Conservative comedian Dennis Miller “is joining Fox News as a contributor to ‘Hannity & Colmes’ this autumn, according to a network executive.” Miller did a stint on H&C in 2003, which led to a now-cancelled CNBC primetime show. A preview of what you can expect.

“The heat wave broke more than 2,300 daily temperature records for the month and eclipsed more than 50 records for the highest temperatures in any July, according to the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.”

Click on the image above to see how your state stacked up.

Last month the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank, fired John Hulsman. Heritage refuses to say exactly why they let him go, but the New Republic reports the “reasons for Hulsman’s departure” are “perfectly evident“; he criticized the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Hulsman previously had kept his dissent to himself, but “years of insurgency, civil war, and general chaos” in Iraq led him to speak out.

In an essay last year for The National Interest, Hulsman took issue with Bush’s policy in Iraq:

[N]eoconservatives, through their policies of expending blood and treasure for problematic gains such as Iraq, are significantly retarding America’s ability to act against the true barbarians at the gate – Al-Qaeda and Islamist extremists.

And Hulsman criticized the Bush administration’s refusal to talk to regimes it dislikes, specifically Iran:

America, on the other hand, having determined the mullahs in Iran were evil, disdained to engage them. But we cannot only conduct diplomatic relations with Canada; I have always naively thought a major reason for diplomacy was talking to those one didn’t agree with, in an effort to modify their behavior to suit one’s own national interests.

These critiques may seem mild, but as Chris Preble of the Cato Institute explains: “At Heritage, anything that smacks of criticism of Bush will not be tolerated.”

The Northern Marianas are the site of America’s most shoddy labor practices. Human “brokers” bring thousands there to work as sex slaves and in cramped sweatshop garment factories where clothes (complete with “Made in U.S.A.” tag) have been produced for all the major brands.

The workers are “paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage,” and are “forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed.”

Thanks to Jack Abramoff, who lobbied against better worker protections, that’s the way conditions stayed. But Abramoff couldn’t do his work alone. McClatchy reported this weekend:

Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) helped Jack Abramoff secure a lucrative lobbying contract with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in 1999 and then assisted the now-disgraced lobbyist’s efforts to route federal money to the islands and defend its garment industry, newly obtained documents show.

The California Republican accepted $14,000 in contributions from Abramoff… The first contribution came just a few weeks before Doolittle endorsed the election of a key commonwealth politician crucial to Abramoff winning the contract. The last Abramoff contribution came as the Northern Marianas lobbying contract was expiring in December 2001.

Doolittle’s excuse: he had “traveled to the Northern Marianas in 1999 on a congressional trip and saw none of the abuses or ‘reported inhumane working conditions.’” Which obviously means they weren’t happening.

“The Texas Republican party asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block an appeals court ruling that says the name of indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay must appear on the November ballot…The case was routed to Justice Antonin Scalia, who handles appeals from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.”

UPDATE: Scalia denies DeLay’s appeal. That was fast.

BP’s press release regarding the shutdown of its Prudhoe Bay operations:

ANCHORAGE — BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. has begun an orderly and phased shutdown of the Prudhoe Bay oil field following the discovery of unexpectedly severe corrosion and a small spill from a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line. Shutting down the field will take days to complete. Over time, these actions will reduce Alaska North Slope oil production by an estimated 400,000 barrels per day.

There is nothing “unexpected” about the corrosion or the spill. In early March, a severly corroded BP pipe leaked 134,000 to 267,000 gallons of crude at Prudhoe Bay. It was “considered the largest oil spill ever in the energy-rich North Slope.” Government reports concluded that six other places along the pipeline also had the same corrosion.

Additionally, just last month, BP had to shut down 12 Prudhoe Bay oil wells after whistleblowers revealed the leaks.

Today on Fox News, Neil Cavuto’s guests said that the shutting down of BP’s operations means we should starting drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But what this incident really illustrates is the extreme risk of entrusting the Alaskan wilderness to the the oil industry.

The Alaska Wilderness League and Richard A. Fineberg have more on BP’s environmental record in Alaska.

following BP’s shutdown of its Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska. “It takes very little to drive up prices,” a spokesman for the auto club said. “It shows how fragile the…system is.”

“A U.S. military court in Baghdad heard graphic testimony on Monday of how three U.S. soldiers took turns raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl before murdering her and her family.” During the hearing, John Aravosis notes, “Defense Attorney Captain Jimmie Culp was blowing chewing gum bubbles while [client Sgt. Anthony] Yribe, sitting to his left, began sucking on a red lollipop during the testimony.”