POLL: McCain/Condi beats Clinton/Obama — in New York. I doubt we’ll see either pairing, and I doubt polls mean a lot at this point. But still. . . .

REBOOTING AMERICA: A Personal Democracy essay contest.

WHAT HATH ASUS WROUGHT? A look at HP’s new low-cost subnotebook.

A LOOK AT hypocrisy on Colombia free trade.

HP SELLING INFECTED FLASH-FLOPPY DRIVES: Reportedly, they were infected at the factory. Publicizing the factory name and location would seem to be a useful deterrent, but the story doesn’t mention those.

THE ECONOMY: 1996 vs. 2008.

BARR VS. BOORTZ on illegal immigration.

WHEN “SCIENCE” IS ABOUT taking sides instead of those annoying facts and numbers.

WHY OBAMA HAS BEEN SILENT ON TIBET: As Chicago Bids for Games, Obama Ducks Olympics Criticism. “Chicago is vying to host the 2016 games and one of Obama’s top campaign advisors and close friends, Valerie Jarrett, is the vice chair of Chicago’s bid committee.”

INDOCTRINATION CONTINUES at the University of Delaware.

THE SILENCE OF THE SOCK PUPPETS.

LANNY DAVIS: “I have tried to get over my unease surrounding Barack Obama’s response to the sermons and writings of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. But the unanswered questions remain.”

GAMING WHILE COLOR BLIND: “Eventually I realized there were blue, green, AND red people in the game. *sigh* Green and blue guys are teammates. Red guys are enemies. That seems simple enough, except that I couldn’t tell the green guys from the red guys.”

TWO AMERICAS: Here’s the one with fancy houses and big political donations.

PHIL CARTER’S INTEL DUMP BLOG has moved to the Washington Post. Congratulations, Phil!

PHILIP CHASTON: “UN spots crisis and pleads cash is not such a good headline, though more truthful.”

BARRON YOUNGSMITH OF THE NEW REPUBLIC EMAILS:

Several Rush Limbaugh listeners have been calling us today about a New Republic piece about Jeremiah Wright’s former religion. There’s been a lot of talk about the piece, so we thought you and your readers might like a link to the original article. Here’s the relevant passage:

After many lectures like this, Obama decided to take a second look at Wright’s church. Older pastors warned him that Trinity was for “Buppies”–black urban professionals–and didn’t have enough street cred. But Wright was a former Muslim and black nationalist who had studied at Howard and Chicago, and Trinity’s guiding principles–what the church calls the “Black Value System”–included a “Disavowal of the Pursuit of ‘Middleclassness.'”

And a link to the piece: (Link)

Ryan Lizza is a former senior editor at TNR, and now the politics correspondent for the New Yorker. Hope it’s of some interest.

It may be.

UPDATE: Ralph Luker wants more information from Lizza on Wright’s alleged Muslim past, though weirdly he makes this demand of me. In my constitutional-law capacity, however, I’ll note that Luker severely misunderstands the point of the Constitution’s provision regarding religious tests, which applies only to government rules, not voters’ preferences.

To me, at any rate, Wright’s well-documented antisemitism and anti-white bigotry — and Obama’s long-term acquiescence in the same — is of more interest than an alleged Muslim past. Perhaps Luker would be willing to comment on those issues, particularly the latter, which seem more relevant to me. Somehow I think that if a white Republican were an adherent of Christian Identity theology, Luker wouldn’t be invoking the “religious test” language.

ELECTRICITY FROM DIRT? Plus, “green gasoline?”

THE NAME IS PRETTY SELF-EXPLANATORY: IraqStatusReport.com.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, we’d see taxpayer-funded religious schools.

And they were right!