HEH: Name ’em and shame ’em.

PAUL MARKS: “Hollywood has become a parody of itself.” But not a funny parody.

SECOND THOUGHTS ON COMPACT FLUORESCENT BULBS: The mercury issue is overstated, but Congress’s mandate is asinine and unAmerican.

“COUNTER-TRIBALISM?” Depends on the tribe.

BOLOS? OR SKYNET? (CONT’D) Automated killer robots ‘threat to humanity’: expert.

OBAMA WOOS THE JEWS: He’d better. One of my die-hard Democrat friends says he’d vote for McCain over Obama because he thinks Obama is anti-Israel.

ERIC SCHEIE: “I think the guys who learned the hardball game decades ago would do well to remember that overpressured, aggressively lobbied, and disgruntled superdelegates can do things like start whistle-blowing blogs (something impossible in the old days).” But fun!

IN THE MAIL, from Ed Begley, Jr.: Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Obama, Farrakhan, and how Hillary Clinton took the opening and then squandered it. “He’s creating the space for Farrakhan to operate separately, bringing him support. Farrakhan didn’t coordinate with the campaign in any way. Fine. That wasn’t the question.”

JAMES LILEKS REMEMBERS THE NEW DEAL:

The NRA, among other things, was intended to prevent the depredations of competition, and “allowed industry heads to collectively set minimum prices,” as this rather scant wikipedia entry notes. (The same page relates the story of the tailor who was arrested for charging 35 cents to press a suit; the NRA rules specified the price at 40 cents. So he was arrested. Consider that the next time someone complains that liberty and civil rights have been eliminated in the last 7 years.)

But economic liberty doesn’t count as liberty because . . . well, because if it did it might stand in the way of policies that some people like. Read the whole thing.

AN ASTEROID MISSION PRIZE, from The Planetary Society.

THE VALUE OF OPTIONS, even unexercised ones:

“Closing a door on an option is experienced as a loss, and people are willing to pay a price to avoid the emotion of loss,” Dr. Ariely says. In the experiment, the price was easy to measure in lost cash. In life, the costs are less obvious — wasted time, missed opportunities. If you are afraid to drop any project at the office, you pay for it at home.

Heck, I wrote about this in the Yale Law Report years ago. (Warning, big PDF file).

INDEED:

What fascinates me is how light the baggage is when one travels from violent radicalism to liberalism. Chicago activist Sam Ackerman told Politico’s reporter that Ayers “is one of my heroes in life.” Cass Sunstein, a first-rank liberal intellectual, said of Ayers and Dohrn, “I feel very uncomfortable with their past, but neither of them is thought of as horrible types now – so far as most of us know, they are legitimate members of the community.” . . . Why was Sen. Trent Lott’s kindness to former segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond a scandal but Obama’s acquaintance with an unrepentant terrorist a triviality?

No enemies on the left.

THE CASE AGAINST government subsidies for college tuition.

THOUGHTS ON stupidity and nationality.

JERRY POURNELLE: “Grinding the faces of the poor seems to be the policy of the Greens.”

CRASHING MURTHA’S PORKFEST at the Ritz:

Rep. John Murtha is hosting a gala dinner tonight at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City for defense industry lobbyists who have received and who hope to receive millions of tax dollars via earmarks sponsored by the Pennsylvania Democrat. . . . .

But Murtha’s porkfest is not going unnoticed. Three conservative citizen activist groups and a conservative blog that are active in the anti-earmark Porkbusters movement are gathering protesters, posters and pigs and plan to crash the Murtha pork bash.

Heh. Taking pigs to this thing is like coal to Newcastle. But this is good:

The protesters are meeting at 5:30 p.m. at the top of the Pentagon City Metrorail station outside the Ritz-Carlton Hotel at 1250 South Hayes St. in Arlington. Organizers say photographs of attendees will be taken and posted on the Internet.

Name ’em and shame ’em.

OBAMA: Feminized?

A POST-DEBATE WRAPUP, from Stephen Green.

MONTANANS insist on gun rights.

CLINTON CAMPAIGN flips on super delegates.

MICKEY KAUS: “In Tuesday’s debate, Tim Russert definitely let Obama off the hook on the issue of Obama’s chosen pastor, Rev. Wright . . . . I don’t think Russert was consciously helping Obama escape. But there are any number of potential subconscious motives for Russert’s choke, including fear that his image wouldn’t benefit if he were the heavy who skewered the popular, charismatic black Dem frontrunner.”

LARRY KUDLOW: Is the Fed in denial about inflation?

GUN CONTROL: Bad for gays? It’s bad for everybody. Except criminals.

THE BBC AND THE TERRORISTS:

A BBC producer failed to give police information that would have helped track down the July 21 bombers, the trial was told. . . .

Called as a defence witness, Miss Suleaman admitted that she had spoken to Hamid in the days following the July 21 attacks and found out he knew the wanted men.

She said she thought he was scared the fugitives might try to call him but did not contact the police because she felt under “no obligation” to do so.

Patriotism? That’s a bourgeois virtue.