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WSJ's OpinionJournal ponders why it took so long:

The post had been vacant for six months. Senate Democrats, under the "leadership" of Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, have prolonged and thwarted every attempt to hold a vote on Mr. Bolton, who of course would have been confirmed had his name reached the Senate floor. No wild accusation was ever proved, other than that he sought the removal of two intelligence analysts for incompetence and insubordination. Notably, both the 9/11 Commission and Robb-Silberman Commission said policy makers have a responsibility to question and challenge intelligence analysts.

Does anyone really doubt that the UN needs some serious tough love right now?

A spacewalk is set to shave off protruding gap-fillers on the underside of the shuttle.

“I think it’s a fairly simple task,” Cindy Begley, lead EVA officer for Discovery’s flight, said of the repair plan earlier today. “It’s just making sure we’re not going to hit the vehicle, and we’re doing that.”

John Bolton, from The Cato Institute:

But one should not invest excessive hope in any secretary-general. The UN Charter describes the secretary-general as the UN's "chief administrative officer." He is not the president of the world. He is not a diplomat for all seasons. He is not Mr. Friend of the Earth. And, most definitely of all, he is not the commander in chief of the World Federalist Army. He is the chief administrative officer. Nothing less than that, to be sure, but with even greater certainty, nothing more.

Kofi Annan has got to be looking forward to Mr. Bolton's arrival in New York, I'm sure.

#10: Terry Pratchett v. J.K. Rowling
#9: Devil Rays 6, Royals 2
#8: Animal Husbandry
#7: Space news
#6: Japan imposes levies on U.S. steel
#5: Atkins Nutritionals in Chapter 11
#4: Saudi king dies, another excuse to jack up oil prices

#3: "Over There" panned by one who has been there
#2: Islamofascist Watch
#1: Bush appoints Bolton to U.N. via recess appointment

Item: Is MI5 hacking Islamic web sites?

Times of London reports that Israeli intelligence thinks the British MI5 intelligence organization may be targeting Islamofascist web sites. Via Little Green Footballs.

Item: (Via Chrenkoff) German publisher Mathias Doepfner's comments on European appeasement of Islamofascism:

What atrocity must occur before the European public and its political leadership understands what is really happening in the world? There is a sort of crusade under way; an especially perfidious campaign consisting of systematic attacks by Islamists, focused on civilians, that is directed against our free, open Western societies, and that is intent on their utter destruction.

We find ourselves faced with a conflict that will most likely last longer than any of the great military clashes of the last century, a conflict conducted by an enemy that cannot be tamed by tolerance and accommodation because that enemy is actually spurred on by such gestures. Such responses have proven to be signs of weakness.

Chrenkoff comments:

But Doepfner's general argument is sound. It is never politically popular - though strategically smart - to deal with a threat when it is still small. But it's difficult to see how making concessions will not make the threat increase, that is how withdrawing Western presence from everywhere in the Middle East and the Muslim world broadly speaking, and giving Al Qaeda a free hand to subvert and overthrow all the current governments, which it considers heretical and treasonous, is going to make us in the West safer. There is indeed, a civil war going on within the Islamic community, and if you think that we don't have any stake in the outcome, just wait until the bad guys win. But by then it will be too late.

A veteran and reporter watches the new TV series set in the Iraq war and is not impressed:

The writers and producers of 'Over There' would have been well served by actually setting foot in Iraq for a few weeks to live and travel with real grunts. It is obvious they didn't and obvious the former grunt they hired as a consultant was only allowed input on the uniforms.

By ignoring reality, they discredit their attempt to create a gripping drama. The reality of the war in Iraq is more compelling and more dramatic than any hollow Hollywood fiction.

Watching the show only reinforced that my decision to go to Iraq to film real grunts in real scenarios was necessary--Hollywood and the left will never tell the true story.

Oil prices rise despite the fact the Crown Prince Abdullah has basically been ruling Saudi Arabia for the past decade.

The Great Low-Carb Bust continues. Atkins Nutritionals becomes the latest low-carb food company which tried to profit from the low-carb boom of the early 2000's to file bankruptcy.

"Mainstream companies such as Unilever, Kraft, and General Mills broke into the controlled-carbohydrate market in 2004 with well-funded, aggressive product launches," Rebecca Roof, Atkins' chief restructuring officer, said in court papers. As a result, Roof said, sales in 2004 were "dramatically less than forecast."

I'm not so sure that low-carb dieters wouldn't be better off if all of these low-carb "fake-food" products disappeared from the shelves and we went back to more natural fare of salads, fresh vegetables, meat, cream, and butter.

In a weird echo of the trade war which occurred in the 1930's in the run-up to World War II, Japan is imposing retaliatory tariffs of 15% on American steel. No world war expected to result from this trade spat, however. Japan is complaining about the Byrd Amendment, intended to prevent dumping of low-cost foreign goods into the U.S. market.