HOLLOW DOCTRINE: Noah Pollak on Spencer Ackerman on Obama’s foreign policy.

HUGO CHAVEZ: Anybody but McCain.

RADLEY BALKO on professional protectionism.

JAY AMBROSE: Free Tibet, like Hong Kong. “In Hong Kong, your motive for granting a high degree of autonomy was making money. In Tibet, the motive would be decency.”

MORE ON the housing market: “Oddly enough, the objectively reasonable price is always above what the buyers paid for it, after commissions.”

VETERANS FOR FREEDOM, in Minnesota.

AGREEMENT/DISAGREEMENT WITH KOS, at TalkLeft.

LOU MINATTI: How we wound up with Bush.

MATT WELCH MAKES A LIBERTARIAN CASE AGAINST MCCAIN, in The New York Times. “McCain is often mischaracterized as a politician without any identifiable ideology. But all of his actions can be seen as an attempt to use the federal government to restore your faith in … the federal government. Once we all put our shoulder on the same wheel, there’s nothing this country can’t do.”

UPDATE: Reader Charles Martin emails:

I can see a libertarian case against McCain, but you go to an election with the candidates you’ve got. Does Matt really think McCain would be *more* of a libertarian disaster than “It takes a village”/”We’re doing it for your own good” Clinton or the “it would be a mandate, but it’s a *voluntary* mandate” Messiah of Change?

Yeah, it’s easier to make a libertarian case against McCain than to make a libertarian case for Clinton and Obama.

Of course, to be fair, the McCain angle is a natural for Matt.

THOUGHTS ON improving the U.S. News law school rankings.

WHEN FIGURE-SKATING METAPHORS GO TOO FAR: “In this metaphor, presumably, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would be Oksana Baiul.”

AN OIL FOR STOOGES DEAL? Heh. It certainly suggests that members of Congress shouldn’t be accepting “charity”-funded trips to the lands of our enemies. And someone should be asking Bonior, McDermott, and Thompson — and Hillary and Obama — some questions.

OBAMA IN TEXAS: In Texas, the Obama campaign tries to win over Clinton’s county convention delegates. I think this may be something of a blog-scoop.

PUNDITS WHO GET THINGS WRONG: “Paul Krugman has been predicting imminent recession with . . . er . . . depressing regularity since George Bush got elected; I doubt he thinks he should have had his column pulled the first time his prediction didn’t pan out.”

OH NO: Linking with approval!

BLOG WISDOM FROM BILL QUICK: “Folks, I’m going to take a week’s vacation. I’m starting to take this whole blog thing way too seriously.”

It’s the wisdom of Justin Sodano.

But such promises usually work out like this: “I said I would blog less last week, and I didn’t do that well. I’ll try harder this week.”

IS SOCIAL SECURITY gettting less broke? That seems too good to be true, but I certainly hope that it is true.

HEH: Now, it turns out, Obama’s related to Brad Pitt, and Hillary’s related to Angelina Jolie. So Brad Pitt is also related to Dick Cheney?

TELEGRAPH: Study: Modern Men Feel Emasculated. I believe the survey involved British men, but Britblogger Cat is unhappy.

HARDBALL, INDEED: McCain Asks When Hillary Clinton Will Apologize to Gen. Petraeus. Video at the link. (Via John Stephenson).

MICKEY KAUS: “In North Carolina, Obama doesn’t seem to be losing ground.”

FAST FRIENDS: Hillary Clinton and . . . Richard Mellon Scaife?

FROM ILYA SOMIN, more on Medellin v. Texas.

ANNE APPLEBAUM:

“The Olympic Games are not the place for demonstrations.” Aren’t they? Actually, the Olympics seem an ideal place for demonstrations. . . . No one involved in the preparations for this year’s Olympics really believes that this is “only about the athletes,” or that the Beijing Games will be an innocent display of sporting prowess, or that they bear no relation to Chinese politics. I don’t see why the rest of us should believe those things, either.

That’s what the Chinese are afraid of.

I DON’T THINK MCPEAK IS AN ASSET: Obama advisor: US Jews hinder peace.