A DIMINISHED New York Times.

Plus, will the New York Post go national?

FROM JANE FONDA TO DR. STRANGELOVE IN ONE WEEK.

Actually, regardless of what you think of Obama’s comments on substance, I think they’re beneficial. They make other countries worry that maybe waiting to get a better deal from the Democrats isn’t a sure thing, and that in fact they might have to deal with a Democratic President who’s . . . a bit scary. That can only help negotiations progress now.

UPDATE: Pakistanis are burning American flags in response to Obama’s remarks. Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

MORE: Barack Obama, neocon: “At least he’s willing to use force against something.”

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER POST ON INTERSTELLAR TRAVEL, Frank Tipler emails:

In section N of the Appendix for Scientists in my book THE PHYSICS OF IMMORTALITY, entitled “Relativistic Spacecraft,” I point out that, in effect, those books you reference on interstellar travel were obsolete before they were written.

Human will NEVER engage in interstellar travel. Only human downloads and artificial intelligences. Carrying full size human bodies, active or frozen, is too inefficient.

In my more recent book, THE PHYSICS OF CHRISTIANITY, Chapter 11, I discuss the ultimate interstellar drive, the neutrino rocket powered by a Standard Model process that allows ordinary matter to be transformed into radiation like neutrinos. Think of the DeLorean car at the end of the movie Back to the Future. This is what this technology will look like. Power is supplied by converting garbage into energy and the propulsion system is a rocket exhaust that has no effect on the surroundings.

I point out in Chapter 11 of the latest book that we’ll have both the human download technology and the neutrino rocket within 50 years. You should not teach your students the the future will be based on obsolete physics.

Sounds more like Greg Egan’s Diaspora. But I’ll be sure to let my students know — and they’ll be amused to see that I’ve been chided for lack of imagination by a physicist of Tipler’s eminence.

DAN RIEHL HAS BEEN FOLLOWING THE TWISTS AND TURNS of the Goose Creek arrests. And there have been some twists and turns.

UPDATE: Frank J. is angry: “I call profiling! We the blogosphere need to investigate this and find out which police officers were involved and hold them accountable.” But he sees an upside: “With the luck we’ve had in America of avoiding terrorist attacks, I guess by Pat Robertson’s view no one has done anything gay enough to make God angry since 2001.”

ORIN KERR on the new FISA amendment.

Some people are unhappy with the bill’s Democratic supporters.

UPDATE: More on the Democrats here. “When push comes to shove, especially on war-related issues, the Democrats have failed almost every time to fulfill their campaign promises. The FISA legislation should enrage the Democratic base. . . . The new majority has proven a little too difficult to manage, especially for Nancy Pelosi. The Blue Dogs have actually made the party less reliably Leftist.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jack Balkin: “The passage of the new FISA bill by the Senate and now the House demonstrates that the Democrats stand neither for defending civil liberties nor for checking executive power. They stand for nothing at all. . . . I hope the Democrats are justly proud of themselves for their cowardly contributions to this slow-motion destruction of our constitutional system.” I guess they’re enraged, all right.

MORE: Tom Maguire comments:

Let me add my own twist – while Dems were busy playing up to the Kos Kidz in Chicago, back in Washington the House Dems were collapsing before the imagined wrath of George Bush on the new legislation modifying FISA (described by Orin Kerr).

Was Nancy Pelosi really that concerned that Bush would rally the full force of the 29% who still approve of the job he is doing? Maybe!

But I’ll bet she was worried that Rush Limbaugh and the right wing talk machine would have chewed on Democrats about this issue all through the August recess – immigration is over, so what were they going to rant about?

Shouldn’t she also have been worried about being chewed on by the “netroots” if she cravenly gave in to Bush? Evidently, she was more worried about Rush – go figure.

Who has a bigger audience?

RICK MORAN INTERVIEWS DAVID AGUINA, the soldier who was silenced at YearlyKos yesterday.

UPDATE: More on Aguina here.

“I WENT HOME AT NIGHT IN TEARS. It was awful.”

SCOOPS OF THE CENTURY!

The LAT discovers that Matt Drudge has become a favorite conduit for the mainstream media and has a man in Los Angeles who created a side business by pointing Drudge Report links his way. Next up: Times hears Bush may go to war against Saddam Hussein.

Plus, Fred Thompson’s wife is an attractive blonde! And a lobbyist! Money quote: “A smart, good-looking woman in Washington in her 30s dating a member of Congress doesn’t come as a shocker.” You think?

UPDATE: From covering the obvious to ignoring it.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT: Mark Steyn on how rich Saudis are using lawsuits to crush reports of Saudi support for terror.

JACK LAIL SEEMS TO HAVE IDENTIFIED A KEY ASPECT TO ONLINE SUCCESS:

The most successful online publications – whether old or new media, whether video or text – all have a lean, mean operation that employs the best people, gives them creative freedom to shape their publication, and frees them from the constraints of the traditional publishing environment and of what has gone before.

Old Media have trouble adapting to this because of internal power dynamics.

FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS IS FINE, but some institutions are too sacred to criticize.

EARTH-FRIENDLY GEOTHERMAL ENERGY:

“The glass vases on the shelf rattled, and there was a loud bang,” Catherine Wueest, a teashop owner, recalls. “I thought a truck had crashed into the building.”

But the 3.4 magnitude tremor on the evening of Dec. 8 was no ordinary act of nature: It had been accidentally triggered by engineers drilling deep into the Earth’s crust to tap its inner heat and thus break new ground — literally — in the world’s search for new sources of energy. . . .

In Basel, the first shaft was bored last year by a 190-foot-tall drilling rig towering above nearby apartment buildings. Water was pumped down the injection well in the test phase in December, and as expected, it heated to above 390 F as it seeped through the layers of rock below.

But that’s where the water remains for the time being; it caused the rock layers to slip, causing the tremors and rumbles that spooked the townspeople.

Geopower Basel, had forecast some rock slippage. In fact, it said the location on top of a fault line — the upper Rhine trench — was an advantage because it meant the heat was closer to the Earth’s surface.

Oops.

HERE’S MORE ON NBC’S undercover hacker humiliation.

Dateline NBC associate producer Michelle Madigan was heckled and derided as she ran from DefCon, the world’s largest computer hackers conference, and raced away in a car. . . . “They sent a moderately attractive young lady with a purse cam whose mission was to first capture someone on film admitting to a felony, which is really not cool, and second to catch a fed on film,” said DefCon spokesman “Priest.” . . . Madigan’s flight was followed by hackers and reporting peers openly disapproving her methods.

Not ready for primetime.

I’M NOW READING PAUL GILSTER’S Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration. I’m thinking of taking my Space Law seminar a bit further afield than usual, with stuff like this, An Introduction to Planetary Defense, and maybe Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience. Any other suggestions?

CHARLES JOHNSON ON AIRBRUSHING AT DAILYKOS: “Imagine, if you will, the reaction among LGF’s admirers on the left if I started deleting topics and comments wholesale.”

UPDATE: Apparently the airbrushing was by the diarist himself, in response to criticism from fellow Kossacks.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: MCCAIN RAPS CONGRESS FOR BRIDGE COLLAPSE:

Republican John McCain said Saturday that Congress could share in the blame for the Minnesota bridge collapse because lawmakers diverted billions of dollars in transportation money from road work to pet projects. . . .

“We spent approximately $20 billion of that money on pork barrel, earmark projects,” said McCain. “Maybe if we had done it right, maybe some of that money would have gone to inspect those bridges and other bridges around the country. Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer than spending $233 million of your tax dollars on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it.”

McCain spoke during a town hall-style meeting with activists, saying he was angered not just by Congress wasting money on special projects, but also by it approving reform packages he labeled a sham.

“I’m angry today because we just had a chance to reform this process in Washington and we punted,” said McCain. “We pushed off on the American people a joke and a sham in the name of earmark reform.”

Actually blaming Congress for this particular tragedy is a bit hyperbolic. But we have big infrastructure needs, and we’re spending money on other stuff — and members would rather have their name on something shiny and new than on unglamorous repairs. So in terms of distorted priorities, he’s got a point.

UPDATE: Reader Gregory Hill emails:

Hyperbolic? Yes. But this may just be the shot-in-the-arm that his campaign needs. This can help re-establish his creds as the ‘town maverick’. It allows him to play the ‘us vs them’ game, with them being an incredibly corrupt Congress. He’s got plenty of material to work with and nothing to lose….

If I were his campaign advisor, I’d tell him to play this for all it’s worth. Me, I’m in the Giuliani camp. But McCain declaring open season on Congress would be a good thing for everyone!

True enough.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Morrissey says McCain is wrong. “Just as I criticized Amy Klobuchar and James Oberstar for exploiting the tragedy for their political hobby horses, we need to ask Senator McCain to have a care how he uses the dead in our community. I fully support his efforts to end earmarks and push towards legislative reform, but let’s stick to the real consequences of earmark abuse.”

THOSE CURSED ZIONISTS: Always making Arabs do terrible things. They’re so omnipotent, it’s a wonder the Saudis haven’t given up and converted to Judaism.

A POSSIBLY INTERESTING ARREST in South Carolina: “Gentlemen of ‘Middle Eastern descent’ out on a Saturday night with a carload of ‘explosive devices’ when pulled over in Goose Creek, S.C., home to the Naval Weapons Station and U.S. Naval Consolidated Brig, home to enemy combatants.” Of course, this may turn out to be nothing. Stay tuned.

ANN ALTHOUSE STEPS IN WHERE Hillary fears to tread: “I call myself a liberal, which is — ironically — something she won’t do.”

RUPERT MURDOCH: “I won’t meddle any more than Arthur Sulzberger does.”

ROMNEY: I’m not running for pastor-in-chief.

YOU DON’T TUG ON SUPERMAN’S CAPE, and you don’t spy on hackers unless you’re, you know, actually good at it:

The DefCon security conference is buzzing after an undercover NBC-Universal reporter fled the building after being publicly exposed for using a spy camera to film attendees.

DefCon organizer Jeff Moss called out Michelle Madigan, an Associate Producer for NBC-Universal, from stage during the “Tactical Exploitation” session.

Shades of NBC’s lame undercover NASCAR trolling.

CONGRESSIONAL pork rinds.

WHEN FAILURE TO POLICE YOURSELF AGAINST CRIMES YOU HAVEN’T COMMITTED becomes a crime.

UPDATE: From the comments: “I used to donate to MADD. That was before they became a branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.”

Yeah, they’re even complaining about booze on trains. No drivers there.

YOU’D THINK: “When a member of the journalism community is murdered, wouldn’t you expect most news agencies to report it?”

UPDATE: More here.

APOLLO MOON FILMS are being made available online for free.

SUNLIGHT — NOT ACTUALLY EVIL:

Women who stay out of the sun are increasing their risk of developing breast cancer, a new study suggests.

The safe-tanning messages that are drummed into women each year may help to reduce their risk of skin cancer – but at the cost of increasing their risk of breast cancer.

It’s looking more and more like the anti-sun message has been overblown. Have dermatologists been in the pocket of Big Sunscreen?

MY EARLIER POST ON PROSECUTORIAL ABUSE led Prof. Kenneth Anderson to email a recommendation for Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor, which came out this spring. I’ve ordered a copy myself.

UPDATE: No, not that Angela Davis.

OF PORK AND BRIDGES: Rob Port offers a radical suggestion: “What if some of the money spent for “earmarks” (pork designated by members of Congress for their own districts), was available to actually, I don’t know, fix things?”

A LOOK AT THE FAUX-CIALIST REVOLUTION. But just because they are ridiculous doesn’t mean that they do no harm.

SOME THOUGHTS ON armed robots and the laws of war.

A POSTMORTEM on the House vote SNAFU.

UPDATE: It’s already generating campaign ads.

HEADING HOME: Did my conference presentation yesterday. Had a nice dinner Thursday night with a bunch of my colleagues plus honorary colleagues (and bloggers) Brannon Denning and Ann Bartow (who blogs at Feminist Law Professors). Saw a lot of people, had a good time, even though it rained the last two days.

HOW TO throw a boomerang.

O’REILLY WILL LOVE THIS: Soldier censored at YearlyKos.

UPDATE: More here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more here.

And more thoughts on mixing uniforms and politics here.

FIRED FOR A BLOG POST?

THE POLITICO: Democrats are converging on YearlyKos, “And yet the influence of the liberal blogs on the Democratic presidential primary is a shadow of what it was in 2004. “

AL GORE GOES GEOTHERMAL.

MORE ON FLYING CARS: Sam Dinkin does an interview.

SO I FINISHED MARK HELPRIN’S A Soldier of the Great War, and I liked it very much. He’s like Neal Stephenson’s more poetical cousin. Or maybe Neal Stephenson is like Helprin’s geekier cousin.

LIKE THE BELTWAY BOYS, ONLY BETTER LOOKING: The latest Corn & Miniter Show is up!

DIGITAL CAMERA SALES CONTINUE TO BOOM: “According to data from CIPA (Camera & Imaging Products Association) camera shipments by CIPA members (the majority of digital camera manufacturers) are up 27% overall in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year. The largest growth coming from DSLRs, a total of 3.5 million units, up some 75% compared to the first half of last year.”

SOME FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS in the shooting of that Oakland journalist:

Firearms linked to the slaying of an Oakland journalist were seized during early morning raids Friday targeting members of a Black Muslim group that operates a chain of bakeries, police said.

Colleagues said Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, 57, had been working on a story about Your Black Muslim Bakery before he was ambushed and killed Thursday morning in downtown Oakland.

Before dawn, officers raided the Muslim group’s headquarters at the bakery and three houses in Oakland. They arrested seven people on charges including homicide, robbery and assault, but it was unclear whether any of those charges were tied to Bailey’s slaying.

“The search warrant yielded several weapons and other evidence of value including evidence linking the murder of Chauncey Bailey to members of the Your Black Muslim Bakery,” Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan said, adding the raids were part of a yearlong investigation into a variety of violent crimes.

I think that shooting Bailey will turn out to be a serious mistake.

TAKING ON deceptive copyright warnings.

CLINTON IN IOWA: But it’s Bill Richardson who’s surging!

A SUBVERSIVE THOUGHT: “What if Americans would rather win?”

THE D.C. CIRCUIT calls the raid on William Jefferson’s office unconstitutional.

ANOTHER IDIOTIC AND ABUSIVE PROSECUTION: I’m beginning to think that we need a lot more oversight over prosecutorial discretion, and more consequences for its abuse.

MORE PROBLEMS WITH electronic voting.

UPDATE: Voting machines decertified.

OUCH: “Minnesota Twins postpone groundbreaking for new $1.1 billion stadium due to I35 bridge collapse. Apparently up until this week they didn’t have any more pressing construction projects on which to spend that money.” Found by Radley Balko, who also notes: “Two-thirds of the stadium is publicly funded. The land was acquired through eminent domain.”

It’s all about priorities.

THE TROUBLE WITH NEWSPAPERS. It’s not technological.

BRIDGE BLOGGING IN TENNESSEE: (Via Michael Silence.)

A NEW NAME for John Edwards.

ARMED ROBOTS ON PATROL in Iraq.

BUSH 24, CONGRESS 3.

CNBC OFFERS A REPORT CARD on the new Congress so far.

A LOOK AT NEXT-GENERATION consumer class actions.

A LOOK AT men, women, and wages.

EGG ON THE NEW REPUBLIC’S FACE: Roundup here.

UPDATE: Another roundup here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more here and here.

A FLYING CAR! Well, kind of.

$150 MILLION IN earmarks for John Murtha.

JAMES LILEKS: “This is the point in the story where we start to debate what’s news, and what’s just disaster-pr0n.”

UPDATE: I blame Kevin Bacon.

SONY IS RECALLING the Cybershot DSC-T5. I have the DSC-T10, which is apparently unaffected. I think it does a good job.

MICKEY KAUS: “Keeping recipients on the dole while they ‘train’ for jobs they never get is a time-tested way of … well, keeping recipients on the dole.”

CHAOS IN THE HOUSE: A “complete breakdown of parliamentary procedure.”

UPDATE: More: “They just replayed the whole mess from the House last night on C-Span. I spoke to Novak and he doesn’t remember anything quite like this happening before. Pretty outrageous, really. It is about as blatant an abuse of power as you can have in a legislative body, to cheat on a vote total.” They may look back on that 14% approval rating as a high of sorts, at this rate.

THOUGHTS ON NEWSPAPER ENDORSEMENTS, from Michael Silence.

JONAH GOLDBERG: “It’s a small paradox of the war in Iraq. As support for the war inches up (according to a New York Times poll that so shocked the editors they demanded it be retaken), as the surge proves ever more encouraging and as Gen. David Petraeus’s confidence grows, enthusiasm for the democracy project in Iraq wanes.”

UPDATE: Reader Stan Brown says everyone is missing the point. Click “read more” for his argument.

EUGENE VOLOKH HAS MORE THOUGHTS on religion and parental rights.

MARKOS: “We are the center!”

UPDATE: Remembering 2002, somewhat strangely.

MEGAN MCARDLE: “Current progressive support for aborting babies with congenital birth defects has very little in common with the philosophic basis for eugenics; the progressives aren’t trying to clean up the gene pool.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES: “Caps on Prices Only Deepen Zimbabweans’ Misery.”

Well, that’s what price controls usually do.

POLLING: SURGE SUCCESS splits Dems.

GUY HERBERT LOOKS AT “governmentalism” in Britain.

PHIL CARTER SAYS don’t believe the good news from Iraq.

But is Baqubah really a place with “the highest sectarian tensions, worst fighting, and least progress”? That’s not what Michael Yon has been reporting from . . . Baqubah.

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

TAHOE HOMEOWNERS FACE BEAR INVASIONS: Once again, David Baron proves prophetic. Some related thoughts here.

MITT ROMNEY: The Victory Caucus interview.

CONTINUING UPDATES on the Minnesota bridge collapse at Buzz.mn, plus more news here.

AT REGISTAN, they’re very critical of The Economist’s coverage of Kazakhstan.

MICHAEL SILENCE LOOKS AT THE FAD FOR “automated traffic enforcement.”

WE’VE HAD TROOPS THERE FOR 150 YEARS, AND THE VIOLENCE CONTINUES: Masked gunman kills Oakland reporter.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “That’s the reason this reporter packs a Ruger P95 next to the laptop… but then again, I’m just a Tennessee redneck hiding out in Northern Virginia.” Just don’t accidentally take it into the U.S. Capitol.

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT.

CONFERENCEBLOGGING: Just finished a panel on the detainee cases before the Supreme Court, and it was quite good. Substantive, balanced, moderate (well, there was one somewhat gratuitous dig at Clarence Thomas, but only one) and very useful. Often when I attend these things I wish that people outside the academic world could see them, as I suspect the image is something more politicized and less substantive.

AMERICAN AIRLINES MOVES TOWARD inflight wi-fi.

It’s about time.

MORE TROUBLE FOR TED STEVENS: Seems like it would be a good time for him to retire. But what Republican will deliver that message?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON Obama’s Pakistan Invasion: “Apart from the notion that it would be as hard to distinguish civilians in a Waziristan from terrorists as it is in Iraq, which the senator has written off, other questions arise. As a US Senator why not now introduce an October 11, 2002-type resolution, authorizing such an invasion? Or why hasn’t he in the past? Obama has criticized Sen. Clinton for her approval of that Iraqi authorization, but the sort of action he is envisioning involves crossing into a nuclear Islamic country, one bullet away from an Islamic republic, and surely should be a question for Congressional approval.”

COBURN CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION into earmark-funded company:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has requested a Pentagon investigation of a defense contractor that he has targeted in recent weeks due to its earmarked funds.

In a letter last week to Defense Department Inspector General Claude Kicklighter, Coburn asked for his office to investigate 21st Century Systems Inc. (21CSI) to determine whether the defense contractor failed “to file legally required paper work” or used “federal funds for prohibited lobbying activities.” . . .

As the earmark’s sponsor for 21CSI, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) has defended his appropriations request aggressively despite the increasing attention from Coburn and from the media. Nelson has argued that the company’s funding serves vital national security needs.

Then there’s no reason to fear an investigation, right?

WILL PUTIN GROW A BUSHY MUSTACHE NEXT? New Russian history lessons glorify Stalin.

MORE ON THE MINNESOTA BRIDGE COLLAPSE, from Popular Mechanics.

BEACH READING: Okay, actually I’ve barely even made it to the beach so far. But on this trip I’m reading Mark Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War, which was highly recommended to me. I’m about halfway through so far, and it’s quite good.

31 COMPETITORS FOR THE 100 MPG CHALLENGE: The Automotive X-Prize looks to be doing pretty well. Excerpt: “The Automotive X-Prize is designed to get engineers thinking outside the box in terms of fuel economy. The goal is to develop a “commercially viable” vehicle that will get at least 100 mpg. How it’s done is up to the individual teams, but they have to keep production in mind to be eligible. They even have to show a business plan proving that they can sell at least 10,000 units a year.”

JAMES LILEKS HAS A BIG ROUNDUP on the Minnesota bridge disaster, and comments: “I’ve driven across this bridge every few days for thirty years. There are bridges, and there are bridges; this one had the most magnificent view of downtown available, and it’s a miracle I never rear-ended anyone while gawking at the skyline, the old Stone Bridge, the Mississippi. You always felt proud to be here when you crossed that bridge, pleased to live in such a beautiful place. Didn’t matter if it was summer twilight or hard cold winter noon – Minneapolis always seemed to be standing at attention, posing for a formal portrait . We’ll have that view again – but it’ll take a generation before it’s no longer tinged with regret and remembrance.”

UPDATE: More from John Hinderaker.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: The Examiner busts Congress for pretend earmark reform:

Young children with active imaginations often invent playtime scenarios in which they pretend to be somebody else, like an astronaut or a firefighter. Everybody, including the adults in the household, knows it is make-believe. Most members of Congress seem to have forgotten that adults know pretending when they see it. And for months, they’ve been seeing way too much pretending on the issue of earmarks and ethics reform.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., epitomized the pretenders when she declared it “historic” that the House, on a 411-8 vote, approved the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 (which, by the way, she negotiated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid behind closed doors). The Senate is expected to approve the bill today or Friday. There are a few positive provisions in the bill, but the bottom line is that it is stuffed with cosmetic changes that fail to address the core issues of congressional corruption spawned by earmarks. . . .

Reid and Pelosi are not alone in pretending to advance genuine reforms. As Roll Call predicted last month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is now undercutting Coburn and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and signaling the desire of many GOP establishmentarians to move on from earmarks and ethics issues. Next, McConnell will credit a “bipartisan consensus” as key to victory for reform in the Senate, thereby enabling Democrats to claim they’ve kept their 2006 campaign promise. Then members on both sides of the aisle in Congress can go on pretending they are serious about honest leadership and open government in Washington.

Can’t we vote for “none of the above”? Plus, will Republicans’ appetite for pork keep the Democrats in the majority? “House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio talks a good case for more openness and transparency in government, but what’s he been doing to corral more support for Flake, Campbell and Hensarling among the GOP ranks he is supposedly leading?”

UPDATE: Indeed: “I understand why the Democrats, now in the majority, want to preserve their opportunities for paying off special interests. That’s largely why they want to be in the majority in the first place. But why on earth should Republicans join with them?”

WHO NEEDS A HYBRID?

Here’s the kicker: The Polo gets 60 to 70-plus mpg. And it’s really fun to drive. . . . What about the VW Lupo? Not yet. Too small, too compromised. I can’t gush about the Lupo, because it’s really, really small. Sure, it adds about 20 mpg to the Polo’s already impressive numbers, but it feels like a compromise. If I were single? Maybe. But with a wife and two kids? No way. At least not until gas is a whole lot more expensive than it already is. As it sits, a clean-diesel Lupo would be a great choice for the committed environmentalist who’s willing to forgo just about everything for the ultimate in efficiency.

I’m glad VW is going to have a clean-diesel Jetta in 2008. But I won’t buy one. For me, the numbers just don’t work: It’s a $25,000 car that gets 45 mpg. I can buy a Toyota Corolla for $10,000 less and still get 38 mpg—a price difference that would take the Jetta 66 years to overcome, assuming $3 gas/diesel. That’s not to say the Jetta isn’t a great car, and I would much rather drive it than a Corolla. But it just doesn’t make economic sense, and as a writer pulling down a modest income, it’s all about economics.

So to Volkswagen, I offer this plea: Bring the Polo to the U.S. Price it at $18,000. Run an ad campaign that brags about its hybrid-crushing performance at the pumps. And then, sit back and laugh all the way to the bank as hundreds of thousands of Americans, eager for just the right balance between frugal, fun and fantastically practical, mob your showrooms.

Obviously, there’s a lot of room for improvement in the automotive world.

THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE: Why the Empire is striking back.

THE KNOXVILLE REAL ESTATE COMMUNITY: Opening its wallets for Fred Thompson.

BUILD A BETTER WORLD by destroying wealth. It often pays well.

FRED THOMPSON on judges.

POPEYE THE SAILOR, 1933-1938, now on DVD. I love the way all this old stuff is becoming obtainable. (Via BoingBoing).

No anime characters in this Popeye.

HOW TO STOP HACKERS FROM watching you through your webcam.

WHAT THE CIA AND ATF THINK ABOUT Blogs as news media.