July 05, 2008

ERIC SCHEIE is disappointed in John McCain. "I am sorry to see that John McCain has denied roughing up the Sandinistas . . . . Frankly, I'm a bit disappointed. I'd love to see a video of McCain grabbing an Ortega associate by his shirt collar and lifting him out of his chair."

MORE ON the politics of ethanol.

BACKTRACKING on the Iraq backtrack backtracking. Or something like that. I can't keep track.

KNIFEBLOGGING, CONT'D: A sale on camp knives, good for outdoor enthusiasts or disaster-prep types. I didn't realize that Ken Onion did "tactical" knives as well as kitchenware.

A PREDICTION: "The media will spend the summer establishing their faux credibility by tsk-tsking about a handful of Obama issues. Come September, there will be an tidal wave of aggressive Obama campaigning by the media that will make the work of the North Korean press look tame by comparison."

PANDEMIC! A look at future disease threats.

A RECIPE FOR WATERMELON LEMONADE. Just beware -- watermelon can reportedly have "Viagra-like effects!"

HELPFUL LANGUAGE ADVICE FROM ANDREA SEE. Including this bit: "You don’t post a blog, you post a blog entry. Unless you start a new weblog every time you write something."

DON'T QUESTION his patriotism!

UPDATE: More here.

PHOTO OF THE DAY: Chinese Anti-Terror Segway Commandos.

SOME EXPERT grilling tips.

WHY FLY WHEN YOU CAN FLOAT? New interest in Zeppelins.

MUDVILLE GAZETTE: Some things about Bud Day that don't make CNN.

UPDATE: Bill Ardolino emails:

Saw your post on Bud Day. I just happened to finish his biography written by Robert Coram, and all I can say is "wow" and "highly recommended:"

The man was beaten with a rubber strip hours at a time for months during the summer of 1969, and he never gave up any info about his unit to the North Vietnamese. He once ejected from an exploding jet, his parachute failed to deploy, and he lived. And that's the tip of the iceberg; the story of his life is so incredible, it's almost hard to believe.

Anyway, highly recommended. Maybe someone should mail a copy to CNN.

Or several.

MEGAN MCARDLE: "Indeed, it's possible that consumer driven care would improve preventative care for some conditions--if you have to pay $1,000 for an emergency room visit when you get slack on your asthma management, you might get a lot more motivated."

Plus, Austan Goolsbee's unconvincing anti-NAFTA spin.

THE HIGH COST OF fighting malaria.

CANADIAN KANGAROO COURT UPDATE:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed the complaint against Catholic Insight Magazine. . . .

This is good news. It means that the political campaign for freedom of speech and freedom of religion is working. It means the CHRC does not want to be seen to treat big fish differently from little fish. It does not want to be seen as operating outside the rule of law. That is a good thing. It means the CHRC wants the scrutiny to go away and fast.

Free Speech for everyone. What a concept. Keep the pressure on. Plus more here:

While the Canadian Human Rights Commission has bowed to widespread public opposition to proceeding with a complaint against Maclean's magazine brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress, less powerful and prominent Canadians should beware: For them, the threat of censorship remains. . . . Ironically, it is not I, Mansur, Steyn or the editors of Maclean's who are ill-serving Canadian Muslims. It is Muslim leaders like Elmasry. By using rights tribunals to intimidate and silence critics, these authoritarian Muslims are undermining the fundamental freedoms of all Canadians, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.

Of course, more than a few non-Muslims also betray scant regard for the historic rights of Canadians to freedom of expression.

Read the whole thing. It's as if the whole "human rights" thing is really just a weapon for silencing political opposition.

IN THE MAIL: Computer Theology: Intelligent Design of the World Wide Web.

Farragut, Tennessee.

DALE AMON: "I have long said we should change the name of the DOD back to the Department of War. If you are going to make war, then you should damn well be a man and say so."

TALKLEFT: Church vs. Obama.

BRITAIN, BIRTHPLACE OF FREEDOM: Home Secretary green lights restrictions on photography.

The letter dated 26 June, which BJP has seen a copy of, is in response to correspondence sent by the Union secretary general, Jeremy Dear, who expressed concern at police surveillance of journalists, in particular photographers.

'First of all, may I take this opportunity to state that the Government greatly values the importance of the freedom of the press, and as such there is no legal restriction on photography in public places,' Smith writes. 'Also, as you will be aware, there is no presumption of privacy for individuals in a public place.'

However, the Home Secretary adds that local restrictions might be enforced. 'Decisions may be made locally to restrict or monitor photography in reasonable circumstances. That is an operational decision for the officers involved based on the individual circumstances of each situation.

They can photograph you, but they get to decide when you can take photographs.

LEE SMITH: Iran Wielding ‘Soft Power’ Against America.

BOB OWENS: Don’t Hammer Obama for 'Refining' Iraq Stance. "Republicans should welcome any change of heart from Obama, as recognizing American progress in Iraq could only benefit both countries."

I don't think it's Republicans who are hammering him the hardest, though; I think it's disappointed Netroots types.

FABIUS MAXIMUS on why you should support the USO. I've donated to them on several occasions. They do good work.

UH-OH: Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis.

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body. . . .

"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam.

Perhaps they just fear being tried for crimes against humanity.

UPDATE: Reader Jason Epstein emails:

Did you notice that the writer suggesting that the report was being kept secret "has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush?" Huh?!? How come there is no mention of the culpability of the environmental community, who pushed biofuels more than anyone else?

Yeah, how come?

CNN: "A growing number of Clinton supporters polled say they may stay home in November instead of casting their ballot for Obama, an indication the party has yet to coalesce around the Illinois senator four weeks after the most prolonged and at times divisive primary race in modern American history came to a close. . . . Obama won 59 percent of support from registered Democrats polled in June; now he garners 54 percent."

MURTHA DOES IT AGAIN.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, we'd see schoolboys punished for refusing to kneel and pray in class. And they were right!

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during a religious education lesson.

Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent - which included wearing Muslim headgear - was a breach of their human rights.

You can't make this stuff up. And, sadly, you don't have to.

UPDATE: Clark Stooksbury is surprised to learn that Stoke-on-Trent is in England. I guess he wasn't lucky enough to have Mr. Wolfenbarger for geography like I did. He also seems a bit unclear on the point of this "They Told Me" series, which highlights the way in which apocalyptic things said about the Bush Administration tend to come true in rather different settings. I'm pointing that out here, just in case anyone else hasn't been paying attention.

MORE: Stooksbury's update just demonstrates that the Andrea See quote over in the right sidebar here is right. Sorry, Clark, you're just missing the joke here.

July 04, 2008

SOME INDEPENDENCE DAY THOUGHTS from Roger Kimball.

"BUT WE DON'T have any more!"

A COOL PHOTO BLOG, discovered via the comments at Ann Althouse's.

NOTHING LEFT TO PIVOT ON? Don't be so sure.

UPDATE: Related item here.

ROGER SIMON: The Good News and the Bad News on the Fourth of July.

BE A PATRIOT! GET A JOB!

SO THESE SUUNTO Heart Rate Monitors are on sale. I used to use a Polar until I lost the sensor and it was pretty good. I've got a Suunto dive computer and I like it. But the reader reviews on these are kinda lukewarm. Any recommendations from folks who've used 'em, or used others?

UPDATE: Reader Mike Dini emails:

I'm a slow runner and I've had several heart rate monitors. I've had one top-of-the-line model from each of the major vendors -- Polar, Garmin, Suunto. To coin a technical phase related to engineering EDA software: 'use what sucks the least'.

Given my experience with the T6, Suunto is dead last in this market. The device was nearly unusable. The SW sucked and regularly crashed. The heart rate monitoring function would occasionally go wild. This wildness was impossible to edit out of the database (My heart will not go 220 BPM). It would take a weird form of chanting to get the watch to recognize the foot pod and chest strap. The display is ODD and hard to read. The UI is not intuitive -- merely starting and stopping the watch takes effort. If you take a vacation for 7 days, you will need to reread the manual. I had trouble giving the thing away. You claim: 'I like the diving stuff'. The T6 made me extremely suspicious (read: terrified) of the diving products.

Polar (S625X) is pretty good, but it is only recently that they added GPS capability in the newer RS800G3. Note that the reviews of the RS800G3 are poor on Amazon. UI to the watch is fairly good (S625X). It is obvious, for example, how to start/stop the watch and save a lap time. All the functions needed are here, but it can take a rocket scientist to get some desperately needed things to work. The most important is to alarm when the aerobic threshold is exceeded (in my 167 BPM). This task taxed all of my 25 years of computer engineering skill to figure it out. The manual is terrible. Technical support is non-existent and hostile. I always had trouble with the IR link. This appears to be a sick company.

At present I'm using a Garmin 305. It is a little large and bulky, but has GPS capability. GPS is *VERY* slow to lock and I question its accuracy. The UI is wretched. It seems as if the engineers designed this product as a wrist-based GPS unit that happens to have a heart rate monitor. This should be reversed: a HR monitor that has GPS capability. The buttons are in the wrong place -- during a training run, I regularly shut off the watch during the most critical time of a run by hitting the 'off' button rather than the 'lap' button. The display is hard to read, and doesn't have nearly as much information as it first appears. The alarm is too faint. The SW is OK, but nothing spectacular. The connections on the back corrode. The watch behaves incorrectly at some of the boundary conditions. The battery life is too short (10 hours or so).

At the moment, I'm using the 305 -- it sucks the least. But, it wouldn't kill me to downgrade to the S625X. I will never use a Suunto HRM product again. OK to use my name and verify. Fix spelling and grammar please.

Ugh. None of this sounds especially appealing . . . .

A SECOND TERM FOR JIMMY CARTER? Courtesy of a Republican? "Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit."

The 55-mile-per-hour speed limit is a bit of idiocy I hoped we'd left behind. I'm not suprised to see Mr. Private Jets supporting it, though. Meanwhile, here are some better ideas for energy savings.

TAYLOR MARSH: Why Barack Needs Hillary.

THE CLIMATE-CHANGE Juggernaut.

THE TOP 100 law and lawyer blogs.

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE Fourth of July Movie?

FROM JENNIFER RUBIN, a Hollywood Pledge.

BRIAN BEUTLER, SHOT IN A MUGGING IN D.C., is going to be fine. They took out his spleen. Don't worry, Brian -- I haven't had a spleen since an unfortunate incident in my youth, and it's caused me no problems whatsoever.

WHO NEEDS WATERBOARDING, when there's Nutraloaf? It's gotta be better than some dorm food I've eaten.

NEXT STOP, serfdom!

SOME JULY FOURTH THOUGHTS from James Lileks.

MEGAN MCARDLE:

There's also this dodgy belief, fervently embraced by many liberals advocating regulations--"Look, even a big business head who would be regulated believes it's a good idea! It must be!" Au contraire, mon frere. The heads of big businesses often love big new regulatory bodies, because they have the resources to best negotiate a complex regime. The end result of this kind of radical regulation is usually that the big companies capture the regulator and use it to shut out competition.

Really big companies are more like bureaucracies than capitalist enterprises. See, e.g., Dilbert.

THE LONDON TIMES: Barack Obama's policy switches are giving the Left whiplash. "Change, it turns out, wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Having campaigned for the past year as the agent of transformation, the man who would lead an historic shift in America's political direction, Barack Obama is discovering that there is quite a lot he likes about the way things are. . . . If next week he named Dick Cheney as his running-mate and revealed that he spends his spare time drilling for oil in wildlife habitats, the only surprise would be that it took him so long."

This is not the Barack Obama that I knew. Well, that might nail down the InstaPundit endorsement . . . .

THIS is a very nice photo. So's this.

A LOOK AT race, politics, and the American labor movement.

IN THE MAIL: Christopher Jones' The Intelligent Portfolio: Practical Wisdom on Personal Investing from Financial Engines.

Farragut, Tennessee. Happy Independence Day! I'm on the road today, but will be checking in from time to time thanks to EVDO. And I've got a few scheduled posts, too.

THIS WEEK'S CARNIVAL OF SPACE is up!

SO I WAS AT THE GYM THE OTHER DAY, WEARING MY BLACKFIVE Don't Be A DouChe' T-Shirt and one of the trainers came up and said it was the coolest t-shirt she'd ever seen. I've gotten a lot of favorable remarks on it, maybe even more than the Enjoy Capitalism! shirt from Bureaucrash. But sometimes real life is even better than parody: Colombian army duped FARC by wearing … Che t-shirts.

INTERESTED IN A SPACE CAREER? Blue Origin is hiring.

SOME INDEPENDENCE DAY THOUGHTS from Don Surber.

A MAN OF SEASONAL PRINCIPLES? I believe you mean "pragmatic and flexible," Charles. We need that in a leader. Otherwise, he might lead us somewhere we don't already want to go!

IN BAGHDAD, CELEBRATING INDEPENDENCE DAY WITH the largest re-enlistment ceremony in history:

While most Americans probably slept, 1,215 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines raised their right hands and committed to a combined 5,500 years of additional service during the largest reenlistment ceremony in the history of the American military. Beneath a large American flag which dwarfed even the enormous chandelier that Saddam Hussein had built for the Al Faw Palace, members of all services, representing all 50 states took the oath administered by Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of Multi-National Forces Iraq.

Read the whole thing.

TIGERHAWK: "The editors of the New York Times are beginning to worry that they are the rubes."

FOR THE MEDIA, converging curves of diminution.

THEY'RE OBSERVING INDEPENDENCE DAY at Google.

UPDATE: Also at Ask.com, and Yahoo!

GOOD NEWS FOR SOME: A record-setting drop in student loan interest rates. I credit the Obama Presidency!

July 03, 2008

KATIE GRANJU looks at the race for First Lady. "I suspect that the 'Hillary Clinton factor' may be at play as part of the reason folks aren’t digging Michelle Obama."

A LOOK AT rejuvenation research.

REPUBLICANS SAY OBAMA VOTED TO RAISE TAXES 94 TIMES: FactCheck says they've overcounted and it's only 54. And some of those votes are iffy. "Most of those were measures to tax the rich or corporations; many aimed to fund government programs; and most didn't actually raise taxes in and of themselves."

OKAY, THIS OBAMA FLIPFLOP SHIFT IN NUANCE DOESN'T DO ANYTHING FOR ME: Obama: Mental distress can't justify late abortion: "Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says 'mental distress' should not qualify as a justification for late-term abortions, a key distinction not embraced by many supporters of abortion rights." I'm pro-choice, after all.

Boy, they're sure pumping these things out for the Independence Day weekend, though.

UPDATE: TalkLeft: "NARAL leaders ought to feel like idiots. . . . As I've said all along about his religious outreach, you don't get something for nothing and if he wants the evangelical vote, he's going to have to offer them something. Is this it?"

MICKEY KAUS:

Instapundit does a much more effective job clearing Obama on the issue of home mortgage favoritism than Obama's own clumsy web site. ...

I do try. Especially as I ponder an Obama endorsement, in anticipation of his refined position on the war . . . .

DOG BITES MAN: "Wire services cozy with terrorists."

HERE COMES THE PIVOT!

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) promised primary voters a swift withdrawal from Iraq, in clear language still on his website: “Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months.”

Not anymore. Heading into the holiday weekend, Obama and his advisers repudiated that pledge, saying he is reevaluating his plan and will incorporate advice from commanders on the ground when he visits Iraq later this month.

A top Obama adviser said he is not “wedded” to a specific timeline, and Obama said Thursday he plans to “refine” his plan.

You could see this one coming. Hmm. With all these changes, Obama's morphing into a candidate I could support!

UPDATE: Obama denies altering proposed Iraq withdrawal timeline.

But, at ABC, Obama’s Iraq Quagmire.

And John McGinnis emails: "You can wait for the Obama Pivot. I want to watch the Olbermann Squirm!"

Olbermann will praise Obama's "manly firmness" in deciding to keep troops in Iraq.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ann Althouse: "This is what I was expecting. Weren't you?"

MORE: A clarification. This should resolve all doubt.

And TigerHawk asks the eternal question.

STILL MORE: Remembering Samantha Power.

NEWS FROM IRAQ: Analysis: Sadr movement, Mahdi Army shrink under pressure.

QUESTION: "Do you think that the netroots support the Democratic Party in the same way that I was a New York Mets fan, growing up? Because damned if I can see how they're getting any practical return on their money, particularly when it comes to foreign policy."

LONGEVITY UPDATE: SIRT-1 activators may have a downside.

MY LITTLE CTHULHU? Who says evil can't be cuddly?

PLAYING BOTH SIDES AGAINST THE MIDDLE, on McCain's military record?

WHEN POLICE DON'T LIKE SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS:

Last year, New York police officers were seen dancing in the streets just before arresting four men in a city nightclub on charges of selling $100 worth of cocaine. It took six months and the men's life savings, but their names were finally cleared when prosecutors took the unusual step of announcing in court that the men had committed no crime.

That's because club surveillance video shows that the undercover cops had no contact with the accused men in the two hours they were in the club.

Now, club owner Eduardo Espinoza says the police are retaliating against him.

Jeez. They'd better get used to it -- surveillance is a two-way street now, and that phenomenon is only going to increase.

OMAR FADHIL: How Iran plans to drag the U.S. into war if Israel dares to attack its nuclear program. We should make sure they regret that, if it happens.

JACOB SULLUM: Obama's Toothless Second Amendment. "The senator defends the right to whatever arms the government decides to allow."

ADVICE FOR OBAMA: "Obama Should Embrace His Muslim Heritage." That hasn't been the strategy so far. In fact, that's the complaint: "He vociferously denies being a Muslim as if it were a slur."

UPDATE: Bill Bradley thinks this post suggests that Obama is a Muslim. I told him that anyone who's been paying attention -- which certainly includes InstaPundit readers -- knows that Obama has a Muslim heritage but isn't a Muslim now. Indeed, that's the point of the linked article. But the sensitivity on this question does suggest that Obama and his supporters think there's something wrong with being a Muslim, which was also the point of the linked article.

ANOTHER UPDATE: So thinking about this, is it just out-of-bounds to use the words "Obama" and "Muslim" in the same sentence? Does that join the ever-lengthening list of things we're not allowed to talk about?

DISNEY IS CLAIMING AN EXEMPTION from a new Florida gun-rights law. But only as to its employees, apparently.

CULTURAL SUICIDE: "If you see trouble, walk away." (Via Hot Air).

WHILE FEDERAL COURTS ARE SCRUTINIZING SURVEILLANCE OF ISLAMIC CHARITIES by the U.S. government, they're also opening the door to massive domestic surveillance by corporations:

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a "set-back to privacy rights".

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

Who do you trust less? Viacom, or the NSA?

UPDATE: More on the Google story here.

IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM SATELLITE RADIO YESTERDAY, you can still hear the latest PJM Political online. Download it and listen in the car on your Fourth of July travels!

MORE ON OBAMA'S MORTGAGE DEAL: "What could Sen. Barack Obama do for a lender in exchange for more than $100,000? Plenty."

Remember when Democrats were all about ending the "culture of corruption?" Now that sounds so 2006.

UPDATE: A reader who asks anonymity -- but he's a guy who's written me before -- emails:

I'm hesitant to add to this story, but I obtained a mortgage from Northern Trust in Chicago for my client at roughly the same time as Obama. The mortgage terms I got for my client were materially better than Obama's--a 30 year fixed at almost a full percent less than Obama's mortgage with a much larger principal amount.

Northern is an unusual bank that specializes in cases that require more attention and analysis than a typical bank will provide. I don't find Obama's mortgage to be anything special or unusual in the context of Northern's very competent Chicago office, though I could see how his situation and unusual income stream would make Northern pretty attractive to him.

This mortgage story is not even remotely comparable to the congressmen like Dodd who solicited what can only be called "constructive bribes" from Countrywide's CEO. The Tony Rezko aspect of Obama's home purchase is sleazy enough without drawing hyperbolic conclusions about his mortgage.

Yeah, I agree it's different from Dodd et al., but these members of Congress always seem to be getting some kind of good deal. Still, it's good to get an inside opinion.

FRANK J.: It's up to me to save the world. Which is a pretty sure sign that the world is in big trouble.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION UPDATE:

She may have defaulted on mortgages and lost a home in foreclosure, but that hasn't stopped Long Beach Rep. Laura Richardson from driving in style and at great expense, courtesy of the taxpayer. The lease on Richardson's 2007 Lincoln Town Car costs about $1,300 a month -- the most expensive lease of any member of the House of Representatives, reports the Daily Breeze. Richardson's monthly lease, paid by the federal government, is much larger than the $400 to $800 a month that other House members pay, according to a taxpayer group.

While Richardson has leased the vehicle only since last fall, it already been involved in one traffic accident while being driven by a staff member. In addition, Long Beach police ticketed the car in January for illegal parking, a ticket that has gone unpaid.

But that's not all. Read the whole thing. And try to guess her (unmentioned) political affiliation . . . .

PHILIP KLEIN: Obama vs. His Website on Iraq.

UPDATE: Is Google blocking The Spectator?

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE WANTS TO HAVE OBAMA OVER FOR BARBECUE: If Obama is smart, he'll take him up on it!

IN THE MAIL: Daniel Silva's Moscow Rules. It was immediately and eagerly borrowed by my colleague Dean Rivkin, who's a big Silva fan. I'll let you know what he thinks.

Knoxville, Tennessee.

FLASHBACK: Wesley Clark, Then and Now. Plus, dodging missiles.

NEWS I CAN USE! Phil Bowermaster on how to be marginally less dorky.

THOMAS MADDEN: America's Days Aren't Numbered.

Nonsense. America is doomed to go down any day now, and it has been ever since I was a kid. At least if you judge by bestselling books . . . . Some earlier thoughts on this subject here.

UPDATE: Of course, if you disagree with me, you could always be bringing your child up to survive the next World War.

But following one of his recommended links I get this customer review: "A 'MUST-READ' to prepare for Y2K Transition!" I wonder what that guy thinks now. Hey, just because all the earlier apocalyptic predictions have been wrong doesn't mean the new ones have to be. And I'm all for disaster preparedness. Just with, you know, a little perspective.

LIKE A STAR TREK CONVENTION for Dukes of Hazzard fans.

FULL TIME FRIDAY: In Class From 8 a.m. to 9:50 p.m.

A HEDGE-FUND READER EMAILS:

Does this (the Dow since early May)...

have anything to do with this (Obama/inTrade) ?

It's the correlation that no one in polite company is discussing.

Luckily, we're not so polite here. It's certainly suggestive.

UPDATE: Hey, maybe this is why Obama is talking so much economic nonsense. By doing so, he drives the stock market down, which makes life harder on the Republicans . . . .

POLLING ON IRAQ:

We also found, however, that more Americans — 57% — think we're winning in Iraq vs. 51% when we last asked the question in November. One of the biggest changes was among Democrats, 45% of whom now think we're winning vs. 34% last fall.

Which makes us wonder what the percentages would be if the coverage was just a little more balanced.

We'll never know. But this prepares the ground for the Obama pivot on Iraq.

COMMON SENSE PREVAILS: "Under increasing public pressure over its decision to temporarily halt all new solar development on public land, the Bureau of Land Management said Wednesday that it was lifting the freeze, barely a month after it was put into effect. The bureau had announced on May 29 that it was no longer processing new applications to build solar power plants on land it oversees in six Western states after federal officials said they needed first to study the environmental effects of solar energy, a process that would take two years."

Now how about dropping the barriers to developing other sources of energy, too, while we're at it?

WHO HAS MET MORE CONGRESSIONAL GOALS: Iraq, or the U.S. Congress?

HEH: "You can't please everybody, and if you want to be President, you really can't please Greenwald, Hamsher, and Kos."

CHINA AND THE INTERNET:

A recent analysis of web sites pushing malware (software that helps hackers steal data) revealed that half of them are connected with just ten ISPs (Internet Service Providers), and six of those ISPs are in China. This came as no surprise, as China has become the favorite hideout for Internet criminals.

There's just one catch. The Chinese Internet is highly policed by a special force of 30,000 secret police technicians. On the Chinese Internet, you don't do something the government does not want, at least not for long. So how do these criminals manage to survive on such a heavily policed portion of the Internet? It's no secret that a lot of Internet mischief comes out of China, with the tacit approval of the Chinese government.

Indeed.

FIVE VULNERABLE NODES in the global energy network. The logical response to such vulnerability, and a fear that disruption might be imminent, say because of something involving Iran, would be to build stockpiles. But if people started doing that, oil prices would rise to record levels. Probably even at a time when the economy was slowing.

Meanwhile, from the comments:

My two cents of logic.

1. As oil prices rise higher, more and more sustainable energy solutions become financially viable.

2. Sustainable energy helps cool the earth thus solving the problem of global warming and saving the planet.

3. Greenpeace supports saving the earth.

4.Any attack on Iran would cause the price of oil to spike.

My conclusion - Greenpeace supports an attack on Iran (at least in concept).

You can't argue with logic like that.

HELLER AND NEW YORK: "In a sign that federal courts here in New York will defend New York City's restrictive gun regulations, a judge is allowing the city to strip a disabled Vietnam War veteran of his gun license."

Some constitutional rights are less equal than others.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: "OK, I’ll admit it: six months ago I was very near buying into the whole Obama thing. That was when he was in his post-racial phase — before Jeremiah Wright, back when voting for Obama seemed like a way of putting an end to the unhealthy obsessiveness about race that disfigures liberal politics."

MICKEY KAUS: "The whole point of last week is that McCain's dropping the 'first' from 'security first.'"

July 02, 2008

CLIFFORD SHOEMAKER, THE LAWYER who subpoenaed blogger Kathy Seidel, got spanked by the judge for his efforts. "I find that Clifford Shoemaker violated Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(b)(1) and Rule 45(c)(1).... The 11(b)(1) violation may also violate Virginia’s Rules of Professional Conduct .... Clifford J. Shoemaker’s action is an abuse of legal process, a waste of judicial resources and an unnecessary waste of the time and expense to the purported deponent." Read the whole thing. Worse yet, everyone who googles him will find out about this -- and that he lost a motion to quash to a blogger acting pro se. Ouch!

JONATHAN CARD is setting up a Space Law Wiki.

BECAUSE WHO NEEDS NEWS, ANYWAY: LA Times to cut 250 jobs, including 150 news jobs. Earlier discussion of newspapers' economic travails is here.

Meanwhile, reader Joseph Beaulieu writes:

If only AP was as skeptical of the L.A. Times as it is of the Bush Administration ...it wouldn't have left this uncommented upon:

"The number one reason that people cancel the L.A. Times is, they tell us, they don't have enough time to read the paper that we give them every day," Stanton said. "We're going to be more picky about the stories we choose to write long and a lot more picky about the ones we write shorter."

Yeah, that's it. People are complaining about too much news. They're doing too good a job! That's their problem!

UPDATE: The LAT's appeal isn't shrinking -- it's just becoming more selective!

ANOTHER GROSS FACTUAL ERROR AT THE SUPREME COURT. Following up on similar huge errors from Justice Stevens in Heller. Plus, another Stevens Heller error here. What gives?

TRAILER PARK: A whole bunch of new movie trailers.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE on how the press is reporting on improvements in Iraq. By talking about problems in Afghanistan!

IN COLOMBIA, A MAJOR HOSTAGE RESCUE and another embarrassment for the FARC terrorists: "Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos has confirmed that former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who was held captive by the FARC, was rescued during a military operation on Wednesday. Santos said no one had been hurt in the rescue."

The Counterterrorism Blog says the operation was something right out of a spy thriller. More on the rescue here.

TOM MAGUIRE: "Larisa Alexandrovna tries her hand at rebutting Jonah Goldberg's essay on Obama's patriotism problem, and hilarity ensues."

CULTURAL SUICIDE.

WINNING OVER the Felon-American community.

COLLEGES PUSHING PHONY DIVERSITY:

In September of 2000, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the University of Idaho were both embarrassed when they were forced to admit that they had doctored promotional photographs to make their campuses look diverse. In both cases, non-white faces were added to real student photographs of all-white groups.

At the universities involved, officials insisted that they meant well, but just about everyone agreed that Photoshop diversity isn’t the real thing. But what if photos, even real photos of real live students, convey a false impression? . . .

The findings: Black students made up an average of 7.9 percent of students at the colleges studied, but 12.4 percent of those in viewbooks. Asian students are also more likely to be found in viewbooks than on campus, making up 3.3 percent of real students on average and 5.1 percent of portrayed students. . . . Looked at another way, he found that more than 75 percent of colleges appeared to overrepresent black students in viewbooks.

So why are black students more prevalent in viewbooks than on campus?

“Black equals diversity for many people. If you show African American students, people think that means your institution is diverse,” said Timothy D. Pippert, an assistant professor of sociology at Augsburg, who led the study. “They are defining diversity as that face.”

Read the whole thing.

IT'S A COFFEE TABLE! IT'S A WEIGHT BENCH! It's both!

FOR WHEN WRETCHED EXCESS STILL ISN'T ENOUGH: The Krispy-Kreme Bacon Cheeseburger.

Or, if you're on a diet, you can "go light" with grilled twinkies. Fatten up now, survive the famine later!

AN UPDATE ON THOSE CANADIAN "HUMAN RIGHTS" KANGAROO COURTS:

Free speech is a basic Canadian value. Indeed, it is one that's key to any self-respecting, modern democracy.

That is why we welcome the Canadian Human Rights Commission's dismissal last week of what we considered to be an unsupportable hate-speech complaint against Maclean's magazine.

The ruling can be viewed as a small but significant victory in the battle against creeping totalitarianism. . . . However, freedom of speech remains under attack.

And the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has yet to rule on a similar complaint launched by the Canadian Islamic Congress over the same Steyn piece.

As former B.C. journalist Nigel Hannaford points out in a recent paper for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, free speech in Canada is now policed by two parallel justice systems.

One is the regular court system, which administers the anti-hate provisions of the Criminal Code.

The other consists of a number of federal and provincial human-rights commissions, set up in the '60s and '70s to deal swiftly with abuses in the areas of employment and accommodation.

Driven by political agendas, these increasingly quirky commissions have now taken on what is, in effect, a censor's role.

Indeed they have, and they deserve to be treated as such, not as protectors of human rights, which they are not. Nice to see this issue getting so much play in the Canadian press. And here's more from a prominent Canadian libel lawyer:

After four decades of suing or defending prominent authors, journalists and businessmen entangled in some of Canada's most memorable libel cases, Mr. Porter warns that it is getting harder to defend reputations or preserve freedom of speech - rights honed over centuries of case law.

One culprit, he said, is quasi-judicial bodies such as human rights tribunals, which are operating far "beyond their jurisdiction."

When these agencies investigate slander and defamation charges, he argues, they operate outside the bounds of civil court procedure. Defendants cannot rely on traditional libel defences such as truth, fair comment or good intent.

The resulting chilling effect is, of course, entirely intentional.

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY: Standing up for free trade in Colombia.

SOME GOOD NEWS FROM CANADA, FOR A CHANGE: Asteroid-hunting satellite a world first. "Canada is building the world’s first space telescope designed to detect and track asteroids as well as satellites. Called NEOSSat (Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite), this spacecraft will provide a significant improvement in surveillance of asteroids that pose a collision hazard with Earth and innovative technologies for tracking satellites in orbit high above our planet."

PETER ROBINSON INTERVIEWS PHILIP BOBBITT on law, war and terrorism. Bobbitt's book is here.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Liberals, Conservatives, and Individual Rights.

ROGER SIMON: "Just as David Petraeus is making us feel good about our military, along comes Wes Clark to remind us that no institution is perfect. "

Petraeus, however, hasn't been booted from his command.

UPDATE: More on Clark from Slate, back in 2001. Among other things, we learn that in U.S. military circles "he was considered a showboating egotist and a devious political operator." And not much of a general, by all appearances.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More:

Get the politics out of the military? It's Clark and Webb who are injecting all the politics into the military right now. Webb is pissing me off. I don't know how McCain can resist taking the bait. Do the Obama people have someone who can be even more annoying than Webb on this subject? They seem to be wheeling out the military men one after the other. Clark didn't do the trick, so up comes Webb. Can they top Webb?

Anyway, Dowd's point is that Obama wants to get us out of Iraq, but he can't even get us out of Vietnam.

To me, the most striking line in Dowd's piece was this one:

“So, what’s going on, guys?” he asked on the tarmac at dusk. “What’s going on on Friday night? You’ll be back in time to have some fun.”

And what about you? a reporter asked the candidate. “I can’t have fun anymore,” Obama said, in a comment meant to be wry but sounding wistful. “It’s not allowed.”

It'll only get worse if he's elected. As noted in the past, it's a job that no sane person could love for eight years. Obama's sounding a bit sane, here.

MORE: From the comments:

This is playing out as if McCain has a mole inside the strategy sessions of the Democrats, guiding them to fight the campaign exactly where their candidate is weakest and their opponent is strongest.

Do they really want people, going into the 4th of July holiday, to be concentrating on the service and sacrifices of John McCain? Really?

Good point.

BACK WHEN I WAS AT THE CONSUMER ELECTRONIC SHOW, I noted a combination radar-detector/GPS that registers speed camera locations. Now here's a review from Popular Mechanics. These things need to be Internet-connected so that when one finds a cop, it sends a warning to other units within a few miles.

IN THE MAIL: Stephen L. Carter's new book, Palace Council. Perfect beach reading, and I'll be going to the beach in a bit.

Alcoa, Tennessee. The nursing home where my grandmother spent some time.

WASHINGTON POST: Obama Got Discount on Home Loan.

"The real question is: Were congressmen getting unique treatment that others weren't getting?" associate law professor Adam J. Levitin, a credit specialist at Georgetown University Law Center, said about the Countrywide loans. "Do they do business like that for people who are not congressmen? If they don't, that's a problem."

Yes, that's the question.

UPDATE: Bob Owens: "Obama had no prior relationship with the lender, was taking out a $1.32 million loan below market rates, without paying the customary fees. So what? . . . Barack Obama did precisely what every other politician does, and nothing more. The only reason this story merits any attention is that Obama's campaign has created a mythology around him that casts him as a reformer."

Yeah, "Barack Obama: More of the Same" wouldn't have been much of a slogan.

WELL, GOOD: Gene Editing Could Make Anyone Immune to AIDS.

ROBERT MUGABE and his enablers.

BEWARE THE EVIL SEX PESTS.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS GETS WATERBOARDED. (Via TDC).

UPDATE: Ann Althouse: "Hitchens concludes: '[I]f waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.' But if Hitchens is willing to submit to it as an experiment, it can't be the worst torture. We can easily think of many tortures that he would not have accepted for journalistic purposes and that no one friendly to him would have perpetrated."

Yes, nobody has their toenails pulled out with red-hot pincers so they can write about it. But what, exactly, does that tell us?

I GUESS THEY'RE NOT WORRIED ABOUT THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE COMING BACK: A nine-figure re-signing bonus for Rush Limbaugh.

ERIC SCHEIE: "Frankly, the haircuts didn't look especially gay to me, but I guess you have to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to know what a gay haircut looks like."

BLACKFIVE: Why McCain's Captivity Matters.

OUCH: TV viewers' average age hits 50.

HOPE, CHANGE, AND A NEW KIND OF POLITICS:

Barack Obama "had nothing to do" with Gen. Wesley Clark's curt dismissal of John McCain's military record, the retired Army officer wants everyone to know.

"I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," Clark said of McCain on "Face the Nation" - and then repeated it on several nationally broadcast venues.

But Obama's not about to stop using Clark as a campaign surrogate.

I don't think being booted from your NATO command is a qualification to talk about other people's military careers, either . . . .

And if, as Rand Beers says, the fact that McCain missed out on the 60s antiwar protests by being in a POW camp means he's "isolated" on national security issues, then what of Obama, who was attending elementary school in Indonesia at the same time?

UPDATE: Rick Moran: Wesley Clark and the Unbearable Banality of Campaign ‘08.

ANOTHER UPDATE: James Webb flipflops on military service.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU reply to all your spam. Kids, don't try this at home!

DAVID WEIGEL ON Swift Boat Derangement Syndrome: "This is why, when today's Democrats talk about John McCain, they can sound incredulous. After all the crap they took, why is he able to ride his Vietnam record to the GOP nomination? "

Maybe because it wasn't a lie?

UPDATE: Weigel emails: "I hope it's clear that the graf was written from the voice of an angry Democrat... and not me. I found the Swift Boat stuff distracting (was ANYONE happy that 2 months of that campaign was about Vietnam?) but Kerry lied about Cambodia and opened the floodgates."

It was clear to me. And it seems the Obama campaign wants this election to be about Vietnam, too, for some reason. That doesn't really seem to work for the Democrats . . . .

HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY: "The latest surveys, taken in the United States and in several developing countries, showed increased happiness from 1981 to 2007 in 45 of 52 countries for which substantial time series data was available."

Plus this:

"Though by no means the happiest country in the world, from a global perspective the U.S. looks pretty good," says Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the university, who directs the study. "The country is not only prosperous; it ranks relatively high in gender equality, tolerance of ethnic and social diversity and has high levels of political freedom."

They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, we'd see -- oh, hell, no they didn't.

EUGENE VOLOKH: "Yet another study — which I learned about because it was cited to me by a fellow academic — that shows a correlation between home gun ownership and homicide and suicide risk to occupants without controlling for some obvious confounding factors. . . . The failure to control for the obvious criminal history variable strikes me as especially glaring. And yet such studies are read, reported on, and believed."

FRUIT, CUT AND DRIED: How does dried fruit compare with fresh fruit in nutritional value?

July 01, 2008

MARTIN FELDSTEIN: We Can Lower Oil Prices Now.

DEMOCRACY, WHISKEY, SEXY: "Alcohol is flowing again in Baghdad."

HIT HIM AGAIN, HARDER: Angry McCain grabbed Sandinista official at talks.

"You won't like me when I'm angry."

THOUGHTS ON PATRIOTISM, from Jonah Goldberg: "In part because liberal commentators have such a hard time grasping why patriotism should be an issue at all, and the GOP is so clumsy explaining why it's important, the debate often gets boiled down to symbols. . . . Definitions of patriotism proliferate, but in the American context patriotism must involve not only devotion to American texts (something that distinguishes our patriotism from European nationalism) but also an abiding belief in the inherent and enduring goodness of the American nation. We might need to change this or that policy or law, fix this or that problem, but at the end of the day the patriotic American believes that America is fundamentally good as it is."

DIG IT!

A "CHILLING COMMONALITY."

PROGRESS REPORT: New Iraq report: 15 of 18 benchmarks satisfactory.

LAURA LEE DONOHO: "I’ll Tell You What’s 'Inartful!'"

YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP:

Muslims have complained over a police advert featuring a puppy sitting in an officer's hat. A police force has apologised to Islamic leaders for the "offensive" postcard advertising a new non-emergency telephone number, which shows a six-month-old trainee police dog named Rebel. The German shepherd puppy has proved hugely popular with the public, hundreds of who have logged on to the force's website to read his online training diary. But some Muslims in the Dundee area have reportedly been upset by the image because they consider dogs to be "ritually unclean."

Sadly, you don't have to. It's amazing what a combination of PC multi-culti guilt and a credible threat of violence will get you, though I'm guessing that it's mostly the credible threat of violence that's doing the work here. Nice incentive structure they're setting up.

NIFONG SUPPORTER charged with sex crimes.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Should I Call Myself a Feminist? I didn't realize you had to get approval from the Membership Committee.

I'LL BE ON HUGH HEWITT'S SHOW WITH MICKEY KAUS in a minute, talking about this story. Key bit: "No one should have to live like this, and no one did anything about it." Kaus's take is here.

WELL, WHO WOULDN'T WANT TO DRIVE ONE? "Gutless, tawdry, disappointing (and, to me, stunningly desirable)."

UPDATE: Reader Debbie Ebberts emails:

Thanks for the link to the Chevrolet Malibu blog entry. My very first car was a 1976 Chevrolet Malibu Classic - I inherited it from my mom in 1981. I loved that car. It was silver with a hideous red interior and I called it "The Beast". It was heavy & bulky but had an amazing engine and therefore lots of power. Guys loved it - but I'm sure that had nothing to do with my fondness for it. And, it kept me very safe - I had a few fender benders when I first started driving and The Beast never got a scratch, but did some serious damage to some, um, smaller cars. Oops. I drove it until my sophomore year in college. I still miss that car. Thanks for the memories!

Better than my friend Griff's memories -- his sporty '77 Rabbit had an unfortunate run-in with a brown Malibu.

BRENDAN LOY is photoblogging East Tennessee.

BANNING HATS to make things easier for surveillance cameras.

UPDATE: Reader Craig Good emails: "What about burqas?" Banning those would be racist. Or something.

SYMPATHY FOR WILL SMITH: Oh, the burdens of cruising the French Riviera while feeling ashamed of your country and president!

MARKOS MOULITSAS UNHAPPY WITH OBAMA: "So many of you are upset that I pulled back my credit card last night, making a last minute decision to hold back on a $2,300 contribution to Obama." (Via