GOOD NEWS: “Iraq completed one of sport’s great fairytales by beating Saudi Arabia 1-0 in the Asian Cup final on Sunday to provide a rare moment for celebration in their war-torn homeland. The Saudis had been bidding to become the first four-times winners of the tournament but Iraq, riding a wave of global sentiment, upset the hot-favourites for a rare slice of sporting glory.”

And Omar writes: “I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that today has been as exciting as one of those election days in Baghdad. Our national soccer team is playing for the Asian cup for the first time in its history. By comparison this is as if the American team is playing for the cup of Copa America against the team of Brazil or Argentina! But of course here in Iraq we care way more about soccer than Americans do. No offense meant of course!”

None taken. Everyone cares about soccer more than Americans do. But follow the link for his liveblogging of the match. He concludes: “Our players, tonight our heroes, learned that only with team work they had a chance to win. May our politicians learn from the players . . . The fear is gone, the curfew is ignored, tonight Iraq knows only joy.” May there be more days like this, and with more occasions than soccer.

PORKQUEST: Mary Katharine Ham goes looking for John Murtha’s missing million-dollar earmark. Watch her visit various Johnstown, PA landmarks, and get the runaround from various PR flacks. (Bumped, because — well, just watch it.)

LOTT V. LEVITT: An update.

MORE ON RECESS APPOINTMENTS TO THE SUPREME COURT: “According to C-Span, there have been 15 recess appointments to the Supreme Court. The first was John Rutledge, who was given a recess appointment to be Chief Justice by President George Washington in 1795. As noted in this report, President Eisenhower made three recess appointments to the Court — Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Potter Stewart. Brennan, in particular, was placed on the Court in the midst of the 1956 Presidential campaign, arguably for political reasons.”

I’m ready for my closeup! Er, but not holding my breath.

STEVEN DEN BESTE, quoted in the New York Times.

The guy hung up his blog ages ago and he’s still unstoppable. So unstoppable, some readers note, that the NYT is even attributing a Mickey Kaus statement to den Beste along with his own. But in the context of the quote, I think that’s okay, since den Beste was quoting Kaus himself, and not really an error on the part of the Times.

UPDATE: Kaus comments: “Print editors do have to save space. But web editors don’t. That’s a major, unremarked virtue of blogs over newspapers when it comes to the newspaper’s alleged unique selling proposition: accuracy. In fact, the need to fit copy to a limited space is a powerful error-creating machine in both dailies and magazines. Harried print editors compress, and get it wrong. Or they fool around trying to simplify attribution and get it wrong. Or they guiltlessly edit quotes within quotation marks and (by definition) get them wrong. … In cyberspace,, if it takes one more line to get it right, you can take one more line. I haven’t killed a widow in so long I’ve forgotten what it feels like.”

ACCORDING TO THIS ARTICLE FROM THE GUARDIAN, the Bush Administration was already supporting torturing suspects back in 1998. “The report criticises the Bush administration’s approval of practices which would be illegal if carried out by British agents. It shows that in 1998, the year Bin Laden was indicted in the US, Britain insisted that the policy of treating prisoners humanely should include him. But the CIA never gave the assurances.”

I blame John Ashcroft. Er, and Stephen Hawking or Frank Tipler, I guess . . . .

UPDATE: Bill Quick asks the inevitable question: “Did Hillary Clinton support torturing Osama bin Laden?”

MORE COOL UNDERSEA PHOTOGRAPHY.

I MENTIONED A WHILE BACK that I was reading Michael Belfiore’s new book, Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space, and I had a review in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Now there’s a free link available, thanks to OpinionJournal.com. The Belfiore book is very much worth reading for anyone interested in space, capitalism, or technology. And thanks to Scott Johnson for the undeserved praise.

SAVING ENERGY BY SWITCHING from Google to Blackle.

Color me, er, skeptical.

SUNSHINE: NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL:

Ever since scientists convicted sunlight of causing skin cancer, many seemingly sensible people have been running around slathered in sunscreen, using hats and long sleeves to hide our skin from the sun as if we were vampires. Now it looks like we may have gone too far: We may be missing out on the benefits of sunshine.

A study (press release) released today in the journal Neurology indicates that children who spend more time in the sun may have a decreased risk of multiple sclerosis. In pairs of twins where one twin had multiple sclerosis, the MS-free sibling had spent more time outside, playing team sports and sun tanning. Scientists theorize that ultraviolet rays in sunlight trigger a protective response that protects the body from this chronic nervous system disorder, either by altering the immune system or by producing vitamin D. . . .

Getting more vitamin D-drenched sunlight might be a good idea, regardless of your genetic risk for multiple sclerosis: Scientists say most people aren’t getting enough. Researchers at Boston University published a paper last week in the New England Journal of Medicine said that more than 1 billion people worldwide don’t get enough Vitamin D. Too little vitamin D for too long can result in dramatic results like rickets—a softening of the skeleton. But other dangers include Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a range of cancers, Crohn’s disease, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension.

Well, I’m en route to the beach now. For my health!

UPDATE: More thoughts here. I wouldn’t throw away the sunscreen. But I wouldn’t avoid the sun completely, either.

THOUGHTS ON PLASTER SAINTS and war stories.

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS IS UP! Also the Carnival of Cinema, the Carnival of Homeschooling, and the Carnival of Recipes. And don’t miss the Carnival of the Capitalists and the Carnival of Archaelology.

I’m pretty lame about carnival-blogging these days, but there are lots of carnivals listed at BlogCarnival.com, with highlights in my right sidebar.

THIS SOUNDS COOL:

Researchers have developed a remarkably simple way to convert ordinary graphite particles into very thin but superstrong sheets that are tougher than steel and as flexible as carbon fiber but can be made much more cheaply. The discovery could spawn entirely new types of materials for applications as diverse as protective coatings, electronic components, batteries, and fuel cells.

I can see a lot of applications.

ROBIN HENIG LOOKS AT ROBOTS:

Sociable robots come equipped with the very abilities that humans have evolved to ease our interactions with one another: eye contact, gaze direction, turn-taking, shared attention. They are programmed to learn the way humans learn, by starting with a core of basic drives and abilities and adding to them as their physical and social experiences accrue. People respond to the robots’ social cues almost without thinking, and as a result the robots give the impression of being somehow, improbably, alive.

Read the whole thing.

BROWN UNIVERSITY WELCOMES Duke rape case victim.

MICHAEL SILENCE IS grillblogging. Looks yummy!

POLITICAL CAPITAL is John Harwood’s new blog over at CNBC.

DEMANDING A PAPER TRAIL FOR VOTING: About time.

“FIND OUT WHAT HE’S DRINKING, and give some to my other astronauts.“

HILLARY, OBAMA, and a return to normalcy.

MORE THOUGHTS ON GUANTANAMO, from Prof. Kenneth Anderson.

INCONSISTENCIES regarding Yahoo! and China.

MARK STEYN offers suggestions for improving prosecutions.

KEITH MILBY GIVES THE SIMPSONS MOVIE a rave review.

STRATEGYPAGE: “In Iran, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is rapidly losing popularity and respect. It’s feared that his only option is to somehow get the United States to attack Iran. This would instantly boost Ahmadinejad’s popularity, and save his political career. For a while, anyway.” Read the whole thing.

ERIC SCHEIE ON WINDSHIELDS, BAMBI, AND ROBERT BYRD.

K.C. JOHNSON ON the real Ward Churchill scandal:

Beyond illustrating the flawed conception of academic freedom too prevalent in the contemporary academy, the Churchill case illustrates what happens when universities abandon excellence as the primary criterion in the personnel process. Well before Churchill ever uttered his “Little Eichmanns” line, the University of Colorado – a Tier I research university – had hired, then tenured, and then promoted to department chairman a woefully underqualified academic charlatan. In this respect, the affair provides a case study of “diversity” hiring practices gone awry.

And the result was trouble.

PATTERICO OFFERS a tale of airport security.

DON SURBER: “Ending farm subsidies will help win the Global War on Terrorism. Let me explain.”

FIGURING OUT WHY ROBERT NOVAK hates blogs.

“I GUESS HE SHOULD HAVE JUST BURNED A FLAG.”

RICH PEOPLE READ? Ann Althouse is unimpressed.

IS PEGGY NOONAN TURNING INTO MAUREEN DOWD? What’s the point of this column? Rich people make money in ways a WSJ columnist can’t understand? Which has something to do with salespeople being too “aggressively friendly”? Which she thinks represents something new? And then there are all those people talking on cellphones all the time. People didn’t used to do that! What’s wrong with people today . . . .? Actually, on rereading it’s more like Andy Rooney than Maureen Dowd. This isn’t a column, it’s a collection of unconnected — and somewhat crotchety — complaints. Just bizarre. I’ve written enough columns to know that they can’t all be gems, but, well . . . this isn’t one of the gems.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE VS. ENVIRONMENTALISTS:

The Navajo president, Joe Shirley Jr., said his tribe felt similar pressure. Mr. Shirley said the plant here would mean hundreds of jobs, higher incomes and better lives for some of the 200,000 people on the reservation. The tribe derives little direct financial benefit from the operation of the existing coal-fired plants and it has not yet invested heavily in casinos.

“Why pick on the little Navajo nation, when it’s trying to help itself?” he asked. . . .

The staff of Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential aspirant, recently issued a statement saying that the plant “would be a significant new source of greenhouse gases and other pollution in the region” and that Mr. Richardson “believes, as planned, it would be a step in the wrong direction,” undoing his proposed reductions in emissions.

Read the whole thing. Sierra Club members vote for Presidents. Navajos on the reservation do not.

PARTISANS GONE WILD.

As long as they’re not lifting their shirts in exchange for beads.

A GONZALES GRAYMAIL problem?

ANDREW BOLT looks at Guantanamo and doesn’t like what he sees.

THE KNOXVILLE NEWS-SENTINEL HAS AN EDITORIAL on the Gubernatorial Succession Committee that’s had me traveling to and from Nashville lately. It’s a good one, but the quote from me — “There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny over this process” — was actually about the process described in the proposed constitutional amendment, not the process of adopting the amendment. But it’s true both ways.

SO WE’VE NOW GOTTEN TWO COPIES OF Garden & Gun magazine in the mail. It’s not bad — kind of a Town & Country for the Southern well-to-do — part upscale Sports Afield and part less-partisan Vanity Fair or some such. It could do with a bit more gun and a bit less garden, though.

THREATENING BLOGGERS? Bill Hobbs asks will they never learn?

It’s not like they haven’t had the opportunity.

MORE VOTE FRAUD ALLEGATIONS IN FLORIDA: “Local party leaders say they found 60 instances in which people with the exact same name and birth date voted both in Palm Beach County and in New York in the November elections. . . . State and local governments are spending millions of public dollars, even dumping state-of-the-art equipment, to deliver a paper trail, hoping it brings peace of mind and confidence in voting to skeptical Floridians. Investigating complaints of voter fraud, and bringing any double-voters to justice in the land of the infamous butterfly ballot, should be a no-brainer.” I’m all for a paper trail, but it doesn’t matter if the voters themselves are bogus.

CHILLING AT THE AL RASHID.

ANOTHER MENTAL IMAGE I DON’T NEED: “If the Senators went any wilder, they’d be raising their shirts in exchange for beads.”

Is that worse than Joe Biden in a codpiece? I don’t want to think about either image hard enough to be sure . . . .

THOUGHTS ON FEDERALISM FROM FRED THOMPSON: And I certainly agree with this bit:

Law enforcement in general is a matter on which Congress has been very active in recent years, not always to good effect and usually at the expense of state authority. When I served as a federal prosecutor, there were not all that many federal crimes, and most of those involved federal interests. Since the 1980’s, however, Congress has aggressively federalized all sorts of crimes that the states have traditionally prosecuted and punished. While these federal laws allow Members of Congress to tell the voters how tough they are on crime, there are few good reasons why most of them are necessary.

For example, it is a specific federal crime to use the symbol of 4-H Clubs with the intent to defraud. And don’t even think about using the Swiss Confederation’s coat of arms for commercial purposes. That’s a federal offense, too.

Groups as diverse as the American Bar Association and the Heritage Foundation have reported that there are more than three thousand, five hundred distinct federal crimes and more than 10,000 administrative regulations scattered over 50 section of the U.S. code that runs at more than 27,000 pages. More than 40 percent of these regulatory criminal laws have been enacted since 1973.

I held hearings on the over-federalization of criminal law when I was in the Senate. You hear that the states are not doing a good job at prosecuting certain crimes, that their sentencing laws are not tough enough, that it’s too easy to make bail in state court. If these are true, why allow those responsible in the states to shirk that responsibility by having the federal government make up for the shortcomings in state law? Accountability gets displaced.

But read the whole thing. And I have some related thoughts on federalism, special interests, and accountability here.

Also, Mark Tapscott has some further observations on Thompson’s essay.

UPDATE: Ilya Somin comments: “I fully agree with Thompson’s view here. . . . However, there is a major elephant in this federalism room that Thompson doesn’t mention. He is right to note the massive growth in the federal prison population over the last 20 years, but fails to point out that most of that growth is due to the War on Drugs. As I explained here, convicts incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses represent 55% of the total federal prison population. And it was the War on Drugs that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich, which largely gutted constitutional limits on federal power.” True. Read the whole thing.

SIMPSONS UPDATE: A look at the science of Springfield.

“Lisa, in this house we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics!”

HOW TEXANS bailed out the British.

MORE ON THE POLITICS OF WAR.

IN LIGHT OF YESTERDAY’S POST ABOUT TV, ARNOLD KLING SENDS THIS:

Back when I had my relocation web site, we got hold of some zip-code level marketing data. When I looked for purchases that correlated with affluence, hardback books was one of the strongest.

Rich people read. Books.

I’m not surprised to hear that.

ADVERTISING AGE ON THE LATEST MOVEON STUNT: “What’s left unsaid in the AP piece is that MoveOn has been pitching this story for weeks now. . . . And if the owner of a local business has gone through the trouble of specifically buying an ad on Fox News, it’s because he wants to be there and he wants to target Fox News viewers. And such an advertiser more than likely has certain views about MoveOn. I can only imagine what the conversation will sound like when a self-appointed MoveOn monitor calls up Joe’s Bait, Tackle & Hunting Supply to say he should remove his ads from Fox News.”

SO THEY SENT ME A DVD OF No End In Sight. the documentary on Iraq that takes a rather different approach than, say, J.D. Johannes’ Outside the Wire. I was too busy — a triple deadline Friday on a law review article, a Popular Mechanics column, and a Wall Street Journal piece — to watch it. But Tom Maguire has some thoughts and comments: “I am not sure why Bush gets a pass in this movie. It was Bush’s job to know whether the reconstruction planing was getting the proper attention, focus and coordination; if Rumsfeld was putting too much effort into the invasion planning and not enough into the reconstruction phase, Bush should have re-directed his effort.” But note the discussion in the comments.

UPDATE: Phil Carter liked it.

THE RICH ARE GETTING RICHER, AND SO ARE THE POOR: Why does this bother so many people?

A “LIFELONG ROCKETEER.”

MICHAEL TOTTEN: The rule, not the exception.

RED MEAT FOR REPUBLICANS: Democrats will block all Bush Justices.

Bush should make a lot of recess appointments to the courts, just to mix things up. I volunteer to fill any vacant Supreme Court slots on a recess basis. I promise to make things interesting . . . .

THE KLEIN KLUB: Son of Townhouse?

A NASHVILLE BLOGGER UNDER ATTACK: Via Michael Silence.

POLICE UNCLEAR ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

PORK FOR COPS.

DRUNKEN ASTRONAUTS: The story is looking a bit thin:

For those hoping for juicy details on the drunk astronauts, there aren’t any. The review panel was told of anecdotes of two astronauts who were intoxicated just prior to flight. However, the panel did not pass on information identifying the individuals or the flights. NASA officials said they were investigating but could not say whether the incidents actually occurred.

Hmm.

UPDATE: Jay Leno: “Maybe that’s why they call it the Kennedy Space Center.”

THOUGHTS ON HOLLYWOOD AND THE TROOPS, from Marc “Armed Liberal” Danziger.

ONE TRUE COMPLIMENT: SARAH PULLMAN IS SAYING NICE THINGS ABOUT STRANGERS.

Just today, I paid a compliment to a woman at the gym — she’s been working with a trainer and I commented that she was showing real progress (which she was). “You’ve made my day,” she said, and she seemed to mean it. When I think something complimentary about people, I try to say it, if there’s occasion. There’s not nearly enough of that in the world.

IT’S BAD TO BRING A KNIFE TO A GUNFIGHT. It’s worse to bring a soda can:

An elderly man beaten unconscious by an assailant wielding a soda can awoke and shot the man during an attempted robbery, police said.

Willie Lee Hill, 93, told police he saw the robber while in his bedroom Wednesday night. Hill confronted the man and was struck at least 50 times, police said. He was knocked unconscious.

Covered in blood, Hill regained consciousness a short time later and pulled a .38-caliber handgun on his attacker. The suspect, Douglas B. Williams Jr., saw the gun and charged the man, who fired a bullet that struck Williams in the throat, police said.

“I got what I deserved,” Williams, 24, told police when they arrived, officers said.

I think he’s right.

ARE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES WUSSING OUT on the YouTube Debate? Rick Moran has been working the phones with the campaigns.

UPDATE: Woof, woof, big fella.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR STOCKS: “Wall Street extended its steep decline Friday, propelling the Dow Jones industrials down more than 500 points over two days after investors gave in to mounting concerns that borrowing costs would climb for both companies and homeowners. It was the worst week for the Dow and the Standard & Poor’s 500 index in five years.” I blame the new Democratic Congress!

DEMOCRATS AS VICTIMS? Jake Tapper looks at the new theme of Democratic victimology.

THOUGHTS ON THE SCOTT THOMAS STORY, from Megan McArdle. With a followup here.

UPDATE: Actually, being married to a TNR staffer isn’t a silly reason to suppose someone more credible, if you’re the editor of TNR. But the whole whistleblower thing does sound like a double standard.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from The Mudville Gazette.

MY EARLIER POST ON RANDY BARNETT AS ATTORNEY GENERAL — clearly he would have been better than Gonzales, no? — got me reminded of the prospect that, if nominated, he might liveblog his own confirmation hearings. Even more reason to support him next time the position is open. Er, which could be soon. . . .

WHAT DOES THE MILITARY KNOW?

AND I MISSED IT: Knoxville band JagStar was a featured artist on iTunes this week.

More on that here, and more on JagStar here.

IN LONDON, BLAMING THE LAWYERS. When I was in law school, one of the courses was called “The Limits of the Law.” Few seem to accept that law, and lawyers, even should have limits now.

HOW TO GET RICH: Quit watching TV.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

These days when I fly carriers that offer seat-back TV service, I am always struck by the contrast between coach and first class. In coach it seems most people spend most of their time watching TV. But when you walk through first class, the seats are littered with well-thumbed newspapers and magazines. Is that heavy reading habit something those people acquired after they started flying first class? Or is it how they got there? My money’s on the latter.

Mine too. TV’s okay, but as a habit it’s destructive.

IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE PART OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE:

A federal judge held the FBI “responsible for the framing of four innocent men” in a 1965 gangland murder in a landmark ruling yesterday and ordered the government to pay the men $101.7 million for the decades they spent in prison. The award is believed to be the largest of its kind nationally.

In a decision that was as dramatic as it was stern, US District Judge Nancy Gertner said from the bench that the FBI had deliberately withheld evidence that Peter J. Limone, Joseph Salvati, Louis Greco, and Henry Tameleo were innocent, and that the bureau helped cover up the injustice for decades as the men grew old behind bars and Tameleo and Greco died.

“FBI officials up the line allowed their employees to break laws, violate rules, and ruin lives, interrupted only with the occasional burst of applause,” said Gertner, berating the FBI for giving commendations and bonuses to the agents who helped send the men to prison for the killing in Chelsea of Edward “Teddy” Deegan, a small-time hoodlum.

Quite a stain on the honor of the FBI.

SOME PRAISE FOR THE VICTORY CAUCUS from blogger Bill Frist.

STRATEGYPAGE: “Much to Iran’s annoyance, the U.S. is cracking down on financial institutions that move money to terrorist organizations Iran supports. This includes Hizbollah and Hamas. The U.S. has ramped up its intelligence effort to discover who is paying who, and is ordering banks to cease providing services to terrorist related organizations, or face being cut off from the American banking system. Iran has to scramble to find banks that do not fear U.S. banking sanctions, and is discovering that this is not easy.”

MORE FUN THAN RELIABLE SOURCES: The latest Corn & Miniter Show is up!

Click To Play

David Corn’s reference to a Clinton / Obama “catfight” isn’t very flattering to either.

IS THE WAR LOST? Three inconvenient truths about Iraq.

IN THE MAIL: John McCain’s new book, Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them.

THE L.A. TIMES has a big report on the Mojave / Scaled Composites explosion. Basically it’s a fairly standard industrial accident, made sexier for news purposes because it’s space-related:

Rutan said the suspected culprit, nitrous oxide, normally is “not considered a hazardous material.” Commonly called laughing gas, it is found in dental offices and is used by hot-rodders to boost the horsepower on their vehicles’ engines.

According to Rutan, company employees were examining the rate at which the propellant flows through an opening. He emphasized that the test, conducted at room temperatures, did not involve igniting the rocket motor or sparking any fire.

Probably something led to a spark in an unforeseen, and perhaps unforeseeable, way.

GOOD NEWS:

In a prison cell south of Cairo a repentant Egyptian terrorist leader is putting the finishing touches to a remarkable recantation that undermines the Muslim theological basis for violent jihad and is set to generate furious controversy among former comrades still fighting with al-Qaida.

I’m in favor of that.

CREATURES FROM The Abyss.

JUNK SCIENCE AND CONGRESS: A firsthand account from Todd Zywicki:

The study’s central findings were that 54½ percent of all bankruptcies have a “medical cause” and 46.2 percent of all bankruptcies have a “major medical cause.” Even if this were true, bankruptcy law already provides adequate safeguards for the special problems posed by medical bankruptcies, as one of us (Mr. Zywicki) testified at the hearing. But it is not true. And the only way to make such a claim is to gerrymander the definition of medical bankruptcies to generate the desired results — true junk social science.

For example, the study classifies uncontrolled gambling, drug or alcohol addiction, and the birth or adoption of a child as “a medical cause.” There are indeed situations in which a researcher may legitimately classify those conditions as “medical,” but a study used to prove Americans are going bankrupt as a result of crushing medical debt is not one of them.

A father who has gambled away his family’s mortgage payment is not the victim of crushing medical bills.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A response from Elizabeth Warren.

ARGUMENTS ABOUT A MARS SAMPLE RETURN MISSION:

At the Mars conference, placing an expensive sample return activity on the exploration agenda, perhaps at the expense of other projects, sparked some anxieties.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” said Philip Christensen, a leading Mars scientist and professor in the Department of Geological Science at Arizona State University in Tempe. “I am concerned that the sample return mission would take over the Mars program. If you put that mission too far into the future, with not much in between, then you lose a lot of momentum … a lot of young talented scientists and engineers,” he said.

Christensen added that he sees “a real serious challenge” in carving out enough money in the near-term to pay for Mars sample return and still maintain a dynamic program.

“It’s going to take a careful, delicate balance to be able to afford the sample return and yet maintain some measure of a program,” Christensen told SPACE.com at the Mars meeting in Pasadena. “I have no expectation that the program will be as dynamic and vigorous as it has been if we’re going to pay for a sample return. Something’s got to give. But at the same time you can’t just give up everything.”

Plus, of course, there’s the issue of back contamination.

U.S. ATTORNEY declines contempt prosecution.

OBAMA CALLS HILLARY “Bush-Cheney lite?” Hmm. Who’s the Cheney? Bill?

GOOD NEWS: “The economy snapped out of a lethargic spell and grew at a 3.4 percent pace in the second quarter, the strongest showing in more than a year. A revival in business spending was a main force behind the energized performance.” I credit the new Democratic Congress!

MARRIAGE MAKES YOU HAPPIER: Especially if you start off depressed.

NOBODY LOVES ALBERTO: “Gonzo has managed to do something no one else in Washington has managed in years: create a spirit of true bipartisanship. ”

He’s a uniter, not a divider. The Bush Administration wouldn’t have had this problem if they’d listened to me and made Randy Barnett Attorney General! But maybe they’ve been saving him for the Supreme Court . . . .

UPDATE: Ouch: “Gonzales has lost so much credibility that he’s no longer believed even when he is telling the truth.”

VOTER-FRAUD IN WASHINGTON STATE: “King and Pierce County prosecutors filed felony charges today against seven people who allegedly committed the biggest voter-registration fraud in state history. The defendants, who were paid employees and supervisors of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, concocted the scheme as an easy way to get paid, not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections, King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg said. . . .

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the worst case of voter-registration fraud in the history of the state of Washington. There has been nothing comparable to this,” state Secretary of State Sam Reed said at a news conference with Satterberg, King County Executive Ron Sims and Acting U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan.

It’s not comforting. (Via NewsAlert).

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Richard Milhous Spitzer: “At least Nixon waited a little while before using the tools of state against his political enemies.”

MICKEY KAUS: “Will L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa hold up NBC-Universal’s giant $3 billion development plan if it doesn’t reinstate his honey at its Telemundo subsidiary? If NBC does take care of Mirthala Salinas, does that mean Villaraigosa owes the company? At last, some irresponsible bloggish speculation from the Los Angeles Times.”

AN ELECTRIC-POWERED SPORT PLANE: Range is not extensive.

THE NIGHT SHIFT: From StrategyPage. “There’s a war going on in Iraq that you rarely hear about. It goes on at night, and has been very successful. While U.S. infantry and tank units make raids all over central Iraq, the other war, fought largely at night, by engineers and non-infantry troops (often artillerymen) serving as infantry, to catch and stop teams of terrorists trying to set up roadside bombs.”

A ROCKET EXPLOSION at Mojave Airport. Scaled Composites is there, but so are a number of smaller rocket companies; not clear yet what happened. Explosions are a part of the rocket business, alas.

UPDATE: Jeff Foust posts that TV reports say that it was an accident at Scaled Composites.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Rand Simberg.

MORE: Meanwhile, reports of sabotage and drinking at NASA.

STILL MORE: Via Rand Simberg, a Friday morning update. It was a “cold flow” test using nitrous oxide that appears to have accidentally ignited; since no ignition system was present it was probably a spark or something. They’re now saying three dead, all Scaled Composites employees. May they rest in peace.

In truth, this is a pretty routine industrial accident, of the sort that’s basically inevitable when you’ve got activity of any significant size using things that can explode — it’s just the space connection that gets it the attention. Let’s hope the various bureaucrats and politicians don’t see this as an opportunity to make themselves feel important at the expense of the industry. (Bumped).

ETHICS COMMISSION BEGINS review of Spitzer’s office.

More here.

And Professor Bainbridge adds: “Can you imagine what Attorney General Spitzer would have done to a corporate CEO who told two of his executives to stonewall and who tried to fight off an investigation?” He’s got lots more — just keep scrolling.

A VICTORY FOR FREE SPEECH: “Rep. Mike Pence sponsored an amendment prohibiting the Justice Department from spending any money to enforce the most controversial part of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law: the part regulating political advertising in the run-up to an election. . . . The amendment passed on a voice vote; then Chris Shays (R., Conn.), one of the two main House sponsors of McCain-Feingold, demanded a recorded vote. It passed again, 215-205.”

PILOTS: “Our entire approach to airline security is almost completely ineffective.”

I DON’T GET SEASICK, but please don’t book me on this cruise.

STUDENT-LOAN FOLLIES:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, fresh from an investigation of the student loan industry, is out with a plan he says will “help reverse the crisis in college affordability.” Kennedy’s Robin Hood approach takes $18 billion from lenders and applies it to reducing loan repayment costs for students, among other purposes.

The student loan business is a lucrative one. But the senator is going after the wrong folks if he’s trying to rein in the biggest “fat cats” in academe. That mantle should rest on the shoulders of colleges and universities themselves. Legislators setting policy with regard to higher education should realize that colleges and universities are our nation’s richest — and possibly most miserly — “nonprofits.”

Colleges and universities are sitting on a fortune in tax-free funds, and sharing almost none of it. Higher education endowment assets alone total over $340 billion. Sixty-two institutions boast endowments over $1 billion. Harvard and Yale top the list with endowments so massive, $28 billion and $18 billion respectively, that they exceed the general operating funds for the states in which they reside. It’s not just elite private institutions that do this; four public universities have endowments that rank among the nation’s top 10. The University of Texas’ $13 billion endowment is the fourth largest nationwide, vastly overshadowing most of the Ivy League.

These endowments tower over their peers throughout the nonprofit world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is America’s wealthiest museum. But the Met’s $2 billion endowment is bested by no less than 26 academic institutions, including the University of Minnesota, Washington University in St. Louis, and Emory. Indeed, the total worth of the top 25 college and university endowments is $11 billion greater than the combined assets of their equivalently ranked private foundations — including Gates, Ford and Rockefeller.

Higher education endowments also are growing much faster than private foundations. The value of college and university endowments skyrocketed 17.7 percent last year, while private foundation assets increased 7.8 percent. Just 3.3 percent of the increase in academic endowments is attributable to new gifts. Most of the gain is a result of stingy, outdated endowment payout policies that retain and perpetually re-invest massive sums. This widespread practice results in a hoarding of tax-free funds.

Yeah, I was doing some math on Yale, trying to figure out if they could abolish tuition entirely based on their endowment earnings. I’m pretty sure the answer is yes, which makes me less interested in donating when they call.

WELL, YES: “Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.”

I’ve posted on this before.

WHEN I LINKED MY BROTHER’S NEW CD the other day, it quickly went out of stock at CDBaby. But if you were one of the ones who missed out, it’s back in stock now. And their hometown paper, the Cincinnati Post, calls it “stellar.”