SALENA ZITO: Walpin’s Firing Reflects Money’s Role in Politics.

In the political patronage system, if big-time donors think they are being harassed – which may simply mean they have run afoul of the law or of reporting requirements – they are too-often forgiven, depending on the seriousness of the offense and how likely it is to be publicly reported or prosecuted.

The press could help keep things honest, but we all know that the press is working with fewer resources and fewer readers – and Walpin’s firing is not a YouTube sort of story.

Well, that and they’re doing their best to protect Obama from any bad news. (Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!)

GOOGLE: High Tech Censor.

MARKDOWNS on exercise and fitness gear.

IRANIAN UNIONS ready to strike?

SOME MORE Iran protest video.

HEH: White House Says Obama Health Care Promises Should Not Be Taken Literally.

AN IRANIAN REVOLUTION UPDATE, at The Berman Post.

THE CAPRICIA MARSHALL TAX STORY makes TaxProf. Also Skippy, who observes: “Apparently this woman is clueless on the protocol we working slobs of the country have to adhere to. If one of us ‘non wealthy, non connected’ americans didn’t file tax returns for 2 years, we’d have the irs breathing down our neck threatening to take everything we have.”

Plus, from The Tax Lawyer: “I was going to add up how many Obama appointees/employees have tax problems when it dawned on me that I could save time by counting the ones who don’t.”

And since some readers questioned whether this story amounted to much, I emailed actual tax professor Paul Caron of TaxProf, and he responded:

I think it is important because (1) it fits the narrative of the Obama Administration’s ardor to raise taxes on everyone else when they themselves disdain their obligations, and only pay their taxes/file their returns when outed in the nomination process; (2) her job is protocol for goodness sense — one would think attention to detail is job requirement #1; (3) her explanation — blaming the rich cardiologist husband and the post office — is especially lame; (4) we’ll see if the tax refund storyline is really true — are they really that rich that they didn’t notice or care about the supposed $37k in tax refunds; (5) even if it is, the size of the fine for noncompliance does not excuse the failure to follow the law; if you’re stopped for DUI, it’s no defense to say that you didn’t kill anybody; and (6) the class distinction (as you note) is especially striking — for lower income folks, the “innocent spouse” defense is very hard to win, and often results in shackling the non-represented wife with the tax obligations of the crooked husband who has fled; here, the rich lady’s defense of blaming the rich husband is more acceptable in elite circles.

Point #4 reminds me of the great scene in Caddyshack with Chevy Chase:

Here’s an uncashed check for $10,000.

Keep it.

There’s a bunch of them! And a summons.

It’s yours.

Pretty pathetic, Ty.

Pathetic? Maybe for you, Lacey.

For me, there’s a subtle perfection in everything I do.

Well, I feel that way myself.

ANXIETY ABOUT THE DOLLAR hits a new high.

I wonder what’s got people so nervous?

SEE, THEY CAN KEEP SECRETS: Journalism and “professional courtesy.” “We are increasingly living in a society that plays by Ottoman rules; meaning that what the rules are depend – of course – on who you are. That’s not something we will survive for long, and simply put, it needs to be exposed and stamped out anywhere we see it.”

ED DRISCOLL: Let the man finish his ice cream!

Plus, tone deaf?

AT CAR LUST, authors reminisce about dads and their cars.

UPDATE: More from Rand Simberg.

THE LAST WORD ON LETTERMAN (and Playboy), from Sonja Schmidt.

THOUGHTS ON a free society.

KANGAROO COURT UPDATE: The Calgary Herald denounces Canada’s despotic “human rights” commissions. “In these despotic forums, the vehicle of choice for those who wish to silence those whose opinions they don’t like, what is conventionally called a human rights complaint is less accusation, than old-style Soviet denunciation. Not surprisingly, with no right to plead truth or fair comment, and with no obligation upon the prosecution to prove intent or follow rules of evidence–circumstantial evidence and hearsay is accepted in human-rights cases — defendants hardly ever emerge victorious from these proceedings.” Should these be established in the United States, it would be ground for revolution, or at least some “out of doors political activity” of the tar-and-feathers variety.

THOUGHTS ON politicians and father issues.

IMAGES FROM THE JAPANESE Kaguya Lunar Probe.

TRYING TO HIDE THE TRUTH IN IRAN. Not working so well.

Plus, “Her name was Neda.”

UPDATE: A martyr?

A BUNCH OF interesting food links.

WANT TO LIVE LONGER? Consider being “slightly chubby.” “People who are a little overweight at age 40 live six to seven years longer than very thin people, whose average life expectancy was shorter by some five years than that of obese people, the study found.”

RASMUSSEN: Obama approval index goes negative for the first time. “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 32% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That’s the President’s lowest rating to date and the first time the Presidential Approval Index has fallen below zero for Obama.”

GOOD ADVICE FROM JEFFREY GOLDBERG: “The overarching goal is to see the birth of a democratic Iran, not to make ourselves feel good, or get in the way.”

HMM: Arrests of Rafsanjani kin show Iran clerics split. “Iran’s government said Sunday it arrested the daughter and four other relatives of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the country’s most powerful men, in a move that exposed a rift among the ruling Islamic clerics over the disputed presidential election.” That’s not a move that suggests confidence in their position.

GETTING MOSQUITOES to poison their own larvae. Works for me. Every time a mosquito dies, the world becomes a slightly better place.

UPDATE: Reader Duke DeLand emails: “Watch out, Glenn, the PETA folks will be after you for trying to commit ‘Xenocide’ on mosquitoes!”

I’m more worried about the PETI folks.

NEWSWEEK: Obama Closes Doors on Openness. “For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies.”

Hope and Change! Same!

USING MASS TRANSIT can ruin your hearing.

I THINK SO: If it’s too big to fail, is it too big to exist?

DEALING WITH IRAN: Reader Paul Levitt is reminded of these words from John Howard:

If you imagine that you can buy immunity from fanatics by curling yourself in a ball, apologising for the world – to the world – for who you are and what you stand for and what you believe in, not only is that morally bankrupt, but it’s also ineffective. Because fanatics despise a lot of things and the things they despise most is weakness and timidity. There has been plenty of evidence through history that fanatics attack weakness and retreating people even more savagely than they do defiant people.

I miss him.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: What do these first six months mean?

IN THE MAIL: From Mark Kurlansky, The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food–Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food.

SOME DEMONSTRATION VIDEO FROM TEHRAN.

Knoxville, Tennessee. Gay Street, at lunchtime.

RAND SIMBERG: First, they came for the pilots.

RON ROSENBAUM: CNN’s Shocking Suck-Up to Iran’s Fascists.

DAN RIEHL HAS lots of disturbing video from Iran.

HAPPY HAPPY: Swine flu ‘could infect up to half the population.’

JOHN KASS: Obama’s political play should shock no one.

It’s amusing to watch the Washington political establishment feign shock, now that President Barack Obama’s reform administration has used a clay foot to vigorously kick one inspector general and boot another out the door.

One inspector general foolishly investigated a friend of the president. Another inspector general audited those juicy bonuses given to AIG executives as part of $700 billion federal bailout of the financial industry. . . .

The use of political muscle may be prohibited in the mythic transcendental fairyland where much of the Obama spin originates, sprouting green and lush, like the never-ending fields of primo Hopium.

But our president is from Chicago. Obama’s Media Merlin David Axelrod and chief of staff Rahm Emanuel come right from Chicago Democratic machine boss Mayor Richard Daley. They don’t believe in fairies.

Daley can’t wait to be rid of his own inspector general, David Hoffman, who had the audacity to question why Daley’s nephew received $68 million in city pension funds to invest. The mayor insists he didn’t know anything about it. Nobody with a functioning brain believes the mayor.

It’s the Chicago Way, which doesn’t have much to do with “hope and change,” as the rubes are discovering. . . .

TEHRAN: “Residents of the area described firefights after protesters grabbed weapons from security forces.”

ANN BARTOW: “Obama won my support by making claims he is not living up to in a number of contexts, and he deserves to be called on it.”

HEH. Unintentional irony on the New York Times front page today:

Thanks to reader Shelley Hartman for the tip.

HAPPY FATHER’S DAY: On the latest Ask Dr. Helen. (Bumped).

TOM MAGUIRE: Emotion trumps research every time.

ANTHONY RANDAZZO: Government action caused the economic crisis, not the free market.

Related: An economic “roadmap to nowhere.”

FARHAD MANJOO: Why newsprint beats the Kindle.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

DEREGULATION UPDATE: Distillery Bill Passes: “Moonshiners could face new competition from legal distilleries in as many as 44 Tennessee counties, including several in the Knoxville area, under legislation given final approval in the waning hours of the 2009 General Assembly.”

ARRH! German Member of Parliament Joins the Pirate Party.

MORE Americorps developments.

VIRGINIA POSTREL ON NAOMI WOLF ON ANGELINA JOLIE:

Unlike Paskin, I do not regard Wolf as “a serious feminist and thinker.” She’s a feminist, certainly, but neither serious nor a thinker. She is an emoter, whose work typically generalizes from her narcissistic neediness to “the female experience.” It is usually an intellectually frivolous approach.

But this time it works brilliantly, though not in the way Wolf intends.

Read the whole thing.

QUESTION: Does Obama Care About The Gays?

VIDEO: Urban survivalists.

UPDATE: The BlogProf says we’re just catching up to Detroit.

AN IRANIAN OPPOSITION AD, with English subtitles.

CONTINUOUS IRAN COVERAGE from Nico Pitney.

Plus, Iranian-Americans demonstrate in California.

THERE WILL BE A LOT OF “TEA PARTY” PROTESTS ON JULY 4: Here’s a list.

CAR LUST: Remembering the MGB.

WOMEN AND THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION. More thoughts here.

OLD PEOPLE may be immune to swine flu.

TWITTER: Compare and contrast.

TRANSATLANTIC POLITICS: Iranian minister still invited at G8 meeting next week.

INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS IN IRAN:

I don’t know where this uprising is leading. I do know some police units are wavering. That commander talking about his family was not alone. There were other policemen complaining about the unruly Basijis. Some security forces just stood and watched. “All together, all together, don’t be scared,” the crowd shouted.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: “Iran is heading for a revolution.” Let’s hope.

DON SURBER: Don’t Become West Virginia. “If poverty is so good, then why do we have anti-poverty programs? Using her logic, we should have pro-poverty programs.” Well, that’s pretty much what’s going on right now . . . .

PRESIDENT EMILY LITELLA.

Hey, I got to this one first.

VIDEO: The exciting world of giant Tesla coils.

DANIEL DREZNER: “I’m pretty sure supreme leaders in Iran don’t change political tack because of mass protests — it undercuts their claim to be, you know, supreme leaders. . . . I’m not sure that Ahmadinejad and Khamenei will be out of power soon. What I am pretty sure of is that the only way they’re going to stay in power from hereon in is through a display of brute force on a Tiananmen-like scale.”

FROM PRESIDENT OBAMA, a new statement on Iran. “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.”

UPDATE: Andrew Malcolm is unimpressed: “The fact that Obama quotes the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, not exactly a religious icon in the Muslim world, which will get him all over the U.S. news on an otherwise slow summer Saturday, indicates what audience the chief executive is also trying to reach.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Very concerned about being “very concerned.” “Perhaps after a whole week of cringe-inducing passivity, saner voices prevailed upon the president. Maybe now the White House realizes it is time to get on the right side of history. And those apologists who cheered Obama’s paralysis will of course now celebrate the more robust language. This is what they wanted all along, right? Well, hardly, but the criticism of those conservatives and some brave Democrats who pleaded with the president to get off the fence will go down the memory hole. The president’s spinners now will no longer need to excuse the inexcusable. What a relief that must be.”

Plus, “Deer in the Iranian Headlights.” Well, I’m just happy that he’s finally starting to take the right line on this. Wish it had been sooner, but I’ll take what I can get.

CHINA MIEVILLE: Five Things Someone Else Should Totally Do.

FOLLOWING DEVELOPMENTS IN IRAN, at The New Ledger.

GIVE THIS LAW STUDENT a million dollars.

VERY SWEET: Letter to a future Boy Wonder.

JOHN STOSSEL has a blog.

PHOTOS FROM IRAN:

Via Nico Pitney. And there’s much more over at Gateway Pundit, too.

MOE LANE looks at the May political fundraising numbers.

THE TOP SIX water guns of all time.

IN THE MAIL: From Tyler Cowen, Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World.

TAXPROF: Tax Bloggers Don’t Buy Obama’s Defense of DOJ Tax Division Nominee.

NICO PITNEY: Continuously updated reports from Iran.

Knoxville, Tennessee. Krutch Park, downtown.

THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE AND HEALTH CARE “REFORM:”

One of the few things I don’t miss about being in the MSM cocoon is the task of treating low-protein verbal confections like “permanent supportive care” and “real comprehensive immigration reform” as if they have bearance upon human life on planet Earth. I also suspect Luntz congratulates himself a wee mite more than strictly necessary for his clever phrasings.

But the real reason to be glad about high-profile deconstructions like Merkley’s is that Health Care Reform Part 2 will look worse the more its related texts are unpacked. Back when I was merely middle-aged and the Golden State was considering a mandated-insurance statewide health care reform proposal, I had fun trying to get Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to use the word “coercion” in describing how he was going to get hundreds of thousands of Californians who didn’t want to buy insurance to buy insurance. His response — that he was seeking to change the “mentality of people” in order to make Californians more closely resemble the Austrians he once bragged about fleeing — was instructive. Schwarzenegger’s health care overhaul failed specifically because its breezy assumptions couldn’t survive the light of day. And that was in the land of the nuts and the fruits. Imagine how much bogus language remains to be unpacked as the realities of multi-trillion-dollar state-run programs and death’s inescapable victory reveal themselves through the summer.

Indeed.

CHOOSING RISK: Instead of banning bikini waxing or harmless toys, let people take control of their own choices.

MICKEY KAUS: “What if they came out with a study showing that No Child Left Behind is working–raising test scores without hurting high- or low-achievers–and nobody paid attention? (Except Education Week).”

MICHAEL LEDEEN: A bloody Saturday in Iran? Let’s hope not. But there’s this: “Tens of thousands of Revolutionary Guards have been brought to Tehran to put down the demonstrations. These are older, well-trained and presumably loyal soldiers who will not shrink from attacking the crowds. . . . This is all the regime has left, because the demonstrations have revealed its hollowness, and the nightly chants of ‘God is great’ from the rooftops of all major cities in Iran have exposed the collapse of its central doctrine: that the theocratic fascist system is blessed by Allah. Millions of Iranians are openly rejecting that. . . . Meanwhile, there were cracks in the regime’s instruments of repression, and reports of action against the Basij thugs in the night time streets of Tehran.” Even Iranians don’t know what’s coming next, which means that speculation on our part is likely to be wrong.

UPDATE: If I were the protesters, I think I’d arrange attacks on some of the mullahs’ commercial interests. That would probably lead to a lot of regime bullyboys being detailed to protect them, and leave fewer available to go after the protesters . . . .

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Chris Dodd’s Irish Luck: The Senator Sure Knows How to Pick an Investment. “The Senate’s financial disclosure forms are supposed to be a tool of honest government, and former Senator Ted Stevens was indicted for allegedly false disclosures. Mr. Dodd’s miraculous property reappraisal is further grist for Senate and Justice investigators — and especially for voters in 2010.”

SOME MODEST CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS: D.C. Expands List Of Allowed Guns To Avert Lawsuit. It’s only modest, but hey, this is D.C.

IRAN WARNS OPPOSITION against staging protests.

MATT WELCH ON THE ECONOMY: “If I can wade briefly into unscientific anecdote, a recent West coast swing through Portland, Palm Springs and Los Angeles revealed a startling proliferation of ‘for lease’ signs and noticeable decraptitude since the last time setting foot in all three; meanwhile here in D.C. gentrification seems to roar on uninterrupted.”

MORE ON AMERICORPS: The Removal Of An Inspector.

RED SPILLING over green.

SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: Terrorist watch lists are bad, and Orwellian, because they’re full of mistakes and put together without due process. But if you’re on one, you shouldn’t be allowed to buy a gun. Well, the Supreme Court says that gun ownership is a constitutional right, and you’re not normally supposed to lose a constitutional right because some bureaucrat puts you on a list without any due process. One suspects that this Eric Lichtblau story in the Times is part of a PR effort designed to gin up support for doing just that. The prominent role of Frank Lautenberg — traditional stalking-horse for the Brady Campaign, et al. — supports that suspicion.

HMM: White House Resists Calls for a Tougher Stance on Iran.

MICHAEL S. MALONE: Great technologies are typically sold, incorrectly, on applications we know – but succeed on applications we can’t yet guess.

HEH: Sotomayor: My women-only club isn’t discriminatory but I’m quitting it anyway.

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: Yes, Twitter is playing an important role in Iran.

A BUNCH OF grocery markdowns at Amazon.

A ROUNDUP ON TODAY’S IRANIAN ELECTION FRAUD RIOTS, at The Berman Post.

TIGERHAWK: The Surprising Limits of President Obama’s Power: “It really is astonishing that Barack Obama is able to get virtually anything he wants out of Congress — billions for this, trillions for that — but somehow cannot extract a lousy few million clams to close Gitmo, a policy that the Democratic Party stands united behind. It’s almost as though the president is telling the public one thing, and quietly signalling Congress — perhaps using a dog whistle — to do the opposite.”

ADVICE: Go Midwest, Young Man.

AMERICA the deadbeat?

THE CREDIT BUBBLE: Before:

And after:

HEH: Culinary books I’ll never get paid to write. A lot of folks would agree with the Arby’s one, though.

ALFONZO RACHEL: Bong Hits With Bill Maher.