TAPPING THE Great Plains oil bonanza.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Working with the tribes in Iraq: An interview with Marine Capt. Quintin Jones.

OLLIE JOHNSTON, the last of the classic Disney animation team known as the Nine Old Men has died. He was 95. “It was difficult to see all that Ollie was doing when you flipped his original drawings, because he didn’t push his key poses as far as Milt [Kahl] did graphically, or as far as Frank did performance-wise… but when you saw Ollie’s scenes the way they were intended to be seen– at 24 frames a second– all the beautiful nuances became crystal clear; and his characters were as sympathetic and as full of life as anything seen on screen.”

MORE Wikipedia shenanigans.

HE SEEMS TO BE DOING PRETTY WELL: Obama releases 2007 tax returns. Adjusted Gross income: $4.1 million.

GERAGHTY VS. SULLIVAN on Clinton and Obama.

UPDATE: And here’s Marc Ambinder’s scorecard.

SHOULD LAW SCHOOLS block Internet access in classrooms? Another round of discussion.

PROTESTERS MARCH AHEAD OF OLYMPIC TORCH IN INDIA: “Hundreds of Tibetan protesters marched through central Delhi on Thursday morning shouting ‘Die for Freedom’ hours before the Olympic torch was due to be carried through the Indian capital.”

The sentiment’s admirable, but I’d prefer to adapt Patton’s dictum.

AIRLINE MERGERS: Less a threat to travel costs than hub monopolies.

“IT’S INEVITABLE:” A nuclear attack on Washington.

20 COUPLES, 20 COUCHES: Via Sarah Pullman.

“GOAT RODEO?”

SOME COOL iPhone photos from New York, by Missy Schwartz.

DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Police Shoot Wild Cougar in Chicago.

Related item here. And there may be more.

UPDATE: No, it wasn’t a Canadian Cougar.

FROM BAGHDAD WITH LOVE: It’s sort of a military version of Rescuing Sprite.

A REVIEW OF THE NEW 9″ Asus Eee PC.

IS YOUR CELLPHONE CARRIER tracking your location?

LIVEBLOGGING the Clinton / Obama debate.

UPDATE: More liveblogging here and here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Josh Marshall liveblogged most of it, but wasn’t impressed: “It’s been genuinely awful.”

MORE: John Podhoretz: “It’s clear this is Obama’s worst performance of the entire campaign, and judging from the pained expression on his face, he knows it.” Plus this: “Early pulse-taking from Obama-centric blogs and bloggers indicates that Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos are in for a world of hurt over the next couple of days.”

Video here and here.

And here’s a postdebate discussion thread at TalkLeft.

And Freeman Hunt invokes Atlas Shrugged.

Best catch from Salena Zito: Obama considers Dick Cheney “wise?”

Finally, an endorsement Obama could live without. And a big roundup of reactions.

IAIN MURRAY ON BUSH ON GLOBAL WARMING: “The President, as I mentioned below, stepped back from calling for a ruinous cap and trade scheme, but his speech still lays out a blueprint for slow motion economic decline. . . . President Bush has unfortunately moved the debate toward energy rationing policies that will raise the electricity and gasoline prices paid by consumers.”

What we need are nice, clean, environmentally-friendly nuclear plants. But hell, we can’t even get wind power.

BUT OF COURSE: BitterAmericans.com.

AN XP VERSION OF HP’s Mini-Note subnotebook. Sounds nice.

ROBOTS TAKING CARE OF THE ELDERLY: Not that the haters will give them any credit for their selfless actions. Robophobes don’t care about the facts.

NEW DVD RELEASES: I can’t believe Juno is aready out on DVD. Seems like it was just in theaters.

HUFFINGTON POST: Hillary Clinton On Southern Working Class Whites In 1995: “Screw ‘Em”.

Well, that language should win over the Kos Krowd!

OOPS: “Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken’s personal corporation didn’t file corporate income tax returns in California from 2003 to 2007.”