THE NEW YORK TIMES ON TOM DELAY’S VINDICATION: “But many of Mr. DeLay’s actions remain legal only because lawmakers have chosen not to criminalize them.”

AT AMAZON, outlet deals.

CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY: Senate Landscape Shifts Farther in Favor of GOP. “It’s hit that point in the election cycle where the competitive nature of Congressional races are shifting rapidly. Unfortunately for Democrats, the overwhelming majority of those shifts are in favor of Republicans.”

HEH.

TONY ROBBINS: Forget What I Said Before; We’re All Doomed. Actually, this makes me feel safer, somehow.

ARGUING AGAINST INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OVERREACH. I haven’t read Lewis Hyde’s Common As Air, but it seems clear to me that we’re overdoing it on the intellectual-property front. As Robert Merges and I argued in an article for the Harvard Journal on Legislation some years ago, there are constitutional limits here, and courts should be willing to enforce them.

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.

NOT IMPRESSED WITH THE WEEKLY RADIO ADDRESS: Professor Bainbridge: Obama’s Anti-Corporate BS.

OH, GOODY: More kinds of hepatitis, beyond A, B, and C. I didn’t know we’d gotten to G & H.

Plus, from the comments: “I heard about this one time at a famous club in NYC, a coupla long-time rockers hooked up after a show. The result was hepatitis CB-GB.” Well, it’s the funniest hepatitis joke I’ve ever heard, anyway . . . .

HOW TO SAFELY AND LEGALLY CAPTURE THE RAIN.

IN NEW JERSEY, a sovereign debt crisis of our own?

HOW MANLY IS YOUR DRINK?

LIFE LESSONS from Zoltan Mesko.

DVD SALE: Any season of The X-Files for $13.99.

HMM: Panel: College’s police force violates First Amendment. “It’s not every day that First Amendment issues get raised in a drunk-driving case. But last week the Court of Appeals threw out a DWI case involving an arrest by a Davidson College police officer, agreeing with the defense that Davidson is a religious institution and giving police powers to the school is unconstitutional.”

MICHIGAN DEMOCRATS embarrassed by fake Tea Party.

NEW YORK CITY’S BEDBUG PROBLEM — there’s a musical!

RESPONSE: Dear NY Times, Here’s Why I Haven’t ‘Grown Up.’ Love, a 20-Something.

RECOVERY SUMMER! U.S. restaurants starved for business. “The number of restaurants operating nationwide dropped this year for the first time in more than a decade, a survey shows, with California accounting for almost a third of the losses.”

UPDATE: Reader Greg Pollard writes: “I wondered about the studio and related Hollywood layoffs mentioned in the article. Are you aware of any recent links or articles regarding that phenomenon? I suppose it’s poetic justice in a way, based on how caring the Hollywood crowd is toward large chunks of their potential audience.” No, it’s news to me.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Danielle Schlei sends this report and cautions: “As you can see from the LA times blog post, mostly IT & home entertainment are affected; not the folks who make decisions about what is produced. I live in LA and know people affected by this layoff.”

PARKING SIGNS: “NO FOREIGN CARS.”

HOW TO BUY a Nissan Leaf.

TRASH TALK: I’ve got one of these. Not bad, though the lid sometimes pops off the hinge. Easy to fix when it does, though.

A TRAGIC LOSS. OH, WHO AM I KIDDING? The Great Pinto Extinction Proceeds.

IN THE MAIL: In FED We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE FUTONS GONE?