MICKEY KAUS: Edwards and the Agony of the MSM. “Has the gap between what the MSM lets you know and what happened–and what you can easily find out happened–ever been greater?”

And, in an entirely unrelated development: Profits Drop 82% at New York Times. And more bad news across the industry.

DOG BITES MAN: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1.

CARLY FIORINA?

JERRY POURNELLE: “The news from Turkey is terrible, and the US State Department thinks it is good news.”

JACK SHAFER: Why the Press Is Ignoring the Edwards “Love Child” Story.

ROBERT SAMUELSON: “The specter of depression stalks America. You hear the word repeatedly. Are we in a depression? If not, are we headed for one? The answer to the first question is no; the answer to the second is ‘almost certainly not.’ The use of ‘depression’ to describe the economy is a case of rhetorical overkill that speaks volumes about today’s widespread pessimism and anxiety. A short history lesson shows why.”

Under an Obama Presidency, by contrast, the use of the word “depression” will be forbidden.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON THE HOUSING BILL:

Instead of moving to put FM/FM into a more easily understood model–either nationalizing them, or privatising–they’re making the GSEs even weirder, and of course, piling on more debt.

It’s time for Congress to bite the bullet: nationalize them, or take them private. But keeping pet companies on a leash so that you can use them as a sort of housing market slush fund, while pretending that the liabilities you thereby create don’t really affect the government, is the kind of thing one expects to see in a banana republic, not a free and prosperous nation.

I sometimes think that our political class would prefer a banana republic, as they’d be able to steal more and lord it over the common folk to a greater extent. And then there’s the bill on oil speculation:

The first thing I think is that my liberal friends should stop saying their party is more credible on economic issues. Because this is even stupider than McCain’s doubling down on the gas tax holiday–and McCain’s gas tax mania is plenty stupid. At least McCain’s gas tax manipulations won’t actually do something except give a small amount of additional money to oil companies and loathesome governments. This monstrous bill, on the other hand, might actually do some damage.

As the song says, “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

STEPPING UP ON NON-FOOD-BASED BIOFUELS: “DuPont Co. has joined a state initiative to build the first pilot-scale biorefinery in the U.S. that would take corncobs and switchgrass grown on Tennessee farms and convert the biomass into ethanol for fuel. The announcement today by Gov. Phil Bredesen and DuPont officials marks a change in development partners for the University of Tennessee-managed cellulosic ethanol project.”

Corn-based ethanol is idiotic. This isn’t. Plus, Joe Lieberman is pushing a FlexFuel plan that’s a sort of lite version of Bob Zubrin’s.

CAR LUST: Remembering the Avanti.

Other Avanti memories here, from Paul Boutin.

MCCAIN keeps up attacks on Obama.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: World oil prices keep tumbling.

Plus Gold down, dollar up.

TAKING A VERY EXPANSIVE VIEW of what constitutes “my deeds.”

I’VE HEARD PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THE “DRIVE-BY MEDIA,” BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS: Robert Novak yields to no one.

PATTERICO: Der Spiegel rewrote entire Maliki interview.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Anti-war protester spits on Iraq war veteran. But don’t question their patriotism!

UPDATE: Reader Kevin Maguire emails: “I don’t think that’s a fair description of that video. Unless the guy holding the camera, who was spat upon, was in uniform – and there’s no evidence that he is (or that he isn’t) – it seems to me that ‘protester spits on counter-protester’ would be a better description.”

MURDER CHARGES DROPPED AFTER CONFESSION PROVES BOGUS: You get a lot of these, though I wonder what percentage wind up being accepted, leaving the case closed and the actual killer free.

JIM LINDGREN HAS MORE on mandatory volunteerism. A stealth effort to bring back the draft?

PHOTO OPS AND FAKE INTERVIEWS.

I DON’T THINK SO: Paying for the privilege of recycling?

A BIG EMINENT DOMAIN FIGHT in Nashville.

ANDREW BOLT: The Great Victim Hunt.

BOSTON GLOBE: How a gun-hating family from Billerica produced an Olympic shooter. Yes, the Boston Globe.

“I was very anti-gun when my kids were little,” says Scherer’s mother, Sue, who works a number of different jobs, including cleaning and painting houses, running a day care, and organizing Jeopardy!-style entertainment for nursing homes. “I always thought, `Guns are bad. Guns kill people.’ So, I didn’t want my kids to have anything to do with guns.”

Read the whole thing. (Via Dave Hardy, who sees a countercultural angle).

RON BAILEY POSTS HIS WRAPUP from the Oxford Catastrophic Risks Conference. Note that nanotechnology risks could be significantly reduced by widespread adoption of the Foresight Guidelines for responsible nanotechnology.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Joe Klein’s scurrilous meltdown. “If Klein wants to get all outraged about something, he should get outraged retrospectively about how Obama and many Democrats were ready and even eager to embrace defeat. If Klein wants to worry about who is unsuited for the presidency, he ought to recognize that if Obama had been President two years ago, we would have suffered a humiliating defeat in Iraq that would have repercussions for decades.” Read the whole thing.

Reader C.J. Burch, who sent the link, adds: “The deal here is that the press longed for this defeat, planned on it, celebrated it and now grieve horribly that they have missed it. Anything else they say is nonsense.”

Yes. Had we followed Obama’s advice, we’d be having another Vietnam. And some people wouldn’t have minded.

UPDATE: Okay, you really do need to read the whole thing. But here’s a bit more: “The point is that Obama’s judgment would have led this country to jump headlong into defeat. We now must decide if we want this man making choices about things that will arise in the future. Why is it necessary to spell it out again and again that we need to use past judgments to predict future judgments about new matters? I feel like an annoying pedant saying this again. But the reason it’s necessary is that journalists like Klein are covering for Obama.”

Are they ever. More on Joe Klein’s meltdown at Hot Air. “If the rest of the media is chest-deep in the tank for Obama, Klein’s already fully submerged.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Much more at military blog Blackfive. “As I recall, up until about late April, ‘everyone’ believed the Surge had failed and al Sadr was going to take over the world. Greyhawk declared the war was won in the fall (and he was there — I know, because I was there with him). Michael Yon declared it was won last week, which seems to have rung the bell for the major media. Suddenly, ‘anybody knows’ the war ‘cannot be lost.’ This is an astonishing turnaround by the major media . . . What Sen. McCain is saying is that Sen. Obama is admitting that he wouldn’t have done what it took to win the war, even with the benefit of hindsight knowledge.”

MORE: Tom Maguire defends Joe Klein. Well, kinda.

YOUR HOMELAND SECURITY TAX DOLLARS AT WORK:

At that point, Perry was standing in his underwear in public view. He asked to see a supervisor. That made things worse.

“She was yelling ‘I have power, I have power, I have power,” Perry said. The power to stop him from flying to Florida with his wife that day to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

When the airlines collapse, this will be why. And why haven’t the Democrats made an issue of this?

UPDATE: I’ve written about this subject before, and this column has stood the test of time, alas.