LAMAR ALEXANDER’S POLITICAL CAREER may be in trouble now that someone has pointed out his resemblance to Pat Boone.

THE GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH– a cultural universal?

HERE’S A HOMESCHOOL BLOG with an, er, insider’s view of the process.

DAVID NIEPORENT points out that Eugene Volokh has yet another accurate Supreme Court prediction to add to his record. Advantage: Volokh! And Nieropent, for pointing this out.

“VELVET CONSERVATISM” — An article on New York Sun and New Republic owner Roger Hertog from The American Prospect. I don’t know how accurate it is, since I know nothing about the guy, but it certainly seems fair.

The best quote in the piece, though, is from Sun Editor-in-Chief Seth Lipsky:

“The right wing of the Democratic Party,” Lipsky told me recently, “is a depressed stock.”

That’s certainly true, and God knows I hear it from Tennessee Democrats all the time.

WAS THE BACHELOR RIGGED? Alex Rubalcava says it was, and it looks like he’s got the goods.

THAT’S MISTER YUPPIE SCUM, TO YOU: According to this article, gentrification may be good for neighborhoods, and even for the poor people who live in them. The reduction in crime and improvement in amenities have something to do with it:

“Low-income households actually seem less likely to move from gentrifying neighborhoods than from other communities,” said a recent report by the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, a New York nonprofit organization that analyzed demographic shifts in the city over the last few years.

If low-income residents remain in gentrifying areas, then they can enjoy the community improvement that gentrification generally brings. . . . “I really didn’t find any evidence that it did push poor people out,” Vigdor says of his study of demographic changes in gentrifying neighborhoods in Boston. “In fact I found a good amount of evidence that they’re more likely to stick around.”

Even though rents go up in gentrifying neighborhoods, Vigdor found long-term residents wanted to stay to enjoy the better environment for children, the increased local services, and the possibility of new jobs in the area.

“Basically you’ve got two factors,” says Braconi. “You’ve got rents maybe increasing — that makes it harder for poor people to stay — by the same token gentrification brings with it a lot of community improvement.”

Wow. Who’d’ve thought that poor people might actually benefit when their neighborhoods get better?

A WORD FOR OUR TIMES.

THIS POST BY RAMESH PONNURU over at The Corner is, as far as I know, the first use of the term “Idiotarian” by a professional journalist.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Hankamer writes: “Now if only there was an Idiotarian Party. I can see it now: ‘Vote Idiotarian – It’s Easier Than Thinking.'”

Actually, Mike, sometimes I think we have two of those.

CLONING UPDATE: Reader James Taranto sends a link to this Slate article on Hatch, LDS theology, and stem cells.

THE MULLAHS’ GRIP IS LOOSENING in Iran, in this very interesting story from ABC. (Via Clueless). Keep those Britney Spears videos on the air — they’re obviously weakening:

The 15-year-old girl trying out her new in-line skates in central Tehran also was making a bold fashion statement: jeans, a bulky sweater rolled up to her elbows and a bright orange head scarf barely hanging on to her hair.

Yet her outfit drew no special attention part of a quiet, but potentially momentous, test under way in Iran.

Almost daily, new boundaries are being defined for the “hijab,” the Muslim dress code for women enforced since the Islamic revolution 23 years ago.

Coming soon: a Barbie airdrop!

STEVE at HappyFunPundit has the email address for the PR firm behind the Saudis’ TV ads. He’s suggesting that people express their sentiments about making pro-Saudi advertisements.

READER ALEX BENSKY writes about the epidemic of “public health” studies relating to guns:

Why wouldn’t medical people have special insight into gun control, given that misuse of guns leads to health problems?

As a baseball fan, therefore, I have special insight into nuclear weapons programs, because an all-out nuclear attack on the U.S. might lead to an interruption in the American League schedule. As a matter of fact, I have direct insight, because I’ve got tickets to a Red Sox game in June.

And my friend the realtor has special insight into nuclear warfare because nuclear war would, after all, destroy real estate and reduce the value of what’s left. Maybe he could form a group called Realtors for Social Responsibility.

Why the hell not?

EMILY JONES is unimpressed by peace protesters.

STEPHEN GREEN says he doesn’t trust Bill Kristol.

MARTIN ROTH now has a more comprehensive list of Christian blogs.

LOS ANGELES IS THE ROME OF THE 21ST CENTURY, according to Ken Layne. So what’s the Athens?

Knoxville, of course, is the Sybaris of the 21st century.

ANOTHER major public-health study will be released tomorrow.

MORE ON CLONING: I’ve said it before, but it’s worth pointing out again that Congress’s enumerated powers don’t extend to a ban on cloning anyway. Such matters don’t concern big-government conservatives (if that’s a meaningful term) like Kristol, but this ought to give pause to more principled conservatives who believe that the Constitution actually means something.

CLONING UPDATE: Orrin Hatch is supporting cloning. Well, therapeutic cloning — he wants to outlaw human cloning. Still, that puts him on the opposite side of this legislative from Kristol, who supports the Brownback/Landrieu bill that would ban therapeutic cloning, too. I didn’t notice it at the time, but Gerald Ford took the same position last week.

CHARLES JOHNSON comments on David Tell’s article about the U.N.’s obsession with Israel. Johnson hits the nail on the head: “In a sane world, the United Nations itself would be investigated.”

JUST HEARD A REALLY TERRIFIC STORY on space tourism on NPR. It was first-rate, with interviews from people in the space community who really get it, and who did a good job of explaining why it’s important.

BILL KRISTOL’S ANTI-CLONING GANG has its own commercial in response to the Harry and Louise pro-cloning ads. Too bad it’s basically full of lies.

Too harsh? Well, it says that the anti-cloning bill won’t ban life-saving research. But it will.

It says “some biotech companies will do anything to make a buck” — a faux-populism worthy of John Edwards and the Trial Lawyers.

It portrays real, human clones as walking around now because of cloning research (they’re not) — and suggests that if they existed they’d be patented, and hence owned, by big pharmaceutical companies, presumably leading to armies of subhuman cloned slaves. That’s not true.

This is Shrum-like in its dishonesty.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Murray writes:

Of course, the deeper hypocrisy of the Kristol ad is its explicit claim that those rascally corporations need to be reined in, or God only knows what they’ll do in their mad pursuit of profit, coming as it does from a right wing that has for years preached free market economics. I guess this means that I should expect to see Kristol at the next anti-globo rally, carrying a disfigured papier-mache puppet and condemning corporate greed, huh?

Well, that’s where they’re headed, based on this commercial. Though Kristol has never been much of a fan of free market economics. He likes big government — he just wants it to be his kind of big government.

HEY, THE CAIR WEBSITE IS DOWN. The reader who calls my attention to it asks: Could it have anything to do with this story on FoxNews?

Probably not. But stay tuned.

UPDATE: It’s back. Hey, it’s not like my site ever goes down. . . .

HEY, I ALMOST FORGOT: InstaPundit is site of the month over at Enter Stage Right, though they correctly report that I am not a conservative, but a Whig.

Does that count as right-wing? Who knows, anymore?

UPDATE: Reader Tyler Boswell writes: “The Whig party, huh? So that explains your hair in the pic.” Ouch. No, for better or worse, that’s all mine.