MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM . . . . The carnival of the recipes is up. This week’s theme: what to serve guest bloggers company.

LAURA MCKENNA: Brooks is right. The world is growing more left.

I’m not sure I agree with this. The world has gotten a lot more anti-Bush. And the left is getting more left . . . but the left is not the world. Does a swing against Bush mean America is ready for national healthcare, expanded affirmative action, gay marriage, and so on? Colour me sceptical.

MEDPUNDIT SAYS you might want to cancel that early lung cancer screening.

Most people believe intuitively that doing a periodic chest x-ray has the potential to save them from lung cancer. The worst scenario is when a patient is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and then blames their physician for never doing a chest x-ray or CT scan, even if they didn’t have any symptoms. In fact, you could have a chest x-ray every month and still die of advanced lung cancer. Lung cancer is one of those cancers that has many faces. There are some that are so aggressive, finding them early makes no difference. By the time they’ve shown up, they’ve already spread. There are others that are slow and passive and easily treated, even if we only find them once they become symptomatic. But try telling an angry cancer patient that. Especially one who read the first set of news stories touting the benefits of routine CT scans, but missed this weeks’s news.

THE NEW YORK TIMES is worried about the mortgage market, and by extension, the market for homes. Here in DC, where I’m living right now, the bottom has clearly dropped out of the market. But in New York City, my permanent home, my mother the real estate agent reports that the buying market continues to be hot. She says her colleagues all marvel that there is still so much money left in the city. This may be because New York City, where sales often-have to get past co-op boards or condo management, was much less driven by sub-prime mortgages than other areas of the country.

DAVE SCHULER asks some questions about subprime loans.

“I’M GIVING SOME THOUGHT TO IT. GOING TO LEAVE THE DOOR OPEN.” Fred Thompson certainly looked like a presidential candidate to me, just now on Fox News Sunday.

THOMPSON: I want to see how my colleagues who are on the campaign trail do now, what they say, what they emphasize, what they’re addressing, and how successful they are in doing that, and whether or not they can carry the ball in next November, and mainly whether or not they can reach the American people, inspire the American people to do the tough things that we’re going to need to do.

…

CHRIS WALLACE: And if you search your soul and if you listen to what they’re all saying and it doesn’t seem to you that they’re catching on, making sense — whatever — then what?

THOMPSON: Well, I’m going to give it serious consideration.

Translation: Yes!

UPDATE: Here‘s the video. If it seems hard to play, try fiddling with the buttons. (More Althousian tech advice.)

ANOTHER VIDEO: Here‘s some more video. It works better — and covers a different part of the show.

“A LOW, THROBBING, VIOLENT, READY-TO-RUMBLE HUM DRIFTS past the espresso machine, past the rack of alternative weeklies, past the wall exhibit of photos from a faculty member’s trip to Florence, past the plastic tub where you put your dirty cups and spoons.” RLC reads something rantish in the NYT and rants back — with pictures of “the menacing black hole that unnerved the Times writer.”

“I WAKE UP AT NIGHT AND I SPIN, countless thoughts, tripping over each other. My crazy work schedule this semester, the bid for a new condo, I’ll be moving, everyone’s moving, I’m in Cervinia but the Law School is just emails away. I need to write more, I need to moonlight, I need to sleep.”

“THE UNEASY, ‘INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS’ SENSE that regular people, who were funny-shaped and neurotic and sincere and inefficient, were suddenly having to compete with — and losing to, and inexorably being replaced by — a new kind of 24/7 success cyborg that had had doubt and depression and down time genetically engineered out of it.”

“STRONG AND CLEAR.” Not “soft and muddy.” If John Edwards seems to have changed, he says, it’s only a change in clarity.

“I should make absolutely clear: Nothing has changed about John Edwards as a human being and my value system,” he said. “It’s exactly the same as it’s always been, which is wanting to give people the chances that I’ve had.”

Well, there must at least be a change in your values about how forthright a political candidate needs to be.

UPDATE: A little muddiness on Edwards’ relationship with the netroots.

MIDWESTERN RIVALRY. “We’re No. 1!” Most corrupt!

SO, TOM. Are we doing boldface intros or all caps intros?

Note to Newt – Wake up and smell the Coffey.

HI, TOM. I’m glad to see you’re here early, which is early early this Daylight Savings morning. I thought my Cingular cell phone was the best bet for getting the real time when I got up this morning, but — unlike my computer — it didn’t register the spring forward. Hello, Instapundit readers. I hope, with enough of us blogging in concert, we can serve up juicy nuggets at a Reynoldsian rate. And thanks to Glenn for letting me back in over here. The last time I did it, in August, I was also driving from Madison, Wisconsin to California and back — and counting on Holiday Inn Express to supply the internet connection. It was a bit insane. I’ll be more grounded this time. At least physically.

UPDATE: I can’t believe I’m giving tech advice, but turning the cell phone off and back on got it to spring forward.

Did That Last Entry Say “Tom Maguire”? Yes! I will be guestblogging for a week, along with Ann Althouse and Megan Mcardle. Regular readers here may remember me from Just One Minute, which lately has been The Lewis Libby Channel. I have promised Glenn that (for a week anyway) I will end my Dark Obsession and look for other material in the uiniverse.

You Can’t Win If You Don’t Play. But you do win even if you lose – it’s a dollar for a dream!

A “MELTDOWN” in Nevada. Don Surber is amused.

UPDATE: This might amuse him, too.

I’LL BE AT A SECURE, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION for the next several days. But my usual crop of topflight guestbloggers — plus a surprise new addition — should keep things hopping around here. I don’t expect to be checking email, etc., much if at all. See you when I get back!

JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG’S NEW BOOK gets a positive review from Todd Zywicki.

And John Scalzi’s new book get’s a positive review from Eugene Volokh.

HISTORICAL IRONY in South America.

MIKE RAPPAPORT: “How is it that Scooter Libby is facing jail time and Sandy Berger got off with a slap of the wrist. At least part of the answer is that Libby was investigated by a special prosecutor, while Berger was not. My guess is that there is more to the story of Berger as well (incompetence at Justice?)” Or something.

THE BLOGGINGHEADSTV INTERVIEW was recorded (at our end) using the Canon GL2 that Helen has used for her documentaries — it has the remote control that lets you zoom, etc., without being behind the camera. Plus, the aptly-named thrifty light set. That worked out pretty well, although the near-white wall in the background gave a bit of a backlighting effect — next time I’ll do a bit of exposure compensation. It looked fine on the monitor, but just a shade dark in the final version.

JOHN NOONAN: “This war has become, by and large, an exercise in politics. ‘Warped Clausewitz’ is a good way of framing it. “

WHO KNEW THAT HARRY REID HAD SO MUCH INFLUENCE? “Iran tells US to set timetable for Iraq exit.”

UPI REPORTER PAMELA HESS talks about what she saw in Iraq recently, on C-SPAN.

BORN ON THE BAYOU: Novels by Kimberly Willis Holt.

BILL HOBBS: “Michael Silence, the reporter/blogger at the Knoxville News Sentinel is running rings around the The Tennessean’s political reporters and their blog on the Fred Thompson story. “

BILL ARDOLINO INTERVIEWS a civil affairs Marine in Fallujah.

IMUS VS. SCHUMER on Walter Reed: Follow the link and see the transcript.

IAN HALPERIN’S JAMES TAYLOR BIOGRAPHY, Fire and Rain, gets a review from Doug Weinstein.

PROTESTING AGAINST ZAPATERO IN MADRID, to the tune of over 2 million people, according to reports collected at BarcePundit. It’s a lot of protesters, anyway.

THE APPLE-THEMED ANTI-HILLARY VIDEO that people were talking about last week is still of uncertain authorship. But it’s been viewed over 100,000 times because — as one of the commenters notes — it’s funny.

On the other hand, Andrew Marcus’s video from the Secular Islam conference has been viewed over 100,000 times, too, without the aid of humor. That’s actually kind of encouraging.

UPDATE: By the way, Andrew Marcus emails to say that he shot that video with this Canon still camera. When I first met Andrew, he was shooting a documentary in HD with, literally, a truckload of equipment and a crew. Not that that stuff doesn’t have its place, but he’s really been won over by the ease, flexibility, and surprisingly high quality of shooting web video with digital still cameras. And, as he noted in this email, people are far less intimidated by the smaller camera, which tends to produce better interviews.

AN ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER is noted by Tim Blair.

THOUGHTS ON PROSECUTORIAL ETHICS, from Maimon Schwarzschild.

THE GREENHOUSE-FRIENDLY NUCLEAR OPTION IN EUROPE:

The role of nuclear power in Europe received an unexpected boost yesterday as EU leaders hailed a landmark climate change deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and switch to renewable fuels.

Environmentalists complained that an ambitious headline goal to cut Europe’s CO emissions by a fifth by 2020 had been weakened by concessions to the main nuclear nations and the biggest polluters in Eastern Europe. . . . Jacques Chirac, the outgoing French President, welcomed the deal as one of the top three achievements of the EU during his 12 years in the Elysée Palace.

Tony Blair was also pleased with the concession towards the nuclear powers. The outcome will give a boost to his plans to rebuild Britain’s ageing nuclear power stations which suffered a setback last month when the High Court ruled that the consultation process was seriously flawed. Mr Blair said: “There is then the 20 per cent target on renewable energy. In setting that, there will be permission to look at the energy mix that countries have . . . including nuclear technology, which obviously helps the UK as well.”

I think that America should take a “more European” approach to energy policy.

“COMPLETELY SMUGLY, and to the annoyance of my critics.”

DAVE WEIGEL on the D.C. Second Amendment decision: “That’s huge. And one angle you probably won’t hear: This is the direction DC public opinion has been moving toward for some time. “Only one month ago Marion Barry, DC’s statesman/punchline who now holds a city council seat, proposed a halt to the gun ban.”

Plus, Radley Balko notes the Washington Post’s silly, shrill editorial. I should have said, silly, shrill, and predictable. And Jeralyn Merritt comments at TalkLeft.

THE “HARMLESS HABIT” THAT turns men off.

ANN ALTHOUSE AND I appear on BloggingHeadsTV, with a special guest appearance by the Insta-Wife.

HERE’S A LOOK AT THE DIGITAL EFFECTS in the new movie 300. Inspired by the critics’ reviews, Dean Barnett is eager to see the film!

I imagine this will help the sales of Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, too. That’s good, as I found it to be an excellent novel. So did the whopping 556 reviewers over at Amazon. . . .

UPDATE: I haven’t read Pressfield’s Alexander the Great novel, but people seem to like it, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: An interesting look at the politics of the film. Apparently it didn’t play well in Berlin. But the National Hockey League likes it! I’d think they’d find it insufficiently violent . . . .

DAVE KOPEL ON THE ART OF “INSULTING UPWARD,” as practiced by Ann Coulter and her disciples.

HMM. CONGO URANIUM RING SMASHED:

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo say they have dismantled an international network set up to illegally use uranium mined there.

Scientific Research Minister Sylvanus Mushi said DR Congo’s top nuclear official and a colleague were being questioned in connection with the case.

The official, Fortunat Lumu, and the colleague were arrested on Tuesday.

The move comes amid reports that a large quantity of uranium has gone missing in recent years in DR Congo.

State prosecutor Tshimanga Mukeba earlier told the BBC that an “important quantity” of uranium was taken from the atomic energy centre in the capital, Kinshasa, without revealing any figures.

Hmm. I wonder where it went? Here’s some speculation: “Patricia Feeney, director of a campaigning organisation called Rights and Accountability in Development says action is overdue. The worry is, who is buying in this nuclear black market. There are rumours it could be Iran or North Korea.” Gee, do you think?

IS THE BBC running scared?

MORE ON DEVELOPMENTS AT DUKE, at K.C. Johnson’s blog. Just keep scrolling.

MORE ON THE ONGOING disgrace at San Francisco State University.

MAYBE BUSH SHOULD TRY TO SELL HIS SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS AS “MORE EUROPEAN:”

Sweden is close to implementing new surveillance legislation that will include the monitoring of emails, telephone calls and keyword searches using advanced pattern analysis. The objective is to detect ‘threats such as terrorism, IT attacks or the spread of weapons of mass destruction’ but the proposals have divided the country. In a misguided attempt to put people at ease, the government admitted that Sweden has been tapping its citizens’ phones for decades anyway.

‘Cause the Europeans are, you know, more progressive than we are.

NOW EUGENE VOLOKH NOTES a Second Amendment error in The Washington Post. It’s like they’re not even trying to get this stuff right.

UPDATE: More problems for the New York Times, too. Maybe if they’d stop just taking dictation from the Brady Campaign or the Violence Policy Center and actually learn about this stuff, they’d do a better job . . . .

JOANNE JACOBS’ BOOK IS NOW out in paperback.

I GUESS SOMEBODY FORGOT TO TELL NEWT: Chris Matthews says that conservatives don’t like sex.

MORE ON BUSH’S BRAZILIAN BIOFUEL PACT: Plus, I think I approve of this loophole:

A tortured route around the tariff goes through the Caribbean Basin. There, two dozen small countries are exempted as part of a 24-year-old trade agreement from near the end of the Cold War, designed to combat communism by feeding the U.S. dollar into their poor economies. Even that tariff exception — which requires entrepreneurs like Mr. White to jump through legal hoops while risking losses from volatility of supply and demand in Brazil and the U.S. — is under attack. . . .

The Caribbean sugar industry is so antiquated that it can’t produce the fuel competitively from its own cane fields. Instead, Caribbean companies take on a middle step in the production process: They dehydrate the ethanol from its original state, then ship it to U.S. refiners, which add gasoline to make the fuel useable in American cars.

The dehydrating meets the U.S. requirement that products be “substantially transformed” in Caribbean Basin countries, if they don’t originate there, to escape tariffs. Such techniques to satisfy trade rules often are controversial: In the 1980s and 1990s, Caribbean Basin countries ran afoul of U.S. apparel makers when they started finishing low-cost apparel from Asia and sending it on to the U.S., skirting trade barriers aimed at the Asian products.

U.S. farm-state lawmakers like Sen. Grassley say that merely siphoning water from ethanol shouldn’t qualify Caribbean firms for tariff breaks. “It’s subterfuge,” he says.

We should get rid of the tariff, which — as Grassley’s state-of-the-union behavior illustrates — is just a subsidy to domestic political interests. More thoughts on that here:

If Mr Bush were serious about ethanol, he’d let Brazil’s in more cheaply, preferably tariff-free. This would boost both Brazilian farmers and America’s ethanol infrastructure. Once all that expensive stuff starts to appear—pumping stations, distribution networks—American cellulosic ethanol (from switchgrass and whatnot) is a lot more likely to come onto the market and be competitive. Everyone wins but OPEC.

And Grassley’s corngrowing constituents.

EUGENE VOLOKH notes some factual errors in the New York Times’ coverage of today’s Second Amendment decision from the D.C. Circuit.

UPDATE: Plus some interesting stuff from Blackstone on what that talk about “a free state” in the Second Amendment means. Or just go here to see a whole bunch of interesting posts on this case, all on one page.

POLITICAL WINDS shifting on Iraq? Obey’s amusing.

UPDATE: More on Obey here. I liked this bit:

When The Hill contacted him Friday about the videotaped encounter, Obey immediately apologized for getting angry with the woman, saying that his immense frustration about “this stupid war” boiled over.

It reminded me of this:

The most memorable part of “Forrest Gump” is a scene set in or around 1968, in which Forrest, who by the way served in Vietnam, has encountered his love interest, Jenny, at an antiwar rally in Washington. Jenny gets into an argument with her hippie boyfriend, who slaps her in the face. Forrest decks the hippie, who later tries to smooth things over with Jenny: “Things got a little out of hand,” he tells her. “It’s just this war and that lying son of a bitch, Johnson! I would never hurt you. You know that.”

Life imitates art imitating life. Or something.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN NOTES THAT the phony Plame narrative continues in spite of repeated debunkings. More here.

THIS SEEMS LIKE PRETTY GOOD NEWS:

The shadowy leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, an al-Qaida-inspired group that challenged the authority of Iraq’s government, was captured Friday in a raid on the western outskirts of Baghdad, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was arrested along with several other insurgents in a raid in the town of
Abu Ghraib, said Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, spokesman for the Baghdad security operation. U.S. officials had no confirmation of the capture and said they were looking into the report.

Al-Moussawi said al-Baghdadi admitted his identity, as did another “of the terrorists” who confirmed “that the one in our hands is al-Baghdadi.”

The arrest of al-Baghdadi would be a major victory for U.S. and Iraqi forces in their fight against Sunni insurgents, especially the hardcore religious extremists who have shown no interest in negotiating an end to their struggle.

It also suggests that we’re getting good intelligence, which is very important. Gateway Pundit has more.

MY EARLY WARNINGS about the Patriot Act seem to have borne at least some fruit, though I’ll confess that things don’t seem to have been as bad as I feared. Still, this is troubling:

The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

And for three years the FBI has underreported to Congress how often it forced businesses to turn over the customer data, the audit found.

FBI agents sometimes demanded the data without proper authorization, according to the 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. At other times, the audit found, the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.

Still, “we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities,” the audit concludes.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: At the Counterterrorism Blog, this is called “troubling and inexcusable,” but there’s also this:

The problems identified by the IG are problems of process in terms of recordkeeping and reporting, which are administrative. The process in terms of operation and use of the information has not been problematic. The IG found no deliberate or intentional misuse of authority, meaning there were no infringements on privacy rights or civil liberties. Even though recordkeeping and reporting was inadequate, actual use of information was appropriate.

That’s an important point.

18 DOUGHTY STREET looks at anti-Americanism at the BBC.

FURTHER THOUGHTS on the D.C. Second Amendment decision mentioned below.

MORE NEWS ON A FRED THOMPSON CANDIDACY as Howard Baker confirms rumors that he’s pushing Thompson to run. Plus, a roundup here.

LUCAS SAYRE blogged Justice Ginsburg’s talk at Indiana University. “Justice Ginsburg seemed to be moving pretty slowly. I realize she is advanced in years, but this echoes an article I read just last week that said she was moving more slowly than usual. That said, she was eloquent and quite engaging.”

IN THE MAIL: Checkmate, a thriller by former National Security Council staffer Karna Small Bodman.

A HISTORY LESSON ON IRAQ, for those who need a reminder of what Democrats were saying a few years ago.

D.C. CIRCUIT STRIKES DOWN DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA GUN CONTROL LAW as a violation of the Second Amendment, adopts individual rights view. Howard Bashman has more, and the opinion is here. This is a very important development.

Some additional background on the Second Amendment can be found here, here and here.

UPDATE: Okay, I’ve given the majority opinion a very quick read. It’s very much in line with the so-called “Standard Model” of individual rights scholarship, and also makes much of the Tennessee cases that I discuss here and that the Supreme Court noted in Miller. Seems like a very strong opinion; the dissent, on the other hand, looks a bit odd. I’m going to have to think about it a bit more to decide if it’s really as flimsy as it seems.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Eugene Volokh notes the decision, and has some further thoughts about timing and the 2008 elections.

Perhaps the Democrats would be wise to take the issue off the table politically by passing some sort of federal legislation guaranteeing American citizens the right to own guns.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Tim Lynch at Cato weighs in.

MORE: Strangely, as of 6:45 pm there’s not a word on this at Hit & Run. What, the Reason folks don’t care about the Second Amendment anymore?

MORE INSURGENT ATTACKS, in Iran.

A.C. KLEINHEIDER calls the Fred Thompson run the campaign that will never happen. Er, unless . . . .

JAMES LILEKS ON CHRISTOPHER ROBIN’S REPLACEMENT:

Here’s the part that makes me truly sad:

The little girl wears a bike helmet.

Because you could fall down in the 100 Acre Woods and hurt yourself.

I swear, they’re going to put airbags on Barbie’s Pegasus next, and require thick corks on the point of all unicorn horns.

Anyway: I don’t mind that they’ve introduced a girl into the 100 Acre Woods, and as the father of a daughter I fully support the addition of female characters with whom my daughter could identify. But I know how I’d feel if I had a young boy. There are 100 acres. There’s not room enough for both?

Read the whole thing.

THOUGHTS ON INTELLECTUALS AND THE MILITARY, at The American Thinker.

HUNTING BIN LADEN in Waziristan. “It seems as if Dick Cheney’s visit to Pakistan meant something rather significant for Musharraf. With AQ more active than any time in the last five years, and with Musharraf sitting on his hands, Cheney’s visit was meant as an ultimatum for action. If Musharraf won’t fight terrorists, then we have less interest in preventing his destabilization. Musharraf responded by arresting two senior members of the Taliban outside of Waziristan, and his lack of response thus far to American operations in Waziristan seems to indicate acquiescence to the new American policy.”

JOHN TAMMES POSTS ANOTHER ROUNDUP OF NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN that you might have missed. It’s his 50th roundup!

UH OH:

Anybody who has walked by the east side of the Capitol in the last few years knows that there’s a big construction project going on. It’s for an underground visitors center. Here’s the shocking news: It’s costing far more than originally planned and taking years longer than expected to complete . . . . If Congress cannot properly oversee a project that’s taking place in its own backyard—literally!—then how can it oversee anything?

Is this a trick question?

SO MUCH FOR THE “100 HOURS:” The Democratic takeover of Congress doesn’t seem to have done much for that body’s public esteem.

Michael Yon sends this photo from Baghdad, and emails: “Saddam said our soldiers couldn’t take the heat. He thought wrong.”

Visit his site, if you haven’t. And remember that he, like other independent blogger-journalists like Michael Totten, Bill Roggio, and Bill Ardolino — and independent documentarians like Pat Dollard or J.D. Johannes — is dependent on reader/viewer contributions for support. So if you like his work, consider donating. Meanwhile, I’ll note that Saddam also thought our politicians couldn’t take the heat, and it isn’t clear yet whether he was wrong about that, though he’s certainly in no position to find out.

MORE GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS, from Jules Crittenden.

VIDEO-PEDICURE BLOGGING. As far as I know, this hasn’t been done before . . . .

WHY IS THIS NEWSPAPER going after a blogger who reported (truthfully, it appears) on a local politician? Rogers Cadenhead wants to know: “I’ve been reading the Record for a decade. I can’t recall a single time where it conducted an effort to catch a rapist, robber or murderer anywhere near the scope of this manhunt for a blogger.”

RANDY BARNETT plugs the Institute for Humane Studies summer seminars.

WILL REUTERS BE AN EARLY ADOPTER? “A suite of photo-authentication tools under development by Adobe Systems could make it possible to match a digital photo to the camera that shot it, and to detect some improper manipulation of images, Wired News has learned.”

DON SURBER: Fire Alberto Gonzales: “The Bush administration has gone after corporate and congressional crooks, regardless of party. The actions of Gonzales allow that sterling record to be smeared. Kick him to the curb. Hard. Fast.”

ETHANOL HYPOCRITES: If Bush is for it, they’re against it. Maybe that’s his new way of helping out his oil buddies . . . .

TOM SMITH: “Here’s what we should do: Give veterans enough benefits so they can afford to get the care they deserve from private sources. You could do this with medical vouchers. It would be cheaper than supporting the inefficient and notorious VA hospital system, and it would result in better care for people who really deserve much better care than they are getting. The line I used to hear from LWJ when she rotated through VA hospitals in her training was, it’s a good thing veterans are so tough, because VA care would kill anybody else. That ain’t right. “

OBAMA’S STOCK TRADES: Professor Bainbridge thinks there’s no scandal there for Obama, though he notes a larger Congressional issue.

JIHAD OR INSURGENCY: Richard Fernandez looks at what’s going on in Thailand. “Largely ignored by, and hence unknown to the West, it is the most lethal insurgency in Southeast Asia. In the wake of the most recent attacks an army spokesman believed that unidentified insurgent forces were trying to intimidate ethnic Chinese — who celebrate the New Year holiday — into fleeing the predominantly Muslim region. Even so, no organization has claimed responsibility for the direction of the insurgency.”

YAHOO! BEING SUED for ratting out Chinese dissident. And Yahoo! is getting slammed by the VOA.

535 ways to make a point.

WISCONSIN UPDATE: “Sensitivities take precedence over truth and academic freedom.”

And they shouldn’t.

UPDATE: “Process overdue.”

MICHAEL TOTTEN GOES on the record with IDF Intelligence.

WELL, IF YOU INSIST: “PorkBusters, take a bow. After 20 years of writing editorials denouncing this crap and seeing only occasional success, it is nice to see bloggers take up the cause and carry the ball forward.” But don’t get cocky.

IT’S ALL FRED THOMPSON, ALL THE TIME, at Michael Silence’s News-Sentinel blog. Just keep scrolling!

PORN FREE: Jeff Goldstein weighs in on a scandal I’ve barely noticed. Hey, that’s why the blogosphere is a big place. I don’t have to notice everything!

UPDATE: Jeff’s post is fine, but if you’re worried about NSFW content you might want to be careful about following some of the links.

HMM. IT SEEMS AS IF THIS deserves more attention: “The Senate’s anti-terrorism bill would relax visa requirements for foreign travelers coming to the United States, a move that some worry will leave the country more vulnerable to a terrorist attack.”

On the other hand, as long as it’s that easy for Saudis to get here, how much difference does it make?

FITZI’S HONOR: Tom Maguire has some uncomplimentary thoughts.

OBAMA AND THE SWIFTBOATERS: Well, this doesn’t make me think less of him.

CAPITALISM FOR CAMPESINOS: “At stake is the liberation of the poor.”

AN ARMY OF STACEYS: Just found out that one of my cousins has gone into the online chocolate business. Looks yummy, but so far my family connection has failed to yield any free samples. Probably just as well for my waistline, though chocolate does count as a health food nowadays . . . .

We talk to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) about why he wants to be President. We caught up with Rep. Hunter as he was getting ready to go to Iraq, and talked with him about the war, gun control, stem cell research and cloning, and much more. (His core principles statement is online, but we noticed a surprising omission.) Plus, what his son learned serving in Fallujah.

You can listen directly — no download needed — by going here, or you can download the entire file by clicking right here. A lo-fi version suitable for dialup is available by going here and selecting lo-fi. And, of course, you can subscribe for free via iTunes, and you should!

As always, my lovely and talented cohost is taking comments and suggestions.

Music is by Doug Weinstein’s acid jazz band, XTemp, from the album Bugsy’s World. (Sadly, it’s not available online.) This podcast is brought to you by Volvo USA.

A LOOK AT genocide in Zimbabwe.

AUSTIN BAY WAS ON NPR THIS MORNING, talking about his new book, Embrace the Suck: A Pocket Guide to Milspeak. You can listen to the story here.

Nice pic of Austin, too.

C-SPAN OPENS UP: “Under pressure from bloggers and other Internet activists, the network that broadcasts congressional hearings has agreed to grant public access to many of its video feeds.” Read the whole thing.

And bravo for C-SPAN, as this is an excellent thing. And might I suggest that they make it possible to embed video in a YouTube fashion — or better yet, like MotionBox, which lets you set links to multiple locations within a video.

AN ARMY OF DONS: Don Williams was a regular columnist in my local paper, the Knoxville News-Sentinel. He left the paper over creative differences, and has now started writing for Randy “SKBubba” Neal’s local news/opinion site KnoxViews. Don and I disagree rather sharply on the war, etc., but he’s a good guy — plus, as is common with these “sharp political divisions,” we actually agree on lots more stuff than we disagree on, really — and I’m helping him get set up with blogging, too. What’s interesting is that he will probably wind up reaching more people this way than via the News-Sentinel’s oped page. And given their niggardly payments to outside columnists, he may even make more money.

MORE GOOD NEWS FOR GIULIANI: “A new poll shows Rudy Giuliani taking two of the three crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio from Hillary Rodham Clinton by winning over independents and nearly breaking even with her bread and butter – female voters.” He does even better against Obama. But as I’ve noted before, it’s awfully early yet. Still, I suspect this will stoke pre-emptive attacks against Giuliani in the media.

UPDATE: It’s already started. But if this is the best they can do, it won’ t do much.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

IF YOU HAVEN’T CHECKED IT OUT YET, the New York Sun’s Politics Blog is worth a look.