THOUGHTS ON rites of passage.

BUT I THINK MORE OF HIM: The president-elect’s silence on the Gaza crisis is undermining his reputation in the Middle East. People want him to condemn Israel — well, some people do — but he hasn’t. And Israel’s just playing by Chicago rules: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!” And he hasn’t been silent — he’s made himself clear.

CONOR FRIEDERSDORF says I’m wasting my time. “I guess I’d say that nowadays Instapundit isn’t really arguing with anyone of consequence when he makes these sorts of arguments. Those who disagree with him — the estimable Nicholas Lemann excepted, if he hasn’t changed his views on blogging — are dinosaurs unlikely to do anything noteworthy in the field of journalism.” My earlier thoughts here and also here.

YOUR HOMELAND SECURITY DOLLARS AT WORK: “Photographer Duane Kerzic was standing on the public platform in New York’s Penn Station, taking pictures of trains in hopes of winning the annual photo contest that Amtrak had been running since 2003. Amtrak police arrested him for refusing to delete the photos when asked, though they later charged him with trespassing.” They had no legal right to ask him to delete the photos. He should sue. I also think — as I’ve said before — that we need federal civil rights legislation to protect photographers’ rights. There are too many situations like this, where idiot security officers violate the law. And homeland security is still a joke.

LOTS OF GUNS but no gun murders in North Dakota.

CHRIS DODD UPDATE: Hartford Courant:

After nearly 28 years of consistent popularity, U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd saw his public approval ratings sag to below 50 percent in late 2008 after months of news disclosures about his cut-rate mortgages from banking giant Countrywide Financial and his long absence from duty while he was running for president earlier in the year. Now it’s decision time for Dodd on whether to launch a run for a sixth Senate term in the 2010 election. Dodd has denied wrongdoing, but still refuses to release documents related to his mortgages while the Senate conducts an ethics probe.

Remember that — though Dodd would like you to think otherwise — the Senate ethics probe is no barrier to him releasing the documents now.

HEROISM, hamstrung. It’s almost as if people have been paralyzed.

THE BRAVE RESISTANCE: “Hamas operatives are in the hospital and have disguised themselves as nurses and doctors.”

ANDREW MALCOLM, L.A. TIMES: Billygate: Why Obama Dumped Gov. Richardson Now.

UPDATE: Another Obama cabinet scandal? “A developer in New York state donated $100,000 to former President Bill Clinton’s foundation in November 2004, around the same time that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton helped secure millions of dollars in federal assistance for the businessman’s mall project.” (Via John Stephenson). The hits just keep coming! But it’s hard to blame the Obama vetters here — who’d’ve thought there might be questionable stuff in the Clintons’ background?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg thinks this is bad for commercial space, given Richardson’s excellent record on the subject. I think he’s right.

MORE: Heh: “Another money problem for the Dems. Can’t we get a sex problem for a change? This is getting boring.” Stay tuned!

SOME software predictions for 2009.

WELL, GOOD: “More than three-quarters of laboratory leukemia cells exposed to an extract from grape seeds died within 24 hours, effectively killing themselves while leaving other cells unharmed, a new study shows. University of Kentucky researchers say they found that the extract activates JNK, a protein that regulates the cell-signaling pathway the leads to cell death, or apoptosis.”

REMEMBER THOSE ARRESTS BEFORE THE RNC? Well, it was because an informant warned of firebomb plans:

ST. PAUL, Minn. — To some of the people who know him back home in Texas, Brandon Darby is a traitor.

In his own mind, he’s proud of what he did — feeding the FBI information that led to the arrests of two men accused of trying to disrupt the Republican National Convention.

“I feel like, as an activist, I played a direct role in stopping violence,” Darby, 32, said in an interview with the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Darby’s role as a confidential informant in the case leaked out in a pretrial hearing. It was a remarkable transformation for a man known to many back in Austin as a fiery, grass-roots activist with a mistrust of government.

Darby was key to the investigation of David Guy McKay and Bradley Neal Crowder, both of Austin. The two men are scheduled for federal trial on Jan. 26 for allegedly building Molotov cocktails during the convention. They have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors claim the two men built the firebombs because they were angry that police had seized a trailer filled with riot shields they’d built and hauled to Minnesota. In a conversation recorded by the FBI, McKay allegedly told Darby he planned to use the explosives on law-enforcement cars parked in a lot near the Xcel Energy Center.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: A reader notes that there’s already a website aimed at attacking Brandon Darby. A WhoIs search says that it’s registered to a Robinson Block of Bellaire Texas, presumably the same guy who wrote this letter on Israel.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Julie Stacy writes: “I’m sure it’s completely unrelated, but the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw your post was the the unsolved firebombing of the Texas Governor’s Mansion in Austin last year. The there’s the firebombing of Bush’s childhood home in Midland, which is a small museum, and the torching of Sarah Palin’s church, all in one year. Yes, surely all unrelated, but in 2008 there was a bit of a pattern of anti-Republican arson happening. Not that the press would take notice.”

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED: “Twitter wants to make us all Instapundit.”

OKAY, THIS IS A SHOCKER: Richardson Withdraws Name as Commerce Secretary-Designee. “New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has withdrawn his name from consideration as commerce secretary for President-elect Barack Obama, citing an ongoing investigation about business dealings in his state.” I guess there’s more to that scandal than I had realized.

Boy, with this, Blagojevich, etc., this Obama “honeymoon” is looking kinda rocky.

UPDATE: Reader Mark Shelden writes: “If we include the aborted Pritzker nomination, it seems like Obama will have tied Clinton’s AG selection process for most withdrawn nominations prior to an actual confirmation hearing. I wouldn’t be surprised if he surpassed Clinton though.”

MORE: “There is unrest in the Senate.”

Plus, going beyond Jerry Springer. (Bumped).

WORRIES ABOUT where the dollar is heading.

HMM: Pro-Israeli rally draws thousands to Paris.

THE PHYSICS OF pole-vaulting.

COMFORT FOOD: Markdowns on slow cookers and bread machines. I don’t have a bread machine, but I highly recommend this slow-cooker cookbook.

THE KINDS OF GUNS THAT used to be legal. From a time when crime was lower. Go figure.

HAPPY 75TH ANNIVERSARY to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Of course — like the TVA dam projects — its establishment involved kicking a lot of people off their ancestral land, something that drove Richard Marius’s novel, An Affair of Honor.

UPDATE: Link was wrong before; fixed now. Sorry!

THE HEALING POWER of cupcakes.

CONCERTS IN intimate home settings. Beats a smoky club.

IN THE MAIL: From McKinley Conway, Project New America, a plan to generate jobs while achieving energy independence.

BILL FRIST: Not running for governor after all?

UPDATE: But Terry McAuliffe is running in Virginia.

JACK LAIL on old and new media.

UPDATE: Some related thoughts from Randy Neal, who has been doing a lot of intensive local coverage.