You can listen in a few minutes at 7 p.m. on KCRW, 89.9 FM in Los Angeles. Or listen at this link, which will feature an archived version shortly after the program ends.

Other guests include Russ Stanton, editor of the L.A. Times; Marc Cooper, with whom I have been debating online at the L.A. Times website; and public affairs consultant Emma Schafer.

Don’t forget to check out my debate with Marc Cooper on the future of the L.A. Times — a debate taking place at the L.A. Times web site.

Part One is here. If you didn’t read it yesterday, read it now!

Check back during the day at this link — probably after noon Pacific time — for Part Two.

UPDATE: Here’s the link to Part Two.

The L.A. Times has a front-page article reporting that Barack Obama likely will not be able to pay for everything he is promising:

In more than a year of campaigning, Barack Obama has made a long list of promises for new federal programs costing tens of billions of dollars, many of them aimed at protecting people from the pain of a souring economy.

But if he wins the presidency, Obama will be hard-pressed to keep his blueprint intact.

Nice job, and kudos to the paper for the article.

Dana Goldstein at TAPPED reminds us of the “facts” about partial-birth abortion:

Intact dilation and extraction, aka D&X or — to the antis — “partial birth abortion,” accounts for less than two tenths of one percent of all abortions performed in the United States each year, and is usually reserved for instances in which the pregnant woman is facing severe health risks or when expectant parents learn their fetus will not be viable outside of the womb.

Just one problem: it’s not so.

But don’t take it from me. Take it from two prominent left-leaning journalists.

First, we have leftist Franklin Foer:

After interviewing doctors who perform the procedure, both [the Washington Post and the Bergen Record] concluded that only in very few instances was the IDE actually necessary to protect the woman’s health. Most of them were performed on poor women who could not muster the money to pay for abortions earlier in their pregnancies.

Next, we have leftist David Savage:

Only 1% to 2% of abortions take place after the 20th week of pregnancy.

Of these, about 3,000 to 5,000 per year are done with D&X [partial-birth abortion]. Doctors say only a small percentage of those are done because of medical complications or fetal deformity.

Yet this canard is repeated, again and again, by the “pro-choice” left.

All we can do here is keep repeating the truth, again and again and again.

Posted by WLS:

Having read Judge Walker’s opinion last week in which he determined that the federal common law “state’s secrets” privilege was abrogated by Congress with its passage of FISA, it occurred to me that there is a fairly simple hypothetical which can be used to explore the view that FISA is an unconstitutional encroachment on the Article II “Commander in Chief” powers of the US.

Lets assume that the Clinton Administration hadn’t been so feckless in its closing months, and that after the bombing of the USS Cole it had followed the advice of Richard Clarke, sought an authorization to use force against Bin Laden, AQ, and the Taliban, and initiated offensive military operations — of whatever type — in Afghanistan for the purpose of dislodging Bin Laden and AQ.  

Lets next assume that part of the offensive operations was an aggressive intelligence collection effort conducted by NSA and DOD which focused on communications between Bin Laden and other AQ actors in Afghanistan on the one hand, and the loose net of affiliate organizations around the world on the other hand.

Lets next assume that the Bush Administration kept the same policy following the election, and remained on the offensive against Bin Laden and AQ, short of an all out invasion of Afghanistan.   That during this effort the intelligence agencies were able to intermittently intercept cell phone transmissions believed to be from Bin Laden and other members of AQ’s leadership.  

We’re still talking about a pre-9/11 timeframe here, and from those interceptions intelligence analysts were convinced there was some type of plot underway inside the US, but the details were not yet known.  But in July 2001, interceptions established a contact between AQ in Afghanistan and Ramzi Binalshibh in Germany.  Binalshibh is identified by intelligence agencies as having been associated with a cell of Islamic radicals in Hamburg, one of whom is Mohammed Atta, who is found to be attending flight school in the US in the summer of 2001, with travel records from various intelligence agencies showing they had traveled to Afghanistan together in 1999.

So, based on this information, in July 2001, NSA and DOD begin intercepting all telephone communications of Binalshibh in Hamburg.  These interceptions are the direct result of battlefield intelligence obtained in Afghanistan, and the purpose is to seek to collect actionable intelligence which might be used by the military or civilian law enforcement to prevent an attack on US soil.

Under these circumstances, is the President’s Article II authority as Commander in Chief to be constrained by FISA if Binalshibh decides to call Atta in the United States?  Its not Atta’s phone that is being monitored — its Binalshibh’s phone in Hamburg.  Does the Executive, in the midst of exercising its war fighting authority, have to run to the FISC to obtain a warrant to continue listening to communications between Binalshibh and Atta? 

[This post will remain bumped to the top through Monday. New posts will appear below. -- Patterico]

I want you to help me compile a full list of Obama’s flip-flops.

Leave a comment fully documenting one or more flip-flops. Links are critical. For maximum usefulness, I would like to see the following for each flip-flop:

1) Obama’s original quote, with a link.

2) His later flip-flopping quote, also with a link.

Here’s an example of what I’m looking for:

Flip: Obama says the health exception for late-term abortions has to be a serious physical issue:

I have repeatedly said that I think it’s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.

Flop: the health exception can include non-physical issues like mental diseases:

My only point is that in an area like partial birth abortion having a mental, having a health exception can be defined rigorously . . . It can be defined through physical health. It can be defined by serious clinical mental health diseases.

Video proof of a flip-flop is even better. Link that if you have it. I know there are videos like that out there. I want to know about all of them.

Maximum participation, people! If you do this well, I can bring it all together in a single, massive post that documents all of Obama’s flip-flops. In that post, I’ll credit each person who first documents a particular flip-flop to my satisfaction.

Now start documenting!

It goes on all week. The link isn’t up yet, but keep checking here.

UPDATE: Here’s a direct link to Round One.

Round Two is here.

[posted by Justin Levine]

With all my excitement over Joey Chestnut’s win in the hot dog eating championship, I forgot to congratulate Nikolai Sazhin on winning the world chess boxing title.

His opponent said it all:  “I took a lot of body-blows in the fourth round and that affected my concentration. That’s why I made a big mistake in the fifth round: I did not see him coming for my king.”

[posted by Justin Levine]

Mahablog obviously doesn’t like the news. I can’t comment on the analysis of any other site, but it should be obvious that Mahablog is deliberately misconstruing the point of the post (and the debate). The debate isn’t about if Saddam was on the verge of obtaining nukes or not. Rather, it is about the fact that Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame are liars - something that most of the press refuses to acknowledge. Notably, Mahablog doesn’t mention the Joe Wilson controversy at all.

Of course people know that yellowcake does not equal enriched uranium. If that were the case, then everyone would be worrying about the great nuclear weapons power named Niger. But of course you don’t hear that, so I really don’t know what Mahablog’s point is here. The crux of the argument was that Saddam was trying to compile the materials for an inert weapons program that he could one day reconstitute after got the sanctions lifted (with the help of bribes from the U.N. ‘oil-for-food’ scandal).

I presume that Mahablog doesn’t deny that Israel previously bombed a nuclear reactor in Iraq which would indicate that Saddam had a desire for such weapons. In light of that fact and Saddam’s hostile history, the existence of stored yellowcake there becomes a bit more significant than it being stored in Niger, even though we all know it doesn’t magically take on weapons’ grade properties once it crosses the border into Iraq. But rather than think through the implications of the fact that Iraq previously had a nuclear weapons reactor in the past, Mahablog is simply content to state, “The critical point is that Saddam Hussein couldn’t do anything with this uranium because he lacked the equipment and technology to enrich it.”

Once again, for the bazillionth time, the argument was never that nuclear Iraq was imminent. It was that it was eventually inevitable unless Saddam was removed from power. Perhaps it wouldn’t come to be until years into the future, but it would eventually come. People could have tried to make the argument that it was not inevitable that Saddam would acquire WMD (and perhaps some did), but the most vocal decided to lie instead and suggest that Bush’s real argument was that Saddam’s acquisition of nukes was ‘imminent’.

Mahablog is right about one thing - the existence of yellowcake in Iraq is not really new news for those who have read up on the issue. But because many in the media refuse to acknowledge Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame for absolute frauds that they are, this old news manages to take on continued significance.

But here is the real test of Mahablog’s argument: If Mahablog has a legitimate point, then why did Joe Wilson go to such great lengths to try and cast doubt on the very existence of the yellowcake Niger story? Why didn’t he just say, “It is possible that Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger. But even though I can neither confirm nor deny this accusation, it is ultimately irrelevant since yellowcake is harmless and is not proof of anything significant regarding an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.”?

That is not the argument that Joe Wilson the liar made. There is a reason for this - reason’s that people like Mahablog would rather not address. So I’ll be happy to stay on his ‘Idiot’s Hall of Fame’, let people read both posts, and decide for themselves.

– Justin Levine

[posted by Justin Levine]

For those who missed the epic event that went down on July 4th, it was considered by many to be one of the greatest, if not THE greatest in the 93 year history of the contest. Joey Chestnut won it in overtime in a 5-dog eat-off against the equally astonishing Takeru Kobayashi. It was one for the ages. Congrats Joey!

Footage here, here and here.

I’m thrilled that Chestnut was able to dig deep within himself and pull out a victory to keep the belt in America.

Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas gave an impressive showing. She’s one to keep an eye on for future contests. I also liked Juliette Lee’s efforts. The competition is getting fiercer, and that’s good for the sport.

As for Kobayashi - what can I say? The man is a great competitor and a very gracious person as the video attests to. He was even able to repeatedly jump up and down after swallowing 50+ hot dogs in 10 minutes in order to psych himself up for the overtime round. You have to feel for a guy who swallows that many hot dogs, only to come in second place. Oooch! But he has nothing to worry about in terms of his reputation. His record for holding the title for 6 straight years in a row is not likely to be challenged any time soon. Kobayashi revolutionized the sport more than any other individual. Even if Chestnut continues to dominate him in future years, his legacy will be secure.

Some are now comparing the Chestnut / Kobayashi rivalry along with the great sports rivalries in history (Ali vs. Frasier; Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird, etc.). I agree. This is a great age for fans of the sport.

Chow on!

– Justin Levine