Late Night Line, May 16 Engage Scanner:

• Pajamasista Rattler Gator is in his element in Florida with “Alligator Safety Tips.” Forward to everyone you know in Florida. If in Florida, print out and slap it on the refrigerator.
  
• 25,270,000,000 Pages and 10 Things You Might Not Know About Google. #5: “Did you know Google actually has 16 different – and all official – blogs? “
  
• The End of Days: Rightwing Nuthouse takes a hard look at liberals hysterics over NSA call-monitoring and concludes: “They may be right…. Then again…”
  
• After tonight, Chad at Fraters Libertas asks, “Why not Newt?”
  
• Hate those energy bills? Move into this green palace : “The first zero energy home costing less than $200,000 has been built in Oklahoma.”
  
• Chris Muir @ Day by Day sees an alternative to the National Guard on the borders.
  
• Jeff Goldstein @ Protein Wisdom puts the boot into Reason’s Jesse Walker over Walker’s classic racism card concealed up his sleeve.
  
• Deeper into “24” than you thought anyone could go: “The clock never shows a 0 turning into a 1, and it never shows a 1 turning into a 2. “
  
• The Oozinator and why this Hasbro perversion must be stopped before it corrupts the children of America.
  
• Varifrank is in fine rant form as he lays into the Republican knuckleheads: “Here’s the problem that the President now faces. The Republican party has always had a “knuclehead nativist” stripe a mile wide down its back, and for 60 years the kind of knuckleheaded thinking of “I’d rather lose on principle than win by compromise” kept us away from any sort of political power and deservedly so, because it’s the kind of thing that adolescent children say, not adults in the process of running a government of a great country.”

Bush Speech Formula: 2 Little + 2 Late = Rare Blogosphere Unity On the Right: Brutally Honest is not quite brutal about the Bush Speech: “Impressions? Too little, too late. But one can hope that it’s a beginning. Or the beginning of a beginning…..My gut is that this was done to shore up the base…. I’m not sure it’ll work….But really, where will they go?”

On the Left: Marc Cooper is not feeling shy about sharing:”Bush should have been speaking out forcefully in favor of these moves ever since he raised comprehensive reform as a priority in his 2004 State of the Union speech. Unfortunately, he hid under his desk on this issue for the last two years. Only after the right-wing of his base rebelled and only after the pro-immigrant movement blossomed in the streets – that is, only after the White House was completely overtaken by events—did the President act.”

Cooper’s conclusion? “As usual, it was too little, too late.”

Right. Check. Left. Check. Cut. Print. That’s a wrap.

Not the trigger finger -- the other one At Daimnation!, Mark Collins links to the story of five Canadian snipers who performed battlefield prodigies in Afghanistan and were investigated immediately afterward.

Danger lurks in London phone booths The Jawa Report says: “Do not encourage your children to use the public phones in central London. … Pictures of nude women line the inside of all the phone booths here.”

Immigration Nation: News and Views Pajama Media’s all-day coverage of the run-up to the President’s speech on immigration.

• Bush’s Speech on Immigration: Full Text Here
  
• “Stay off my side” says Rob of Say Anything Blog to a World Net Daily columnist who uses the most odious of comparisons to advocate the deportation of illegal aliens.
  
• Dane Gunderson has several important questions, including: “Should we redraw the border to allow the SouthWest to be destroyed by the same misguided governmental policies that they are fleeing?”
  
• ABC NEWS (BREAKING) right into the “N-S Sherlock” File: PRESIDENT BUSH TO SAY IN IMMIGRATION ADDRESS TONIGHT, ‘WE DO NOT YET HAVE FULL CONTROL OF THE BORDER’.
  
• Pierre Legrand calls the mantra that ‘illegals will do jobs that Americans won’t do’ a fable.
  
• A thirty-year-old problem kicked down the road by five presidents won’t be solved tonight, says Fausta.
  
• Kevin Korenthal fears that tonight’s speech will be a “total failure” for the man he “devoted countless hours and dollars to re-electing.”
  
• Bloggers intending to liveblog the immigration speech can register at N.Z. Bear’s tracking page.
  
• The Corner: “Tonight could be the first fully televised political suicide in history. I don’t even want to watch.”
  
• Damian Penny attributes cynical motives to President Bush for just now getting around to attempting to solve the Mexican border problem.
  
• Don Singleton doesn’t think that the president’s plan will succeed and lists his own twelve-point plan.
  
• Tammy Bruce interviewed Dymphna of Gates of Vienna and James Hudnall on topic. Dymphna suggests that Americans can learn by negative example from Europe’s immigration problems.
  
• The Anchoress: when conservatives prejudge the president’s immigration speech, they have become “part of the problem …. The President of the United States is not merely President of the Base.”
  
• Headlines du Jour — The New York Times pushes the fret with: Plan to Deploy Guard at Border Worries Mexico. The LA Times pumps up the soothe with: Bush Tries to Calm Fox’s Fears About Use of Guard . The Washington Post feels the tension: Bush Set To Send Guard to Border. And the London Times just gets out the hammer and starts the pounding with: Bush posts troops at Mexican border to appease Right
  
• 100 Million More at the Door?: Heritage Foundation claims new law allows flood over next 20 years.
  
• Malkin @ videoblog Hot Air says the Bush speech will be his “Read my lips, no new amnesty” moment, calls the reported Bush plan to put National Guard troops on the southern border “stunt sprinkling” and sees the speech as a bit of Kabuki.
  
• Halperin et. al. @ The Note offer “10 ½ clean big non-secrets about immigration as a political issue.”
  
• Washington Post:The We Are America Alliance of Hispanic interest groups looks for compromise solutions but “does not speak for all. “
  
• Washington Times:Blacks see threat from Hispanic illegal aliens
  
• ABC News: Bush to Send National Guard to Border. Some congressmen feel it is “not the role” of the National Guard to guard the nation.
  
• La Shawn Barber will be liveblogging the president’s immigration speech “as if [the speech] will make any difference in the scheme of things.”
  
• From Gun Toting Liberal: a certain bipartisan portion of the body politic is adamantly opposed to any further immigration into the US: the environmentalists.
  
• Because she believes that “putting National Guard troops on the border is like placing a band-aid on a broken leg,” Sister Toldjah isn’t sure that the president’s speech be worth missing an episode of 24.
  
• Immigration activists are about to sabotage their own position by over-reacting—again—says Captain Ed, as the We Are America Alliance goes into action.
  
• Senator Chuck Hagel seems to think that the National Guard’s mission doesn’t have anything to do with ‘guarding the nation.’
  

An American MI-5? Pejman Yousefzadeh reviews Richard Posner’s article on whether America needs an agency which surveils but does not necessarily prosecute.

Wiretapping the press Both the Volokh Conspiracy and Balloon Juice comment on press reports that it is being wiretapped to find the source of recent national security leaks.

Freedom in Egypt The Big Pharaoh discusses freedom, secularism, Islamism and imprisoned bloggers Egypt in the Guardian.

Politics is bad for your health The Anchoress tells the story of an anti-abortion activist who is being denied hospital care by people offended by his political views.

The ETA ceasefire Barcepundit reminds us that a ceasefire is so named because it is temporary. What is Spanish PM Zapatero prepared to concede to keep ETA from reopening fire?

The Price of Freedom, Per Gallon. How Much Would You Pay? AskMom takes a cold look at the whines over gas prices and is not amused: “Billions of people all over the planet would love to come here and pay one-fifth of their average hourly wage for a gallon of gas. Where they are now, gas is about a week’s pay per gallon. Not that there is much gas, or work, available.”

Personal Democracy Forum - #3 - Moulitsas and Ruffini agree

Moderator Matt Bai of the NYT with Patrick Ruffini and Markos Moulitsas

Alert the media, media! (or tell the blogs, bloggers)… Patrick Ruffini - of the RNC - and Markos Moulitsas - the Daily Kos - were in complete agreement at the beginning of their panel at the Personal Democrary Forum: A maturing blogosphere could be the medium that tilts the congressional election of 2006. Jonathan Garthwaite reminded the resident blogophiles that there was, however, another source called talk radio with, ahem, thirty to forty million listeners. Meanwhile, on the big board chat room above the panelist’s heads, liza typed: “Hillary totally does not get it… she won’t touch feminist bloggers.”

Bloggers as war criminals Is there a campaign to brand conservative bloggers “war criminals”? Michael Rubin of National Review and Paul Belien of Brussels Journal (here and here) are in the crosshairs.

Andrew Sullivan: Blogger threatened in Belgium

Making your skin crawl Ace of Spades and Boing-boing feature Morgellon’s disease, now appearing in South Texas, which causes itchy wires to grow out of your skin and lesions all over your body.

Cat Fight @ the Huff Post Well, there’s fist fights in the kitchen.
They’re enough to make me cry.
The mailman comes in.
Even he’s gotta take a side.

So this guy called Cenk Uygur (tiny radio talk show host) has issues with Michael Smerconish (big radio talk show host) over who is and is not a “sissy.” This is while they’re both hanging at Arianna’s Crib. Solution? Uygur calls Smerconish out for a fight, “verbal or physical” (Can’t we do both?). Pay-Per-View declines to cover. Ah, civility.

Personal Democracy Forum - #2 NY State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer called for universal broadband access in his keynote speech at the PDF. When Spitzer said that the US had fallen from fourth to sixteenth in broadband access, someone in the audience yelled out that his numbers were outdated. It was already worse. At this moment broadband access is thirty times cheaper in Japan than it is here.

RINOs R Them Stuck in the middle: over at Ex-Donkey Blog, the slightly right-of-center bloggers are congregating for their weekly opining-fest—guaranteed to irritate the ‘clowns’ and the ‘jokers’ alike.

Personal Democracy Forum - #1

Chuck Defeo of beyondthenews and Salem Radio hobnobs with co-panelist David Sifry, CEO of Technorati

The opening session of the Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) features Chuck Defeo of Salem Communications, Josh Marshall of TPM, Chris Nolan of Spot-On, David Sifry of Technorati and Ben Smith of the New York Daily News. Merrill Brown, moderator. More at the link below, including an announcement by Sifry on the developing relationship between Technorati and the Washington Post.

Barry's Got One Fan Dean Barnett notes that Jesse Jackson is trying to keep hope of his relevance as a opinion-maker alive by weighing in on Barry Bond’s home run quest.

Amazon Stonehenge

AFP/SECOM/Gilam Nascimiento

Edmund Jenks @ Maxine: “Just when you think our human experience has nothing new to find or offer … after all, we have Google Earth, we have landed on the Moon, and we don’t even need to have a bank account to have and use an ATM card…. Archaeologists discovered a pre-colonial astrological observatory possibly 2,000 years old in the Amazon basin.

The "Enemy" of My Enemy is My Insurgent! Eric Scheie @ Classical Values writes: “why are admitted al Qaida fighters constantly referred to as “insurgents”? … Why is “enemy action” in quotes? Is there no reportorial agreement on the definition of “enemy”? Or is it thought that “action” might be too strong a word for killing Marines?”

Snowed In George W. Bush going immediately on the air last week to respond to new charges about NSA snooping. And then scheduling a network pitch tonight on immigration. What’s that about? Might it be the influence of his new press guy Tony Snow? Jay Rosen at PressThink is leading the discussion.

Impeachment Murmurs from the Right Glenn Greenwald comments on the fact that several blogs on the right are discussing whether President Bush should be impeached over immigration.

What To Do With Iran? To talk, or not to talk? Greg Djerejian gives it a few thoughts at Belgravia Dispatch.

California Sleepin' There’s a primary election coming up on June 6 to pick the Democratic challenger to California Governor Schwarzenegger. There is? Veteran political analyst Joe Scott, who muses over the L.A. Times’ endorsement yesterday of Phil Angelides, is one of the few paying close attention to what has been a yawner of a campaign. Sacramento-based Bill Bradley is also furiously documenting the campaign lethargy.

World Leader Venezuelan President Chavez is in Europe, and Daniel Duquenal blogfollows him. Gene @ Harry’s Place has a few questions people in the UK might want to ask Chavez, pointing to an article by Ian Buruma.

Market Shakes Sandwichman at MaxSpeak chides the rosy financial experts but nevertheless boldly predicts the market will not crash today (though he has a pithy anecdote to tell if things really do go south before the bell). Historymike, meanwhile, gives new meaning to the phrase “being taken for a ride.”

The Accidental Pundit “He is the BBC’s latest star - the cab driver who a leading presenter believed was a world expert on the internet music business. The man stepped unwittingly into the national spotlight when he was interviewed by mistake on the corporation’s News 24 channel;” The Volokh Conspiracy links to more information and the video of it all.

Caning McCain The Moderate Voice has a great round-up of reporting on John McCain’s weekend daliance with Jerry Falwell. TalkLeft gives up on the Arizona senator (and tosses a bouquet to Al Gore).

Hirsi Ali's Fall From Pieter Dorsman @ Peaktalk: “Should Hirsi Ali resign or otherwise be demoted from her present prominent role in the party on the basis of her past lies? The answer to that has to be affirmative. No one holding elected office should be exempt from the most simple ethical and moral test and the same goes for Hirsi Ali. What should not happen, but what I am afraid is will happen, is a very public humiliation of Hirsi Ali and with that of a lot of the ideas she stands for.”

UPDATE - Michael Galien says Ali is apparently heading to the US after the summer.

Blog Week in Review, May 12, 2006 Egyptian blogger jailed … weblogs and the campaign of ‘06 … Ahmadinejad’s “love letter” to Bush in this week’s Blog Week in Review. Panelists: Glenn Reynolds, Tammy Bruce, Eric Umansky. Moderator: Austin Bay.

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Karl Twain? Reports of Rove’s indictment are greatly exaggerated, writes Byron York @ NRO, who spoke with his spokesman Mark Corallo. But TalkLeft’s Jeralyn Merritt, who is still over the case, comments on Jason Leopold’s reponse. Rick Moran and Seixon are skeptical.

Aiding, Abetting... and Supplying Omar @ Iraq The Model notes local reports that Iran has been supplying Al Qaeda in Iraq with Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons including shoulder-born, infrared-guided Sam 7 missile Strela. “Just another example of how helpful a neighbor the Mullahs are, of course! They want everything to be stable on the ground.”

What Will Bush Say? The President’s dramatic TV address on the issue of the border and immigration is slated for tonight. But when he makes his announcement that he’s sending “troops to the border,” what will he really mean? Marc Cooper guesses that whatever side you take on this issue, expect to be deeply disappointed.

Playing "Would’ja Rather" Not the old drinking game but the stark choice that often needs to be made in real life. For example in the NSA wiretapping imbroglio, writes Dale Franks @ QandO.

Maybe They Were Planning a Vacation Captain’s Quarters looks at another translated document from the Saddam files, about the mobile laboratories found in Iraq after the invasion. He finds it interesting that hydrogen gas production trucks would attract such a big interest from a high-level research team.