FOR YALE LAW SCHOOL, conflicting narratives.

UPDATE: And other issues for Harvard.

A DINNER TABLE POLL: “My mother, whom I have dubbed The Swing Voter because her vote has correctly called every presidential election since I was sentient, has announced that if Hillary is the nominee, she’s voting Republican–regardless of who the Republican is. Meanwhile, the gay Republican vote is apparently going for McCain, with a margin of error of 100%.” Which isn’t much worse than polls in general, these days . . . .

AN ARMY OF DOOFUSES: “Anti-Scientology agitators have repeatedly harassed and threatened violence against a 59-year-old PG&E worker and his wife, who were mistakenly flagged as pro-Scientology hackers.” It’s the Internet equivalent of a wrong-house SWAT raid, though without any actual shootings. Another difference — immediate apologies from the responsible parties.

FEEDING YOUR PET via the Internet.

WHAT THE WORLD’S BEEN WAITING FOR: The canned cheeseburger. Yum, yum!

JENNIFER RUBIN: What will Rush, Hugh say if McCain wins? They really don’t like McCain, but will they try to play spoiler? Some related thoughts here.

Meanwhile, I have to note that whenever I turn on talk radio I hear a caller lamenting Fred Thompson’s absence from the race. I have to wonder, though, just how many of those people actually donated money or volunteered in his campaign.

UPDATE: Advice from The Anchoress: Chill for a bit.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

And reader Troy Hinrichs emails: “Hugh Hewitt has said, ad nauseum, on his radio show that if McCain wins the nomination he will vote for McCain and those who withhold their vote are basically dolts for doing so.” I haven’t heard his show lately — it isn’t on in Knoxville at the moment.

WHAT THE COUNTRY NEEDS: Ralph Nader 2008!

WHERE IS AL GORE? “A rare snowstorm swept the Middle East on Wednesday, blanketing parts of the Holy Land in white, shutting schools and sending excited children into the streets for snowball fights. . . . Men in long Arab robes pelted each other with snowballs in the Jordanian capital, Amman, and the West Bank city of Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian government, came to a standstill.”

CHOIRE SICHA: Dear Hillary: Your Obama obsession is making you dull.

UPDATE: Link was wrong earlier. Fixed now. Sorry!

LOOKING AT the black plague and its victims.

THE LATEST PUTIN VICTIM? “Vladimir Putin has now not only disqualified his former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov from running for president, he’s threatened him with prison.”

IN THE MAIL: Get Rich, Stay Rich, Pass It On: The Wealth-Accumulation Secrets of America’s Richest Families. And also, It’s Never Too Late to Get Rich: The Nine Secrets to Building a Nest Egg at Any Age. I’ll read ’em both, and get twice as rich, twice as fast!

EARMARKS AND OUTLAYS: A striking graphic from Larry Kudlow. On the program, Dick Armey called earmarks the “gateway drug for overspending.”

UPDATE: Reader Tom Brosz emails: “I can’t look at that chart without wondering how much of the Republican Party’s problems stem from the departure of Newt Gingrich, who could almost be considered the conservative heart (or brain) of the Republican Congress. He left the House leadership after the 1998 elections, and you can see on that graph that the spending uptick started some time before Bush took office.” Hmm.

TERMINATED: A look at the demise of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s health-care plan, and what it means for Hillarycare 2.0. “Like collapses in Illinois, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, this one crumpled because of the costs, which are always much higher than anticipated. . . . This reveals that liberal health-care politics is increasingly the art of the impossible: You can’t make coverage ‘universal’ while at the same time keeping costs in check — at least without prohibitive tax increases.”

AT THE SPECULIST, A SPECIAL EDITION of their Better All The Time good-news roundup, devoted just to energy news.

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME: McCain Derangement Syndrome arrives. I understand people having issues with McCain, but people need to calm down soon. This is politics, the art of the possible, not the ideal. Some people on the right are starting to sound almost Kossack-like.

UPDATE: Bill Quick begs to differ. Hey, for everybody there’s a point at which they’d rather take their marbles and go home. For me it would be Huckabee. For some Democrats it was Gore in 2000 and they voted Nader instead. For some Republicans it was GHW Bush in 1992 and they voted Perot.

What I find particularly hard to swallow, though — and this is not Bill’s problem — are the people who say that if Romney doesn’t make it they’ll vote Democratic rather than support McCain because McCain’s not a true conservative. Maybe not, but neither is Romney, and it seems like a strange place to draw the line. Those who hold a special grudge against McCain over immigration or McCain-Feingold are a different case. But again, everybody gets to vote how they want. Just be prepared to live with the results.

HE’LL BE GOING BACK TO ONE OF THE TWO AMERICAS — the fancier one! John Edwards quits.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, political activists who circulated petitions critical of government policy would be tossed in jail. And they were right!

ATF CONFIRMATION FIGHT continues.

WHAT THE NEXT PRESIDENT SHOULD DO on day one.

UPDATE: Why wait? A reader emails: “I think Bush should do it NOW, or at worst before his term ends. If it works as advertised and bankrupts the Saudis, Chavez, and the rest of OPEC, it will go down as the best thing he did in office, and I include Iraq in that assessment.”

Sadly, the White House opposes the Zubrin plan because it’s a “mandate,” notwithstanding that it would be far less intrusive — and far more beneficial — than the increase in C.A.F.E. standards.