HOW YOU CAN HELP Bangladesh cyclone victims.

UPDATE: Some good news about Bangladesh. (Bumped to top.)

IN SLATE, William Saletan on liberal creationism.

“BUCKWHEAT!” Another chance to play Name That Party!

THE NOT-SO-GREAT generation?

WOULDN’T MARK CUBAN BE COMPLAINING EVEN MORE if Fox refused to run his ads?

Meanwhile, some people are trying to organize a boycott of Redacted, — though from what I hear about the film, that shouldn’t be hard, but might be unnecessary. Like asking 8-year-olds to boycott liver and brussels sprouts. Even the Beauchamp-infested New Republic hated it. I like the commenter who referred to Redacted as “DePalma’s suicide bomb.” Heh.

UPDATE: Some amusing thoughts on TNR and Redacted.

TOM FRIEDMAN: “I have no idea who is going to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but lately I’ve been wondering whether, if it is Barack Obama, he might want to consider keeping Dick Cheney on as his vice president.”

Obama-Cheney. Just one of several odd pairings I’m hearing today.

THIS STRIKES ME AS BAD POLITICS: “It’s been less than a week since New York’s Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Eliot Spitzer had to climb down from their support of driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has moved to kill an amendment that would protect employers from federal lawsuits for requiring their workers to speak English. Among the employers targeted by such lawsuits: the Salvation Army.”

JAMES KIRCHICK: “Intervention in Darfur may fuel Muslim anger, but that can’t be an excuse to do nothing.”

THE RACIST ROOTS OF GUN CONTROL in Georgia.

Very interesting data on the 1906 Atlanta race riots, where mobs attacked black neighborhoods, the residents fought back (in an early form of straw man sales, light skinned residents bought guns for their neighbors), and police and the state militia responded with house to house searches for guns. The Atlanta Journal ran an editorial entitled “Disarm the Negroes,” endorsing the searches with comments such as “Should a collision between the races occur, it would be too late to deplore the fact that the negroes had been permitted to arm themselves.” The study also probes why GA law bans carrying at public assemblies, and notes the law was enacted after night riders attacked blacks who were travelling to a … public assembly, and they fought back.

This kind of thing isn’t news to those who have been paying attention, but it’s probably news to everyone else.

JOHN TIERNEY: “The keepers of bioethics are even more alarmed than usual now that scientists have reported cloning a monkey embryo and extracting stem cells.”

Some of the discussion sounds a bit familiar, which just demonstrates that these debates tend not to advance very much. Meanwhile, I still believe that Congress lacks the power to ban cloning anyway.

GETTING A YALE EDUCATION on the cheap. Well, sort of.

KENNETH ANDERSON on the Madrid bombing verdicts, law, and terrorism.

MICROWEAPONOMICS — a new coinage from Bob Krumm.

A CHRISTMAS WARNING: “Apparently, these days, one needs to possess an itty-bitty, teeny-weeny, Barbie-sized screwdriver to be able to open the battery compartments of many of the toys on the market today. Consequently, we have tons of dolls and helicopters and singing My Little Pony Pinkie Pies around the office that have not done a thing except sit there.” Be prepared!

ILYA SOMIN POINTS OUT a danger in using foreign law to interpret U.S. law: “For a Supreme Court made up of generalists, even keeping up with all the US law that the Court has to deal with is a full-time job, one that the justices often fail at. . . . This lack of expertise may help explain why those justices who do rely on foreign law never seem to do a systematic survey of the relevant foreign precedents, but instead simply pick a few examples that seem to support their position.”

PARTYING WITH the science crowd.

MY LEGAL CAREER IS A SUCCESS: I just noticed I got a “highly recommended” from Larry Solum.

A TELLING QUESTION about Iraq.

SHIFTING DEFINITIONS for “conservative ideologue.”

GERMANY: The soft underbelly of Europe?

WHEN JOURNALISTS “PLANT” THEIR OWN QUESTIONS — and their careers. “NY1 Anchor Quits After Calling a Show on the Station Under a False Name.”

HOW TO MEASURE ONLINE VIDEO: Just remember, all Web stats are at best rough approximations. And non-Web stats (like Nielsen or Arbitron) are probably worse.

A LOOK AT GUNS ON CAMPUS. I had some thoughts on this subject a while back.

DO WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES exist?

ROGER KIMBALL HAS THOUGHTS on affirmative action.