BATTLE OF THE ALS: Mickey Kaus says Al Gore was intentionally slighting Al From by pleading a “scheduling conflict” that turned out to be, well, pretty obviously nonexistent.

TRAFFIC: Extreme Tracker is reporting 477,885 unique visitors to the main page for July. If tomorrow’s a good day, we might break a half million for the month. Not bad considering I was on vacation for two weeks. Maybe I should take more time off!

MY DREAM JOB, if only I could draw.

SORRY GOOGLERS: This isn’t me. I’ve had their Shiraz and Merlot, though, and both were excellent. You’d think I’d get a family discount, or something. . . .

MERYL YOURISH SAYS IT’S ALL MY FAULT, as she rates the superheroes for, ahem, action-adventure appeal. True to my prediction, the Elongated Man does very, very well.

Maybe I should rate the female superheroes (superheroines?), but, really, it’s such a short list, with only one answer: Supergirl, as played by Helen Slater. ‘Nuff said. (Though it may raise issues akin to these. Ouch.)

Wonder Woman? She doesn’t like men, does she? She might be a good pick for, say, Norah Vincent, (though somehow I don’t see them as a couple), but I figure anyone who yells “Sufferin’ Sappho” doesn’t belong on my list. Besides, I used to see Lynda Carter all the time at the late, lamented “21 Federal” in Washington, back when I was a rich lawyer who went to places like that. She was more of a babe without the costume, which surely cuts against it.

Now Saturn Girl was kinda hot. Hot enough that I don’t really remember her super power. Telepathy? Precognition? Something like that. (UPDATE: It’s telepathy and mind control. I love Google! Oh, and Umbra, who I don’t remember at all even under the old name of “Shadow Lass,” isn’t bad, either).

SO I WANTED TO WATCH STOSSEL, but the local ABC affiliate is off the air because of tonight’s thunderstorm. Damned lightning.

CHARLES DODGSON agrees that the War On Drugs raises serious doubts about homeland security.

IF I HADN’T ALREADY DECIDED to post more law review articles on the Web, this would have convinced me: How often do law professors get to see people debating their 10-year-old writings? (Much less people with names like “Oberon Lord of Avalon”).

The thread’s too long for me to respond to in any detail at the moment, but it was quite interesting to read.

ERIC OLSEN has a whole lot on the Fort Bragg spouse-killing incidents. Apparently a big story will break shortly.

I’m guessing we’ll find overlapping instances of infidelity here, but that’s just that: a guess. I haven’t followed this very closely.

UPDATE: Reader Anne Salisbury seems to think that the above pot implies that I think infidelity is a justification for murder. Nope — just a motive, and one of the oldest. But I guess we’ll know soon.

I WASN’T GOING TO WRITE ABOUT this New Yorker piece by Rik Hertzberg on Robert Dahl’s new book. That’s because I don’t think the Hertzberg piece is that good, and I rather doubt that the Dahl book is, either. (I haven’t read it, but it doesn’t sound as if he’s changed his views from previous works.)

But then I noticed that Patrick Nielsen Hayden was citing it approvingly, so I thought I’d add this word of warning: What Dahl is talking about turns out in practice to be what Robert Bork wants. Bork’s idea of the Framers’ intent, and the problems with judicial review, comes from confusing the thinking of the Framers with the political science that Bork studied in college, which was very Dahlian. (William Jennings Bryan had similar thoughts, too.)

It’s tempting for liberals to look at the Rehnquist Court and find that sort of thing attractive, just as it was tempting for conservatives of Bork’s generation to look at the Warren Court (and even the Burger Court) and find that sort of thing attractive. But the Framers weren’t about democracy; they were interested in a democratic republic. And subsequent history, pace Dahl, suggests that they were pretty damned smart to think that way.

Since World War II the United States has made a big deal about democracy, as opposed to democratic republicanism, because it was simpler to explain, and hence an easier idea to sell than separation of powers, checks and balances, etc., etc. Interestingly, Americans have been more swayed by that propaganda than anyone else, and the importance of the Constitution’s built-in countermajoritarianism has been largely ignored — except where issues like school prayer or flag-burning come up.

But there’s a lot more to the Constitution’s countermajoritarianism than the Bill of Rights, and there’s good reason to believe that the structural protections against tyranny have done more to protect freedom than the Bill of Rights — which the Supreme Court didn’t really do much with until the mid-20th Century anyway.

IT DIDN’T HAPPEN THIS WAY.

But there are people who wish it had.

DELLWATCH UPDATE: Well, hotdamn, it works. The Dell tech showed up on time and quickly got the desktop up and running again. Despite the yeoman service my laptop provided, I’m happy to have it back. Now I just have to get the wireless network going again. Ugh.

I SURE HOPE THAT this turns out to be true. If I’m ever going to get the aircar I expected when I was 8, something like this has to work out.

I LIKE P.J. O’ROURKE, but Spoons has him dead to rights here. Bill Lockyer would probably disagree.

DON’T FORGET TO WATCH John Stossel’s program tonight on why the Drug War is a miserable failure that threatens us all.

WELL, WHY THE HELL NOT? It’s a Dan Savage / National Review Online lovefest!

HOMELAND SECURITY UPDATE: Juan Gato suggests Bud Selig as Secretary for Homeland Defense.

Why not? It’s the only thing they could do that would make me even less confident in the whole program. So it just makes sense!

IS THERE AN AQUAMAN COMEBACK IN THE WORKS? Here’s a report that he’s getting his own series. Of course, there’s the inevitable line about “bringing new depth to the character.”

Me, I say that the days of disrespect for Aquaman are over. Yep. . . . The tide is turning!

THE TED WILLIAMS STORY has died down for the moment, but Rand Simberg has a long and thoughtful defense of cryonics at TechCentralStation.

ARTIFICIAL ANTIBODIES? CELL-PENETRATING NANOMATERIALS? All this and more news about nanotechnology can be found on NanoDot, a Slashdot-style collaborative website.

SCOTT ROSENBERG has posted a Salon Blogs progress report — on his blog, naturally.

LYNNE KIESLING SAYS THE MARKET WORKS — and right now it’s working on Perot.

MORE ON MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL’S ATTACK ON A FAN WEBSITE can be found here. Here’s some good practical advice from trademark lawyer Martin Schwimmer:

Finally, as a practice pointer for folk with clients in the sports and entertainment field, you have to be really careful how you deal with fans, because you never want to see your demand letters posted on a website.

Indeed.

AQUAMAN UPDATE: Ted Barlow has more evidence that Aquaman don’t get no respect. “Aquaman sucks” t-shirts?

HESIOD THEOGENY is upset that Egypt is basically a dictatorship, and rightly so.

Me, I’d like to see democratic capitalism and a secular consumer society spread across the entire Middle East, rather than barbarously thuggish governnments who “cooperate” with Washington while looking for ways to undermine it, and who kowtow to fundamentalist religious wackos who want to turn the clock back to the 12th century.

I think that makes me an Evil Imperialist. So be it.