Hard to tell. It’s night there now, but a new Freeper there is reporting clashes at the University of Tehran and the Ministry of the Interior.

For your first stop on today’s Iranian blogathon, stop by Lileks’ place.

He’ll take over the tour from there.

The gun grabbers can’t even wait to find out what happened before chasing the Meridian, Mississippi ambulance (and hearses) for their pet anti-freedom cause.

In the wake of yet another horrible mass shooting, Congress and President Bush need no more reminders of why they should work to reauthorize and strengthen the federal ban on assault weapons. While we don’t yet know what weapon was used in this tragedy, we do know that rapid-fire assault weapons are designed for this type of terrible assault.”

I suggest that Congress also ban groups like the Brady Campaign, and the Million Mom March. After all, while it’s perhaps too early to know why many members of the public are incapable of coherent thought, and ignorant of the Constitution and the nature of firearms, such demogoguery is designed for the type of terrible assault on logic that contributes to that ongoing tragedy.

[Update at 10 PM PDT]

He used a shotgun…

Joe Katzman is hosting Carnival of the Vanities tomorrow, so here’s your chance to get your blog noticed, if you have something that you really think that others should see, that you’ve posted in the last week.

Also, more importantly (because there’s a CotV every week), he’s hosting a special Carnival of Iran, to support freedom in that country on tomorrow’s anniversary of the revolt four years ago. I don’t blog much about Iran, but for those who do, details for submission can be found here.

While I’m a harsh critic of NASA in general, I’ve been withholding criticism of the agency with regard to what happened to Columbia until the facts are out. This is partly because, well, I don’t know all the facts yet, and I actually want to provide some useful advice, but also because much of the criticism that they’ve sustained since February 1 has been (to put it as charitably as possible) uninformed and largely logic free. And basing policy decisions on flawed analysis paves a road to policy disaster (as we’ve seen with the space program down the decades).

My largest complaint, of course, is that people continue to whine about the loss in human life, and put forth ridiculous concepts like flying the vehicle unmanned, when that’s not the issue at all (the real issue is the high cost and fragile nature of our fleet, given its pathetically small size and flight rate).

The astronauts are grownups and, as I’ve said repeatedly, they knew the job was dangerous when they took it. However, what if they didn’t know quite how dangerous it was?

I’m not referring to the natural desire to not want to find bad news that seemed to prevail during the flight. I’m talking about the general state of knowledge about the system, even prior to the launch of that flight. Which is why I find this story quite troubling.

Pooya Dayanim says that judgement day is coming for Iran’s brutal mullahs, and that it may come as soon as tomorrow.

And here are some of the people who may replace them.

…and come out with your hands up!

Let’s just quit messing around, and make breathing a crime.

That way, if police and prosecutors don’t think they have the evidence they need to put us away for something they “know” we did, they’ll always have a good backup.

Ayn Rand pointed out that the goal of the bureaucrats is ultimately to make it impossible to live without breaking some law, to maintain control over the populace. My modest proposal is simply jumping to the logical end of that process.

I’m off the air until at least Monday afternoon. Driving up to San Bruno.

It seems to me that the smartest thing the Dems could do would be to get Grayout to resign, and hand the governorship over to Cruz.

There’d still be the recall election, but Bustamante would be running as an incumbent, and would be the obvious pick for Democratic voters. He could even pick up independents with a plea for “continuity.”

Of course, the hard part about this scenario is getting his Grayness to step down. And wouldn’t it be a kick in the pants if he did so, and then the recall failed?

But go read Bill Whittle’s latest essay.

It’s, as always, worth the whole read, but readers of this site may be particularly interested in his description of an engine test at a little but growing company up in Mojave, California.

Just as an aside, I hope that they won’t, like many other companies, be chased out of California due to ongoing idiocy in Sacramento.