PABLUM, MUSH, WHATEVER.

MIDNIGHT WHIFFLEBALL IN DOWNTOWN KNOXVILLE? Michael Silence is on it, but I broke this story nearly a year ago! With photos!

WAS IT CHURLISH OF ME NOT TO LINK THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER STORY ON JOHN EDWARDS? Maybe so. Anyway, here it is, though by now you’ve no doubt seen it via Drudge anyway.

Plus, it would be really churlish not to acknowledge this: Today is Fitzmas for Mickey Kaus. He’s been all over this story.

JAMES JOYNER on declaring victory.

JAMES BOND: Now coming out in Blu-Ray.

Lots more new Blu-Ray releases here.

THE QUAYLE TEST. “This is my proposed Quayle Test. Ask yourself: How each time Obama says something stoopid, would the press would have crucified Dan Quayle for it?”

Some related thoughts here.

IT’S ABOUT JUDGMENT: Obama on the surge.

UPDATE: More on judgment here.

Related item here. Note the Bing West observation.

DOLLY IS OFFICIALLY A HURRICANE, and may threaten the Rio Grande levees. More at Weather Nerd.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Stocks jump as crude drops $3 a barrel.

ROGER SIMON ON JOHN EDWARDS, RIELLE HUNTER (whom Roger knew), and the high-flown rhetoric of politicians.

VINCE CARROLL DOUBTS that Al Gore’s plan for carbon-free electricity will work. Me, too. We can’t possibly build enough nuclear plants in 10 years, unless we get legislation clearing away a lot of environmental barriers. Perhaps Al plans to get behind that?

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

TYPICAL: “I do find it odd that while the city has so far not been willing to record and broadcast their mid-day meetings on local cable TV outlets, they are considering aiming cameras at those who attend meetings and requiring security checks to enter the council chambers.”

QUESTIONS ABOUT SUNSCREEN SAFETY: They seem to be overblown. Use it — just be sure you get some unfiltered sun, too, to make vitamin D.

TRAFFIC RANKINGS for law professor blogs.

CHALABI supporting Obama?

THIS SEEMS PROMISING: “The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management today published proposed regulations to establish a commercial oil shale program that could result in the addition of up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil from lands in the western United States. “

USING GRAPHENE FOR NANOTECHNOLOGY. And lots of other cool stuff.

THE RELEVANCE OF VIDEO GAMES in the modern world.

THE PRESS’S DISTORTED NARRATIVE: Humanizing al Qaeda, Demonizing the Bush Team. “It’s a tribute to our society that even amid a terrible war we are capable of seeing the humanity of an enemy raised and trained to hate and kill us. Some of us are still waiting for that same presumption of humanity to be extended to the good men and women doing their imperfect best to keep us safe.”

THE WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY, CONTINUED: “I am more than baffled by the current wave of anxiety about adults taking pictures of children in public spaces. . . . The assumption that pictures represent a significant threat to children has acquired a fantasy-like grotesque character. We rarely dare ask the question: what possible harm can come from taking pictures of children playing soccer? Dark hints about the threat of evil networks of pedophiles are sufficient to corrode common sense. Tragically, what the dramatization and criminalization of the act of photographing children reveals is a culture that regards virtually every childhood experience from the standpoint of a pedophile.”

MILBLOG TV: Today, reporting from Afghanistan.

FROM GREG STEIN, thoughts on Yankee Stadium’s impending demise.

STEVEN CALABRESI EXPLORES THE LIVING CONSTITUTION and concludes that, using modern interpretative techniques, Obama is too young to be President. “All these episodes and behavior patterns confirm the wisdom of understanding the 35-year-old age limit in light of its purpose, rather than woodenly or literally.” No, we wouldn’t want to be “wooden” or “literal” in our constitutional interpretation.

ROBERT LEVY: Looking Ahead to Heller’s New Paradigm. “If Henigan is correct in predicting that sensible regulations will be the by-product of Heller, I for one applaud that development. But sensible is not what we have in New York or Chicago or San Francisco or many other major cities. And sensible is not what the Brady Center has supported.”