Mark Steyn on the daft proposal to ban flag burning:

A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned, that’s not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can’t stand the heat of your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It’s the left that believes the state can regulate everyone into thought-compliance. The right should understand that the battle of ideas is won out in the open.

Quite right. As it turns out, one of my first bits of political almost-participation—I say “almost” because I never mailed it—was a letter to the editor to the Stars and Stripes opposing such an amendment in the wake of Texas v. Johnson. My political views on a few things have changed since then—I was something more of a nanny-statist in my youth—but not on flag burning.

þ: Peaktalk and a host of others.

Class Maledictorian is now Prettier Than Napoleon. Hey, that rhymes!

The Baseball Crank notes that Joe Biden is throwing his hat—or at least his hairpiece—into the ring for 2008, while the SoCons are apparently in the market to coalesce behind a single Republican contender already, according to this piece linked by John Cole—after all, there’s only 1,226 shopping days left before the next presidential election. All hail the permanent campaign.

Of course, the drawback of predicting the “redshirts” at this point is that, unlike in Star Trek (or, in general, when using the Law of Economy of Characters*), you don’t know who is going to buy it until after the fact.

Clarion-Ledger reporter Jerry Mitchell suggests that prosecutors may find forensic evidence that is sufficient to indict the real other killers involved in the slayings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. Color me somewhat skeptical, but if the evidence fits, you must convict.

Another oddity: the C-L piece mentions Sam Bowers as a possible suspect in the sidebar, and Scipio points out that Bowers and Killen may soon be bunkmates at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in lovely Rankin County, Bowers having been convicted for killing Vernon Dahmer a few years back. You’d think they’d mention Bowers was already behind bars for another racially-motivated killing, instead of referring to him as “Sam Bowers of Laurel.”

I love the smell of a 100% fee increase in the morning:

A change in state law that requires scrutiny of window tint as part of vehicle safety inspections has some businesses that perform the annual inspections reconsidering whether to offer them.

Starting July 1, the darkness of a vehicle’s window tint must be checked as part of vehicle inspection, and the inspection fee rises from $5 to $10. Legislators approved the change to protect law officers.

Just another year in the life of our state’s massively effective vehicle safety inspection program, which (in its entirety) ensures public safety by making sure our cars’ horns, lights, and blinkers work.