Links and Nodes It’s one of the most effective tools for tracking terrorists and organized crime. It’s called links and nodes analysis, and we’ve recently learned that the National Security Agency (NSA) has operated a program to support that effort, through phone company data. Predictably, the civil liberties crowd is positively atwitter. … Obviously, this type of social network analysis, as it’s sometimes referred to, can provide potential tip-offs …

Another Letter from Iran In what may best be described as a “side-channel,” Hassan Rohani, a representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini on Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and Iran’s former top nuclear negotiator has written a letter to TIME magazine. The letter sets forth a plan to remove the nuclear issue from the UN Security Council and return it to the IAEA.

Will The Stones Keep Rolling? Keith Richards leaves the hospital and Punditguy says:

After all, how can a man who has spent 40+ years ingesting every chemical substance known the world over while drinking fifth after fifth of Absolut really be silenced from something as innocuous as a coconut tree? I mean come on! Look at him. This man is gonna live forever!

London bombing report released Blairwatch analyzes the report on the London July 7 bombings.

Well I would suggest that knowing three out of the four bombers … and allowing them to continue after months of surveillance is a culpable failure. So was ignoring warnings from America and France that an attack was likely and still reducing the security alert from SEVERE GENERAL to SUBSTANTIAL at the time of a G8 summit in the UK.

Global War: Right under their noses
Clarity and Resolve: Attack could have been prevented
Bareknuckle Politics: Radicalization of British Muslims

Bloody Somalia (Mogadishu, Somalia) After 15 years without a national government, Somalia is a battlefield. Tribal militias and Islamic fundamentalists, allegedly tied to al-Qaeda, are struggling for control and many people are dying. … Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed of the Islamic Court Union called for a ceasefire, but the tribal militias suspect that it’s only because they ran out of ammunition.

Peace Like a River: “Yeah, but it’s all the fault of the US”

More Opening It’d be dumb to just take the Iranian government at its word, but there’s no denying that they’re trying to open a discussion and, frankly, it would be insane of us not to give this path a shot. Bush’s view that talking to “evil” regimes is bad because it legitimizes them is silly and it’s going to be completely impossible for us to get any international support for anything at all if we’re seen as ignoring diplomatic initiatives.

Demonstrations in Egypt The Big Pharaoh reacts to demonstrations in Egypt in support of judges who questioned the last election results.

And where does the US stand? There are speculations that the Bush administration is taking a soft approach towards the Mubarak regime after the rise of Islamists during elections held in Egypt and else where. The state department has condemned what happened today yet we still have to see if the US government will act the same way it did last year.

Advertising explodes …top advertisers are proposing an auction marketpace for TV advertising. … It is another harbinger of the death of TV’s upfront, which was built on old business models of scarcity; now scarcity is dead as there is ever more content …

Den Beste on Karloff and McCarthy One of my favorite B movies … is “The Raven” … starring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre. And Jack Nicholson, with a full head of hair! … Karloff’s … is able to foil each of Lorre’s attacks with just a simple gesture of his hands, leading Lorre to mutter those immortal words, “You’re defending yourself, you coward!” … I keep running into this from lefties. They criticize others (us), and if in turn they’re criticized suddenly they squeal about “censorship!” and “McCarthyism!” Their freedom of speech demands that we not say anything in our own defense…

Competion is good, isn't it? (From SlashDot) Look out Wikipedia! Made in China, Baidupedia (in Chinese, of course), it is a ‘self-censoring’ service which bars its users from committing acts such as submitting “malicious evaluation of the current national system” into its database.

'The prototype jihadist' Atlas Shrugs interviews Andrew Bostom, author of The Legacy of Jihad. “Here is a man, a professor of medicine at Brown, that has made the study of Islam and Jihad a life’s work. A life’s work………..the depth and breadth of his knowledge makes ominous the prospect of a peaceful, diplomatic solution.”

Senate deal on immigration According to the results of last week’s Zogby Poll, Americans prefer the the House’s ‘enforcement-only’ bill to the Senate’s legalization of illegals’ bill by a 2-1 margin. However, with the US Senate getting its way and having reached a patently bipartisan agreement on resolving the illegal immigration conundrum, Bill Quick has a bitter taste of treachery in his mouth. “The sellout and the betrayal of the conservative base of the Republican Party continues apace.”

Instapundit and the Doc speak The Glenn and Helen Show featuring RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman and columnist Michael Barone is up and ripe for the listening.

Search innovation Gerard Vanderleun points to Blogs with A Face—a site matching blogger visages/symbols to their individual URLs and grouping the images into a (presumably) ever-growing collage.

Polygamists and child rapists Citing two sets of offenders in the news, Tammy Bruce finds our law enforcement agencies—from the federal to the local level—rather haphazard in its priorities and wonders whether accused polygamist Warren Jeffs is on par with Osama bin Laden in heinousness.

Don't make us mad Forget the advice from Business for Diplomatic Action Inc. If you’re a foreigner and you want to know how to get along with Americans, Frank J. has the top ten methods of doing so—something involving beer and no sudden arm movements.

Making men pay, no matter what While the law allows women to turn casual sex into cash flow sex, Penelope Leach, in her book Children First, poses an essential question: “Why is it socially reprehensible for a man to leave a baby fatherless, but courageous, even admirable, for a woman to have a baby whom she knows will be so?”

Robotic tentacles

New Scientist

Dean’s World writes that robotic researches are experimenting with robotic tentacles, “which only makes sense; artificial fingers have shown severe limitations.”

L'affaire Clearstream: Chirac directly involved? So it seems from the latest revelations in Le Monde; Fausta has all the details; L’Ombre de l’Olivier also has an update.

Previously on PJM:

Tim Worstall: L’Escroc’s bank account

A liberal in blogger's clothing?

Ana's Ark

“Has my opposition to Bush caused me to unconsciously morph into left-libertarianism?”, wonders Daniel Drezner; he decides to run the Atrios Litmus Test For Liberals and looks at the results.

"NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls" Lots of blog commentary, and we mean LOTS, on the report in USA Today after the jump.

Dinner with Mary If you’re going to drop names, drop big ones. Last night, our friend Tammy invited Sheryl and me to have dinner with the Mary Cheney. She was in LA (fresh from a Larry King appearance) to promote her new book - Now It’s my Turn: A Daughter’s Chronicle of Political Life. Of course we were pleased at the invitation. How many times do you get a chance to meet the daughter of a sitting vice president, especially one at the center of controversy herself? … (We will have a podcast interview with her on that subject on Pajamas Media shortly).

Digital Marco Polo Sean-Paul Kelley of The Agonist is blogging -with pictures- from Kashgar, the epicenter of Muslim Uighurs in Western China.

The NYT "honors" A.M. Rosenthal “Talk about yer damnation with faint, er, damnation,” writes TigerHawk regarding the New York Times’ obituary of former editor A.M. Rosenthal.

Violent riots in Cairo Rantings of a Sandmonkey is liveblogging the wave of popular demonstrations in Egypt today and the violent police crackdown: “War is declared in Downtown Cairo and it seems that dozens, if not hundreds, will be arrested today.” He also reports that 700 judges are also protesting and threatening to go on strike unless all of today’s arrested are released.

Evading oversight From Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings: “Bush appoints someone from his campaign to an important job: auditing Iraq reconstruction funds. That person turns out to be surprisingly independent, and discovers a lot of fraud. … Our government’s response? Recategorize Iraqi reconstruction funds so that he doesn’t get to audit them anymore.”

Watching with Wittgenstein

Image: Christian Brandstätter

Norman Geras points to Craig Brown at the Telegraph, who takes us all the way from proposition 1 to 8.2 of the, er, Tractatus Televisivus?

The development paradox In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Joel Millman has an excellent piece of analysis headlined, “Work in Progress: Prosperity in Home Countries May Not Stem Tide of Migrants to the U.S.” His point is that, for a time, economic growth in countries like Mexico and Brazil tends to produce more immigrants.

City of Light, City of Dread

A Europe-like scene in Jaffa Street, Jerusalem

Michael Totten blogs about the differences between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, with lots of pictures.

Idol math How could Chris Daughtry be voted off from American Idol? Pretend Pundit thinks it’s all a matter of electoral mathematics.

A new "CAFE" to visit

No, not this kind

A former Senate majority leader and a founder of Sun Microsystems urge creation of new CAFE standard: Carbon Alternative Fuel Equivalent.

In a move that would massage the governments response to being addicted to oil imports, Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate majority leader, and Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems, put forth an opinion in the New York Times that calls for a fundamental change in the way the government measures the “petroleum mileage” of a vehicle so that ethanol mix would become a positive factor in the automobile’s mileage assessment.