TOYOTA PRIUS OFFERS DISAPPOINTING MILEAGE compared to a BMW 520 diesel.

“LIKE A KENDALL IN THE WIND:” Hillary’s Elton John Problem. The biggest problem may be the puns it’s inspired. Beignet and the Jets?

SOUNDS RECORDED BEFORE EDISON, but not played back until now. That’s cool. (Via the Cutlass).

HEH: “Perhaps I’ll sing a little song instead…” I’m not sure of the provenance of this transcript, but it’s funny.

TEXAS CAUCUS ELECTION FRAUD? Well, something seems amiss. “You ended up being coded as BOTH a Hillary Clinton and a Barack Obama delegate.”

IN THE MAIL: Peter F. Hamilton’s The Dreaming Void. I’ve liked his other books.

SADR TIDINGS: Jules Crittenden on what’s happening in Iraq.

PUERTO RICO’S GOVERNOR INDICTED:

Puerto Rico’s governor and four Philadelphians, including prominent fund-raiser Robert M. Feldman, were charged this morning in San Juan with federal campaign-finance related crimes.

The investigation of Gov. Anibal Acevedo-Vila, a Democrat who faces re-election this year, was triggered by the FBI’s Philadelphia City Hall corruption probe in 2003.

Feldman, who raised more than $1 million for Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. and Gov. Rendell, was a former business partner of Ronald A. White, the late power-broker who was the lead defendant in the Philadelphia corruption case. . . . The case could have political ramifications beyond Philadelphia and San Juan. Acevedo-Vila has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama in the Puerto Rico primary, which holds the nation’s last primary on June 6.

I thought it was the 7th.

UPDATE: Oops. According to this report, Puerto Rico has been moved up to June 1. This has startling implications, according to some . . . .

MORE WAYS that fat is bad for you. The fat in your belly, that is.

UH OH: I-64 closed for six hours after sniper hits four cars.

MICHAEL BARONE LOOKS AT THE POLLS, and notices Barack Obama’s rising unfavorables. He’s into Hillary territory now, and I agree that this is probably a result of the Wright revelations.

CLINTONS: “GET OUT OF OUR WAY.”

BETTER ALL THE TIME: The Speculist’s roundup of good news (mostly) from the world of science and technology.

JOURNALISTIC STANDARDS: Fake documents at the L.A. Times. Can you imagine what they’d be saying if a blogger had done this . . . .?

UPDATE: L.A. Times apologizes for rapper story.

MICKEY KAUS on the first Jeremiah Wright sermon Obama ever heard. In Obama’s words.

OKAY, I LINKED THE REPORT YESTERDAY, but this bit on McCain’s appearance in L.A. is worth stressing:

Speaking of In the Line of Fire, although there was a presence of secret service, security at the well attended event was surprisingly lax. Although the news media desk knew Pajamas Media by name, they never checked our IDs or our equipment bags. Worrisome.

We’ve heard reports of lax security at Obama appearances; apparently, it’s not just him.

UPDATE: Reader Pierce Wetter points out something I didn’t know — McCain has declined Secret Service protection.

JAMES LILEKS ON the light bulb wars.

A.C. KLEINHEIDER is back. I’m not surprised. (Via Bill Hobbs).

HEH: Bloggers File Fundraising Complaint Against John McCain. Chickens, meet roost.

GALLUP SECOND AMENDMENT POLL: “A solid majority of the U.S. public, 73%, believes the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the rights of Americans to own guns.”

UPDATE: Here’s one cautionary note. Just about everyone who saw the Heller oral argument thinks it’ll produce some sort of victory for Heller by at least 5-4. I certainly hope that’s right, but I’ve always regarded vote-counting based on oral argument as a highly risky endeavor. Don’t count your chickens before their hatched.

TOM SMITH says Hillary is being smeared with religion:

So there’s a Bible study group she belonged to in the White House and another in the Senate, which is sponsored by The Family. So what. A Bible study group, as probably no one at the Nation knows, it not like a secret society. You sit around and discuss the Bible and pray some. No animals are sacrificed or blood oaths taken. No coded messages exchanged. Perhaps we can put this in terms the Nation might understand. Imagine there is a reading group that gets together to read Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and debate whether it is heretical or not. The shabby bookstore they meet in, several members of the group, and who knows what else, is probably one degree of separation or two from the Red Army Faction and the FARC. It’s a small world. This doesn’t mean everybody in the reading group is a Red.

Excellent translation.

NO MARRIAGE, PLEASE, We’re British: “The number of Britons tying the knot has collapsed to a record low, it has emerged. The proportion of men and women getting married is below any level found since figures were first kept nearly 150 years ago. . . . The evidence that marriage is withering away at an increasing pace was met with a furious response from critics of Labour’s benefits system, which disregards the status of husbands and wives and pays parents extra to stay single.” Well, that’s certainly going to produce the ideal society.

TALKLEFT on negative campaigning.

OH, JESUS, THIS IS PATHETIC:

Iraqi doctors in al-Anbar province warn of a new disease they call “Blackwater” that threatens the lives of thousands. The disease is named after Blackwater Worldwide, the U.S. mercenary company operating in Iraq.

No, actually that’s just a kind of malaria that’s gone by that name since the 19th Century, as Jules Crittenden points out. Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail, who reported this story, are either idiots or liars; the news service (IPS) that ran it is likewise. Are they that stupid — or do they think that you are?

UPDATE: More here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh: “This is just lame. Next time make up some fake documents or something.”

But hey, it’s not a complete failure of propaganda — some lefties have fallen for it.

HMM: Uranium Cache Linked to FARC Rebels. Stay tuned, and let’s see if this amounts to anything.

UPDATE: Hmm, the Miami Herald link above has gone bad. Here’s another. And here’s a report from Reuters.

MORE: A new Miami Herald link here. This story says the uranium isn’t bomb-grade. It may just be depleted uranium, though if the reports of what it was selling for are true then somebody was getting scammed . . . .