THE PERILS OF error reduction.

JOHN NOLTE: JournoList, Shame of a Nation: Politico & Roger Simon Have Some ‘Splaining to Do. Note that he means the other Roger Simon.

JOHN MCWHORTER: Back in the day, African-American kids didn’t think it was a crime to be young, gifted and black.

WELL, OKAY, I’D RATHER BE AT THE BEACH, but the Maker Faire this weekend in Detroit is sure to be cool, too.

IN 1910, POPULAR MECHANICS INTRODUCES A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA: Shoulder pads for football players.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Summer Kitchen Sale.

A FACEBOOK MALWARE WARNING FROM RAND SIMBERG: “If you get a Facebook message from me or anyone saying that I liked ‘Girls Are Unable to Stare at This for 10 Seconds, but Guys Can…,’ it’s some kind of scam. Don’t follow it.”

NO, THERE’S NO “INSTAVISION” TODAY, as I’m taking a couple of weeks off. But there are lots of other great shows on PJTV this week. Check ‘em out!

SCOTT JOHNSON: “Reading the scholarly work of Woodrow Wilson is an educational experience. It is shocking to read the expressions of his disaffection for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”

CHINA IS PLANNING a large heavy-lift rocket.

EVERY BLACK HOLE may hold a hidden universe.

ANDREW KLAVAN: From Book Publishers to the Media: The Left’s Crusade to End Debate.

OH, GOODY: An Order of Seven Global Cyber-Guardians Now Hold Keys to the Internet. Sounding too much like John Ringo’s Council Wars for my taste. . . .

CAR LUST: The Graham “Sharknose.”

ARIZONA LAW UPHELD IN PART, BLOCKED IN PART: More from Prof. Jacobson.

REASON TV: Protest in Bell, California: Residents Have Had Enough Of Overpaid Civil “Servants.” “They are robbing the city blind. . . . We have a very predatory government.”

TRANSPARENCY! SEC Says New Financial Regulation Law Exempts it From Public Disclosure. “Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.”

AUTO PROPHET: THE CHEVY VOLT MATH DOESN’T WORK OUT VERY WELL. Yeah, but there are two points here. One is that if you’re an early adopter, there are reasons other than gas-savings payoffs to consider. The other is that if you’re really pessimistic about the future, a car that’s less dependent on gasoline looks better . . . .

On the other hand, reader G.L. Carlson writes:

I’ve been making consumer products for 4 decades. My most expensive failures have been those with an environmental advantage and a price disadvantage.

Consumers as a group will not pay extra for environmental goodness. A small following will, out of conviction or guilt- but the bulk of the market won’t do it. The price of an environmentally attractive option must not significantly exceed that of the conventional choice.

The Volt will be an expensive, predictable failure.

Well, we’ll see. And thanks to the GM bailout, they’re gambling with your money whether you buy a Volt or not.

TIM DANIELS: Barney Frank’s one dollar fare conundrum and the ruling class. “The ruling class disease of entrenched hubris and elitism has echoed the halls of the United States Congress for far too long and is the cause for many of the ills that we face now as a nation.”

JUSTICE: DoJ stalling on protecting voting rights of military?

UPDATE: Related: Military voters soon to be disenfranchised – again: Panther prejudice not the only problem at Justice.

NOT A BIG SURPRISE: Late Sunset Delays Teen Sleep.

SHOCKER: Unexpected Drop in Durable Goods. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that demand for durable goods from American factories fell 1 percent in June. Excluding the volatile transportation sector, new orders decreased 0.6 percent. The report comes on heels of Tuesday’s latest take on consumer confidence, which dropped sharply in July.” Darn these constantly repeating unexpected events!

CONGRESS BLOWS IT: Commercial Spaceflight, We Have A Problem. Congress will always choose short-term pork over long-term development unless there’s strong Presidential leadership. But while the Obama space policy is good, the White House hasn’t provided the kind of legislative push it takes to make it work. Without strong leadership, a good policy will always lose out to pork.

AS LONG AS IT’S NOT ICE IX: Artificially controlling water condensation leads to ‘room-temperature ice’.

ADVANTAGES OF the risky hire.

IN THE MAIL: From Jessica Stern, Denial: A Memoir of Terror.

TAXPROF: More on the ABA’s Proposal to Dilute Law Faculty Tenure.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: “Hysteria over Shirley Sherrod last week unfortunately overshadowed a sensible, courageous and long overdue analysis of racial politics by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.”

BRUNO BEHREND: Swapping a VAT for failing income tax is good policy. So much for the “devil you know” theory.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE NEWS: Will NYC’s College Building Boom Bubble Pop? “New York’s universities have grand expansion plans, but could the economy–and online courses–doom them to failure before they’ve even begun?”

SHOCKER: Serious Journalists Feel Betrayed By Klein’s JournoList, But Do Nothing About It.

WELL, THIS SHOULD OVERCOME ALL THE CLAIMS THAT HE’S A CORRUPT TOOL OF LOBBYISTS: K Street goes to the defense of Charlie Rangel.

Related: Report: Meeting on ethics charges involving Rangel’s lawyers may have been, er, unethical.

COMPLIANCE WITH THE LAW, LIKE TAXES, IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: IRS Continues to Use ‘Tax Protester’ Label Despite Congressional Prohibition.

LOOKING FOR OPTIMISTS? Try the folks who project California pensions’ rates of returns.

WHAT MEN WANT.

FROM AMAZON, new releases on DVD and Blu-Ray.

THE ESTATE TAX: Can George Steinbrenner Change The Debate?

JOHN FUND: YEAR OF THE TEA PARTY VOTER. “Republicans are winning over voters who are disgruntled with both parties.” Well, there should be plenty of those.

WELL, THAT DIDN’T TAKE LONG: In speech to Turkey, David Cameron goes full idiot.

JONATHAN TOBIN: House Democratic Memo Is Another Blow to J Street. “Ever since November 2008, leftists have been trying to assert that the Jewish vote for Obama was proof that J Street and not AIPAC or other mainstream pro-Israel groups truly represented Jewish opinion. But if that were so, why would Obama be trying so hard to convince everyone that his administration was as reliable a supporter of Israel as any of its predecessors?”

DER SPIEGEL: The Shared Extremism of Neo-Nazis and Migrant Youth. By “extremism” they mean “anti-semitism,” and by “migrant,” they mean “Muslim.”

JIM TREACHER: The people on JournoList claim they were just social networking, so let’s start calling it SociaList.

WHEN SECONDS COUNT, THE POLICE ARE ONLY MINUTES AWAY: “The District police department policy on forcible entry caused a ‘deadly delay’ as officers waited for a supervisor outside an apartment while a mother and her two young sons were being stabbed to death inside, according to a lawsuit filed by the woman’s family.” Breaking down doors for drug raids is bad. Breaking down doors to prevent murder is good. Guess which one the cops hold back on . . . .

I PREDICT THAT IF THIS SPREADS TO WASHINGTON, THEY’LL BRING BACK DDT: Bedbug Crisis Sparks Offensive in New York. Some background here.

RAND SIMBERG ON CONGRESS AND SPACE: Is NASA Being Set Up To Fail (Again)? “Congress is putting pork before progress by micromanaging NASA, asking them to do too much with too little, and, once again, setting America’s space agency up for failure.”

IF THEY THINK THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT: Will Obama’s Deficit Commission Call for $26.7 Trillion Tax Increase?

Here’s a hint: When they say “everything’s on the table,” they don’t really mean “everything, including elimination of the Department of Education, and privatization of Social Security, and a 15% across-the-board cut in federal payrolls.”

OBAMA TO THE RESCUE, at Patty Murray fundraiser. “It is a sign of the seriousness with which the White House is taking Murray’s reelection race. Polls show her in a potentially tight contest with Republican Dino Rossi, the other candidate likely to emerge out of Washington’s Top Two primary.”

WILL COLLIER: Get Ready For The Charlie Rangel Coverup.

GAY PATRIOT: “I hereby withdraw the apology to Mrs. Sherrod.” “The edited video was unfortunate, but the true racist stripes of the NAACP, the Sherrods, and the Obama Administration have certainly come out over a week’s time. So bravo, Mr. Breitbart. You hit the target.”

CHEVY VOLT KINDA PRICEY AT $41K: Volt’s price induces some sticker shock. “The long-anticipated Chevrolet Volt, General Motors’ electric car, will cost $41,000, the company announced Tuesday, leaving consumers to decide whether its environmental appeal is worth a price far above that of similarly sized conventional autos.” Of course, there’s a $7500 tax credit. I’m guessing that without that, the Volt would be significantly cheaper.

But who can resist this sales pitch? “The Chevrolet Volt will be the best vehicle in its class . . . because it’s in a class by itself.” I’m actually modestly excited about the Volt, but my excitement is tempered by my expectation that GM will probably screw it up somehow. I hope I’m wrong.

MICHAEL BARONE: House Democrats head for a thumping at the polls. Unless the Republicans blow it, which they’re certainly capable of . . .

POST: Rangel In Sleaze Squeeze: Pelosi henchman: He’d better make deal.

ROGER SIMON: Is Oliver Stone Today’s Walter Duranty?

ED DRISCOLL: Michael Calderone, Dave Weigel, and the Telltale Eleventh Paragraph. “Dave Weigel’s JournoList-related departure from the Washington Post ends up being a lateral move, but you wouldn’t know it unless you made it to the 11th paragraph of this article for Yahoo’s ‘Upshot’ column by Michael Calderone.”

BUSTED, WILL PAY UP: Sen. Kerry to pay $500K tax on yacht. “Senator John Kerry said today he will voluntarily cut a check to the state of Massachusetts for some $500,000 in sales tax for a yacht he purchased in Rhode Island earlier this year. . . . Kerry has been dogged by questions in recent days by questions about whether he purposely tried to evade taxes in his home state by listing the $7 million yacht’s home berth as Newport, R.I., when he actually intended to use the boat at his summer home on Nantucket. His yacht purchase was first reported in the Boston Herald.”

JIM LINDGREN: “Asking millions of Americans to sign a birthday card for the President suggests a tone-deafness about the cult of personality. If we lived in a dictatorship, getting millions of subjects to celebrate the Dear Leader’s birthday would be routine, but in a free republic this appeal to get millions of citizens to celebrate a current president’s birthday strikes a discordant note to my ear. No, I am not saying we are in a dictatorship; I am saying that because we are not, we should not be emulating the trappings characteristic of that fundamentally different sort of regime. Nor do I think this is particularly ominous.” Just revealing.

UPDATE: Orin Kerr: Relax, it’s just campaign fluff. And from the comments, there’s this: “They’re pretty clearly trying to recapture the ’spirit of ’08.’ In that way, this email serves as a nice reminder of how embarrassing the ’spirit of ’08′ really was.”

WHAT WOULD BUGS BUNNY DO? Celebrate his 70th Birthday.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: From Rev. Wright to the Sherrod Affair.

AUDIENCE: In July, ‘Countdown with Keith Olbermann‘ Saw Lowest Viewership Since April 2008.

REPUBLICANS: Hillary Clinton Was Right.

HMM: Clintonista Rendell: Obama May Be Primaried In 2012. “Has Obama gone from messianic to the Titanic in less than two short years? Yes, Rendell endorsed Hillary over Obama in 2008. Carville has continued to wail away on Obama domestically, to some extent. Now, Rendell throws down the foreign policy card. War has divided the Democrats since George McGovern.”

IF ONLY HE WERE AS CHEAP WITH OUR MONEY AS HE IS WITH HIS OWN: Rep. Barney Frank causes scene demanding discount. “Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank caused a scene when he demanded a $1 senior discount on his ferry fare to Fire Island’s popular gay haunt, The Pines, last Friday. Frank was turned down by ticket clerks at the dock in Sayville because he didn’t have the required Suffolk County Senior Citizens ID. A witness reports, ‘Frank made such a drama over the senior rate that I contemplated offering him the dollar to cool down the situation.’”

THE NEUROSCIENCE of breakups. “A study published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology found that romantic break-ups activate parts of the brain that are associated with addiction cravings.”

ILYA SOMIN: Tenure and Faculty Self-Selection Reconsidered. Plus, from the comments: “While I can see decent arguments against tenure, they are nothing like so urgent as the arguments against the powers of university ‘administrators’.” Good point.

PETER KIRSANOW on the New Black Panther Case.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on factory-reconditioned tools.

UPDATE: Reader Bryan Frymire writes, “I just saved thirty bucks on a Milwaukee abrasive chop saw I’ve been wanting/needing to buy for a couple of months now. I owe it all to Instapundit!” Happy to help!

PJTV: Sonja Schmidt and Tony Katz are pushing an “Arizona Buycott.”

Hey, maybe they can get Elton John to join them!

“THIRSTY, PEASANTS?”

GOOD NEWS FOR FREE SPEECH: The DISCLOSE Act fails.

HEALTH: What Do You Lack? Probably Vitamin D.

FROM WHITE ROOFS, to white awnings over roads.

JON STEWART: “Andrew Breitbart may be the most honest person in this entire story.”

UPDATE: Dan Riehl: Sad, Jon Stewart Has More Ballz Than Many Right-Side Pundits On Breitbart, Sherrod. That’s true. When the lefties target someone, whether it’s Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh, too many rightish pundits instinctively distance themselves. That’s a reflex left over from when things were very different.

NO SURPRISE: Foresight’s student award-winners go on to great things.

RISE OF THE helpful robots.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

JOHN SCALZI likes his Droid X.

CONTEXT: Full Sherrod Video: Violence Against Cops, Judges And Lawyers?

MICKEY KAUS:

“Shut up” seems to be a favorite talking point of Journolist defenders. But I don’t think non-members need to accept their message discipline.

Journolist was a terrible idea from the start, not so much because it enabled the promotion of “lock-steppedness” and a progressive party line across media organizations (though Salam more or less concedes that it did), or because it fostered an “us vs. them” mentality (which it also obviously did). It was a bad idea, mainly because it took a process that could have been public, democratic and transparent and gratuitously made it private, stratified and opaque. This was an odd move for “progressives” to make when confronted with the revolutionary openness of the Web. It’s as if they’d looked at our great national parks and said hey, what we really need is to carve out a private walled enclave for the well connected. Invited to a terrific party, they immediately set up a VIP room.

It’s all about the VIP rooms with these people. For them, “private, stratified and opaque” isn’t a bug, it’s the desired end-state every time.

VIDEO: Jane Austen’s Fight Club.

COURT: Cyber Bullying Not Actionable.

PROF. JACOBSON: If This Doesn’t Motivate You For November, Nothing Will.

QUESTION: “If there are only 39,697 African-American farmers grand total in the entire country, then how can over 86,000 of them claim discrimination at the hands of the USDA? Where did the other 46,303 come from?” Plus, a Shirley Sherrod question.

BYRON YORK: What Does It Take To Be A “Hero” Of JournoList?

Related: Peter Wehner: JournoListers Risked Their Integrity. Risked? “What we have, in short, is intellectual corruption of a fairly high order. From what we have seen and from what those like Tucker Carlson and his colleagues (who have read the exchanges in detail) say, Journolist was — at least in good measure — a hotbed of hatred, political hackery, banality, and juvenile thuggery. . . . Journolist provides a window into the mindset of the journalistic and academic left in this country. It is not a pretty sight. The demonization and dehumanization of critics is arresting. Those who hold contrary views to the Journolist crowd aren’t individuals who have honest disagreements; they are evil, malignant, and their voices need to be eliminated from the public square. It is illiberal in the extreme. . . . Those who participated in Journolist undoubtedly hope this story will fade away and be forgotten. I rather doubt it will. It is another episode in the long, downward slide of modern journalism.”

WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: “Crisis” in Availability of Wireless Spectrum Is a Myth.

HONDAJET MOVING CLOSER TO DELIVERY. Well, good. I thought it was cool when I visited the plant.

CONSIDER IT STIMULUS: Justice Dept. parties with tax dollars — arcade games, bowling, and skateboarding!

MAURICE STUCKE: Reconsidering Competition and the Goals of Competition Law. Hayek is discussed.

FRANK TIPLER ON The Difference between ‘True Science’ and ‘Cargo-Cult Science.’

KATIE GRANJU: Help us learn more about what happened to our son.

IT’S NOT HOPE, SO IT MUST BE CHANGE: Consumer Confidence Falls, Lowest Since February.

IN THE MAIL: From David Weber, Mission of Honor.

LET THEM EAT TAXES: On Stephen Green’s Hair Of The Dog. Mara Liasson, “the smartest excuse-maker on TV?” Plus a bonus reference to Q-SKY radio in LA.

CHANGE: U.S. upgrades behind other nations w/nukes?

PORKER OF THE MONTH: Rep. Marcy Kaptur.

BYRON YORK: Dems fear GOP oversight of Obama administration.

ROGER KIMBALL EMAILS:

Today, Encounter Books publishes Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations: A William F. Buckley Jr. Omnibus, which I edited together with Linda Bridges, Bill’s long-time assistant at National Review. I hope you’ll pick up a copy. Buckley’s anti-statist message is a necessary beacon in these dark times. as is his nimble, supremely civilized manner of dispatching his opponents and celebrating his friends and avocations. The book also boasts a splendid preface by George F. Will and a marvelous cover that goes a long way towards capturing Bill Buckley’s contagious delight.

The folks at Powerline (speaking of things necessary, nimble, and supremely civilized) graciously asked me to say a few words about the book on the occasion of its publication. I was delighted to do so and direct readers to my column there.

Check it out.

HOLDING FIRE: “House Republican leaders intend to keep their powder dry as the public ethics trial of embattled Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) unfolds. . . . Republicans are employing a don’t-get-in-the-way-of-your-enemies-when-they-are-destroying-themselves strategy, the same game plan Democrats employed as Republicans grappled with ethics scandals in 2006.”

STEVE CHAPMAN: The Art of the Unbelievable: The trouble with Illinois politics.

SOME fusion power news.

AN IMPORTANT QUESTION: Yodels, Or Devil Dogs? I was always a Little Debbie man, myself.