COOL STUFF BEING MADE: The folks at the National Association of Manufacturers have a series of posts on how things are made, along with video and photos from the shop floor. Given how divorced most people are from the process of actually making things these days, I think this is very cool. It should be a TV series! Er, I mean . . .

THOUGHTS ON ART, OPERA, AND ISLAMISTS:

Now that some Muslims have made it painfully obvious that religion-taunting is not an easy game anymore, abandoning it expresses fear, not respect for religion. And continuing to disrespect the religions that don’t lash back only highlights that cowardice. Poor transgressive rebel artists! How are they to shock the middle class anymore?

They may have to go back to actually doing work that’s, you know, good.

HAROLD FORD, JR. voted for the detainee bill.

HOW PARTISAN IS TOO PARTISAN? David Adesnik has some further thoughts.

IT’S A ROUGH YEAR FOR REPUBLICANS, with Tennessee in play and George Allen barely holding on. But there’s some good news. First, the economy:

A wave of positive economic news, capped by this week’s run-up in the stock market and a continuing drop in gasoline prices, seems to be coming at an ideal time for Republicans worried about the November elections.

And New Jersey is looking bad for the Democrats:

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez’s closest political adviser was secretly recorded seven years ago boasting of political power and urging a Hudson county contractor to hire somone as a favor to Menendez, according to a transcript obtained by The Star-Ledger.

Tonight Menendez’s campaign says he has severed his ties with the adviser, Donald Scarinci, after learning of the taped conversation. . . . Menendez, locked in a tight U.S. Senate election race against Republican Tom Kean Jr., is already facing political fallout from a federal investigation into a rental deal he had with a non-profit organization in Union City years ago.

A GOP pickup in New Jersey would make Democrats’ chances of retaking the Senate look much worse.

JEFF BEZOS TALKS ON HOW AMAZON is going all Army of Davids:

It is, in short, open source business strategy. Amazon has spent years building up a technological and physical infrastructure to their business, and instead of keeping it proprietary, they are selling their unused capacity to others. The Web services I mentioned here are only a few of what the company is now offering (you can check out the rest at aws.amazon.com), but it seems either a very brave or very stupid way of doing business. Give the tools of the big guy to the little guy, and you may just empower the little company that will one day bring you down. But then again, (to abuse a metaphor) if you’re the one facilitating the rising tide, it’s probably not your boat that’s going to sink.

I think it’s a smart approach.

GEORGE ALLEN’S CAMPAIGN looks to be floundering, but they’re up by five percent in the latest poll.

CATHY SEIPP: “An anti-STD vaccine no more encourages promiscuity than locking your doors at night encourages burglars.”

DEAN ESMAY disputes suggestions that Muslims are incapable of democracy.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “Throughout these last crazy weeks, I have been struck by Western tolerance and benevolence. Can you imagine, as Pakistan’s Musharref does, a President Bush publishing his book in Pakistan and then touring the Hindu Kush, hawking its message of criticism of his host to local tribes?”

When Pakistan has its own version of The Daily Show, we will have won.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: The Mudville Gazette looks at the NIE, Iraq, and 1998.

UPDATE: Some further thoughts on the NIE: “nowhere does this report mention the Israel/Palestine conflict as a source of tension, a motivation for jihadists, or a factor in global anti-American sentiment.”

SOCK-PUPPETRY, AGAIN: “A top aide to U.S. Rep. Charles Bass resigned Tuesday after disclosures that he posed as a supporter of the Republican’s opponent in blog messages intended to convince people that the race was not competitive.”

JEFF COOPER HAS DIED. Johnathan Pearce remembers him.

I recommend his many writings, particularly Principles of Personal Defense and his memoir, To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth. My favorite bit in the latter was his reminscence of travel by ocean liner in the 1930s, which sounded pretty nice.

UPDATE: Here’s a lengthier tribute by Marc “Armed Liberal” Danziger.

AL QAEDA IS POLLING BADLY IN IRAQ: I guess that whole bombing-mosques thing isn’t working out for them.

TENNESSEE SENATE UPDATE: One thing that everyone in Washington asked me about was the Tennessee Senate race between Bob Corker (R) and Harold Ford, Jr. (D). Here’s what I told them. I think that Ford’s got an excellent, and probably better-than-even chance at winning. That’s because he’s a very strong candidate with an excellent campaign operation.

There’s nothing wrong with Corker, but he’s not as impressive on TV, and his campaign seems to be much less of a well-oiled machine. The conventional wisdom was that Ford might pull even during the summer, but that once Corker started spending money and running ads, he’d pull into the lead and stay there. That hasn’t happened. In fact, if you look at the polls at Pollster.com, it seems that the race shifted in Ford’s favor about the time (mid-August) that Corker started really running his ads. This suggests that Corker needs new ads.

The race could still go either way, but the momentum is very much in Ford’s favor at the moment. Ford’s biggest weakness: The Ford family, an old West Tennessee dynasty which has a lot of skeletons. Nobody’s tied Harold Ford, Jr. to the scandals that have afflicted many other members of his family, and Corker would be a fool to run commercials based on that issue (attacking someone via his/her family looks tacky), but if one of them says or does something dumb between now and the election it might hurt him. I imagine they’ll be trying to keep them quiet. People wonder if race is an issue for Ford, but I don’t think it’s hurting him, and in fact it may well be helping him.

If Corker wants to win, he’s going to need better ads, and a better-organized staff. Right now, I’d give the edge to Ford, who’s already got both. Follow the links for our interviews with Bob Corker and Harold Ford, Jr.

DEAN BARNETT on the Webb / Allen race: “At this rate, the Allen-Webb race should easily surpass 1984’s Jesse Helms – Jim Hunt Senate race as the most dispiriting political exercise of the modern era. I know Allen and Webb both really wanted to make history, each in his own way. But I bet this isn’t what either one of them had in mind.”

DICK MORRIS promising new Clinton scandals.

Janet Jackson in the news.

The Dow approaching record territory.

It’s like the 1990s all over again.

UPDATE: Dick Morris links isn’t working for some reason. It’s at Gateway Pundit — just scroll down.

TODAY’S FLIGHT was better than last time’s — actually arrived a few minutes early after a no-hassle departure.

Plus, this heartwarming review from my trip to DC:

Glenn Reynolds displayed no visible antennae, wires or other electronic components. His grip was warm and remarkably flesh-like, and his optics tracked movement with reptilian smoothness. Remarkable.

It doesn’t get any better than that. No, really, for me it pretty much doesn’t.

HEADING HOME: And hoping my flight is better this time. I stopped by the Capitol briefly to meet with Bill Frist (we talked about podcasting, PorkBusters followups, etc.), and on the way through security saw some Cynthia McKinney fallout: An officer of the Capitol Police was telling some of his troops that they should check ID on everyone, and not worry if members of Congress complained; I got the impression that this is still a contentious issue, as they seemed pretty unhappy. Jeez. There are 535 members of Congress, most of whose constituents probably couldn’t pick them out of a lineup, and every officer of the Capitol Police is supposed to know them on sight? The rest of the country has had to make adjustments to security. So should Congress.

MIKE TREDER IS LIVEBLOGGING from MIT’s Emerging Technologies conference.

SPLIT AN ATOM, SAVE THE WORLD? My TCS Daily column is up.

THREE WOMEN, THREE RELIGIONS, ONE GOAL: It’s easy to make fun of this kind of earnest, can’t-we-all-get-along stuff, but in fact it’s exactly what we need.

I haven’t read The Faith Club, but it looks pretty interesting.

HAMID KARZAI on the press and terrorism.

LAST NIGHT’S NATIONAL PRESS CLUB EVENT went quite well, with an over-capacity crowd and a spirited discussion that went on until they ran us out. I was too tired to blog about it last night, but Paul Mirengoff managed.

UPDATE: Some followup thoughts by Tom Bevan.

A NEW WATERSHED IN HUMAN RIGHTS LAW:

George Blake, who spied for the Soviet Union, won a human rights claim against the British Government yesterday, 40 years after he escaped from prison in London and fled to Moscow.

Britain was ordered by judges in Strasbourg to pay 84-year-old Blake £3,350 in damages and £1,340 costs for breaching his right to a fair hearing within a reasonable time.

It took the European Court of Human Rights five years and eight months to decide Blake’s case.

Blake, a double agent, had complained that legal action brought by the Attorney General in the English courts to stop him profiting from his autobiography had taken more than nine years to resolve.

Nice to see that they’re on the job in Strasbourg.