I’M OFF to a hot dish of sour cherry pie and a cushy bed. Thanks so much for letting us blog here this week, Glenn, and thanks to my co-bloggers, who made it look easy.

THE MUSLIM COUNCIL OF BRITAIN is getting rather closer scrutiny than it’s used to, and the results are predictable.

I wonder how this poll on terrorism and civil liberties would come out if it were repeated in Britain?

JONATHAN DRESNER emails that this week’s History Carnival is up, and highlights this post on what might have happened if bloggers had been around during various historical episodes.

Also, Jay Solo emails that next week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is already up.

TAX PROTESTING: It’s not just for libertarian nutjobs any more.

Sheehan, who is asking for a second meeting with President Bush, says defiantly: “My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don’t owe you a penny…you give my son back and I’ll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we’ll put this war on trial.”

Somehow, I don’t think the loss of this woman’s taxes is going to force the US out of Iraq.

WELCOME BACK, GLENN. Thanks for giving us the run of the place. It’s time for me to slink off and watch “Six Feet Under.”

YOU CAN HEAR IRAQ BLOG-JOURNALIST MICHAEL YON on the radio tonight at 9 Eastern. Link and info here.

TREY JACKSON is photoblogging pro-choice protesters.

THANKS, GLENN. I’m heading out of town for the rest of the evening so this is probably my last post at Instapundit for now. Thanks, Glenn, for giving me, Megan, and Ann a big audience and the power of the Instalanche. Thanks, also, to everyone else for putting up with us.

TIM BLAIR notes more provincialism in the media:

Ads on SBS for upcoming anti-US documentary Enemy Image refer to the US as “the world’s largest democracy”.

Er, that would be India. Well done, multicultural broadcaster.

Jeez. What do they teach in schools these days?

BOO! If you want to know how to frighten people about a particular drug — and we’re talking about caffeine here, as well as crack — Colby Cosh compiled all the time-tested formulas just for you. (Hat tip: Matt Welch.)

BOB ARNE emails about a bloody crackdown in the Maldives that hardly anyone seems to be covering.

UPDATE: Robert Mayer has more over at Publius Pundit.

WELL, I’M BACK: Actually, I got back last night, but I had family stuff to do today, and my guest-bloggers were doing such a good job that I felt no need to jump right in.

Did my almost-annual dive trip to the Cayman Islands. They’re recovering nicely from the tremendous pounding that they took from Hurricane Ivan, but the tourist industry — except for the cruise lines, about which more later — hasn’t quite gotten the word yet. The reefs are in excellent shape. I had expected them to have suffered a lot of damage from Ivan, but (other than the tunnel at Round Rock, which had suffered a rockfall that left it a bit narrower at the entrance) I didn’t see a whole lot of damage.

Thanks again to Ann Althouse, Megan McArdle, and Michael Totten for filling in. They’re great bloggers, and you should make their blogs regular stops, if you don’t already.

I’ll be back later. And Ann, Megan & Michael: If you’ve got more posts coming today, don’t be shy about putting them up!

JOE KATZMAN is leaving Winds of Change. He’s also leaving Canada to become an American.

CALLIMACHUS compares the American propaganda of today with American propaganda during World War II.

SOME ADVICE to the West from Lebanon: “To stop a man who wants to oppress you is not a case of you oppressing him.”

HELPING PREEMIES Very premature babies have a lot of problems, both physical and mental; as many as 41% of very premature babies have learning disabilities. This week’s New York Times magazine profiles a psychologist who thinks that the way Neonatal units are set up could be contributing to that, and who is trying to make them more developmentally friendly environments.

“ON AUGUST 14, 1980, LECH WALESA ILLEGALLY SCALED THE WALL” – 25 years ago.

THE ERROL MORRIS SERIES “FIRST PERSON” just came out on DVD, and I’ve been greatly enjoying watching one episode at a time. Each episode is an interview with one person, done with Morris’s brilliant Interrotron technique. Yesterday, I watched “The Killer Inside Me,” about a woman who was quite pleased about the fact that she’d had a sexual relationship with one serial killer and then sought out a second serial killer (in prison) and got him to fall in love with her. This is a fabulous DVD set, but I have one big complaint. Every time you start one of the discs, before you can get to the menu to select an episode, you have to watch a long, jarring message about how pirated DVDs are stealing. I bought my DVD set, so this message isn’t aimed at me, but I’m forced to listen to crude, pounding rock music and have shaky flashing images and the word “STEALING” strobing at me each time I want to watch one of the 17 episodes. It was bad enough to have to watch it once, but 17 times? That’s just crazy!

IF I LINK TO THE BRITBLOG ROUNDUP, I’m going to feel awfully guilty about all the “carnivals” we guestbloggers failed to link to this week. The consistent carnival-linking is one of the many admirable things Glenn does around here. Today’s our last day of guestblogging, and I have a feeling that leaving Instapundit without linking the carnivals is like borrowing the car and returning it with an empty tank! So, please, if you’re looking for more things to read, consider these. There’s Blog Mela, from India, and the New Jersey Carnival, from New Jersey. There’s Carnival of Cordite. There’s the Hillbilly Carnival, the Carnival of Comedy, the Carnival of the Capitalists, the Carnival of Liberty, the Carnival of the RINOS, and the Carnival of the Clueless. The Carnival of the Liberated brings you the best of the Iraqi and Afghani bloggers. If you want to listen and not read, there’s the Carnival of the Podcasts. Did you know there’s a Carnival of Personal Finance? Nothing puts me in a less “carnival” mood then the whole topic of personal finance, but the list of links over there looks reasonably fascinating, so try it out. Michael linked the Carnival of the Recipes already, so I think we’ve hit them all now. The Insta-tank is refilled!

UPDATE: The easiest way to keep up with all the carnivals is to go to this page of the always-informative Truth Laid Bear.

ANOTHER UPDATE: (From Glenn) Here’s the Carnival of the Vanities, too!

“WHO HAS BENEFITED MOST – AND LOST MOST?” Joe Gandelman asks as he analyzes the debate about the Iraq war as re-organized around Cindy Sheehan.

BANKRUPTCY BOONDOGGLE Delta Airlines is setting up the financing it will need to declare bankruptcy.

Industries such as airlines and telecoms with high fixed costs (i.e., it doesn’t cost them very much to carry an extra passenger or data byte; their costs are mostly concentrated in things that cost them money whether they have any customers or not, such as planes or switching equipment) tend to experience serial bankruptcies. The problem is that once one big player has declared bankruptcy, and emerged with its costs lowered, it can charge less than its competitors, who promptly start hemhorraging money until they are forced into bankruptcy. In the case of airlines, the problems are compounded by the legacy of high labour costs, left over from the days when airlines were highly regulated, and as a consequence, highly uncompetitive. They promised benefits and pensions that are not sustainable in a more competitive environment . . . and developed rather poisonous relations with their unions, which (along with cluelessness and greed on the union side) make it hard to profitably restructure unless a bankruptcy judge forces changes down the union’s throat.

Add to that what a general pain in the ass flying has become (security delays are making trains and automobiles highly time-competitive in my neck of the woods), and you can expect to see more companies follow Delta.

SUNNIS ARE BEING PRESSURED TO RATIFY THE CONSTITUTION. So far, they can’t quite admit that it is over: that they will never again enjoy unfettered control of their country.

For peace to come, I suspect that the Sunnis will need a Michael Collins–someone with the guts, and credibility, to tell his people that their dreams of glory are unrealistic, and it’s time to put down the guns and settle for what they can get. The Palestinians never had such a leader, which in my opinion is one of the main reasons they don’t now have a state. I don’t know who such a man would be in the Sunni community, but let’s hope one emerges before it’s too late.

ANOTHER THING TO HATE ABOUT HIGH OIL PRICES Airlines are hiking their fares.

BEATING THE DEADLINE FOR THE IRAQI CONSTITUTION. President Talabani predicts they’ll be done Sunday, a day early: “We have reached agreements on many points but I am not authorized to announce them because we want to make the declaration all together.”

ON NOT LISTENING TO THE 9/11 RECORDINGS, from Ambivablog. A small excerpt:

“One reason I don’t want to listen is that I’m familiar with an all-too-vivid account of what it’s like to be buried alive: my husband’s. As an 18-year-old slave laborer in a Soviet coal mine, in his third winter, weakened by cold and hunger, he was caught in a mine cave-in.”

Read the whole thing.