DAN MITCHELL: Europe’s Riots, America’s Future.

BARELY LEGAL Sea Bass? Shockingly, not a niche porn-market.

UPDATE: Bob Owens emails: “Hey, some fisherman just want a little tail.” I’m sure there’s a jail-bait joke in there somewhere, too.

JOEL KOTKIN: California’s Failed Statesmen. “Right now neither party seems focused on the state’s future besides enriching their core constituencies.”

TAXPROF: IRS Files $500,000 Lien Against Al Sharpton.

SOME GOOD NEWS FOR commercial spaceflight.

VIDEO: The Night Jon Stewart Turned On President Obama. “We came, we saw, we sucked.”

CHRIS PETERSON: Why Terrorists Are Often Engineers: Implications For Nanotechnology.

DIGITAL SIGHT that could cure blindness. Faster, please.

IN THE MAIL: From Claire Berlinski, There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters. I interviewed her for PJTV last night; the book’s well worth your time.

CATO:

This week, President Obama called for the hiring of 10,000 new teachers to beef up math and science achievement. Meanwhile, in America, Earth, Sol-System, public school employment has grown 10 times faster than enrollment for 40 years (see chart), while achievement at the end of high school has stagnated in math and declined in science (see other chart).

Either the president is badly misinformed about our education system or he thinks that promising to hire another 10,000 teachers union members is politically advantageous–in which case he would seem to be badly misinformed about the present political climate. Or he lives in an alternate universe in which Kirk and Spock have facial hair and government monopolies are efficient. It’s hard to say.

I’m having a lot of Bearded Spock moments lately . . . .

WHAT SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT do about airports? “In many places, a combination of zoning, and the local authorities who often run the airports, means that there’s no meaningful competition. The result is that they don’t have to do anything to please passengers, and boy, they sure don’t.”

SO IS THIS THE “HOPE,” OR THE “CHANGE?” Now, More Bad News: The ‘New Normal’ is Here to Stay.

AN ENDOGENOUS VIRUS that’s not a retrovirus. “Finding these viruses fossilised in songbird genomes tells us that they were once infecting these birds, like hepatitis B is infecting humans today.”

IS SPAIN cooking its books?

THE ANATOMY of evil.

JIM TREACHER: Gloria Allred makes accusation against California Republican gubernatorial candidate on eve of election. “I realize I need to be more specific. After trying and failing with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, this time Allred is striking at Meg Whitman.”

PROFESSORS: “Why do they hate us?” Backlash against New Class overreach. . . . Plus, from the comments: “Interesting that Benton’s take is largely that they just don’t understand us. Maybe they understand us too well. The academy is currently very out of step with the values and beliefs of mainstream America. Whether that is good or bad, it has consequences. And our response again is that they don’t get it. We have all the answers and we rarely show the willingness to question our own orthodoxy.” I think it’s also the sense that education has been oversold, to its consumers’ detriment and its producers’ advantage.

The discussion in the comments is pretty interesting. There’s also this: “I’m not nearly as worried about what the general public thinks of professors as I am about what the college administrators think of us. If we have enemies, and arguably we do, that’s where most of them live.” Well, that’s where most of the bloat comes from.

ILLINOIS: A history lesson for Phil Hare.

CLASS M PLANET DISCOVERED: Newly discovered planet may be first truly habitable exoplanet.

ARMIN ROSEN: Village Voice Writer Trapped In White Derangement Feedback Loop.