MORE ON MURTHA: WaPo: Eye-Opening Earmarks.

ANN ALTHOUSE smacks Andrew Sullivan. Hard.

MORE TEA PARTY NEWS:

NEW RICHMOND, Ohio — The flag was prominently displayed Sunday in New Richmond as a crowd of people gathered to celebrate Flag Day with patriotic and political fervor.

Organizers of the Cincinnati Tea Party movement used the symbolic day to encourage political involvement, as the group sets its sight on the national political stage.

“The politicians are disconnected from the citizens. They don’t realize that they still work for us, and too often they go off in their own direction without paying any attention to what the citizens actually want,” said Mike Wilson, president of the Cincinnati Tea Party.

Tea Party organizers said they are trying to encourage political participation in the hopes of influencing the 2010 midterm elections.

An earlier report said there were over 1,000 people there.

MAX BOOT: “If the mullahs were really canny, they would have let Mousavi win.”

DAVE PRICE: The high cost of accommodation. “Just as newly minted President Barack Obama appears bearing apologies and overtures of friendship, Iran’s autocrats seem bent on throwing away the last vestiges of democratic legitimacy the regime possessed by crushing protests, killing unarmed protesters, and arresting the presumptive winner of the election.”

RICH LOWRY: “You have to wonder if the Iranian authorities now regret ‘over-stealing’ the elections? Did the theft have to be quite this blatant?”

A BUNCH OF Father’s Day gift recommendations.

BBC: Unrest Challenges Iran’s Republic.

GEORGE W. BUSH’S message to the Iranian people.

HEY, MAYBE THAT DEMOCRACY-IN-IRAQ THING DID make a difference.

REMEMBER WHEN IT WAS WRONG TO question people’s patriotism? That was then, this is now. “Before you know it, Sullivan will claim the Mormons are behind Ahmadinejad.” Only if it gets attention.

You think that’s mean? You obviously aren’t reading Bill Quick.

UPDATE: Iranian thuggery confuses the Left. “Does the American Left – after eight years of whining about make-believe tyranny – not know how to react to actual tyranny when it sees it in action?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Really, Sully? I mean, really? WTF goes through someone’s mind when they dream up an idiotic comparison between (a) Karl Rove, a Republican political strategist, and (b) Mahmoud Ahmadinejed, a Jew-hating genocidal maniac?”

Hey, don’t dump on Sullivan here. At least he’s picking on Karl Rove and not one of the Palin kids.

YOU’RE NOT GETTING OLDER, YOU’RE GETTING BETTER: Happy Birthday to the U.S. Army.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT: Remembering The Rape of Nanking. “I was struck by the similarity between the reaction of the Chinese civilians and soldiers to their fate and that of many Jews during the Holocaust. Despite plenty of obvious evidence to the contrary, they clung to a belief that they would be okay right up until the very end. The Japanese troops carrying out the killings were often outnumbered ten and even a hundred to one by their prisoners yet there were very few instances of any resistance even though the Chinese likely would have been able to overwhelm their captors had they acted together. It’s probably part of human nature at some level to refuse to accept that a horrible fate awaits and to rationalize your way into inaction. I don’t know if there are any lessons that one can take from this (and hopefully they would never need to be applied), but one seems to be that if armed men come to take you away you should assume the worst. Resistance at that point, even if futile, is probably preferable to the alternative. It reminds me of how people are usually advised that if you are getting car jacked or kidnapped, the best chance of escape is in the initial moments of the attack.”

IRAN TRIES TO END THE “FACEBOOK REVOLUTION.”

So far, not working.

HOPE AND CHANGE: Freed From Guantánamo, Uighur Muslims Bask in Bermuda . “We have ended up in such a beautiful place. We don’t want to look back and we don’t have any hard feelings toward the United States.”

OBAMA’S REACTION TO IRANIAN CHAOS — FAMILIAR? “It reminds me of of George H. W. Bush’s reaction to the events preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall. The best word to describe both administrations is flatfooted. I guess this is the way that all ‘pragmatists’ react when their neat, little assumptions about the world order run into reality.” More on Obama’s reaction from Jake Tapper.

UPDATE: Mike Pence: Obama should speak out in favor of Iranian reformers.

DIGITAL CAMERA UPDATE: People email me for camera advice all the time, but I haven’t shopped for a new camera in a while. I still love my Panasonic Lumix LX-3 — the only “complaint” is that the telephoto isn’t very long, but since I bought if for the wide-angle coverage that’s kind of inevitable — and I still love my Nikon D300. But the new issue of Consumer Reports has a big digital camera survey and if you’re interested you might check it out. They really like the Sony DSC-W300, though it seems a bit pricey to me. They also like the Canon SD880, which is considerably cheaper. In the somewhat more-sophisticated range, they like the Canon Powershot G10.

DPReview is also a good digital-camera resource if you’re interested.

IN NEW YORK CITY, protesting Iranian election fraud. A blog-report with pictures and video.

UPDATE: Constantly updated coverage from Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post. Including: “The students’ plea to Obama: don’t accept these results.”

WHERE IS MY VOTE? Iranians protest in London.

Plus, Video: Iranian thugs beat protester to death in broad daylight. Robust debate . . . .

UPDATE: Also, beating foreign journalists?

IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW: The Empathy Exam.

IN LIGHT OF MY EARLIER POST about how it’s not Rush Limbaugh hollering about “the Jewish Lobby,” a reader emails:

Rush has been downright forceful in defending Israel, yet I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Jew defend him.

It is frightening and sobering for me, as the child of Holocaust survivors, to see my co-religionists align with pals of unambiguous anti-semites like Rev. Wright.

I let my wife choose to raise our kids as protestants, rather than have them risk the fate of my grandparents.

American Jews have cast their lot as poorly as many German Jews did nearly a century ago. I can honestly say I never imagined in my blackest moments I’d see this.

Yes, the mainstreaming of anti-semitism (disguised as being tough on Israel or “Zionists”) has proceeded apace, even while people on the right are the ones called Nazis.

UPDATE: Ron Coleman says get out more.

WORKS FOR ME: Health-Care Debate Could Derail Over Government Plan.

WORRYING TOO MUCH about swine flu?

A FLAG DAY POST from Jules Crittenden.

MORE ON IRAN: “Iran doesn’t have elections, it has circuses.” “Reports that some of the thugs doing the ‘crowd control’ are foreigners, who speak Arabic, not Farsi. These seem to be Hezbollah people, from both Lebanon and Syria.”

Plus, Insurrection: Day 2. Also, Ahmadinejad Or Obama: Who Will Have The Last Laugh? And, Four More Years of Ahmadinejad: Change We Can Believe In . . . .

BOOSTING THE ECONOMY WITH High-Speed Fiber Internet? Well, I like the idea better than auto bailouts . . . .

STOPPING LIVER CANCER with MicroRNA. “This treatment is roughly analogous to a security patch to an operating system.” Faster, please.

IRANIANS PROTEST: Government Cracks Down.

LAST NIGHT at a family get-together, the Insta-Wife was reminiscing about LibbyLand TV dinners for kids, and how they seemed like such a big deal at the time, even though they were really crappy by today’s standards. Naturally, the subject has already been blogged.

A GOOD REVIEW FOR Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show start.

VIDEO: Jay Leno reviews Zero S electric motorcycle.

AN IRAN ROUNDUP at Gateway Pundit.

TYLER COWEN ON MEDICARE SPENDING: “MEDICARE expenditures threaten to crush the federal budget, yet the Obama administration is proposing that we start by spending more now so we can spend less later. This runs the risk of becoming the new voodoo economics. If we can’t realize significant savings in health care costs now, don’t expect savings in the future, either.”

I agree with Virginia Postrel: Fix Medicare First! “Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let’s see what ‘better management’ looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country. ”

UPDATE: “The great thing about government health care is … you can start denying coverage for demographics that don’t vote for you.”

NOT SO RECOMMENDED: So the Insta-Daughter had pre-ordered The Sims 3 and eagerly awaited its arrival. Installing it was kind of iffy at first, but downloading an updated graphics driver and installing the DirectX version from the disk fixed the constant-crash problem. But the game itself isn’t that good. According to the Insta-Daughter, “If I’d had this first, I’d think The Sims 2 was a great upgrade.” The user reviews seem to be consistent with that, so be warned.

READER JUSTIN BINIK-THOMAS emails from a rally in New Richmond, Ohio organized by the Cincinnati Tea Party folks: “Over 1000 in attendance so far.” He sends this picture.

AS SEEN ON TV: Testing out the Titan peeler.

THE PEOPLE WHO’LL BE PAYING THE PRICE AREN’T GETTING A VOICE: Climate Change Treaty, to Go Beyond the Kyoto Protocol, Is Expected by the Year’s End.

IN THE MAIL: From the folks at Baen Books, Of Berserkers, Swords and Vampires: A Saberhagen Retrospective. I’m a big Saberhagen fan — Empire of the East is terrific, and the Berserker stories are excellent, and his Dracula retelling (from Dracula’s point of view) in The Dracula Tape is brilliant.

WASHINGTON POST: Obama’s Spending Plans May Pose Political Risks: Concern Mounts in White House as 2010 Elections Loom. A “whiff of desperation?”

Gee, what could they be worried about?

On the other hand, Obama’s got this going for him: “The question is whether the Republicans will be smart enough to take advantage of this.”

UPDATE: From Joe Biden: Stimulus apologies. “Everyone guessed wrong.”

CONOR CLARKE ON THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ON GAY MARRIAGE. I particularly like the accompanying images.

IN MICHIGAN, TEA PARTIERS LIKE THE FAIR TAX: “The Tea Party movement in Michigan moved from the streets to the conference room Saturday, with activists meeting to discuss the movement’s future. . . . The so-called Fair Tax beat out alternative proposals to require two-thirds majorities in the Legislature to raise taxes; the enactment of spending limits on state and local government, and a plan to hold the benefits of government employees to the average level in the private sector. Asked if that means the Tea Party movement is becoming a Fair Tax movement, convention organizer Wendy Day said: ‘No. It tells me that a lot of Fair Taxers came to the convention.’ Day said the primary purpose of the convention and the Tea Parties — a series of well-attended rallies held across the country April 15 — is to channel citizen outrage over the expansion of government and soaring spending into activism.”

KENNETH ANDERSON: “If They Can Find Time for Feminist Theory, They Can Find Time for Edmund Burke.”

NOT THAT THEY’LL STOP SELLING ‘EM STUFF OR ANYTHING: EU Nations Criticize Iran Election, Concerned Over Protests.

#CNNFAIL: Twitterverse slams network’s Iran absence. When CNN isn’t covering, I always suspect an Eason Jordan-style deal now. (Via Dan Riehl).

SONJA SCHMIDT: Laugh Clowns, Laugh.

ROGER SIMON: Netanyahu, Obama and the Iranian Coup d’Etat.

WELL, THEN: Ahmadinejad defends vote as ‘real and free’.

A PHOTO FROM IRAN.

CHRIS DODD UPDATE: Hartford Courant: Loans Probe, Value Of Cottage Bedevil Dodd.

A year ago, Portfolio magazine reported that Dodd was enjoying more than $800,000 in favorable loans from subprime mortgage titan Countrywide Financial as a member of the “Friends of Angelo.” That was the exclusive club of borrowers given special treatment at the behest of Countrywide co-founder and president Angelo Mozilo.

In 2007, Countrywide, based in southern California, was the first major lender to collapse in the upheavals of the financial industry. Many expensive troubles followed and continue. Fingers continue to be pointed, blame apportioned and explanations floated.

Dodd trotted out myriad excuses for not honoring his early pledge to release his mortgage documents to the public last year. He held a snap press conference one Monday morning last winter and flashed a pile of papers purported to be his mortgage documents at some reporters. No copies were allowed and, curiously, no list was provided of what was in the stack to the few who were invited to Dodd’s office and the many who were not. . . .

With the political atmosphere heavy with suspicion, Dodd obtained a new appraisal on his 10-acre waterfront home in Ireland after the unusual circumstances around his ownership of it were raised in this column in February. . . . Last month, Dodd told Newsweek he paid Kessinger $207,000. While Dodd continues to revise the details of that 2002 deal, an immutable, nagging fact remains: Dodd appears to have received from Kessinger a gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which he never reported, in the year after Dodd obtained a presidential pardon for their friend Downe.

Read the whole thing.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS:

John Bailey thought it was great when his neighbor was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007.

“Not everyone lives next door to a congresswoman,” he said.

But two years later, he doesn’t feel so lucky. The congresswoman’s house is abandoned and in disrepair, “a blight on the neighborhood,” Bailey said.

He said he thinks the way Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., has treated her home tells far more about her than her voting record.

“I wouldn’t want anyone that irresponsible to represent me,” said Bailey, like Richardson a liberal Democrat. “What I don’t get is how she has the time to visit with Fidel Castro but doesn’t have time for her own house. If you can’t manage your own household, you probably shouldn’t get involved in international affairs.”

He’s not alone. Neighbors have complained to the city, written letters and e-mails to Richardson and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but the three-bedroom house remains an eyesore. Neighbors just wish she would sell it or let it go into foreclosure, anything to get it into the hands of someone who would care.

Indeed.

HOPE AND CHANGE: “According to a new poll, 29 percent of Iranians hold a positive view toward the United States, down from 34 percent in February 2008.”

MORE “TEA PARTY” NEWS: Michigan Tea Party Convention aims to tap into anger beyond party politics.

Arkansas Tea Party Rally on June 15.

Bellingham TEA Party organizers plan for more events.

Plus, this from Iowa.

COOL: A $199 netbook computer that runs on AA batteries.

BUSINESS WEEK: From bank bailouts to auto bailouts to executive pay, business is increasingly nervous about the heavy hand of the Obama Administration. And this, of course, hurts investment and, hence, the economy.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Iran on Fire (Continuously updated). Lots of pictures and video.

TEA PARTY UPDATE: Hundreds Rally at the Fairtax Tea Party Protest In Columbia, Missouri.

NATE SILVER: Statistical Report Purporting to Show Rigged Iranian Election Is Flawed. Hmm. I’m inclined to suspect fraud based on who’s involved, but that’s a separate question.

SWINE FLU UPDATE: “A new analysis of the current swine-origin H1N1 influenza A virus suggests that transmission to humans occurred several months before recognition of the existing outbreak.”

WHAT’S ON a helicopter pilot’s bookshelf.

My 18-year-old nephew is a helicopter pilot. I’m not sure what’s on his shelf, but I gave him a copy of John Birmingham’s How to Be A Man a few years ago. It seems to have worked.

OH, GOODY: North Korea Declares All-Out Push for Nuclear Weapons.

GOOD NEWS: Prokineticin 2 Cuts Appetite In Mice. Lose weight painlessly! But wait, there’s a catch: “The brain injection part isn’t exactly appealing.”

Still, a happy forecast: “While we are living in an era with a high prevalence of obesity we are nearing the end of that era. 20 years from now I expect obesity to be rare in developed countries as drugs that suppress appetite hit the market.” Or, alternatively, the economic collapse may just solve the problem for us sooner . . . .

HOWARD KURTZ: “Most major newspapers haven’t covered the Letterman/Palin imbroglio, and it does make me wonder whether there’s a different standard for Palin.”

Related: Sarah Palin, en famille.

THE NAVY’S NEW 100 Kilowatt laser weapons. You need a pretty thick extension cord, though.

THE NEW PALM PRE: Better than the new iPhone?

ON THE LATEST PJM POLITICAL: Will Soft Despotism Mean Lights Out For The West? With Mark Steyn.

AN INSIDER-TRADING SCANDAL FOR DICK DURBIN? More here. “The Illinois senator’s 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. The same day, he bought $43,562 worth of Berkshire Hathaway’s Class B stock, the disclosure shows.”

ANOTHER CAYMAN TECH REPORT: So while I was on Grand Cayman, we rented these underwater scooters from the folks at DiveTech. I last did an electric-scooter dive in 2003, and the technology has come quite a ways. The newer ones are more reliable, have controllable speed (instead of relying on you pulsing them on-off) and — most importantly — can be ridden in a human-torpedo fashion rather than held onto by both hands; there’s a saddle on the front, and you straddle the scooter instead of having it drag you along. The human-torpedo approach is a lot better. You just steer by leaning your body where you want to go, and the electric-motor noise (a major issue last time I did this) is much reduced by virtue of much greater distance between the motor and your ears. The rental was a bit steep ($40/hour) but the scooter lets you go places that are kind of far to swim. I don’t think I’d buy one, but they’ve got their virtues, and the technology has improved a lot in just a few years.

Downside: When you go fast, the drag on the regulator in your mouth becomes noticeable. Also, while you can cover a lot of undersea ground while riding these, you don’t see nearly as much of any particular patch. Still, they’re nice, particularly at the Cobalt Coast area, where the Cayman Wall is a pretty long surface-swim from the dock.

“REGIME UNCERTAINTY” KILLS A PROJECT: New downtown Knoxville Mercy hospital shelved. “Mercy Health Partners said Thursday it has shelved plans to build a new downtown hospital because of the economy and uncertainty over the national health care debate. . . . The Obama administration has announced its intention to enact sweeping health care reform this year. ‘The only certainty is that reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid are going to go down,’ Askew said. Mercy Health has also put on hold any future capital expenditures at all of its campuses other than what has already been started.”

JON HENKE ON BLOOD LIBELS:

The ongoing efforts to conflate the Tiller and Holocaust Museum murderers with the Right, conservatives or Republicans – or to imply that criticism of government is responsible for these murders – is absurd and offensive. Would the critics change their political views if it turned out that one of the killers was a left wing militant? No.

What’s more, it’s not something any of the critics actually believe. Recall their outrage when Andrew Sullivan suggested that a fringe on the Left would fight against the US. Of the idea that this fringe on the Left would “ramp up its hatred in the days and months ahead”, Duncan Black said, “Sullivan was one of the earliest adopters of the idea that the most appropriate response to September 11 was to figure how to to use it to pit American against American.”

On the other hand, there’s this: “Conservatives who object to being tied to Von Brunn were eagerly associating Obama with Ayers and Wright.”

Except, you know, that Obama actually did associate with Ayers and Wright, while it’s not as if anybody who matters on the right was hanging out with von Brunn.

BLOOD SHORTAGES IN KNOXVILLE: I’ve donated twice this year; guess I’ll have to do it again soon. I’m afraid this problem is more general, though.

HARDLY SURPRISING: Massive Fraud Alleged In Iranian Vote.

UPDATE: ACORN in Iran?

ANOTHER UPDATE: Can A Nervous Regime Strike Fear Once More Into The Population It Fears Most?

A BRACING NEW ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: “Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic ‘shrink to survive’ proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.”

Best line: “People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow.”

UPDATE: Asking the tough questions: “You can’t just return to nature by removing the streets and buildings. What will these non-urban buffer zones really look like? Even if it is something like a forest — made of very fast-growing trees? — or meadow, what sorts of animals — rodent and human — will run wild there?”

And reader Robert Tipton writes:

I don’t know, the meadows line is certainly terrific, but I liked: “Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity.”

That line just absolutely captures the ‘can do’ spirit which exemplifies the American spirit – well, the heavily unionized and “what will the government do for us” version of it, not that ‘old-fashioned’ kind which built Flint in the first place…

Hope and change!

IN THE MAIL: Rise of the Terran Empire, the next volume in the reissue of Poul Anderson’s classic Polesotechnic League stories.

CANADA’S JENNIFER LYNCH tries to keep Ezra Levant off of TV. It didn’t work out: “To their great credit, CTV refused to be bullied — and it was Lynch who wound up off the show.” You’d think they’d have learned not to tangle with him by now . . . Kudos to the CTV folks, too.

ROGER SIMON: How Fraudulent Was The Iranian Election? I’d like to see a mass popular uprising that overthrows the mullahs, and I heard some people sounding positive about that on TV last night, but I’m, sadly, skeptical. I’ve been hearing predictions of such an uprising for years. I’d love to be wrong, though.

Meanwhile, Obama Administration officials suspect fraud. Gee, do you think?

UPDATE: Reader Kevin Harmon sends this video of protests in Tehran.

According to the comments, they’re chanting “Death to this liar government.” Works for me!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some Tehran street photos on Flickr, via reader Nathan Branch.

FROM BUSH TO OBAMA — CONTINUITY CONTINUES! “Obama says he opposes DOMA as a policy matter and wants to repeal it. Nothing in the DOJ brief prevents him from acting on that belief. He is, he says, a ‘fierce advocate’ for gay and lesbian Americans. When does that part start?”

Andrew Sullivan, meanwhile, says the brief is “defensible” though “terribly deflating.”

THAT SHOULD BE POPULAR: House Health-Care Proposal Adds $600 Billion in Taxes.

A REPORT ON THE HOUSTON TEA PARTY’S PELOSI PROTEST:

Hundreds of protesters showed up outside the Wortham Theater in Houston to let House Speaker Nancy Pelosi know they weren’t happy with Washington. Protesters held signs saying they were upset with the stimulus plan. They also called for tax cuts, spending cuts and a major change in congress.

Protest video at the link. And another report here:

Those who attended paid $19 to $144 to hear her answer questions about international and national affairs and discuss her book, Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters.

In front of the Wortham Center, activists offered their own greetings to those attending the speech.

“Turn back while you still have the chance! Don’t support the liar!” Doug Audirsch, of Porter, shouted while hoisting a sign over his head that called for “Less 1984 — More 1776.” . . . Police estimated the crowd at 600. Houston Police Department officials at the scene said there were no reported incidents or arrests.

These protests just keep happening. Here’s a picture from a reader.

TAKING TIME OUT TO HATE: It’s Not Rush Limbaugh Hollering About the “Jewish Lobby.”

I DON’T BLAME GAY ACTIVISTS FOR BEING UPSET about the Obama Administration’s position on the Defense Of Marriage Act, but I think it’s wrong to attack Mormons. Instead, I think they’d be better off pushing hard for DOMA repeal, and putting Obama — and Congressional Democrats — on the spot. The post-Prop 8 attacks on Mormons, etc., seem to have caused gay marriage to drop in the polls. Meanness seldom sells. “You can’t make the point that people should be allowed to love by advocating hate.”

MEGAN MCARDLE ON NOMINAL VS. REAL FRIENDSHIP: “As far as I could make out, they were trying to prove that what had happened to me couldn’t possibly happen to them.”

You get a lot of that if you have a serious health problem, too.

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: Military Covering Up Fireballs From Space. “Priceless observational information derived from the spacecraft were made quickly available, giving researchers such insights as time, a location, height above the surface, as well as light-curves to help pin down the amount of energy churned out from the fireballs. . . . But all that ended within the last few months, leaving scientists blind-sided and miffed by the shift in policy. The hope is that the policy decision will be revisited and overturned.”

CHICAGO-ON-THE-PERSIAN GULF: Ahmadinejad Is Declared Victor in Iran. “Fraud has been a prominent concern for Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, with many of his allies warning that Mr. Ahmadinejad could use the levers of state — the military, the Revolutionary Guard, and the Basij militia — to cajole or intimidate voters, or even engage in outright fraud.” Why would anyone expect an honest election from these people?

BITES FROM THE APPLE: Much more on the iPhone 3GS.

THE AUDACITY OF BULLYING: “The important thing is for Obama to be tough. Because when you can’t be tough with Iran, Syria, North Korea or Russia the next best thing is to beat up on Israel, right?”

I WISH I WERE A SENATOR, SO I COULD GET THIS KIND OF HOUSING-MARKET APPRECIATION: Dodd’s Irish Cottage: Was $190,000. Now $658,000. “A new appraisal of the Irish cottage owned by Sen. Christopher Dodd concludes that it is worth about three times as much as Dodd has been reporting on his financial disclosure forms. . . . Dodd has been criticized for low-balling the worth of the cottage in his disclosure forms. Questions also have been raised about his original purchase of the cottage with a Kansas City businessman William Kessinger, who he met through long-time campaign contributor Edward Downe.”

USA TODAY: SO HOW’S THAT “STIMULUS” WORKING OUT? “People who still have jobs are faring worse than at any time since the Great Depression, a USA TODAY analysis of employment data found. Furloughs, pay cuts and reduced hours are taking a toll on workers who so far have escaped job cuts. . . . Unemployment rates for workers 45 and older have soared to their highest level since at least 1948, when the government started tracking it.”

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: “Reading Judith Warner’s column this morning on the recent upsurge in hate crimes, I was struck by what she left out. Two weeks ago, a Muslim extremist shot two soldiers, killing one, outside a recruiting station in Arkansas. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad acted alone, just as James von Brunn apparently did. He was, like von Brunn, captive to a supremacist ideology that, in his mind, justified the murder of an innocent man. Like von Brunn, authorities said, he had mapped out Jewish targets for potential attack. And yet, no mention of the hate crime committed by a Muslim; only hate crimes committed by white, right-wing extremists were worthy of mention in Warner’s column. This is true for other columnists on the liberal side of the spectrum. The murder of Private William Long seems to be of no concern, and without larger meaning.”

WHAT EVERYBODY NEEDS: A Goat Tower.

BILL MAHER IS ALREADY SICK OF SEEING OBAMA ON TV. It’s gonna be a long four years, Bill . . . .

PHIL BREDESEN WILL let the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act pass into law without his signature. A.C. Kleinheider thinks that Bredesen is confused, though: “If he feels the way he obviously does, he should have vetoed it. Otherwise he should have let it pass without comment.”

A BUNCH OF markdowns on cookware.

BOY HIT BY METEORITE. No, really, that’s the story, though it’s a bit sketchy on details. Wouldn’t be the first person so struck, though. In fact, the famous Sylacauga Meteorite struck a woman in my dad’s home town.

FROM CONSERVATIVE LESBIAN CYNTHIA YOCKEY, More on how to get Letterman fired — and why Republicans need to do so. Do they? Well, Democrats would do it.

Anybody interview Don Imus on this subject?

UPDATE: Austin Businessman Files FCC Complaint over Letterman Joke.

GETTING PEOPLE TO DRIVE LESS: Good for the environment, but bankrupting toll roads: “Traffic on thirty-three toll facilities dropped 4 percent in December 2008 compared to 2006 — the largest such plunge since data was first collected in 1970. Revenue did not fall as sharply as traffic because most of the toll roads introduced sharp rate hikes to cover losses. During the same period, stand-alone toll road revenue dropped only 1.5 percent. For some roads, that may not be enough.” So if fewer people are driving on them, raise the prices! Makes sense to me!

ANDREW SULLIVAN IS BEATING ME IN ANN ALTHOUSE’S POLL. And I haven’t even followed the link to see what it’s about. Maybe later. But I saw this in the comments: “Right now Andrew’s head is about to explode over The One’s decision about DOMA…as is a lot of the liberal gay (redundant, I know) blogsphere. And I say this as a card carrying member of the gay community….no ‘buyers remorse’ for me.” Well, if I were Andrew I’d be feeling pretty taken-in by Obama — on gay marriage, torture, “responsible” spending, etc. And the DOMA thing has got to hurt. But this degree of cognitive dissonance takes a while to work itself out. Let’s see what Andrew’s saying — on everything — in a few months. I find it’s like the weather in East Tennessee: If you don’t like it, don’t worry. It’ll change.

UPDATE: Okay, I finally gave in and looked. He says my concern about federal spending is fake. Ho hum. My question: Why should we listen to Sullivan regarding Obama and the economy when, so far, he’s gotten things so spectacularly wrong about Obama and torture, Obama and gay rights, etc., etc.? Oh, well. Like I said, his position will change — and those who disagree with his new position will be just as evil and partisan in his eyes as the people who disagree with him now. It’s not just important to have the right opinions: You have to have them at the right time.

UNHAPPY AT AMERICABLOG: Obama DOJ lies to Politico in defending hate brief against gays. You know, one of the things I thought I’d like about Obama was his gay-rights position. But now I’m wondering if a Cheney administration wouldn’t be more liberal on this subject.

UPDATE: Declan McCullagh: Gay Rights Groups Irate After Obama Administration Lauds Defense Of Marriage Act. “In hindsight, perhaps, it should be no surprise that Mr. Obama is shying away from this front in the cultural wars. He broke faith with liberal supporters over warrantless wiretaps, the repetition of the Bush administration’s arguments on ‘state secrets,’ and the continuation of the Bush administration’s indefinite military detentions of terrorism suspects. The surprise should be that some supporters seem to have confused a politician’s campaign promises with his actual policies.” With fierce moral urgency.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Boy, this is turning out to be a shitty Pride Month.”

MORE: Moe Lane: “I thought that I’d at least like Obama’s position on gay issues, too. It’s just that I more or less stopped doing that when I saw the exit polls for Proposition 8.”

MORE BREAKING COVERAGE ON IRAN: At PJTV.

T.V.-WATCHING reduces your sleep time. And not enough sleep makes you fat. The solution: Ban late-night TV! Perhaps we can subject David Letterman to a “fat tax.” All for the public health of course.

ADVICE TO THE G.O.P.: In order to rebuild, Republicans need to identify the people who have something—good ideas, popularity, vision, and a good record. And, of course, pay close attention to InstaPundit!