How great is this list of C-Net’s favorite lost technologies? Hint: #2 is Kozmo.com.

If you haven’t already, check out Matt Labash’s immensely good piece on immigration, North of the Border. It’s a work of quiet, serious genius. The best thing Labash has written in a couple years. And that’s saying something.

I just got the following email alert from one of Washington’s foremost conservative women’s organizations, the Independent Women’s Forum:

Barbara Comstock will be a guest this morning on WDAY radio’s “Hot Talk with Scott Hennen.” Barbara will be discussing the looming battle in the Senate over the president’s nomination of Judge John G. Roberts to the United States Supreme Court.

Network: WDAY (Fargo, ND)

Show: Hot Talk with Scott Hennen

Time: 11:45 a.m. ET

Date: August 19

IWF Personality: Barbara Comstock

To listen live this morning please click here.

Just thought I’d pass it on; if you hurry, you can probably still catch the end of the interview.

Mike Russell goes to the Drive-In.

Excellent story about Judge Joseph Force Crater, who’s been missing for 75 years:

Crater —who vanished mysteriously 75 years ago—was killed by a city cop and his cab-driver brother and buried under the boardwalk in Coney Island, according to a handwritten letter left behind by a Queens woman who died earlier this year.

“Good Time Joe” Crater was a dapper, 41-year-old judge known for his dalliances with showgirls and his ties to corruption-ridden Tammany Hall—until he got into a cab in Midtown Manhattan one evening in 1930 and disappeared . . .

Read the rest of the article for the amazing story of the days leading up to his disappearance and this very sweet tidbit about Crater’s wife:

Crater’s wife remembered his disappearance every year for the rest of her life by visiting a bar in Greenwich Village on Aug. 6.

She’d sit by herself, order two drinks and down one—after saying, “Good luck Joe, wherever you are.”

At a moment where Markos Moulitsas is coyloy suggesting that Joe Scarborough might be a murderer (a real murderer, mind you, not a metaphorical murderer, the way all Republicans are), it is reassuring to read Ed Kilgore’s smart thoughts on why America should not have a fixed date of withdrawal from Iraq and ideas on what a good withdrawal should look like:

1) Publicly announce the United States is abandoning any plans for permanent military bases in Iraq to make it absolutely clear our presence is temporary.

2) Publicly announce benchmarks that will trigger withdrawal of American troops, including approval of a constitution and election of a permanent government; specific levels of trained Iraqi troops and other security forces; and renunciation of demands by major Iraqi communities that are incompatible with a stable and pluralistic regime (e.g., Kurdish right to secede, Sunni Arab privileges in a strong central government, Iranian-style Islamic Republic).

3) Initiate direct negotiations with insurgents.

4) Renounce any public or private-sector U.S. designs for control of Iraqi natural resources

5) Launch an internationalized reconstruction effort which explicitly renounces U.S. exclusive privileges, with special attention to assistance from Sunni Arab countries

The goal would be to leave Iraq with a half-decent chance of maintaining a sustainable government without civil war, foreign domination, or a permament base of operations and recruitment for al Qaeda. The main strategy would be to convince, through carrots and sticks, the Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shi’a to step back from their maximalist demands, while creating trans-communal political and security institutions. The philosophy would be to dramatically invest Iraqis with complete responsibility for their common future. And while they would not provide a guaranteed, fixed date for final U.S. withdrawal, the benchmarks would immediately create tests for Iraqis that would either lead to greater stability in the country . . .

If only Kilgore got as much attention as Kos.

Is this going too far?

Guests of DogTown each stay in a heated and air conditioned private house with a bed or cot. Each house has paneled walls, a padded tile floor, and two windows that look out to the common exercise area. Music is provided, and TV is available for an additional fee. Some of the houses even have skylights!

Don’t miss the pictures. Courtesy of Galley Friend A.L.

He’s very, very good:

Ever since America’s all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterise them as ‘children’. If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that’s her decision and her parents shouldn’t get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the Oval Office shagpile and chow down on Bill Clinton, she’s a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year old is serving his country overseas, he’s a wee ‘child’ who isn’t really old enough to know what he’s doing.

His next line is the really, really mean part:

I get many emails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes as if she’s auditioning for a minor supporting role in Sex and the City. The infantilisation of the military promoted by the Left is deeply insulting to America’s warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd’s purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that ‘of course’ they ‘support our troops’, because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.