MICKEY KAUS: “At this point, does Barack Obama want John Edwards to even show up in Denver, much less give a prime time speech? . . . If you’re an Obama strategist, mightn’t you conclude that the best thing for your candidate would be if the press weighs in quickly and definitively concludes that Edwards is guilty, with the result that he and his whole sordid story go away until after November?” If so, just pass the word and the L.A. Times will be all over the story. With memos to bloggers encouraging them to cover it!

FIGHTING DEPRESSION with electrical brain stimulation: “People with otherwise untreatable depression improved in a small clinical trial after receiving electrical stimulation of a part of the brain that scientists believe regulates sadness. A report this week in the journal Biological Psychiatry said 12 of 20 patients with chronic major depression benefited from the electronic device — including seven whose disease went into remission. The benefits were sustained over the course of the one-year study, researchers said.”

IN THE MAIL: Matthew Randazzo’s Ring of Hell: The Story of Chris Benoit and the Fall of the Pro Wrestling Industry. With a dramatic cover photo.

MICHAEL BARONE: “Sometimes public opinion doesn’t flow smoothly; it shifts sharply when a tipping point is reached. Case in point: gas prices. $3 a gallon gas didn’t change anybody’s mind about energy issues. $4 a gallon gas did. . . . In a country with less in the way of checks and balances, which can be gamed by adroit lobbyists and litigators, we would be building more nuclear plants, and would be drilling offshore and in ANWR. We would be phasing out the corn ethanol subsidies that are enriching Iowa farmers and impoverishing Mexican tortilla eaters, and we would be repealing the 54-cent tariff on Brazilian sugar ethanol (the sugar for which would be produced not in defoliated Amazon rainforests but in the desolate and currently unused certao).”

After 114 years at the same corner of Oakwood Avenue in Elmira Heights, Pierce’s 1894 Restaurant is closing, a corporate officer and family member said Friday.

Sorry to se you go, I enjoyed every delicious meal I ate there.