IF PRO WRESTLING SEEMS TOO CALM AND DIGNIFIED, you can always read law reviews.

MORE ON THE U.N., SELF-DEFENSE, AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: “People writing reports for the U.N. should consider what the founders of the modern ideas of the law of nations had to say about the subject. Hugo Grotius was quite clear on the subject. Emmerich de Vattel was too. . . . the U.N. has cut international law off from its root.”

MORE THOUGHTS ON ECONOMIC ATTITUDES, from Dr. Tony.

UPDATE: Meanwhile The New York Times is changing its tune.

DR. MELISSA CLOUTHIER says that full-spectrum lighting is better than fluorescent.

AVATAR INTERVIEW: Mark Warner was interviewed at Second Life. The transcript is here.

HERE’S MORE ON THE “SECRET HOLD” EXPOSURE, from The Hotline:

Stevens’ admission “offered a glimpse into the increasing role that online pundits play in U.S. policymaking.” It came a day after Senate Maj. Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) “posted a Web entry asking colleagues to cooperate with bloggers who were trying to identify who was using the legislative maneuver to stall a vote.”

The measure, co-sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), “has bipartisan support” and has been “championed for months by bloggers who, regardless of their political persuasion, advocate for more information to be available through the Internet.” RedState.com’s Erick Erickson: “The left can very easily find out which earmarks Halliburton is involved with, and the right can find out which earmarks Planned Parenthood is involved with.” Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor: “When you have InstaPundit and RedState, some of the most influential conservative bloggers, working with (left-leaning) DailyKos, that’s sort of a powerful grassroots alliance” (Talev, McClatchy Newspapers, 8/31).

CNN’s Koppel: “This political-who-done-it captivated bloggers for days and brought together an unusual alliance on both sides of the aisle. …

Let’s hope it’s just a beginning, and not a one-off.

UPDATE: Here’s more on the Byrd secret-hold story.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Byrd admits it!

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd admits that he placed a “secret hold” on legislation that would make uncovering the Byzantine world of federal contracting as easy as typing a Google search.

Tom Gavin, spokesperson for Byrd, confirmed to Cox Newspapers that the senator placed the hold on legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., before voting on the measure.

Byrd joins Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, for holding up the bill right before Congress left town on August 4. . . .

Byrd has released his hold, now that there “has been time to better understand the legislation,” Gavin said.

Excellent news. And TPM Muckraker has more.

MORE: Bill Frist makes a commitment: “In September, I will bring S. 2590 to the floor of the Senate for the vote it deserves.”

WHERE ARE ALL THE STUDENT ANTIWAR PROTESTS? Ann Althouse has some thoughts.

PIETER DORSMANN TAKES A LOOK AT Dutch politics and says that claims of a rightward shift may be exaggerated.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Despite Republican Sen. Ted Stevens being outed as a secret-hold source, there have been rumors swirling that there’s a Democratic secret hold, too. TPM Muckraker has more:

By this morning, the dogged persistence of hundreds of bloggers and blogreaders garnered denials from 98 senators saying they did not hold up the Coburn/Obama spending transparency database bill. Only one senator, Ted “King of Pork” Stevens (R-AK), has admitted placing a hold on the bill.

But do the math — you’ll find that makes 99 senators. And Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) ain’t one.

That’s right: Byrd, whose penchant for pork would probably win him the Pork Crown if he weren’t saddled with minority status, has for days declined to answer constituents and others who have asked if he put a hold on the spending database proposal, S. 2590.

We have called and emailed his office and press secretary at least a half-dozen times over two days. Yesterday, we were promised a statement by the end of the day; none came. This morning, spokesman Tom Gavin continued to blame Byrd’s travel schedule for the lack of response.

What’s more, staff in the personal and leadership offices of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have been almost uniformly mum on the issue. If Byrd placed a hold on the legislation, he would have had to notify Reid’s office to do so. After several calls and conversations with numerous staffers, Reid spokesman Jon Steinberg would say for the record only that “it’s the policy of our office not to talk about holds.”

Well, Byrd’s not exactly beyond suspicion here. In fact, he and Stevens shared top honors in the PorkBusters Hall of Shame. Maybe they just like the attention!

UPDATE: An idea on turning secret holds into a force for good.

SELF-DEFENSE IS NOT A RIGHT, according to a U.N. Report. David Hardy has some thoughts. “As might be expected from the source, the concept of ‘right’ is rather ineptly socialist: rights are what you may ask the government to do for you.”

IN THE MAIL: The DVD release of Paul Greengrass’s United 93. I’ll try to watch it this weekend, but the reviews on Amazon are already stellar.

CHANGING THE WORLD with new fluorescent lightbulbs:

For two decades, CFLs lacked precisely what we expect from lightbulbs: strong, unwavering light; quiet; not to mention shapes that actually fit in the places we use bulbs. Now every one of those problems has been conquered. The bulbs come on quickly; their light is bright, white, steady, and silent; and the old U-shaped tubes–they looked like bulbs from a World War II submarine–have mostly been replaced by the swirl. Since 1985, CFLs have changed as much as cell phones and portable music players.

One thing hasn’t changed: the energy savings. Compact fluorescents emit the same light as classic incandescents but use 75% or 80% less electricity.

What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

I replaced the bulbs in the overhead fixture in my study with compact fluorescents, and I’m not crazy with the quality of the light they’re producing. But I may not have chosen the best new bulbs. I have been replacing outdoor lights with fluorescents, though, as I don’t care as much about the light quality there.

But look who’s spreading the technology:

In the next 12 months, starting with a major push this month, Wal-Mart wants to sell every one of its regular customers–100 million in all–one swirl bulb. In the process, Wal-Mart wants to change energy consumption in the United States, and energy consciousness, too. It also aims to change its own reputation, to use swirls to make clear how seriously Wal-Mart takes its new positioning as an environmental activist.

It’s a bold goal, a remarkable declaration of Wal-Mart’s intention to modernize and green up a whole line of business using market oomph. Teaming up with General Electric, which owns about 60% of the residential lightbulb market in the United States, Wal-Mart wants to single-handedly double U.S. sales for CFLs in a year, and it wants demand to surge forward after that.

Diane Lindsley, the hardware buyer who decides what goes in the lightbulb aisles at Wal-Mart, thinks 100 million swirls is perfectly reasonable.

No doubt we’ll hear more complaints about evil monopsony power, though.

HOWARD KURTZ: “Cook up something, call it a ‘study’ and, like Pavlov’s dogs, panting journalists will put it in print and on the air.”

They respond faster, though, to studies that reinforce their political views.

JEFF SOYER’S ALPHECCA BLOG ISN’T DOWN — just moving servers. It should be back soon.

THE INSTAWIFE has Google Ads on her blog now, and the context-sensitive adserving has responded to her post on prison sexual abuse by linking up “ladies of the Pen,” a site dedicated to “lonely, sexy ladies looking for love” — from behind prison bars. It seems like it ought to be a parody, but as far as I can tell it’s not.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Ladies of the Pen may not be a parody, but it’s probably not what it claims to be. I recognized one of the women pictured as a fairly popular B-grade pornstar, so the other pics probably aren’t authentic jailbirds either. (Let’s not dwell on HOW I recognized her!)”

Maybe it’s a Reuters operation . . . .

But if it’s “Hoosegow Honey” action you’re looking for, IowaHawk is the place to go! Guaranteed 100% authentic — unlike, well, most of the stuff at IowaHawk.

OLBERMANN outdoes Chomsky.

JOHN WIXTED looks at how Americans hate their fabulous economy. The charts on attitude and economic performance are very interesting. (Via Power Line).

UPDATE: TigerHawk comments: “The problem with Engram’s post is that it does not respond to the primary lefty criticism of the “Bush” economy, which is that real wages for the average Joe — people who are not in, say, the top decile — have been flat to down. . . . While I do not doubt that the media is tougher on the economy today than it was during the Clinton years, real wage stagnation is a more likely explanation for the sour public mood than a vast mainstream media conspiracy.”

Hmm. Maybe. But two observations: One, the shift from satisfaction to dissatisfaction is awfully abrupt, and comes when Bush was elected. Wages can’t stagnate that fast, but media coverage can shift tone that fast. Two, I keep hearing about real-wage stagnation, but everyone I know who has a business complains that they can’t get enough decent help even when they raise pay, because people are always leaving for better jobs. That may be a local phenomenon or something, but I’d like to see something that accounts for worker mobility, too.

This post by Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek isn’t quite on the point mentioned above, but it does explain why living at the median income today is a lot better than living at the median income was in 1967.

MORE: Wixted responds to TigerHawk.

THE WAR OF THE WALLETS: Austin Bay says that Hezbollah is not faring as well as many seem to think.

JIM LINDGREN WRITES on ABC News and the end of the world.

THE “INSTA-ANDIE MACDOWELL”? Actually, Helen hears this a lot.

FRED THOMPSON IN 2008: Brian Noggle makes the case.

DAVID LAT HAS A NEW LEGAL BLOG, called Above the Law. Okay, it’s more of a legal-gossip blog, really.

VINCE CARROLL REVIEWS the Popular Mechanics 9/11-myth debunking book in the Rocky Mountain News.

Our podcast interview with the book’s editors, David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, can be found here.

THE MANOLO has a great take on the Couric photo-fakery story.

UPDATE: Eww.

Plus, textbook faux-tography.

CNN HAD A PORKBUSTERS / TED STEVENS FOLLOWUP: The video is at Hot Air.

UPDATE: Now there’s a Democratic hold?