STRESSING AN OBAMA ASSASSINATION THREAT, while editing out a threat to Bush from the same guy.

I AGREE: Media’s self censorship is a bigger scandal than Edwards. “Is it any wonder that nobody buys newspapers any more?” (Via Kaus).

TROUBLE IN THE CAUCASUS: “In a move which has put it squarely on a collision course with Putin’s Russia, Georgian troops continuing their campaign against South Ossetian separatists are reported by the BBC to be nearing Tskhinvali. . . . Moscow’s support for South Ossetian separatism, in part a reaction to Georgia’s efforts to get closer to the West potentially puts Russia and NATO on a collision course.”

UPDATE: Reader Michael Cecire emails:

As a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Georgia, I can tell you with certainty that the ongoing hostilities in Georgia is neither anomalous nor a case of ‘Georgian impertinence,’ as many in the media will certainly imply in their coverage and comment. As one of the Bush administration’s foreign policy success stories, and a resolute American ally, its efficacy is obviously always under the most unfair sort of scrutiny. This is a curious but unmistakable worldwide pattern – see Israel, Taiwan, Moldova, Kosovo, etc.

And to be clear, Georgia is now being invaded by a country that has been pushing, provoking, and violating the sovereignty of many of its neighbors for centuries. As for Georgia, Russia’s posture has been decidedly hostile since Georgia’s “ungrateful” secessions – first in 1991 and again in 2003’s Rose Revolution which aligned Georgia with the West – with Russia responding over the years with a series of embargoes, blockades, and gratuitous support for separatists in violation of internationally recognized borders.

President Saakashvili is absolutely correct when he says that the current conflict is hardly about separatism; rather, the root of the issue is Russia’s obstinate unwillingness to concede the sovereignty of its former satellites and imperial provinces. This situation, in reality, is hardly more than blatant Russian aggression against a small, Westernizing democracy flailing to extract itself from its suffocating geographic and historical proximity to Russia in all its forms – tsarist, Soviet, and currently oligopo-fascist.

Stay tuned.