EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT SEMICOLONS.

BIG DEBATE IN AUSTIN TONIGHT TOMORROW NIGHT. Will Obama coast? Does Hillary have a plan? It seems like her only hope is to make something big happen tonight tomorrow night. Are you one of the lucky Austinites who got tickets? “There were more than 43,000 applications for the 200 tickets available to the public. Austinites had a better chance of scoring a free pass to all South by Southwest music events, or to a UT football game with Oklahoma, than they did getting into this presidential debate.” Anyway, I’ll be live-blogging it here on my home blog, where we always like new commenters. [ADDED: Sorry to screw up on my first day here, but the Austin paper I’m linking to has it wrong!]

HI, MEGAN, HI MICHAEL. Nice to be here with you again. I’ve been away all afternoon flying from Madison, Wisconsin — my usual home base — to Brooklyn Heights, where I’m a visiting professor at Brooklyn Law School this year. I’m especially glad to be back to my view of New York Harbor for tonight’s total eclipse of the moon. If the clouds behave I hope to have some nice photographs for all you Instapundit (and Althouse) readers. But don’t wait for the photographs. Find a vantage point and gaze. Or howl. Or whatever one does for a total eclipse. Not howl. That’s for the full moon. Maybe a hearty silent scream. You’ll have to wait until 2010 for the next opportunity.

THIS RHETORIC FROM THE CLINTON RALLY verges on homophobic. Machinists’ union president Tom Buffenbarger, speaking before Hillary Clinton last night, called Barack Obama a “thespian,” a “silver-tongued orator,” a “man in love with the microphone,” and “a poet.” And a Harvard Law Review editor.

HAWAIIANS AND THEIR FAVORITE SON. From The Plank: “Hawaii caucus turnout has never been above 5,000. The Obama camp’s pie-in-the-sky prediction was 18,000. Final tally? 37,247.”

ADDED: Is “Hawaiians” the wrong word?

FEDERALISM TRIUMPHS in Danforth v. Minnesota. So why is Chief Justice Roberts dissenting? He wants the Supreme Court to keep a tight grip on constitutional lawsaying. But there are 7 votes for letting states make their own law about the retroactive application of new rules of constitutional law at the post-conviction stage, and I think they get it right, in what I think may be the most interesting Federal Courts case I’ve seen in 20+ years of teaching the subject.

OKAY, I’M TAKING OVER. (Thanks, Glenn.) Not just me, though I’m the only one here so far. But don’t worry, the flow of posts will continue. Don’t get edgy. We’ll be serving a slightly different brew, but it will keep you going. It will stave off withdrawal pangs. I’m even reading Glenn’s email, so keep sending stuff.

WORRIED ABOUT VOTER FRAUD? You should be worried about what that says about you: “In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people.”

OUR CONSTITUTION IS HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF YEARS OLD… Oh, that’s how old Matthew Yglesias thinks it is anyway. But it’s still old! What do you say we have a new constitutional convention, and write a new one that will suit us Americans of today? Who do you want to do the writing? Let’s see, there’s Matt Stone, Steve Jobs, Christopher Hitchens….

DEFENDING AGAINST REPUTATION DEFENDER. If you followed the AutoAdmit controversy — see this WaPo article — you should check out this response from Jarret Cohen of AutoAdmit. Where do I stand on AutoAdmit (a website where law students and prospective law students sometimes talk raunchily about particular individuals)? Well, my original response to the WaPo article was somewhat supportive in the face of what I thought were demands for too much repression, but then I Googled "althouse autoadmit" to find my old post for that link, and check out what came up first. Now, I’ve got to laugh and say yes, this is life here on the internet, but I’m old and I have tenure. I really do see how something like this can disturb a young woman who’s in the job market, though I still don’t think law firm partners are dumb enough to take obvious junk like this seriously in hiring decisions. (And given this attitude, I couldn’t get too steamed when feminist bloggers railed about my failure to exhibit proper deference to the fears and feelings of women.) If you want to talk about all this, come over to my blog, where I’ll set up a post with comments.

TIMESSELECT FOR FREE — if you have an “edu” email address.

THE IRAQ RESOLUTION, fails in the Senate — by a wide margin.

Only one Republican, Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon, voted in favor of the measure. Two Democrats, Senator Mark Pryor or Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted against it, as did Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut. Senators Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota who is ill, and John McCain, an Arizona Republican who is in Iowa, did not vote.

Compare the way DailyKos reported the vote:

For those keeping score at home, those opposing were the 49 Republicans and Joe Lieberman.

Embarrassing.

UPDATE: I can’t believe Kos is still uncorrected 8 hours later. They must truly loathe Lieberman.

ANOTHER UPDATE: That wasn’t the most embarrassing thing on Kos today. There was this. (Via Kaus, who gives Kos credit for not taking the post down.)

WHAT WOULD GANDHI DO? Fred Thompson thinks Code Pink’s sanctimonious question is actually reprehensible.

During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

Speaking of Jews and knives:

Suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl and a central role in 30 other attacks and plots in the U.S. and worldwide that killed thousands of victims, said a revised transcript released Thursday by the U.S. military.

“I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan,” Mohammed is quoted as saying in a transcript of a military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, released by the Pentagon.

“For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head,” he added.

NO RIGHT TO USE MEDICAL MARIJUANA. Not yet anyway, according to the 9th Circuit, ruling in the case of Angel Raich (who, two years ago, lost in the Supreme Court, which upheld Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause to ban home-grown, home-consumed marijuana).

TRY NOT TO HAVE YOUR HEART ATTACK on a weekend. It’s all about the “door-to-balloon time.”

STAVING OFF DESPAIR. Andrew Sullivan on Iraq.

CHRISTINE HURT FAULTS the new Bluebook rule for citing blogs. It excludes the name of the blogger for a solo blog. Like Instapundit, I presume. Okay, now, you Bluebook nerds. Cite this post!

LAWPROF JOHN O. MCGINNIS READS two new books about the Supreme Court.

“I WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE 9/11 OPERATION, FROM A TO Z.” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed confesses.

In a rambling statement, Mr. Mohammed, a chief aide to Osama bin Laden, said his actions were part of a military campaign. “I’m not happy that 3,000 been killed in America,” he said in broken English. “I feel sorry even. I don’t like to kill children and the kids.”

He added, “The language of war is victims.”…

His actions, he said, were like those of other revolutionaries. Had the British arrested George Washington during the Revolutionary War, Mr. Mohammed said, “for sure they would consider him enemy combatant.”

“I LOVE THE SASQUATCH.” Me too!

UPDATE: Sasquatch phylogenetics. Via Metafilter.

JUST SAY NO to the idea that the (second) state song is about drugs. “Rocky Mountain High” — it’s not about drugs!

“We could be talking about guys who’ve been fishing all day, or kids pigging out on s’mores, with the chocolate,” Senator Hagedorn said, referring to other endorphin-producing activities. “If I thought there was anything in that song about the use of drugs or encouraging the use of drugs, I would never have run the resolution.”

We’re high on life, man.

THE YOO-DE MAN THESIS. Brainiest witticism of the day, from Sasha Volokh.

“OF COURSE WE ARE ALL POLITICAL HACKS!” Orin Kerr answers the question: “Why haven’t we written about the US Attorneys’ story?”

CAMILLE PAGLIA ON ANN COULTER:

John Edwards got publicity for the wrong reason two weeks ago when Ann Coulter bizarrely called him a "faggot" at the Conservative Political Action Conference…. [S]atirists who play on gender themes need some whiff of self-knowledge, or they look ridiculous. Is Coulter truly oblivious to her gender weirdness? It’s no coincidence that words like "tranny" and "transvestite" clog the anti-Coulter blogs.

Coulter is a smart woman with formidable energy, and whether liberals like it or not, she is a high-profile feminist role model in her appetite for aggressive debate. But Coulter seems to be regressing rather than growing intellectually and sharpening her analytic skills. She evidently leaves no room in her life for study and reflection. I take books seriously (which is why I left the scene for five years to write "Break, Blow, Burn") and thus hold against Coulter the part she has played in the debasement of that medium.

If only Coulter were more like Paglia, Paglia would like her better.

“MARRIAGE IS A UNION BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN,” says the highest court in France.