BRIAN WANG: DNA origami based nanomachine for future microsurgery and neuro-imaging sensors and direct cellular interaction.

HURRICANE IKE IS LOOKING LIKE A MAJOR THREAT TO TEXAS: Brendan Loy has more. If you live near the Texas coast, you should probably plan on skedaddling soon. More from Eric Berger.

AUSTIN BAY: Bin Laden’s Slow Rot. I hope it’s been painful, too.

I LINK TO this 9/11 memorial pretty much every year. I won’t be observing the day by giving shooting lessons to a Marine as I did a couple of years ago. I guess I’ll just do what I did 7 years ago, and blog. But here’s a piece by Lileks that’s worth a visit.

MICKEY KAUS: “Coulter and the Code Pink protesters in my Venice neighborhood have more in common than I thought.”

JESSE WALKER: “Ron Paul’s press conference today has been taking a beating in the Hit & Run comment threads, mostly from people who can’t see the point in appearing with non-libertarians like Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, and Chuck Baldwin. I’m more impressed that Paul managed to get two of the most prominent left-wing figures in the country to declare that ‘there should be no increase in the national debt’ and to attack the Fed’s ‘arbitrary power to create money and credit out of thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests.'”

DAMON ROOT ON CHARLES RANGEL: “Good grief. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee can’t hire a bilingual tax adviser?”

THIN GRUEL: I got an email yesterday with this heading: CBSNEWS.COM EXCLUSIVE: CBS NEWS INVESTIGATIVE UNIT OBTAINS AN EXCLUSIVE EMAIL PALIN WROTE JUSTIFYING THE INCREASE IN TAXES TO FUND THE SPORTS COMPLEX.

Oh, the scandal! Good work, CBS Investigative Unit! Only here’s the story, and it’s about . . . a mayor funding a sports complex. I’m against cities funding sports complexes — though this one is actually for people to use, rather than for overpaid professional athletes to make money in, so maybe not — but if this is what the crack CBS Investigative Unit has “obtained,” then, well, they don’t have anything: A document so innocuous that, even though it comes from CBS, I doubt it was faked . . . .

UPDATE: Meanwhile, the folks at the New York Times have forgotten about YouTube: “But the thing is I know that the crowd laughed — and Obama paused to encourage the crowd to laugh — after he said “You can put lipstick on a pig,” and before he said, “but it’s still a pig.” So it’s obvious to me that the NYT is not playing it straight. Does it make a whole lot of difference? Obama’s position is still defensible, but I hate to see the NYT helping him defend himself. Play it straight. Tell the truth. We have the video. We don’t have to trust you anymore.”

And they’re not exactly bending over backwards to earn that trust, either.

REIHAN SALAM on how the Republicans still don’t get the Web.

VIDEO: PIG VS. SUICIDE BOMBER. Advantage: Pig.

UPDATE: “Is it my imagination, or does that odd device the suicide bomber has strapped on his head bear a suspicious resemblance to a tube of lipstick?”

AFTER THIS, OBAMA MIGHT AGREE: Biden: Hillary a Better Pick Than Me.

UPDATE: More worries: According to an anonymous Democratic strategist quoted in The Politico: “Obama is struggling with working-class whites just like John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis did, and Walter Mondale. He’s struggling with voters in the border-state South. And he’s struggling with an enormous wind at his back, a hatred for George Bush and a mainstream media that is little short of a chorus for his campaign.” Yes, objectively Obama looks weaker than those earlier Democratic candidates, given his lackluster performance despite Bush’s problems and — admittedly, here — a compliant and supportive media environment.

SO I TURN ON THE TV AND GRETA VAN SUSTEREN IS IN FAIRBANKS, ALASKA WEARING A PARKA: That’s odd; I’ve been in Fairbanks in the summer and it was actually hot. Weather.com shows it as 59 degrees there, which isn’t hot, but hardly parka weather. Did some producer just figure that Alaska=parka? The folks in the background are wearing t-shirts.

UPDATE: Reader Bob Bayha emails: “Greta is in Anchorage…. 51 degrees and raining….” I would swear it said Fairbanks. But that’s still not parka weather. For me, anyway.

MARC DANZIGER: “It’s almost like they coordinated what they were doing…”

WALL STREET JOURNAL: “The era of big government is back, bigger than ever.” Spending was bad under a Republican Congress, and it’s worse under a Democratic one.

ERIC SCHEIE: ” Pat Robertson is black? Who knew?”

Plus, your community organizer questions answered, by Frank J.!

AN INTERVIEW WITH Neal Stephenson.

SOME FOREIGN POLICY QUESTIONS FOR SARAH PALIN: With suggested answers.

MORE ON LAW PROFESSORS’ POLITICAL DONATIONS, from Professor Bainbridge.

ELECTION 2008: A map of what people are reading. The map is redder than I would have expected. . . .

IN REASON, RADLEY BALKO ON SARAH PALIN: A decent libertarian pick. “As a libertarian, there’s plenty I like about Palin. I don’t agree with many of her culturally conservative positions, but she has for the most part declined to enshrine those views in public policy. Her lack of experience doesn’t bother me much at all. Washington’s in desperate need of fresh blood and fresh ideas, not the promotion of another five-term senator who’s found a permanent home in the Beltway morass. But what I like about Palin should bother McCain.” If you know Radley Balko, you’ll believe that . . . . .

He concludes: “Palin’s persona thus far seems to be more in the tradition of Alaska’s frontier, individualistic conservatism than John McCain’s Weekly Standard-style national greatness conservatism. It’s a philosophy that’s skeptical of government, instead of what Repubilcans stand for now, which is to embrace government, so long as Republicans are running it.” I’m with Radley on this one.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ to the McCain Campaign: Enough with the pig thing.

UPDATE: I see that Jerry Pournelle agrees.

FRED THOMPSON ON media hyperbole.

TAKING THE NIKON D90 out for a spin.

ALL YOU NEED TO BE VICE PRESIDENT is not to have had an abortion?

S.C. Dem chair: Palin primary qualification is she hasn’t had an abortion

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate “whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”

Palin is an opponent of abortion rights and gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, earlier this year after finding out during her pregnancy that the baby had Down syndrome.

Boy, I guess I really blew it then. . . .

UPDATE: The good news for me: Neal Devins says abortion politics are increasingly irrelevant. That’s why I need to milk this t-shirt photo while I still can! Backstory on that here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Why shouldn’t men have a right to have abortions? Men have the right to have babies! “It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.”

Brannon Denning and I have managed to work this Monty Python bit into a law review article on the Second Amendment.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Grahan Cooley emails: “A Monty Python reference without a ‘Palin’ joke? Come on, Glenn!” That would be too easy. The law review work-in was a challenge.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: The Obama Bubble. Plus, a warning to the Republicans: “Plus, the GOP may be experiencing its own bubble right now in the rising popularity of McCain running mate Sarah Palin. Maybe ‘Sarah America’ is an example of what Mackay meant by ‘some new folly more captivating than the first.’ Maybe American politics has become like the economy, one bubble seemingly leading to another. Maybe. But by the time this latest bubble begins to leak, the election may already be over.”

Optimistic slant: Daniel Gross says that bubbles are good for the economy. Could political bubbles be good for the public sphere?