Morning Roundup

A few things that caught my eye ’round about sunrise:

Saddam’s worst nightmare is coming true. We’ve turned him over to his own people for justice.

Massive pro-democracy demonstrations are on tap in Hong Kong. From the article:

Organizers expect 300,000 people to brave stifling heat to press Beijing to allow them greater voting rights. That is less than the half a million who poured onto the streets on July 1 last year, but the desire for more democracy does not appear to have dwindled.

…

Last July 1, half a million people poured into Hong Kong’s streets to denounce plans by the local Beijing-backed government to enact a tough anti-subversion law, criticize its handling of the weak economy and demand more political freedom.

The outpouring of public anger shocked Chinese leaders, who fear growing calls for democracy here could spill over into the mainland.

This event deserves major-league blogosphere coverage.

The LA Times realizes (belatedly) that the “Gore Tax” is a huge boondoggle. They can’t quite bring themselves to call for its abolition, but it’s a start.

According to Gallup, 70% of Americans “probably or definitely” won’t be reading Bill Clinton’s new book.

The British Labour Party plans to put a public smoking ban in its next electoral platform. I’ve no idea whether this helps or hurts Tony Blair today, but most of the Brits I encountered when I lived over there in 1990-91 smoked like they had titanium lungs. Still, if it can happen in California, Florida, and New York City, I suppose it could happen in Britain.

If you get stopped by a registration requirement, click over to BugMeNot.com, the second most useful site on the web right now (after Google), for an anonymous login and password.

And finally, the “Ouch” of the day goes to a reader who commented under my “Feedback” post: