MADE IT HOME IN ONE PIECE, Palm Beach to Knoxville in just over 13 hours. Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.

In the meantime, there’s loads of mideast news at Pajamas Media, and Gateway Pundit reports on St. Louis’s great blackout, which is still ongoing, alas.

Plus, Ann Althouse vs. Stanley Fish.

A Fish, a Barrett, a smoking gun . . . .

UPDATE: Alternative subtitle: Stanley Fish worries that Americans will agree with him on free speech.

WE’VE BEEN AT THE SOUTHEASTERN ASSOCIATION OF LAW SCHOOLS CONFERENCE, which was held this year at The Breakers in Palm Beach. A nice place, except that I got stuck — along with several other people — in an elevator for about 20 minutes. And reportedly it happened more than once during the conference. I highly recommend it as a conference venue, but I’d suggest checking to be sure they’ve updated the elevators . . . .

Now we’re heading home.

ILYA SOMIN looks at libertarian divisions over the Iraq war.

RAND SIMBERG has been liveblogging the Space Frontier Foundation conference. Just keep scrolling.

THE L.A. TIMES LOOKS AT podcasting politicians.

DAN RIEHL: “The Kidz are Allwhite.”

TODD STEED sends this email from Beijing:

I’ve been teaching for three weeks in the world’s largest English language camp: Tsinghua University’s 2006 English Summer Camp. Tsinghua is probably the Harvard, Yale or MIT of China. Several people have claimed various other schools at times, but those are the most common comparison. The students are smart, hungry, movitated, funny, and are willing to compete on any level at anything.

Basically, I work with a group of about 60 students from computer and electrical engineering. One of the best suprises was how much these tech students love to sing. In the course of the first few days they learned to sing Rocky Top, obscure American pop songs, Louie Louie, and Brown Eyed Girl. Oh yes, and Country Roads, the semi-national anthem of our class. They can now tell you the geographical errors in the song without prompting.

One small group of my guys formed a band called FTP while another formed a group called All for Lucy. Picture attached of FTP and their coach.

There’s not much free time- but when it’s available I take it. This results in long afternoons getting tea making lessons and such. And walking around in this very pumping city. It’s booming, booming booming and the Olympics are just around the corner to make it boom some more. Everyone is excited about the Olympics. The students, the teachers, the guy selling some mystery meat in the streets,the oustanding street musicians, the shop keepers. They are expecting big things as a result.

It’s all too much to take in. You can’t visit a city like this for three weeks and even make a half dent in it. But I tried, this included also seeing live music. And this where I noticed that Beijing is on the way up quickly. Their live rock bands kick butt. That, and a great beer are the two secret signs of a culture that is ready for the new world. They are still working on the beer, but I think the Beijing Olympic Beer might be a winner.

Great rock bands in Beijing? I think we know who won the Cold War.

MICKEY KAUS: “Is the Democratic elite turning against the teachers’ unions?”

Plus, a buried lede at ABC. And a review of the Tesla electric sports car I mentioned earlier. I’ve been slack, but Mickey has been busy!

TOP TEN SIGNS of trouble at The New York Times.

CNN HAS MORE ON THE BARRETT/U.W.-MADISON STORY: Plus note this comment on Ann Althouse’s blog:

Enough. I’ve read and re-read all the material on the Barrett case and then discussed, thought some more, and discussed again. In the end, we’re going to act locally because our unease coming out of this just won’t ease. As the father of an inbound freshman who completed SOAR and is a month away from moving into the dorm, we’re pulling the plug on UW here, and actively calling back some of the schools we turned down. Yes, it is because of this Barrett class, not this one nut alone, but of the even scarier indifference and lack of systemic accountability involved throughout this process. It really is a truth teller as to what is in store for us the next 4 years, and so, we are opting out. My wife and I are both highly educated and of a fairly liberal bent ourselves, but clearly this 9/11 incident has legs and is indicative of a deeper core cancer at this institution.

There’s more, and you should read it all, especially if you’re an administrator at the University of Wisconsin.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse comments.

UNITED NATIONS AN ACCOMPLICE in Hezbollah kidnapping?

RON BAILEY on Bush’s stem cell veto.

THE WEEK looks at reports of a boy crisis. If that interests you, and you missed it, you might also want to check out this podcast interview with Michael Gurian that we did a few months back.

WENDY MCELROY OFFERS a postmortem on the Deb Frisch story.

ANOTHER PODCAST INTERVIEW with Israeli bunkerblogger Eugene.

FINISHED Naomi Kritzer’s new book, and liked it a lot.

WELL, DUH: Pat Buchanan calls Israel “un-Christian.” Never mind what I’d call Pat Buchanan . . . .

THE TESLA ROADSTER: Sounds cool, but I’m skeptical. I’d cheerfully accept an evaluation copy, though . . . .

FACT-CHECKING Hezbollah.

JOSH MANCHESTER: “The ‘big bang,’ as invading Iraq has sometimes been called, was meant to reorder the nature of politics in the region. This has been accomplished in a fundamental way.”