VIDEO: A pro-Huckabee, anti-Thompson, push-poll.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON AGING BABY BOOMERS: Read the whole thing. I love the opening paragraph.

HIL FORCE ONE: But what about the greenhouse emissions? Don’t they care about the planet?

IS HUCKABEE’S APPEAL regionally limited?

THE QUEST FOR better body armor.

MORE ON L’Affaire Ron Paul. I’ve written before on the bizarre confluence of “neoconfederate libertarianism.”

THE TOP TEN NEW CARS from the Detroit Auto Show.

AN ARMY OF CLYDE TOMBAUGHS:

Three Racine sophomore students were notified on Monday that a celestial body they discovered during a science project had been verified as an asteroid.

The students at Racine’s Prairie School will be able to name the asteroid, temporarily identified as “2008 AZ28,” in about four years, according to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., the international authority on known objects in the solar system.

I actually wrote about this very phenomenon in An Army of Davids. Astronomical work that used to require a university is now routinely done by amateurs.

MICKEY KAUS makes himself popular with the netroots crowd.

MORE ON THE NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTE, at Ars Technica. Conclusion: “As of today, only sixteen states mandate both a voter-verified paper trail (VVPT) and a random manual audit of election results. The remaining 34 either don’t have a mandatory VVPT, don’t have mandatory audits, or don’t have either. So that’s 34 possibilities for a close presidential contest to produce the same blizzard of data, analysis, accusation, and uncertainty that we saw on a very small scale with New Hampshire. Let’s hope for a blow-out, landslide victory by one side, because I get tired just thinking about anything closer.”

Read the whole thing. And we really need much better security and auditability for voting. And voters.

SO WITH ABOUT 6,000 NEW VOTES since I asked people to hit this week’s Pajamas Straw Poll, the big winners are Fred Thompson and Barack Obama. Big losers: John Edwards and Mike Huckabee.

DON SURBER: “OK, this is a survey by Playboy. But I don’t read Playboy, so I got it from Political Wire.”

NO NEED TO PLAY NAME THAT PARTY HERE!

A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

A 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying—money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

I suspect that there’s a good deal more corruption of this type, actually.

BURNING OUT ON AMERICAN IDOL: “If it’s good, you’re supposed to bond. You’re supposed to care as these characters begin their journey into the months long sifting process. They prod you to bond by presenting mini-melodramas that emphasize the contestants’ close bonds to their mothers, their sick children, and their horses and kitties.” Kinda like the campaign, which a lot of people are burning out on already, too . . . .

REMEMBERING the Subaru SVX. I always thought those were kind of cool. Plus, unlike the WRX, they weren’t ugly as a monkey’s butt. I mean, the WRX is surprisingly fast, and it handles well, but . . . .

TRUST IN MEDIA PLUMMETS, especially on Iraq.

TECHNOLOGY MARCHES ON: The Cappucino Cam.

BLACKFIVE: Can we risk allowing Airbus to build our air fleets?

UPDATE: Reader Bill Reece emails:

I think that some further information is warranted than the glib one liner you posted in the link. The EADS proposal includes Northrop-Grumman as a major partner in the project. If the contract is awarded to EADS, it would build the airplanes in a new facility in Mobile, Alabama as part of a major capital investment in the U.S. economy with the likelihood that EADS would also expand its operations to include the construction of civilian aircraft as well.

The persons involved in the project from the bottom of the totem pole to nearly the top would be American workers living and paying taxes in the U.S. Boeing is every bit as much a “multi-national” corporation as is EADS. Many prominent American defense specialists and political figures have expressed no concern whatsoever on the issue of EADS building these planes and the only pending issue for the DOD to decide at this point is which proposal is overall most cost efficient and practicable for the U.S. Defense Department. Suggestions about anything else being a problem in this competition is mere paranoid chauvinism. In addition, while the governments that support EADS may not have a pristine record, at least EADS does not have a record of bribery and corruption in U.S. defense contracts such as its main competition has in its past.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am a resident of Mobile.

“Mere paranoid chauvinism” is probably a bit strong.

“UNCOMMITTED” delivers a victory speech in Michigan.

HEY, DO ME A FAVOR, and if you haven’t voted in the Pajamas staw poll — top of the right sidebar — this week, please do. I’d like to see how InstaPundit readers view the race now. (Bumped).

GOD, SCHMOD, I want my monkey-man!

Alternate take: “Now our future is going to be a mix of both Terminator and Planet of the Apes.” Couldn’t it be more like Barbarella?

GOOD NEWS, OR BAD? I’m not sure. U.S. Economy: Inflation Slows, Production Unchanged.

UH OH: “Europe’s economies show signs of slowing significantly even as inflation rates rise, introducing the word ‘stagflation’ into the scenarios that some economists are sketching out for 2008.” Given that the United States’ economy is clearly slowing, if not clearly in recession, we need stronger growth elsewhere to help mitigate the effects. I doubt we’ll see that, though.

MONICA LEWINSKY — source of a “lasting stain” on mainstream media? Out, damned spot!

FRED THOMPSON smacks the Department of Justice on the Second Amendment case.