GRAND ROUNDS is up!

BUILDING A 5-minute rocket at home.

TIME: That’s not change you can believe in. I think that the Congress should adopt a single-subject rule for bills, as some states have. There’s a proposal for a federal Constitutional amendment on that, called the “Truth in Legislation Amendment.” I think it’s a good idea.

ENERGY-SAVING ADVICE on getting your home ready for winter.

JONATHAN ADLER: “I am puzzled by a few things about Sarah Palin’s and Joseph Biden’s responses to Katie Couric’s questions about Roe v. Wade and federalism.”

I’LL TAKE “FAMOUS DANISH PHILOSOPHERS” FOR $700 BILLION, ALEX: Roger Kimball on Kierkegaard, the flight to safety, and the future of capitalism.

I agree with this: “The current pandemonium on the Wall Streets of the world is not due to a failure of the free market. It is due to a failure to observe the rules of the free market.” The government’s role in this stuff reminds me not of Kierkegaard, but of Milton: “Chaos Umpire sits, And by decision more imbroils the fray. By which he Reigns.”

ALL THE COOL KIDS ARE INTO ALGAE NOWADAYS: China Shows Green Aspirations With New Algae Biodiesel Facility.

A NEW AFGHANISTAN DISPATCH FROM MICHAEL YON. With lots of cool photos. Remember what I said about supporting people who tell you things the legacy media won’t?

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS IS UP!

PRICING SIGNALS WORK (CONT’D): Americans continue to drive less for 9th straight month.

100 SKILLS EVERY MAN SHOULD KNOW: With instructional videos. Women, too!

UNVEILING THE HONDA INSIGHT. Plus, the Nissan Nuvu electric vehicle.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Conference to develop proposal for a nanotech space elevator.

IN THE MAIL: From Brian Anderson (author of South Park Conservatives) and Adam Thierer, A Manifesto for Media Freedom. I think a lot of people will be talking about this.

RAND SIMBERG is liveblogging from the Space Solar Power conference.

WHAT THEY SAID ABOUT FAN AND FRED: The Wall Street Journal rounds up some pre-meltdown quotes on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the likes of Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Charles Schumer. My favorite: “Rep. Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing.”

Well, roll the dice we did . . . .

INSTA-POLL:

J.D. JOHANNES FOLLOWS UP on my post about supporting non-traditional media. Take some advice from a guy who’s put it on the line to bring you news that the legacy media didn’t want to.

MORE COVERAGE OF OHIO ELECTION FRAUD ISSUES, here and here. If nothing else, the whole thing is shaping up as a big commercial for John Fund’s book, Stealing Elections. But, seriously, an electoral system that we can’t trust is a major weakness. I’ve made this point before, but it bears repeating until, you know, somebody actually does something. We’re already seeing the price of the political class’s fecklessness in economic matters; we don’t need another important system collapsing as the bills for that fecklessness come due.

We need a ballot-counting process we can trust — electronic machines don’t do it — and a system for preventing voter fraud that’s not a joke. Right now we have neither.

JIM TREACHER HAS GOTTEN an advance peek at Gwen Ifill’s questions for tonight’s debate.

MY PJTV APPEARANCE FROM LAST NIGHT is now online free to nonsubscribers. There’s also a Flash version if you don’t care about the HD. My part starts about halfway through. It’s the first one using my new streaming-HD camera in the basement studio. (Bumped).

BOOTED IN BOSTON: “A Boston shelter for homeless women has dropped controversial comedian Sandra Bernhard as the marquee speaker at its annual fund-raising event because of her ‘gang rape’ joke about Sarah Palin.”

IF MCCAIN WINS, WILL PALIN BE SWORN IN? Interesting stuff, from a law-professor standpoint, but in my view it’s no more likely to matter than claims that Barack Obama isn’t a natural-born citizen.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT ON XM SATELLITE RADIO YESTERDAY, the online version of PJM Political is up.

IN THE TANK? OR DRIVING THE TANK? Michael Graham notes that the Boston Globe continues to peddle the Sarah Palin rape-kit myth, despite the fact that it’s been debunked and re-debunked. Graham comments:

The story is old news in the new media. Left-leaning Slate.com called it “a nasty and untrue rumor.” National Review’s Jim Geraghty, who has written exhaustively on the story calls it “unsupported by the facts.” But at the Obama-Uber-Alles Boston Globe, they call it “news.”

We have come to the point in the media’s treatment of Gov. Sarah Palin where even the fig leaf of pretense is gone. The press has openly chosen sides and has stopped apologizing for it.

Yes. My thoughts on what to do are here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Kay Hymowitz emails:

Thought you might be interested to hear that Jon Stewart repeated the rape kit story last night on The Daily Show. It’s pretty bad when the Boston Globe spreads untruths, but remember no one trusts them – or reads them – anyway. But when the Daily Show repeats the story, that’s another matter. Now the country’s entire population of under 30 year olds KNOWS it’s true.

Well, yeah. And Stewart should apologize for repeating an obvious falsehood. But how embarrassing is it for the Globe that it’s being outranked by Jon Stewart?