THIS SEEMS LIKE OVERREACH, even for Canada’s kangaroo-court “Human Rights” Commissions:

The entire blogosphere was put on trial during the second day of a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal hearing into an excerpt of a controversial book published in Maclean’s.

Of course, since half the blogs in creation seem to have covert HRC investigators/provocateurs posting racist comments, maybe it’s fair . . . . (emphasis added).

MORE ON REZKO, from Rick Moran: “While the governor and other top politicians in the state almost certainly should be worried about what Rezko might tell the prosecutor, no one can say for sure if Rezko would have anything of interest to spill about Barack Obama.”

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus on “Fitzmas in reverse.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeralyn Merritt: “Second, as to Obama, this trial was not about him. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest any connection between him and the illegal activity charged in the case. The Government said so. Obama’s name was barely mentioned at the trial. Rezko’s case is important in the context of government corruption in Illinois.”

MORE: Reader William Boggess emails:

I would kindly reinforce, as a resident of Illinois, that the Rezko trial is precisely an indictment of Illinois politics, and that Senator Obama is a direct product of that system. No more, no less. Republican or Democrat, at the state level, they’ve become intertwined, fighting over the spoils. There is a very specific reason that the second largest FBI office in the entire US is in Chicago. The level of corruption is to a point where it’s considered part of the “normal cost of doing business”, right down to garbage collection. It’s that pervasive. And taxes are the legal side of the extortion racket.

You have NO idea.

Well, I have some idea.

19 YEARS AFTER THE TIANANMEN SQUARE MASSACRE: “In Sichuan, it turns to anger as parents demand to know why 6,898 schools collapsed during the quake while government buildings remained standing. As the nation mourns, it will begin to remember the deaths it has been forbidden to recall: not only the thousands who were slaughtered in 1989, but the tens of millions who died under Mao’s rule during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The government leaders know that despite their efforts to erase history, the wounds inflicted by past repression are festering. With each anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre it becomes clearer that behind the bravado, the party is as fearful as a deer caught in the headlights.”

“AN AXE TO GRIND, AND PLENTY OF FURY TO TURN THE WHEEL.” Jon Henke asks: “Why does the Right side of the blogosphere have less traffic, a smaller audience, than the Left side of the blogosphere?”

UPDATE: Various readers complain about Henke’s reliance on Alexa.com ratings. That’s a fair criticism, to a degree — the numbers are based on the rather thin network of people who’ve downloaded the Alexa toolbar to their browsers. If even a few dozen InstaPundit readers added the Alexa toolbar it would probably produce a noticeable upswing in the rankings of InstaPundit and the blogs I link to.

Meanwhile, reader Arthur Krannawitter has a different theory: “Subtract gov. … org. univ., etc., blog hits by public employees surfing on paid time with public equipment and the lefty blog numbers would decrease dramatically– visit any govt., school, firehouse or other public office and witness this yourself – it’s nomenclatura blogging endlessly to and about each other … posit on your blog that this is true — it’s bored, nothing else to do, public employees who repeatedly hit left web sites all day long… private sector workers aren’t allowed this unrestricted, free use of office internet facilities, that’s why they listen to their own radios.” Well, possibly. On the other hand, rightish and libertarian blogs are a breath of fresh air in public-sector areas. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bruce Bridges emails:

Well Jeez Glenn, I never heard of Alexa.

But as a loyal reader I thought I’d install the toolbar. Surprise, they don’t have one for Safari. So that eliminates the vast majority of my web work since I find Safari a more stable browser.

Don’t see how you can follow web traffic if you are ignoring a specific demographic like that.

Yeah, good point.

GUILTY: “Tony Rezko — the high-flying developer and fast-food magnate who was once a major campaign fund-raiser for Gov. Blagojevich and Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and one of the governor’s closest advisers — is now a convicted felon. A federal jury in Chicago convicted Rezko this afternoon on 16 of 24 charges he faced in a political corruption trial that cast a harsh light on the Blagojevich administration. . . . Now, facing the prospect of prison time in the corruption case, as well as two additional criminal trials on unrelated charges, Rezko is under pressure to cooperate with the continuing investigations.” (Via JWF).

MORE ON RESVERATROL: “Most striking was how the resveratrol, like calorie restriction, blocked the decline in heart function typically associated with aging, according to Tomas Prolla, a University of Wisconsin professor of genetics who helped lead the study. . . . In this study, mice were given relatively low doses compared to the earlier research, and still experienced important aging-related benefits, the researchers said.” Actual study here.

And here’s a related story.

A REVIEW OF THE NEW 2009 FORD ESCAPE HYBRID:

The Escape Hybrid still comes with a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Ford’s engineers have eliminated the transmission’s endlessly annoying, never-shifting whine; it finally works, feels and sounds like a standard autobox. Ford’s hybrid team has also created a brake simulation module to convince Escape drivers there are normal, non-regenerative stoppers underfoot. Job done. Perhaps most importantly, the Escape’s noise, vibration and harshness levels have been reduced significantly.

The review’s still kinda lukewarm, though. And Ford’s losing money on them.

HEH: “Is there anything quite like having 2,400 delegates from 162 Nations all jetting in to Bonn, Germany for a summit on–you guessed it–Climate Change?”

JIM LINDGREN IS TRYING TO DEBUNK Internet rumors about Michelle Obama. “Until today, the rumors have been too vague to be debunked, but they have now become specific enough that the currently most prominent version of the rumor could potentially be determined to be false.”

BOINGBOING TV: Joel Johnson takes the military’s combat translator gadget for a test run in Brooklyn.

GENDER DISCUSSIONS and Metafilter censorship?

HOW THE WORLD sees Obama’s win.

Plus, they certainly like him here.

GETTING 73 MPG IN A PRODUCTION CAR: “A group of German motor journalists managed to get 3.2 l/100 km (73 mpg U.S.) in a Skoda Fabia TDI Greenline. The car had a 1.4 TDI (diesel) engine good for 80 HP. The thirty-six journalists (we’re guessing not all of them at the same time) drove the Czech subcompact for 124 km (about 80 miles), using normal highways between Austria and Germany and never going below 60 km/h (40 mph). The only ‘trick’ they used was maintaining as constant a speed as possible.”

DON’T MESS WITH ANGELINA JOLIE: “If anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I’ve no problem shooting them.”

THE FIVE TOP TOOLS, according to Toolmonger.

JOANNE JACOBS: “When did kindergarten teachers get so mean?”

IRAQ IN REAL TIME: Here’s a very positive review of J.D. Johannes’ Iraq documentary, Outside The Wire.

UPDATE: Ack! Link above was wrong before. Fixed now. And here’s part two of the review.

RICK HILLS: Why I am an anti-intellectual. “Being anti-intellectual is not the same as being anti-intellect. My beef is with a particular social class — the ‘intelligentsia’ — and not with the practice of using one’s intellect to reflect on experience. In my experience, intellectuals (as a class) are ideologically intolerant, easily offended by ordinary humor, and pretentious in their prejudices, which they disguise as universal truths.” The comments are delightful, especially the two from Stuart Buck. (Via Volokh).

IF GPS GETS KNOCKED OUT, the government has a backup plan. “This year, the Department of Homeland Security decided that a 30-year-old navigation system used by mariners will be upgraded to back up GPS. The decision preserves the Long-Range Aids to Navigation (LORAN) network, which has been teetering on the verge of forced retirement since the 1980s, according to the Coast Guard’s Navigation Center.”

IN THE MAIL: Robert Zimmerman’s The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It.

MARC AMBINDER: Clinton supporters offer to help McCain.

ZIMBABWE UPDATE: “Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans — orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out — have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance as their government has clamped down on international aid groups it says are backing the political opposition, relief agencies say. . . . Food distribution is not only a matter of life and death to recipients, but it’s a strategic political resource that the government deploys to promote its political agenda.”

POLITICO: Exit polls show challenge for Obama: “On the night that Barack Obama clinched his party’s nomination, one-third of Hillary Clinton’s supporters in Montana and South Dakota said they would not vote for the presumptive Democratic nominee.” Most people who feel this way will change their mind by November, but the election hangs on just how many constitute “most.”

UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

I’VE MENTIONED THE FLIP VIDEO CAMERA several times, but now here’s a favorable review of an alternative, the Creative Vado Video Cam.