IT AIN’T EASY BEING GREEN: “Greenpeace opposes genetically enhanced (GE) rice. Greenpeace opposes man-made global warming. What to do when a company proposes to sell GE rice that cuts greenhouse gas emissions to Chinese farmers who can then earn greenhouse gas offset credits?”

LONGEVITY UPDATE: A roundup from The Economist.

HEH: Voter cited by opponents of Indiana’s ID law registered in two states.

THE LEFTY BLOGGERS WILL NOT BE HAPPY: Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is now up to #31 on Amazon.

NEWSPAPER WOES hurting the Spelling Bee.

MORE ON RON PAUL, from Rand Simberg.

A CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY in San Francisco: “The City of San Francisco has lost its appeal to get its gun ban reinstated.”

MICHAEL YON: Moment of Truth:

There’s only a small group of writers who honestly spend enough time in Iraq to make serious claims based on firsthand accounts. But I’ve seen the Iraqi Army with my own eyes. I’ve done many missions in 2005 and 2007, in many places in Iraq, along with the Iraqi Army: please believe me when I say that, on the whole, the Iraqi Army is remarkably better in 2007 and far more effective than it was in 2005. By 2007, the Iraqis were doing most of the fighting. And . . . this is very important . . . they see our Army and Marines as serious allies, and in many cases as friends. Please let the potential implications of that sink in.

We now have a large number of American and British officers who can pick up a phone from Washington or London and call an Iraqi officer that he knows well—an Iraqi he has fought along side of—and talk. Same with untold numbers of Sheiks and government officials, most of whom do not deserve the caricatural disdain they get most often from pundits who have never set foot in Iraq. British and American forces have a personal relationship with Iraqi leaders of many stripes. The long-term intangible implications of the betrayal of that trust through the precipitous withdrawal of our troops could be enormous, because they would be the certain first casualties of renewed violence, and selling out the Iraqis who are making an honest-go would make the Bay of Pigs sell-out seem inconsequential. The United States and Great Britain would hang their heads in shame for a century.

Alternately, in an equation in which the outcome is a stable Iraq for which they (Iraqi Police and Army officials) are stewards, the potential benefits are equally enormous. Because if Iraq were to settle down, and then a decade passes and we look back and even our most severe critics cannot deny that Iraq is a better place, a generation of Iraq’s most important leaders would have deep personal bonds with their counterparts in America and Great Britain. This could actually happen.

Read the whole thing. He’s got a book coming out in April. Hit the tipjar, or preorder his book, if you want to help.

THE FUEL-CELL POWERED Cadillac Provoq. As I’ve mentioned before, it all depends on where the hydrogen comes from.

ADVICE ON COMPARING BLU-RAY PLAYERS. At CES, everyone seemed convinced that Sony has won the format wars.

I’ve been pretty happy with my Blu-Ray player, though I don’t have a fancy home-theater audio setup. I believe, however, that it supports all the new audio features that I don’t use.

VIDEO: Making your own vacuum tubes. (Thanks to Telford Forgety for the link.)

AT WIRED, some highlights from MacWorld.

“YOU CAN’T SWING A CAT IN THIS TOWN WITHOUT HITTING A BLOGGER.” It’s been said before, but it’s still true. I was at the Fresh Market picking up stuff for dinner and wound up with my Highlander Hybrid parked next to Randy “SKBubba” Neal‘s Prius. We caught up a bit and he said he still loves the Prius. He thinks that nuclear power and plug-in hybrids are the wave of the future. I hope he’s right.

VIDEO: Hands-on with new gaming gadgets.

TOM MAGUIRE on The Impending Obama Media Backlash.

TECHNOLOGY FOR LIVING: A look at the Next-Gen Home.

SOME PROMISING NEWS ON civil rights in Georgia.

THE RING ON ZARQAWI’S FINGER: Michael Totten posts a new report from Iraq.

OBAMA’S NEW LINE: “Yes we can!”

He’s channeling Bob the Builder. Well, there are worse role models, though this may play into that whole “inexperience” thing . . . .

UPDATE: Hey, maybe this explains why Obama’s doing so well with the youth vote!

JOHN FUND ON VOTER FRAUD: How can anyone object to asking for ID?

Our podcast interview with Fund on this topic is here.

LEFTY BLOGGERS WILL WAIL AND GNASH THEIR TEETH as Jonah Goldberg’s new book sits comfortably high in the Amazon rankings at #49. But they can at least post “reader reviews” calling him the real fascist!

ED MORRISSEY: What happened to the Ron Paul supporters?

HERE’S MORE ON CLAIMS THAT Diebold stole New Hampshire for Hllary: “There are so many variables in an election result that to put Hillary’s win down to jiggery-pokery without any real evidence is over the top.” Yep, but also par for the course in some circles . . . .

BYRON YORK: “We’ll be hearing a lot about the need for a critical reassessment of polling practices after Hillary Clinton’s victory yesterday. If there was any totally accepted, absolutely unquestioned belief among the press here in New Hampshire in the last few days, it was that Barack Obama was going to win, and probably win big. The only real question was whether Clinton was dead, or just nearly dead.”

Obviously the discrepancy between the polls and the result can only be explained by fraud. I blame Diebold!

A ROUNDUP OF flash-memory-based HD camcorders.