A BANK RUN, only without the banks. “Mr Weber told fellow central bankers and economists at the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole symposium that the only difference between a classic banking crisis and the turmoil under way in the markets is that the institutions most affected at the moment are conduits and investment vehicles raising funds in the commercial bond market, rather than regulated banks.”

ATTACK OF THE BABY HATERS.

HURRICANE FELIX is now a Category 5.

STEPHEN GREEN CALLS this article by Robert Kaplan “the best article you’ll read this summer.”

IT’S A DIPLOMATIC TRIUMPH — if it actually pans out: “North Korea agreed in weekend talks with the United States to fully account for and disable its nuclear programs by the end of this year, negotiators said on Sunday.”

WAR MOVIES, THEN AND NOW: What changed, I wonder?

Related thoughts from Mickey Kaus.

And, okay, it’s only semi-related, and I’ve linked this piece on Hollywood before, but if you missed it, it’s worth reading.

UPDATE: From the comments to the first post: “Perhaps we need an X-Prize for any studio that can create a pro-US war movie about any war after WWII.”

NICK GILLESPIE: “With the possible exception of the Republicans, is there a major political party more stupefyingly brain-dead than the Democrats? That’s the ultimate takeaway from The Argument, Matt Bai’s sharply written, exhaustively reported and thoroughly depressing account of ‘billionaires, bloggers, and the battle to remake Democratic politics’ along unabashedly ‘progressive’ (read: New Deal and Great Society) lines. Well-financed and influential groups ranging from the Democracy Alliance to the New Democrat Network to MoveOn.org may be taking over the Democratic Party, he says, but they are not doing the heavy thinking that will fundamentally transform politics — unlike the free-market, small-government groups formed in the wake of Barry Goldwater’s historic loss in the 1964 presidential race.”

Meanwhile, Bai’s book doesn’t seem to be very popular with the netroots crowd.

DEATH SPIRAL: Property tax bills soar as services fall. This is the inevitable result of a bloated and inefficient public sector. I doubt that Deval Patrick will do anything much to de-bloat it, though.

UPDATE: Heh.

TWO MORE WRONG-HOUSE NO-KNOCK RAIDS: There needs to be a much, much higher price for this sort of mistake.

A LOOK AT THE CATERHAM SUPER 7, complete with video. “The top-of-the-line Caterham Seven CSR60 comes with a 260-horsepower Cosworth four-cylinder–propelling the Seven to a claimed 0-60 time of 3.1 seconds and a top speed of 155 mph.”

WHY IS CUBA SO POOR: Jonathan Adler notes some omissions in a New York Times story: “Nope, despite the gratuitous mention of the free education and health care available in Cuba, no mention of ‘socialism,’ ‘collectivism,’ or ‘Communism,’ as having any effect on Cuba’s economy. Nor is there any mention of Cuba’s notorious (but apparently not notorious enough) ‘Neighborhood Committees for the Defense of the Revolution,’ nor, relatedly, what, the ahem, disincentives might be for failing to ‘show one’s patriotism,’ though the author does acknowledge that at least one Cuban refrigerator-owner doesn’t feel free to speak openly. And, for the uninitiated, Cuba is not actually economically isolated from anywhere but the U.S., it just doesn’t sell much of anything that anyone wants to buy.”

TALKING NUCLEAR AND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY, with Sen. Lamar Alexander and Reps. Zach Wamp and Heath Shuler.

KATIE COURIC: If I report good news, it must mean I’m gullible! Er, or something like that.

UPDATE: Reader Patrick Graham emails: “Would that Dan Rather had been so sceptical about the submissions fed him about Bush or that Katie show the same scepticism on other topics.”

HOUSING PRICES MAY BE FALLING IN SOME SECTORS, but not here:

It might seem foolish given the recent news from Wall Street, but a group of homeowners is holding firm on an ambitious goal — to break the record for the most expensive home sale in American history.

The price to beat is $103 million.

Two years ago, at the peak of the real-estate boom, only a handful of homes in the U.S. had ever been listed for $75 million, let alone $100 million. Even the highest residential sale to date — investor Ron Baron’s $103 million purchase earlier this year of a 40-acre compound in East Hampton, N.Y. — was never publicly listed. The deal was so secret that the brokers weren’t named.

There are five contenders for the current prize, including a Beverly Hills compound once owned by William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies that’s listed for $165 million; the Aspen home of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, which has been visited by the past three U.S. presidents ($135 million); and an estate overlooking Lake Tahoe with a staircase modeled after the one aboard the Titanic (a dark horse at $100 million). All have come on the market since summer 2006.

Good luck, guys. Er, I guess.

TWO CREEPS IN THE MEN’S ROOM.

EDWARD GOREY’S ADAPTATION OF The Trouble with Tribbles. (Via Making Light).

NOAH SHACHTMAN IS BLOGGING FROM IRAQ: “Meet the new defenders of the city of Fallujah. For years, the Marines have been trying to behead the insurgent hydra that’s been terrorizing the people here. Now, they’ve got a plan that, for the moment, seems to be working. Attacks on American troops are way down; the streets are relatively clean; men are sitting around in outdoor cafes.” Let’s hope it lasts.

MICKEY KAUS looks at Bush’s immigration strategy.

MEGAN MCARDLE on plausible futures. At least we were spared the predicted jumpsuit craze.

ECLIPSE OF THE RED MOON: “On August 29, the same day a rare astronomical event treated millions to the celestial spectacle of the eclipse of a red moon, Jose Maria Sison, founder and chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), were arrested by Dutch authorities at his home in Utrecht, The Netherlands.”

SHAOLIN MONKS VS. NINJA TROLLS: So far, I’d give the advantage to the trolls.

FELIX IS NOW a hurricane and a threat.

GOOD ADVICE ON COLLEGE PRANKS: If at all possible, involve a cow.

WHITHER THE ANTI-TOTALITARIAN LEFT? Indeed.

JAPAN’S secret aircraft carriers.

ANTI-IMMIGRANT SENTIMENT in Switzerland. I’m afraid we’ll see more of this sort of thing in the future. Well, it’s not like people weren’t warned.

CONGRATULATIONS TO PATRICK NIELSEN HAYDEN, who won a Hugo award for best science fiction editor. It’s well-deserved, I think.

Also, Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End won for best novel. You can hear our podcast interview with Vinge here.

Another winner was Naomi Novik, whom I’ve praised here before. She won the John W. Campbell Award, which also recently went to InstaPundit fave John Scalzi. (Bumped).

IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Dan Morain asks: “How did Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign fail to see the red flags in Hsu’s contributions?”

LARRY CRAIG VS. NORMAN HSU: Loyalty counts. “I think the Republicans could learn a thing or two about loyalty from Ed Rendell. . . . Sorry to sound so exasperated, but whatever happened to the South Park Republicans? Is it just my imagination, or are the Jimmy Carter Republicans taking over?”

MR. RODGERS GOES TO DARTMOUTH: “Now the college’s establishment is working to ensure that the likes of T.J. Rodgers never again intrude where they’re not welcome. What follows is a cautionary tale about what happens when the business world crosses over into the alternative academic one.”

Actually, it’s about the point I made earlier — on academic institutions not having the kind of open and responsible governance we find in for-profit corporations. Instead, it’s an insiders’ game all around.

VIDEO FROM THE MINNESOTA STATE FAIR: James Lileks catches Ronald McDonald delivering a vicious clown-beating to a defenseless boy. Quick, call Dateline!

CASUALTIES IN IRAQ: John Wixted looks at the numbers. And at how they’re being spun.

MORE ON THE GOOSE CREEK ARRESTS INDICTMENTS, from Andrew McCarthy.

DANIEL ROTHCHILD SAYS THAT CONTRARY TO REPORTING, there’s no shortage of post-Katrina leadership on the Gulf Coast:

The tendency of journalists to look first to political leaders-who, to say the least, usually have other motives for pushing a narrative-and big names explains why so much of the media has gotten post-Katrina New Orleans so wrong. Turning first to the great and the good to get the story is an easy mistake to make in a society where everything from the foods we eat to the way we garden is subject to the whims of the ruling class.

But leadership isn’t something you are elected into. There have been plenty of leaders on the Gulf Coast over the last two years. It’s just that their names don’t roll off the tongues of magazine editors, or appear in newspapers or campaign ads.

If there’s any good news to come out of the recovery effort it’s that people in the hurricane zone have learned to become less reliant on political saviors and more reliant on themselves.

Read the whole thing.

SARKOZY CHARTS a new foreign policy course. “In the traditional opening address to the French diplomatic corps, Nicolas Sarkozy presented a precise, coherent, logical outline of his foreign policy positions. One need not agree with all or any of Sarkozy’s ideas to appreciate the contrast with the vainglorious platitudes of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac.”

ALL MY SONS. Well, except for that one.

UPDATE: Tom Smith has had it with Arthur Miller.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here.

THE FASTEST FINAL EXAM ON EARTH:

I’m at the Formula SAE, a highly regimented competition organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers, the institution that sets most auto-industry standards in the U.S. The contest, held in Romeo, Michigan, a semi-rural exurb about 40 miles north of Detroit, pits student-built 610-cubic-centimeter racecars against one another, testing acceleration, braking, endurance and the time-honored rules of car design and prototyping.

Hands-on is cool.

MORE DMCA CHICANERY: Worse than Vogon poetry: bogus DMCA takedowns stun sci-fi lovers. More robo-lawyering:

Because DMCA takedown notices require a sworn statement from the sender that the works in question are actually infringing (and that the sender has the right to handle copyright issues related to those works), the SFWA could actually find itself in the legal equivalent of a Vogon airlock over the notices.

What appears to have happened is that the group ran a Scribd search for certain author names and then issued takedown notices for all the results—Doctorow’s book makes a reference to Isaac Asimov, for instance, and Senger’s reading list is populated with the names of great sci-fi authors. This, it hardly needs to be said, is a less than foolproof way to police copyrights.

Perhaps it’s time for the SFWA’s legal team to guide the ship to a starbase for some needed repairs.

People who execute false affidavits should be prosecuted, and the fact that those affidavits are the result of sloppy, unchecked searches hardly constitutes a defense. Here’s a column that I wrote on the topic a while back.

UPDATE: Jerry Pournelle gives the other side of the story, though it doesn’t excuse the errors.

HEH: “Sen. John Warner, R-VA, today said the failure of politicians to make reforms and the lack of progress on ‘almost any benchmark you can name’ have led him to conclude that the only way forward is to pull out of the U.S. Senate, therefore he will not seek reelection at the end of his current term.”

THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT has opened an investigation into Norman Hsu’s political activities.

JAMES FALLOWS POINTS TO A BOOK ON THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION: Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China, which tells a story that hasn’t gotten a lot of traction in the West:

Fewer and fewer people can actually remember the 1930s or 1940s, but we all feel we have a sense of what the Nazi era was like in Europe. There are so many novels, so many movies, so many memoirs, so many museums, so much accumulated lore, apart from the histories and analyses themselves. Life under Stalin is not quite as amply rendered for a world audience, but thanks to legions of Russian writers everyone has some idea.

For obvious reasons, there are far fewer public representations and reminders of daily life in China during the Cultural Revolution. Main reason: the current Chinese government is still uneasy about backwards looks at that era. Such documents as do exist, in Chinese, are less accessible to the rest of the world than are the German, French, English, Russian, etc memoirs of Word War II.

He calls Confessions “a brilliant addition to the existing evidence.” The reader reviews are quite positive, too.

MICKEY KAUS WONDERS IF I’M AGAINST CAMPAIGN FINANCE “REFORM:”

Reaction–even from Instapundit–focused on the fine being “too late and too small” to have any effect at deterring future ACTs. I’d say the controversy is whether ACT should be fined at all.

Well, yes. But that wasn’t my point here — rather, my point was that campaign finance law as it exists is a sham (I also used the word “crock”) because although it limits free speech it’s unwilling to actually police the big-kahuna political players involved. Like a lot of Washington regulations of its ilk, it seems more focused on producing the appearance of regulating the big players than the actuality thereof.

IT’S A HSU-NAMI! Best scandal name in a while.

HARRY REID SOFTENS ON IRAQ: “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has backed down from demands for a withdrawal of our troops in Iraq by next spring. Selling voters on cut and run was always tough, but now a new UPI/Zogby Poll finds that 54% of Americans believe the Iraq war is not lost.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: “I’m probably going to end up voting for Obama just because I like his senior economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee . . . and then regretting it as soon as he actually starts doing things.” Plus, thoughts on Ron Paul.

OVER AT CONCURRING OPINIONS, Kaimipono Wenger wonders when the New York Times will correct its constitutional error.

NEW YORK TIMES: Degeneres/Clinton ’08?

TRAFFIC’S UP TO A 12-MONTH RECORD, which is odd for August. I don’t know where it’s all coming from, but thanks for coming by!

STAND BY THE MISSION: A petition to support the surge.

NORMAN HSU UPDATE: “A top Democratic fundraiser wanted as a fugitive in California turned himself in Friday to face a grand theft charge. San Mateo County Superior Court Judge H. James Ellis ordered Norman Hsu handcuffed and held on $2 million bond. A bail hearing was scheduled for Sept. 5, at which the judge will consider reducing his bail to $1 million. . . . On Friday, Hsu, who has an apparel business in New York, also resigned from the board of trustees of The New School and from the board of governors of The New School’s Eugene Lang College. The college received a federal appropriation secured by Clinton last year, but a spokesman for the school said Hsu was not involved in seeking money for the school.”

OFF TO JAIL: Nifong held in criminal contempt.

K.C. Johnson has more, and is no doubt pleased that this denouement is just in time for the release of his book on the case, which comes out on Tuesday.

MICHIGAN MAKES ITS MOVE “Breaking news from Michigan: there won’t be a Democratic caucus in Michigan. There will be a Democratic Primary on Jan. 15. The Michigan Democratic Party will resubmit its delegate selection plan to the DNC. The DNC will find the plan in non-compliance and strip Michigan of its delegates. The candidates will then have to decide whether to compete there.”

LARRY CRAIG WILL resign tomorrow.

WELL, SUMMER’S ALMOST OVER ANYWAY: “There will be no summer of love in Iowa.”

ERIC SCHEIE IS DISAPPOINTED WITH THE LARRY CRAIG SCANDAL:

I realize that there are things missing in this analysis, and of course the biggest problem is that it does not involve actual sex, but the perception of sex. In that respect, Craig’s “sex” is like the nonexistent sex of Mark Foley, whose crime was not sex, but sending suggestive emails. (Or Vitter, whose name was found in an address book.) . . .

What is it with these guys that they can’t even run a proper sex scandal?

Who ever heard of sex scandals without sex?

At least when the Democrats have a sex scandal, it involves real, honest to goodness sex. Yeah, I know, Bill Clinton said the sex wasn’t sex. But let’s face it, it was. Had Bill tapped Monica’s foot, the most he’d have been accused of was playing footsie, and there’d have been little to no outcry, much less an impeachment. And as Matthew Sheffield makes clear, the double standard is appalling; Democrats keep their jobs after drowning women in cars or keeping male brothels, while Republicans are hounded out of office for sex scandals without even the component of sex.

If I were the American people, I’d be totally sick of sexless Republican sex scandals by now.

The GOP needs to shape up.

It is pretty thin gruel.

HOW ABOUT A MOVIE WHERE HOLLYWOOD FILMMAKERS TAKE MONEY FROM AMERICA’S ENEMIES TO UNDERMINE MORALE? It wouldn’t be any more dishonest than Brian de Palma’s latest.

Here’s more on Hollywood’s missing movies. Instead of the predictable propaganda they actually make. Plus, how Hollywood screenwriters engage in “literary guerrilla warfare.”

UPDATE: More thoughts here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Factchecking DePalma.

IS THE LED ZEPPELIN taking off?

THIS WOULD SEEM TO NARROW JOSH MARSHALL’S CORRUPTION GAP:

Eliot Spitzer’s fall from grace is extraordinary. A mere seven months into his term after a landslide victory, the Empire State’s brash new governor is openly ridiculed as a liar and worse. An astonishing 80 percent of respondents tell pollsters they want the governor to testify under oath to prove his claim that he had nothing to do with “troopergate,” a dirty-tricks plot to smear Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, a Republican rival.

His fellow Democratic pols are largely abandoning him. After two investigations found that his top aides used the state police for a political hit job, and with four more probes gearing up, one of which could bring indictments, Spitzer is suddenly a lonely man. As one prominent supporter put it, “nobody believes him when he says he didn’t know.”

Spitzer has always struck me as a phony.

“PIGGLY,” INDEED: Financing a grocery store’s renovations with federal money.

THOUGHTS ON MANAGING THE INEVITABLE DECLINE of the newspaper industry.

WHAT DO THEY TEACH THEM IN SCHOOL NOWADAYS? Reader Bo McIlvain notes that Newsweek calls Bjorn Lomborg “the anti-Cassandra.” But as McIlvain points out: “I guess no one at Newsweek remembers that Cassandra’s curse wasn’t just that she was always right, she was NEVER BELIEVED. So, it’s more apt to call Gore the ‘Anti-Cassandra’.” Yes, the term “Cassandra” as synonym for “doomsayer” is a popular trope, but it does betray unfamiliarity with the story on which it’s based.

JOHN HARWOOD: Why Bush stepped into the subprime meltdown.

VIACOM CHARGES MAN WITH VIOLATING HIS OWN COPYRIGHT, after he YouTubed their program that used his video.

POISON GAS AND COUNTERFEIT CASH: A look at the United Nations’ inventory problems.

A SHOCKING LAPSE IN JUDGMENT: This story on fugitive campaign donor Norman Hsu contains a passage that’s not about politics, and that reflects badly on academia:

Mr. Kerrey said he was introduced to Mr. Hsu about two years ago, and shortly thereafter Mr. Hsu joined the board of governors at the Eugene Lang College for liberal arts at the New School. He joined the university’s board of trustees last July.

“So much of the university is about the immigrant culture, and I liked his personal story, coming from China, and he had an interest in fashion as well,” Mr. Kerrey said. “It all intrigued me.”

He said that the university did not do background checks of prospective trustees, and that he saw no reason to ask Mr. Hsu to resign from its board.

This is probably not that unusual — guy seems nice, has a lot of money to donate, and the diversity factor is a plus. So why look deeper? But it’s wrong. Universities are, in fact, large and wealthy corporations possessing special legal status and imbued with public trust. Their boards oversee large expenditures in a fiduciary capacity. It’s true that university administrators prefer for the boards to be mere rubber-stamps, but the management of most corporations would prefer less oversight from the board, too. We’ve moved away from that in the for-profit sector, but nonprofits haven’t caught up. They need to, because there’s a lot of money in the nonprofit sector now, and nowhere near the scrutiny over where it goes, either internally or externally.

JOHN WARNER IS RETIRING: Marc Ambinder looks at the impact. Will Virginia’s next Senator be named Warner, too?

GOOSE CREEK UPDATE:

Two Egyptian students at the University of South Florida were indicted Friday on charges of carrying explosive materials across states lines and one was accused of teaching the other how to use them for violent reasons.

Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 24, an engineering graduate student and teaching assistant at the Tampa-based university, faces terrorism-related charges for teaching and demonstrating how to use the explosives.

He and Youssef Samir Megahed, 21, an engineering student, were stopped for speeding Aug. 4 in Goose Creek, S.C., where they have been held on state charges. A federal grand jury in Tampa handed up the indictment.

Seems that there was something to this story after all.

UPDATE: A roundup from Dan Riehl. And much more here, including a link to the indictment.

NOT THAT THERE’S anything wrong with that!

A ROUNDUP OF NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ, from the Iraq-bound Major John Tammes.

WAS A CRIME COMMITTED IN HADITHA? Jim Hanson doesn’t think so.

THE SWING OF THE PENDULUM: At Captain’s Journal, a look at rules of engagement.

“IF YOU THINK GOVERNMENT IS FAIR, go to the grocery store and buy me a six-pack.”

HOSPIBLOGGING: The Insta-Mother-in-Law had hip surgery this morning; she’s out and doing okay now, though rather groggy.

IN THE MAIL: Choosing the Right College: 2008-2009: The Whole Truth about America’s Top Schools.

It’s discussed here.

YAMMERING ABOUT PRINCESS DIANA, while forgetting a more important anniversary.

LATER: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!

HMM. I don’t think this is coming from a position of strength: ” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he is now willing to compromise with Republicans to find ways to limit troop deployments in Iraq.”

I wonder if there’s a connection with this.

FINE WITH ME: Gay marriage now legal in Iowa.

HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE AN INVESTOR SCORNED: A look at securities fraud and its punishment, from Joan Heminway.

We talked to her about her book on Martha Stewart’s legal troubles in this podcast.

DEFINING DIPLOMACY DOWN: “Finally, George W. Bush has secured the support of the ‘traditional ally’ most favored among on the American left. You would think the New York Times would be delighted. You would be wrong.”

APPARENTLY, PEOPLE RESPOND TO PRICE CHANGES: With gas more expensive, small cars are coming back.

WE USED TO HAVE A “MISSILE GAP.” Now we have talk of a “corruption gap?”

The “missile gap,” if I recall correctly, turned out to be phony. The corruption gap? Well, the corruption is real. The gap . . . I’m not so sure.

UPDATE: A Bill Moyers angle.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “How do you do?”

STEVE CHAPMAN: “Before the nation undertakes the extravagant project of rebuilding New Orleans and securing it from the elements, we might ask if there isn’t a better option, not only for the nation but for the flood victims.”

Plus, Hurricane Katrina Myths, Part One and Part Two.

Also, here’s Newsday’s Lou Dolinar on what the media got wrong, and here are some Katrina lessons.

MAYBE WE NEED BRADY-STYLE BACKGROUND CHECKS AND WAITING PERIODS before people are allowed to donate to politicians:

From $62,000 for Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York, to $10,000 for the Tennessee Democratic Party, the full extent of fund-raising by Norman Hsu came into focus yesterday, as campaigns across the country began returning his money in light of revelations that he is a fugitive in a fraud case.

Beyond the hundreds of thousands of dollars he raised from others for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Mr. Hsu personally contributed more than $600,000 to federal, state and municipal candidates in the last three years, a review of campaign finance records shows. It was a startling amount of money for someone whose sources of income remained far from obvious yesterday, as visits to addresses he has provided for his businesses found no trace of Mr. Hsu.

If it saves just one campaign it’s worth it.

SOME GOOD ECONOMIC NEWS: “The economy grew at its strongest pace in more than a year during the spring as solid improvements in international trade and business investment helped offset weakness in housing.” If they hadn’t been writing mortgages to homeless people, it would be even stronger . . . .

WILD PARTIES IN SUDAN: A report from Khartoum.

SALON: JOHN EDWARDS turns on his fellow Democrats. Well, the SUV thing didn’t work out for him. (Roundup on that here.)

ROGER KIMBALL ON the cult of Diana.

FRED THOMPSON’S CAMPAIGN THEME: Security, Unity & Prosperity.

IS ENFORCING A LAW THAT’S NEVER ENFORCED some sort of due process violation?

Of course, if they’d gone after this particular guy for aggravated ptomaine violations, there’d be no room for argument.

HOWARD MORTMAN HAS SOME QUESTIONS about the Larry Craig arrest.

SAN FRANCISCO’S CITYWIDE WI-FI PLAN FIZZLES: That’s too bad, I guess, although the whole thing might have become obsolete in short order anyway.

JUST KEEP SCROLLING: James Lileks continues to blog from the Minnesota State Fair.

ANOTHER ANTI-GUN HEADLINE with no support in the actual story, according to Countertop Chronicles. But at least the WaPo listened to criticism.

THE COUNTERMAJORITARIAN DIFFICULTY, Turkish style.

SHRIMP AND GENDER: Why are we eating more shrimp? Male vs. female explanations.

DANIEL HENNINGER on loss of trust in the media. But it’s worse than that:

All this has gotten the media into high anxiety over the one thing it presumes to value most: the public’s trust. “The defining problem of contemporary television,” the BBC’s Mr. Paxman told the TV professionals last week, “is trust: Can you believe what you see on television, does television treat people fairly, is it healthy for society?”

Fascinating and worthwhile questions to be sure, insofar as most opinion polls of how much the American public “trusts” the press, TV news or even Congress have put their approval ratings in Lindsay Lohanland.

But for the media ponderers there’s a more troubling issue than the restoration of trust. It’s the possibility that too many people now simply don’t much care about the major media anymore.

I expect they find being ignored even worse than being distrusted.

FRED THOMPSON ANNOUNCES that he will announce on September 6. The summer has been rough for him, as his non-campaign has been a bit disorganized. He’ll need to hit the ground running next week.

MICHAEL BARONE on law schools and affirmative action.

COMPLAINTS ABOUT LIVEJOURNAL CLUELESSNESS, as well as complaints about TypePad. Say what you will about Blogger/Blogspot, but it’s free.

THOUGHTS ON the media and foreign policy.