CAN THE GOVERNMENT TELL YOU what to eat?

Ann Althouse writes: “The clip is taken out of context, and now it has a vigorous life of its own.”

LEADERSHIP: The Swedes have decided that the case for more nuclear power is too strong to ignore. You’d think that electing Obama would have made the U.S. more like Sweden. . . .

COOL: Zapping Titan-like atmosphere with UV rays creates life precursors.

THE STORY ADVANCES: The National Enquirer article on the Gore accuser is out. With stained pants in a ziploc bag. John Edwards was unavailable for comment.

FED UP WITH the booze and cigarette police.

A WAR AGAINST station wagons?

THE EXCITEMENT WAS ELECTRIC: Tesla Raises $226 Million in IPO, Stock Gains 40% on First Day.

OBAMA’S Oil Spill To-Do List.

IN THE MAIL: The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane.

DAILY CALLER: Free Press’s schizophrenic relationship with the FCC.

THROW A SHOE AT BUSH AND YOU’RE A HERO. Throw a shoe at Erdogan and you’ll get three years in jail. I think this disproportionate response is clearly a human rights violation. Prosecute the Spanish judge in an international court!

YOU DON’T SAY: Podesta clan’s close ties to Obama pay off big.

COMING: “Monster” money-printing by the Fed? What could go wrong?

MEGAN MCARDLE ON AUSTERITY HORROR: “If Ireland hadn’t done the austerity budget, it might now be more like Greece–in danger of default without massive intervention from the rest of the European Union. Intervention that might well not be forthcoming, if it became clear that too many countries were going to require it. . . . Austerity is an expensive form of insurance against a true fiscal crisis. And though it doesn’t necessarily seem like it when you’re not having one, fiscal crises are much, much worse than austerity budgets. Fiscal crisis means that rather than unpleasant cuts, you have sudden, unmanageable collapses in things like public pension plans. The resulting suffering is not unpleasant; it is disastrous.”

Plus, from the comments: “The pols dream up all sorts of way to piss away money when times are good, then are forced into ‘austerity’ when times are bad. If they hadn’t dreamed up the garbage spending in the first place, they wouldn’t need the ‘austerity’. Take a look at our worst states. Their problem is all related to incredible jumps in spending over a period of 25 to 30 years. Now it’s caught up to them.”

JONATHAN ADLER: Kagan, ACOG and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban.

DANIEL SCHUCHMAN: Will Elena Kagan Allow Books to be Banned? Understanding the Supreme Court nominee’s chilling argument in Citizens United. Listening to that audio from her argument, it’s certainly easy to see why she lost.

FROM SUSANNAH BRESLIN, The War Project.

“AND JOINING HANDS, THEY MADE A METAPHOR.”

In sum total, what you people did was drive someplace where there wasn’t a problem, complain about something you don’t fully understand, get in the way of people who may actually be performing a function, and then do nothing, en masse, except hope that someone else notices your little snit and makes it all better.

Heh.

CASH FOR CLUNKERS: A RETROSPECTIVE. Top-down industrial policy carried out through the sheer force of incentives is welcomed by behavioralist Washington.

UPDATE: Reader Paul Jackson writes:

Before the first piece comes out that postulates “Where it all went wrong for Obama”, may I be the first to say: when he took that ill-fated trip to Copenhagen in order to secure Chicago’s 2016 Summer Olympic bid. That was the first time the public at large sat up and thought it was amateur hour at the White House. They haven’t done much since to dispel that notion.

On an unrelated note, given the consistent media phrasing of “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression”, high unemployment, mortgage failures galore, how come Whoopi/Robin/Billy haven’t done an HBO special for the homeless/out of work? Surely there must be more homeless people than ever in our recent history? Did we, without my knowledge, already solve that problem? I know, I know, doesn’t fit the narrative.

It’s all about the narrative.

DON’T CRITICIZE THEM — THEY MIGHT BEHEAD YOU: Iran: “In Iran, the Bahais play much the same role that Jews do elsewhere: the canary in society’s coal mine. What is emerging in the Islamic Republic today is noxious indeed.”

WHO’S THE BOSS: Steve Carell leaving The Office.

MORE ON ANDREW BREITBART’S OFFER OF $100,000 for the JournoList archives. My thoughts:

(1) If, as Jonathan Chait says, there’s nothing there, why not relieve Breitbart of his bucks?

(2) If you’re worried about your own stuff being released, you don’t really safeguard it by not selling out to Breitbart — you just ensure that if one of the 400 other members does, you won’t get the $100K.

(3) Here’s your chance to be Deep Throat — and maybe to settle some scores along the way . . . .

AL SHARPTON: 90% OF MY LISTENERS SUPPORT THE SUPREME COURT’S GUN DECISION. “I would say 90% of the calls I received yesterday were in support of the Supreme Court and people say they want to bear guns. They’re tired of the violence and it’s very very interesting. I have had a few on both sides today, but yesterday was overwhelming, it was stunning to me.” Given that disarming black people was one of the main purposes of gun-control laws, it shouldn’t be that surprising.

Some years ago we had a program at my law school where ex-Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver (with whom I went to law school) came to speak. It was heavily attended by Knoxville civil-rights veterans, and I think some of my colleagues were surprised when an elderly black preacher launched into a defense of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. I wasn’t.

JUSTICE THOMAS’S MCDONALD CONCURRENCE: His Finest Hour?

WINSTON GROOM: Anger grows along the Gulf Coast at the Obama administration’s pathetic response to the largest oil spill in U.S. history.