OUCH: “Jeffery Fagan, professor at Columbia University, and Stephen D. Sugarman, professor at U.C. Berkeley, have a plan on how gun manufacturers can help curb gun-related homicides in the U.S. If their credentials alone don’t make you chuckle at this premise, reading their actual plan might.”

HELLER’S KITCHEN: Dave Kopel looks at the decision’s impact on New York.

WOMEN AND DEMOCRATS: “Why do they hate us?”

They hate you for your freedom.

STRONG EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING.

Well, better that than global cooling.

ERIC EGLAND VS. Bill Delahunt. I’ve never liked Delahunt since I read about his water-carrying for Kennedy on the Cape Wind matter. That, however, was just ordinary sleaziness, not extraordinary sleaziness.

EXTREME MORTMAN: “Poor Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick. In a year in which Democrats are making news for heading toward a supposed bulldozing of Republicans, the six-term Detroit Congresswoman faces bad news of her own: a tough re-election battle, in the primary. Who’s to blame? Would you believe, her son?”

ROGER SIMON: Some Fact-Checking Questions For The Editors Of The New Yorker.

BUZZ ALDRIN: Beat the Chinese to Mars.

IN HONOR OF GEORGE CARLIN: 7 Words You Can’t Say in Campaign 2008.

REMEMBERING THE PORSCHE 944: “It’s nearly impossible to describe the Porsche 944 without comparing it to the Porsche 924. . . . If the 924 is a nerd, the 944 is a jock. If the 924 is technobeat, the 944 is new wave. If the 924 is punk, the 944 is goth. Where the 924 is a scientist, with an engine optimized for longevity and fuel efficiency, the 944 is an athlete.” The 924S, however, was a nerd who could kick the jock’s ass as often as not.

ARNOLD KLING: “My wife’s pet peeve is colleges that charge $50,000 a year and wind up graduating students who take jobs for $25,000 a year, if that much. My pet peeve is the nonprofit virus that college spreads.”

MORE ON OBAMA’S APPALACHIAN PROBLEM: “Newsweek discovers that hey, those dumb hillbillies may decide the 2008 race — like they did the 2000 race.”

Apparently, the vote for me, you ignorant rednecks approach isn’t working that well.

DANIEL GROSS on why neither McCain nor Obama will be able to do much for the economy. Nope. Presidents’ don’t have much of a role in the economy, except taking credit or blame. And to the extent that they have the ability to affect the economy, it’s more to screw it up than to make it better.

A TRAILER from the upcoming Star Wars Clone Wars movie.

CHANGE YOU CAN PHOTOSHOP.

NO BABIES? That’s in Europe. Here’s the difference between Europe and the United States:

“There’s much less flexibility in the European system,” Haub says. “In Europe, both the society and the job market are more rigid.” There may be little state subsidy for child care in the U.S., and there is certainly nothing like the warm governmental nest that Norway feathers for fledgling families, but the American system seems to make up for it in other ways. As Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania writes: “In general, women are deterred from having children when the economic cost — in the form of lower lifetime wages — is too high. Compared to other high-income countries, this cost is diminished by an American labor market that allows more flexible work hours and makes it easier to leave and then re-enter the labor force.” An American woman might choose to suspend her career for three or five years to raise a family, expecting to be able to resume working; that happens far less easily in Europe.

Flexibility is the key to success. But read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Related thoughts here.

BUT OF COURSE: Court to Mull Individual Right to Drill for Oil. Though I thought we achieved “liquid liberty” with the 21st Amendment . . . .

A GUN-RIGHTS SUGGESTION FROM CHARLES AUSTIN: “What if Colt made a big show of offering Senator Obama a custom engraved 1911 to celebrate Heller? If he accepts it, his base is up in arms, no pun intended. If he declines it, well, let’s just say that 5-4 vote will look a little more frightening to everyone not in his base. Seems like a win-win to me.”

OMAHA RESIDENTS FACE UP TO A WEEK WITHOUT POWER:

They probably can’t read it, but here’s a blackout survival guide. And here are some home generator safety guidelines.

Or you could get one of these, though at this new, higher price (it was 180 bucks when I linked it before) I don’t think it’s much of a deal. Heck, for that price you can get what looks like a pretty decent little inverter generator, with 1800 watts of clean power.

BIZARRO WORLD: Bridge-to-nowhere Porkmeister Don Young gets a Taxpayer hero award? Don Young is a taxpayer hero in the same way a tapeworm is a public-health hero.

IN THE MAIL: Lawrence Alexander’s Rubicon, and Cintra Wilson’s Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny. The reader reviews on Alexander’s book are amusing.

I predict that if Obama is elected President, we’ll see no more last-days-of-Rome books from left-leaning authors. Anyway, the Caligula example is unfair. He only named one ass to the Senate, while we have many more in ours. . . .

DON SURBER:

Question: What is the reaction to the Heller ruling in Canada?

Answer: Some Canadians are wondering why they cannot have guns, too.

Because that would be too American! And not being American is the core of Canada’s sense of national identity, apparently.

ROSS PEROT is back.

ERIC S. RAYMOND HAS THOUGHTS on the Heller ruling and the 2008 elections. “I’m left with a choice between a candidate hostile to both my First and Second Amendment rights and one that supports the Second Amendment. (Normally I’d vote Libertarian, but the LP’s isolationist foreign-policy stance seems so batty after 9/11 that I can’t stomach that option in this cycle.) But Obama’s problem is actually worse than this, because he responded to Heller on the same day with a mealy-mouthed recantation of his earlier public statement that the D.C gun ban was constitutional.”