DIDN’T PAY YOUR POWER BILL? No problem, if you’re on the “protected list” populated by bigshot politicians.

I’M GETTING A LOT OF EMAILS from people who can’t reach Volokh.com. I can see it fine, but their host seems to have DNS problems sometimes. Try Volokh.Powerblogs.com instead.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST charges for Charles Schumer?

MESH/PEER NETWORKED VEHICLES:

REGRETS, we’ve had a few. And yet, in my experience, U.S. Air is much, much better than Delta.

UPDATE: The least they could do is upgrade you to First Class. Or maybe not . . . .

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN AND YOKO: Call me an unbeliever. But I agree about Ringo. And, really, wouldn’t you trust a man who’d marry Barbara Bach over one who’d marry, well, Yoko?

DANIEL DREZNER’S NEW BOOK, All Politics is Global, gets a “very favorable review” in The Economist. Review is here, Bainbridge excerpt (for non subscribers) here.

A LOOK AT “CLIMATE CHANGE HYPOCRITES,” from 18 Doughty Street.

THE POLITICAL IMPACT OF HDTV: “For example, though I’ve never met him, my understanding from those who have is that McCain’s image of vitality is very carefully projected, and that when you actually meet him up close, he looks pretty frail. Will that come out on HDTV? How about Hilary? HDTV is least kind to older women; I’d bet it puts at least ten years on her. I suspect that Obama is the only candidate who will actually look good on HDTV; he’s younger, and even light black skin ages better than caucasian.”

UPDATE: Reader Patrick Sennett emails: “The discussion on janegalt ignores Fred Thompson, who is on HD every week and fares pretty well.”

ILYA SOMIN WRITES ON two fallacies that cause (excessive) libertarian despair.

SIGNS OF LIFE IN THE SECOND AMENDMENT: “The bad news for gun control advocates is that the Supreme Court may adopt an expansive view of the Second Amendment. The worse news is that’s the least of their troubles.”

UPDATE: Related thoughts here: “If the Supreme Court reverses the appeals court’s ruling and upholds the D.C. gun law, states and localities will be empowered to treat the Second Amendment as the D.C. law does: as a nullity. This will bring the gun control issue — and millions of gun owners — back to a roiling boil. That is not in the interest of the Democratic Party, which is supported by most ardent supporters of gun control.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: In light of the above, you’d think the Democrats would be moving to take the issue off the table before 2008.

MORE: Further thoughts, from Jonathan Gewirtz.

LARRY LESSIG PREDICTS copyright chaos.

I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT DISASTER PREPAREDNESS FOR ADULTS on numerous occasions; here’s a roundup of stuff on the subject aimed at kids.

ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL.

NEAL STEPHENSON ON 300, and why the critics liked it a lot less than the audiences have. Plus, some of his comments on gaming and military knowledge (“Video games have turned everyone under the age of 20 into experts on military history and tactics; 12-year-olds on school buses argue about the right way to deploy onagers and cataphracts while outflanking a Roman triplex acies formation.”) echo what Dave Kopel and I wrote back in 2001.

Interestingly, I reread Stephenson’s The Diamond Age last week for the first time since the book came out, and I felt that his future-history has held up pretty well over the last decade. I may have more thoughts on that later.

CRUSHING DISSENT in Egypt. “A crackdown on the Egyptian opposition continues its second day with the warrant for the arrest of 19 activists including every single Kefayah leader (the Egyptian secular opposition group), and three of Egypt’s most prominent bloggers: Wael Abbas, Mohamed Sharqawi, and Alaa seif el-Islam.”

TAKING EUROPEAN DELIVERY of your BMW: A firsthand report. Strangely, it never occurred to me to take Japanese delivery of my Toyota . . . .

NOT MISQUOTING, BUT “DISQUOTING,” in the Los Angeles Times.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, CANDIDACY? John Fund interviews Fred Thompson. I love this quote: “The CIA has better politicians than it has spies.” It does seem that way.

DON SURBER: “But what do those Iraqis know? They only live there, while Americans watch this stuff on TV. Well, not actually watch this stuff. Jon Stewart and Jay Leno make jokes about it all the time so it must be true.” In a postmodern kind of way, anyhow.

“IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THANK A TEACHER: If you can read this in English, thank a soldier.” This slogan seems to have produced some unhappiness, on the ground that it’s excessively pro-military.

UPDATE: This post at Obsidian Wings criticizes me for not providing a link to the “unhappiness” — but if you follow the link I provide, you’ll find precisely that, in the very first Amazon review. (It was, in fact, the only Amazon review when I put up the post).

Really, people who even admit that they’re “nitpicking” ought to at least follow the links before picking nits, especially in the process of offering a theory about the inherent inferiority of solo blogs. . . . .

THE TENNESSEAN HAS POSTED ITS PROMISED STORY on Al Gore’s zinc mine. Here’s a passage you’ll probably hear on talk radio tomorrow:

Even Gore noted in his letter that, according to Scorecard, “pollution releases from the mine in 2002 placed it among the ‘dirtiest/worst facilities’ in the U.S.”

That said, it’s not clear that Gore himself has done anything wrong, though he’s clearly made money from a project that’s pretty environmentally unfriendly. But this will add to the perception that Gore’s green talk is hypocritical, I suspect. As I’ve noted below, if you adopt a quasi-messianic posture, people will judge your actions very differently than if you do not.

CHARGES OF GREEN HYPOCRISY IN THE INVESTMENT COMMUNITY:

“We’ve made 14 investments in cleantech and greentech,” he said. “We’re extremely committed to that investment thesis.”

But others aren’t so sure.

Daniel Kammen, professor in the energy and resources group at the University of California at Berkeley, said such investments by Kleiner and other firms that portray themselves as green-friendly are inconsistent with their marketing message.

“They’re being hypocritical,” he said of the firms. The former vice president Al Gore, the billionaire Richard Branson and other figures with ties to Silicon Valley’s green movement “should hold these companies to a higher standard.”

I don’t see anything wrong with investing in both clean/green technologies and in fossil fuel development — we’re going to be needing fossil fuels for quite a while, even if somebody invents the “Mr. Fusion” tomorrow.

But this illustrates a problem with the environmental movement — when you push your ideas not as a pragmatic, technocratic approach, but instead sell it as a messianic moralistic quasi-religious one, then things like this do look hypocritical.

A LOOK AT BOB LEVY, and why he brought his successful D.C. gun ban lawsuit.

UPDATE: Sam Venable has thoughts on the case:

I’m guessing everyday folks – who may or may not own a gun and don’t feel strongly either way – will be inclined to side with the court this time around.

Why?

Because we’ve all felt the heavy hand of Big Brother, and it’s a most uncomfortable sensation. . . . Meanwhile, I had to chuckle when a Washington anti-gun group called last week’s ruling “judicial activism at its worst.”

How odd. Typically, such accusations come from conservatives when a liberal court opinion is rendered.

Read the whole thing.

SOME INTERESTING Iraqi poll numbers, from Chuck Simmins.