Below The Beltway

A fascinating article in today’s New York Times about what goes in to making an iPod:
The retail value of the 30-gigabyte video iPod that the authors examined was $299. The most expensive component in it was the hard drive, which was manufactured by Toshiba and costs about $73. The next most costly components were [...]

About a year ago, there was much blogging about the alleged Atlas Shrugged movie that was in pre-production at the time. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were rumored to be interested in starring. Everyone was excited.
Except for me that is:
The time has come to face it. There will never be a movie, miniseries, or DVD. [...]

The six time champion of the Fourth of July hot dog eating contest appears to be sidelined:
TOKYO — The competitive eating world is already chewing on this bit of breaking news: The champ may not be able to chomp.
Takeru Kobayashi of Japan, the six-time champion of the annual Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, [...]

Today, the Washington Post reports on the backlash that has developed to Virginia’s so-called “abuser fees” that I wrote about on Monday:
RICHMOND, June 26 — Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and legislative leaders sought to respond Tuesday to a growing backlash over plans to make some Virginia drivers pay hefty surcharges on traffic tickets to finance [...]

Advocates of the effort to give the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives are looking at the Senate math, and it doesn’t look good:
Advocates of a D.C. voting rights bill are stepping up their lobbying in the Senate, hoping to lock up commitments from a crucial group of lawmakers to ensure [...]

It might look something like this:
What if Thomas Jefferson were alive today? What if the founding fathers were still around? What would they say about the way we live? Some of these questions are explored when writer of the Declaration of Independence and philosopher behind the American Revolution, Thomas Jefferson, is transported to the year [...]

Charles at TwoConservatives discusses the latest Prince William County Republican Comittee Meeting, and points out why I’ve always thought that achieving anything worthwhile at the local level is pointless:
The meeting was quite uneventful, just the usually little spats mostly about moving the meeting along, or actually resolving things. We had some fun trying out different [...]

Fred Thompson hasn’t  even entered the race for the Republican nomination, and yet he continues to move forward in the polls
From the latest Rasmussen poll:
Thompson, preparing to formally announce his candidacy, leads the pack in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey with 27% support. That gives him a four-point advantage over former New York [...]

Steven Silver review’s Harry Turtledove’s In At The Death, the apparently final novel in the Timeline-191 series:

Settling Accounts: In at the Death is the last scheduled novel in Harry Turtledove’s massive series following the relations between the United States of America and the [...]

In today’s Washington Post, Sally Quinn writes of supposed rumblings of a movement in the GOP to get rid of Vice-President Dick Cheney
The big question right now among Republicans is how to remove Vice President Cheney from office. Even before this week’s blockbuster series in The Post, discontent in Republican ranks was rising.
As the reputed [...]