Transterrestrial Musings documents Wesley Clark’s recent claim that this nation was founded on principles of progressive taxation. Hat tip: Eugene Volokh.

Time again to announce the winners. Congratulations to Spiced Sass for the winning Council entry, Approaching Iran and to Dean Esmay for the winning non-Council Entry, The New Uncle Wiggle Wings, and an honorable mention to Fresh Potatoes, who might well have won the non-Council race had we not split his vote been two entries of his on the same topic.

Both houses have overwhelmingly passed a bill to give the Federal Trade Commission the power to implement the long-expected “Do Not Call” list. It seems like only yesterday that a court held that Congress did not intend to give the FTC that power. Oh wait, that was yesterday. Nevermind.

UPDATE: “Nevermind” is right. Jeebus.

UPDATE x2: Kevin Murphy has an alternative which would allow consumers to block non-commercial telespam as well as commercial telespam. While I agree that Kevin’s proposal would be better than the existing legislation, it seems a bit odd for the FTC to be involved in regulating any non-commercial conduct. In any event, that issue should be left up to Congress, not the courts. That commercial speech enjoys less First Amendment protection than political or religious speech is well-settled law. But see Lawrence v. Texas, __ U.S. __ (2003) (holding that there is no such thing as “well-settled” law).

Daniel Weintraub, writing in two posts cleared by SacBee censors, argued yesterday that there was no clear winner in yesterday’s debate, and noted today that pundits who think there was a winner are all over the map as to who that winner might be. Some of Weintraub’s examples were surprising, man-bites dog analyses, such as Republicans impressed by Bustamecha, Democrats impressed by Schwarzenegger, and Schwarzenegger fans who thought he was disappointing.

I suspect, though, that most of the people who thought last night’s debate had a “winner” will nominate whoever they themselves now support in the race, which in most cases is whoever they supported before the debate, as well. Case in point: the Daily Monopoly, which appears to cherish its party’s monopoly power in Sacramento as much as its own near-monopoly status in L.A., managed to crown Gray Davis as the winner. Huh?

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Over the past couple of days, I’ve been bombarded with Google hits aimed at Hans David Hans Schmidt, the punk who peddles nude photos of Amber Frey. Has he been back in the news lately? If so, why am I the top Google link right now, even though I haven’t blogged about the guy in almost two months? And if not, why the sudden interest now?

Via Rough & Tumble comes this piece from today’s L.A. Times:

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante continued using disputed donations to air television commercials even after a judge ordered that he return the millions of dollars, court documents filed Wednesday allege.

“Disputed” means, of course, “illegal.” Unless there’s some appeal pending that I don’t know about it, all disputes over the supposed Bustaloophole ended Monday.

All right, which is it? Did two Giants fans recently murder a Dodgers fan, or did two Dodgers fans recently murder a Giants fan? I’m pretty sure that either act would be illegal; however, the former makes a lot more sense than the latter. I mean, seriously, it’s not as though the Dodgers really even have fans. Besides, when was the last time a group of Angelenos got that worked up over anything?

Via Drudge comes word of a recent Gallup Poll that gives former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a 67% disapproval rating, which is three percentage points higher than that of California Governor Gray Davis. The authors of the study caution that the 33% of Iraqis who oppose the war of liberation do not necessarily approve of Mr. Hussein personally, or of his performance in office following his landslide re-election in 2002. Rather, the authors note, many Baghdadis disapprove in principle of a process that many of them feel was nothing more than a politically-motivated power-grab by a rich Republican intent on undoing a recent election that he could not win.

Apparently, Daniel Weintraub isn’t the only writer whose works are being censored edited to fit the whims of a vocal group of lawmakers.

This time, that’s actually a good thing.