PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Goldberg versus Obama; Service versus Servitude.

IRAQ WANTS A WITHDRAWAL TIMETABLE? They’re talking 2011. Tell ’em “sure.” There’s probably a fair-sized haggling component here, but it doesn’t matter: If they want us to leave, we should say “no problem.” Saddam’s gone, the insurgency’s back is broken, and while big U.S. bases in the area might be a stabilizing force in the region, they might not. Leaving because the elected Iraqi government asks us to is winning, not turning tail and ensuring defeat, which is what we would have done had we listened to Obama, the Iraq Study Group, et al. a couple of years ago.

Of course, ideally we’d leave via Tehran and Riyadh . . . .

STUDY: Gays in military would not be disruptive. Plus, a poll.

WORST CONGRESS EVER: “Remember when only 14% approved of the job Congress is doing? A year later, only 9% do.” The Pelosi/Reid leadership team is taking Congress places it’s never been before!

UPDATE: So why are the Republicans running scared, and why aren’t they going after the “new Democratic Congress” hammer-and-tongs? Beats me. Because they’re idiots, I guess.

MICHAEL SILENCE: Some observations on interstate travel this summer.

MORE FROM RACHEL LUCAS ON THE DECLINE OF BRITAIN. When the police are widely seen as the dependable allies of hoodlums, you’ve got a country that’s ripe for some sort of revolution. Any wonder that so many Brits are emigrating?

LONDON TIMES: Barack Obama’s Berlin visit sparks German diplomatic row. “But, say advisers to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, it would be tantamount to giving the German stamp of approval to Mr Obama, an undue interference in the election campaign. ‘The Brandenburg Gate is the best known and most historically significant site in Germany,’ said a Chancellery official, explaining why until now only elected presidents have been allowed to perform there.”

RICHARD MORGAN, author of Thirteen and the various Takeshi Kovacs novels such as Altered Carbon, is now blogging at Omnivoracious.

ARE WE IN THE PEAK OF AN OIL BUBBLE? Quite possibly, even though the long-term trend is clearly up.

THIS FRIDAY, THE 11TH, there will be a rally for Second Amendment rights in Chicago.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over. Including a reference to sex and bacon. Nobody tell John Scalzi!

CANADA: An example to the world?

Some will regard it as alarming that, in current times, world leadership should rest with Canada. But the Canadian Tories are a model of how to behave during a downturn.

They have kept spending in check and reduced taxes. They are playing their full role in world affairs, notably in Afghanistan.

Rather than canting about saving the world (Mr Harper, in his quiet and courteous way, is a Kyoto-sceptic) they have addressed themselves to curing remediable ills and, above all, to putting their own affairs in order.

If the rest of the world had comported itself with similar modesty and prudence, we might not be in this mess.

Read the whole thing.

PROTECTING US FROM EVIL ONION SPECULATORS, with predictable results.

COMING SOON: A hybrid Ferrari? I’m guessing it’ll be more about the torque than the MPG.

THE A.P.: covering all the angles. Well, this way one of the stories has to be right . . . . If I were AP, though, I’d be worried that so much of the blog-criticism directed at AP comes from bloggers who are newspapermen, and hence customer-owners of the service.

MORE CANCER THERAPIES USING NANOTECHNOLOGY: “The first oral, broad-spectrum angiogenesis inhibitor, specially formulated through nanotechnology, shows promising anticancer results in mice, report researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston. . . . While a number of angiogenesis inhibitors, such as Avastin, are now commercially available, most target only single angiogenic factors, such as VEGF, and they are approved only for a small number of specific cancers. In contrast, Lodamin prevented capillary growth in response to every angiogenic stimulus tested. Moreover, in mouse models, Lodamin reduced liver metastases, a fatal complication of many cancers for which there is no good treatment.” (Via NanoDot).

JONAH GOLDBERG: “The story of the South’s sloughing off of racism and its movement into the GOP fold, is one of the most egregiously under-told and distorted tales of modern political history. . . . The bigotry aimed at the South never ceases to amaze me. Indeed, it is astounding to me how the left tells us we need to understand the nuance of, say, the Jihadi mind in all of its shades of gray, but when it comes to the voting habits of law-abiding white North Carolinians all you need to know is that if a white hand pulls a lever for a Republican politician, that hand must be attached to a racist.”

HEADLINES THAT TELL YOU WE’RE LIVING IN THE 21ST CENTURY: For Future of Mind Control, Robot-Monkey Trials Are Just a Start.

EXTREME MORTMAN: Busting the food police in Denver.

LOOKING FOR ALTERNATIVE FUELS? The DOE’s national locator map should help. Plus, a report on the next-generation Prius: “The solar panels could also be used to keep the ventilation system running on hot days while the car is parked. That would reduce interior temperatures, cutting the load on the air conditioning when the driver gets in.”

FELONS VOTING: “Tennessee could double the number of felons who have their voting rights restored this year.” I think if you get your right to vote restored, you should also get your right to own a gun back.

But the real problem is too many felonies. Where’s the action on that? One might almost think that politicians would rather make you a felon, then restore your vote in the hopes that you’ll be grateful, than simply not create as many felonies to begin with.

IN THE MAIL: Tom Brown’s Guide to City and Suburban Survival.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BACON. And this shows just how impact one blogger can have. John Scalzi owns Internet bacon now.

SPENGLER: “Violent antipathy to America measures the triumph of the American principle, and the ascendance of America’s influence in the world. America’s enemies make more noise than her friends, but her friends are increasing faster than her enemies.”

UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Daniel Schensul doesn’t like the Spengler piece: “It ends with an astonishingly stupid critique of Obama.”

I think he’s right. Spengler quotes a passage from Obama’s Dreams of My Father in which Obama contrasts the poor of traditional societies in Indonesia with the — much richer but much less grounded — poor of American slums. I don’t agree with Spengler that this is necessarily a put-down of America in favor of traditional societies, and in fact P.J. O’Rourke has made the same point more than once in comparing U.S. housing projects with third-world slums. To say that inhabitants of housing projects lack the useful social structure that people in traditional societies have isn’t to say that a traditional society would be better for America; it’s more a way of saying that you have to have a degree of civic culture to sustain a worthwhile society — especially if you’re poor.