The LA Times reports on the latest Scientology attack on free speech as they seek to shut down the site scienTOMogy.info.

The Washington Post reports that the District’s “zero tolerance” in issuing DUI’s to drivers under the legal limit has been adjusted by order of the city council (it still has to be approved by the mayor). As mentioned earlier, one woman spent the night in jail after being pulled over at night for driving with her headlights off (she blames it on the valet) and, because she admitted to having one glass of wine, was charged with a DUI. Her BAL was 0.03, well below the 0.08 limit. Nevertheless, because of the said “zero tolerance,” in the slammer she went. But after this story was publicized and calls flooded the city council, a law was passed 9-3 that will now presume drivers under 0.05 are not intoxicated and, as the Post‘s Eric Weiss explains, “The changes would place alcohol levels from .05 to .079 in a ‘neutral zone’ that would require other factors, such as sobriety field tests, to establish a driver’s impairment.”

Mayor Anthony Williams expressed concerns that the law was “hastily written” and pointed out that last year six drunk-driving fatalities involved drivers who had less than 0.08 alcohol in their systems. Fair enough. If the mayor approves the legislation, it will last 90 days and the council can then further amend the law where needed.

In the meantime, DC residents can now safely have a glass of wine or a beer and know they won’t be spending a night in jail if they get pulled over because of a broken tail signal.

Special props go to the sponsor of this legislation, lone Republican Carol Schwartz, and her cosponsor–our beloved former mayor Marion Barry.

Speaking of First Things, they’ve done some spiffy things to their website. The first is the addition of ROFTERS–Reader of First Things–which is a set of online discussion groups. There’s an email discussion group run out of Yahoo (send a blank email to ROFTERS-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com) as well as a ROFTERS blog, being edited by Sam Cable. There are also a number of off-line groups both in the U.S. and across the globe (for a list, click here.

But perhaps the most interesting development is the new blog On the Square, run by Father Neuhaus. Pop it in your RSS aggregator; getting Neuhaus every day instead of having to wait for the magazine once a month is like getting Christmas all year long.

In case you missed it yesterday, go back to Vic’s Tom Sizemore item, which has the best headline this site will ever muster: “The Action Is the Juice.”

On a related note, GS Commenter Chris points us to this review of the tape:

At one point Sizemore, dressed in bicyclist’s gear with a toque on his head, wields a two foot long rubber dildo and literally whines that the two prostitutes (who are cleaning up a hotel lamp and bottle of wine he knocked over) are not paying attention to his antics.

Does that get you hot?

The Cake Editirix sends us to this fantastic site where a gent by the name of Truman Collins has sussed out all of the probabilities of the Monopoly board. Fabulous, amazing stuff.

Highlights: The red properties are the best on the board, the oranges a close second. Boardwalk and Park Place are a waste.

But really, if you’ve ever thought long and hard about Monopoly (B.J., I’m talking to you), this site deserves study.

Courtesy of Patterico we have this link to Patrick Semmens, who found a small, but telling, Harriet Miers nugget:

On lines 15 and 19, as a response to questions about whether she has read books on the subject on which she is being questioned, Miers answers:

“I probably can shorten this line of questioning… if you just asked me when’s the last time I read a whole book.”

Compare that with George W. Bush’s pre-presidential remark to Tucker Carlson: When asked what activity he didn’t excel at, Bush replied, “Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something.”

Yeah, baby! Books are for elitists!

It would probably be impolite to point readers to the November issue of First Things, which features a long and typically brilliant Antonin Scalia essay on “The Language of Law,” which is a review of Steven D. Smith’s book, Law’s Quandary. No vapid abstractions here. (And I’ll bet Scalia even read the whole book, which is about both policy and philosophy! How does he do it?)

It might be even more impolite to point out Scalia’s conclusion on Law’s Quandary:

Steven Smith is a diligent observer of academic correctness. This is evident in the fact that his book has at least as many shes as hes (“So the hiring partner said, ‘I’ll call you,’ did she?”)–excluding, of course, those pronouns referring to antecedent proper nouns that are masculine, for which Smith can hardly be blamed. One would never expect Smith to violate the “norm prescribing that religious beliefs are inadmissible in academic explanations.” Vining (with appropriate disclaimer) is about as far as one can go without offending the proprieties. Could it be, however, that Smith is inviting, tempting, seducing his fellow academics to consider the theological way out of the quandary–the way that seemed to work for the classical school?

As one reaches the end of the book, after reading Vining’s just-short-of-theological imaginings followed by Smith’s acknowledgment of “richer realities and greater powers in the universe,” he (she?) is sorely tempted to leap up and cry out, “Say it, man! Say it! Say the G-word! G-G-G-G-God!” Surely even academics can accept, as a hypothetical author, a hypothetical God! Textualists, being content with a “modest” judicial role, do not have to call in the Almighty to eliminate their philosophical confusion. But Smith may be right that a more ambitious judicial approach demands what might be called a dues ex hypothesi.

Read that last bit again: Textualists, being content with a “modest” judicial role, do not have to call in the Almighty to eliminate their philosophical confusion. So why, then, is the White House insisting that their nominee’s evangelical Christianity is important?

In addition to being a wonderful essay, Scalia’s piece is a rebuke to the religiosity and anti-intellectualism of the last two weeks. Those who voted for George W. Bush were promised a mind like Scalia’s for the Supreme Court. Instead, they’ve been given a mind like George W. Bush’s.

Hugh Hewitt points us to this typically genius piece on memoirs. Just awesome.

One of my favorite actors is Tom Sizemore. A real man’s man, a tough guy, a mean guy, a brave guy. And sex-addicted. According to the Philadelphia Daily News, the actor who played Sergeant Mike Horvath in Saving Private Ryan has a case of priapism but is putting it to good use. He will next appear in The Tom Sizemore Sex Scandal, “a Vivid Entertainment XXX feature offering 70 minutes of uncut, uncensored, inexhaustible Sizemore sex with a quartet of young ladies. All at once,” writes Howard Gensler.

Who’s his agent? Has it been that hard to come by a good script? We’re talking about Cheritto from Heat. Jack Scagnetti from Natural Born Killers. Sure he’s had a bad drug habit. Sure he had a bitter (some say violent) relationship with Heidi Fleiss. But did it have to lead to full-blown porn?

If you hear Sizemore is starring in Heat Part II, The Fast and the Furious III or Die Hard IV, don’t say I didn’t warn you about the explosions.