HOPE YOU HAD A HAPPY EASTER!

PROF. JACOBSON SAVORS THE WORDS: “You were right about Obama.” “If Obama has lost my friend, the Frank Rich-loving, Sarah Palin-hating greedy Democratic geezer that he is, the Democrats are in deep electoral trouble.”

IS THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS OBSOLETE? If so, it’s a self-inflicted obsolescence.

SOME PICTURES from the Tea Party Express in Nashville.

UPDATE: Suicide Watch at DNC HQ: Four in 10 Tea Partiers Independents or Democrats.

CALBUZZ: Free Mickey Kaus!

VIDEO of the San Diego earthquake as it happened.

IPAD FIRST DAY SALES live up to the hype. (Warning: Annoying auto-play video.)

PAUL MIRENGOFF: “Politico reporter David Catanese may have allowed Obama/Pelosi talking points to override common sense. If so, following New Hampshire Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes around the state has disabused him of the idea that, once Obamacare was enacted, voters would magically forget their objections and swallow the dog food.”

PROFILES IN COURAGE: HARRY REID Cancels Speech At Mormon Church After Protesters Threaten to Show Up.

DAVID BOAZ responds to my Washington Examiner column with more thoughts on knowledge and regulation.

5 JOKES AND SKITS about government spending.

OUCH: Magnitude 7.2 quake strikes Baja California.

UPDATE: Lots of blogging here.

AN OPEN LETTER TO LOU DOBBS on free trade.

MAGAZINES: 2 years for the price of one.

UPDATE: Still getting fan mail on Garden & Gun.

PJTV: AlfonZo Rachel Reads His Hate Mail.

WHICH WOULD YOU RATHER BE: Teabagger, or Teabaggee?

PETER SUDERMAN: God And Man At The Movies.

LAW SCHOOL LEGAL CLINICS under siege.

FEDS ON DRYWALL: Oops! Our Bad.

THIS WEEK in the future.

JULIETTE OCHIENG ON Great Black Patriots in the House of Representatives.

CALORIE-FREE CHOCOLATE: Just inhale.

BEN CUNNINGHAM ROUNDS UP TODAY’S Tea Party news headlines.

FIGHTING PARALYSIS WITH nerve hacking.

UPDATE: Reader Russ Emerson writes: “As one who has, over the past few years, been crippled by a neurological disorder, all I can do is quote some guy I read somewhere… *ahem*… ‘Faster, please!’” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

RADICAL CHIC: The California Campus Edition.

VIOLENT ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC, from Greenpeace. “We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few.” No doubt Frank Rich and Paul Krugman will be comparing them to Nazis any day now . . . .

BRAIN DAMAGE AND MORAL JUDGMENT. With some thoughts on benign sentient robots. Though, of course, everyone knows that those are just a myth.

WHERE WOULD YOUTUBE BE, without crazy guys on snowmobiles?

IMPROVISED GYROSCOPES IN SPACE.

IN THE MAIL: The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.

THE SECOND-ORDER KNOWLEDGE PROBLEM: My Washington Examiner column on Henry Waxman’s unpleasant surprise. (Bumped).

IF YOU MISSED IT ON SIRIUS / XM RADIO LAST NIGHT, the latest PJM Political is now online.

THE END of Mexico?

MICHAEL BARONE: What The Tea Partiers Believe.

AIRPORT SCREENING: What TSA Is Doing. “Now, when TSA scrutinizes the passenger list, it won’t just be looking for known terrorist identities but also for fragmentary identities. So, if we know that a Nigerian is training for an attack and that his first name is Umar, we’ll select a lot of Nigerian Umars for screening. . . . Ironically, Europe is probably picking a bigger fight over reservation data with the Obama administration than it the one it had with the Bush administration. For the last administration, using travel reservation data was just one among a dozen or more counterterrorism initiatives, so a European attack on that initiative was just one more fight to preserve a piece of the last administration’s strategy. But for this administration, using intelligence to screen passengers is a signature, maybe the signature, counterterrorism initiative.”

MORE BLOGGING from on board the Tea Party Express.

HAPPY EASTER!

MARK STEYN: Parochially post-American: Don’t Blame Obama. “It’s not just the president. The entire administration suffers, to put it at its mildest, from systemic indifference to American allies. It wasn’t Obama but a mere aide who sneered to Fleet Street reporters that Britain was merely one of 200 countries in the world and shouldn’t expect any better treatment than any of the others. It wasn’t Obama but the State Department that leaked Hillary Clinton’s dressing down of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Ally-belittling comes so reflexively to this administration that it’s now doing drive-by bird-flipping.”

REPORT: Air Force To Launch Robotic Winged Spacecraft.

COOL STUFF FROM the Cleveland Auto Show.

AT AMAZON, a clothing clearance sale.

JIM HOFT IS UNHAPPY THAT THE NEW YORK TIMES CONFLATES TEA PARTIERS WITH weathermen terrorists. But I think they’re saying that Tea Partiers will be close friends with the next President . . . .

UPDATE: Ann Althouse explains it all.

WHAT COURTS DEFER TO when they defer to Congress.

UNICORN: The Other White Meat.

SITTING BY THE WINDOW: And looking out, from the Tea Party Express bus.

There is, by the way, a double Moby Grape reference in this post. But how many will get both?

BIG BROTHER is on your tail.

FROM THE NEW YORK AUTO SHOW: 6 New Cars Under $20K. “If you’re looking for a car with no secret history, a warranty and decent gas mileage—but you don’t want to spend a lot—there are plenty of options.”

BYRON YORK: Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews, and the “regime” question. “Perhaps Joe McCarthy never called the U.S. government a regime, but Chris Matthews did. And a lot of other people did, too. So now we are supposed to believe him when he expresses disgust at Rush Limbaugh doing the same?”

JUAN WILLIAMS: Tea Party Anger Reflects Mainstream Concerns: Dissatisfaction with the economy and the country’s direction cuts across racial lines.

THE COMMENTS ARE STILL POURING IN on Helen’s porn column.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl: Not the whole war on porn thing again! I blame provocateurs for the Democrats, seeking to divide the opposition.

WHAT HAPPENS WITHOUT A TELEPROMPTER: “He then spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds lulling the crowd into a daze.”

UPDATE: Kerry Roberts: “I just timed myself. I can say ‘no, it was not wise’ in under two seconds. Next question, please…”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Roger Simon is worried about the President.

FROM STEPHEN GREEN, it’s The Week In Blogs. “How bad is the new healthcare law? It has politicians running away from the cameras.”

I BLAME THE VIOLENT EXTREMIST RHETORIC of Democratic politicians and press: Another GOP Office Attacked in Ohio–-Window Smashed. It’s like Kristallnacht all over again!

GOVT. HEALTHCARE: From too big to fail, to too big to nail. Well, they’re practically part of the government now, so naturally they should be above the law.

WOULD IT BE FAIR TO SAY THEY’RE NOT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, THEY’RE JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE? Well, no. But it would be less unfair than it might have been, now.

NAOMI WOLF: “Obama has done things like Hitler did.” Meanwhile, Michael Moynihan evaluates Wolf with phrases like “monumentally stupid.”

GROWTH OF UNPAID INTERNSHIPS possibly illegal?

ARIZONA: Sonoita ‘tea party’ is standing room only. Here’s a Flickr album.

IF YOU MISSED IT THE OTHER DAY, check out my interview with Georgetown Law Prof. Randy Barnett on the constitutionality of ObamaCare.

THE POLITICS OF STIMULUS SPENDING: A roundup on the Veronique de Rugy / Nate Silver debate.

Plus this: “At this point, there are precious few people who are willing to pretend that the stimulus has achieved anything other than more red ink. Indeed, my gut sense (not a regression analysis!) is that Obama’s crew of cracker-jack economists such as Christina Romer, whose academic reputation was made in part by deflating claims about previous efforts at stimulus spending, knows that the economy ain’t going up anytime soon and that when it does it’s not going to be because of weatherizing foreclosed homes in Detroit.”

CAN YOU choose to be a luckier person? Obi Wan Kenobi says, “In my experience, there is no such thing as luck.”

PROSTATE DRUG MAY WORK as a cancer preventative.

On the other hand, there may be heart risks.

IT’S ALL ABOUT CONTROL: “There’s a big epidemic, no, not of sex addiction…
… but of wives deciding their husbands are sex addicts who must get treatment.”

JOURNALISM: CNN’s Scientology reporting should look familiar to St. Petersburg Times readers.

WELL, THAT SEEMS FAIR: Jail for man who broke into woman’s home to frame husband for child porn.

CHARLIE MARTIN on Obama’s Energy Policy: “Watching the Obama administration’s energy policy is a lot like trying to learn stage magic. You have to learn to look where he doesn’t want you to look.”

MARKDOWNS ON portable speakers for iPods and MP3 players.

SO I TRIED OUT AN IPAD TODAY and I’m kinda lukewarm. The iPod touch fits very smoothly into one hand — the iPad, on the other hand, is too big for one hand, but feels a bit small for two. (At least two of mine — the (much) smaller-handed Xeni Jardin liked it fine). I’ll try it out again when there’s more time to fiddle with it, but it just seemed too big for a small device, and not big enough for a big one — I was hoping for something more like a tablet netbook, but it just didn’t come across that way. And netbooks are cheaper, too.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse bought one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Dvorak pours cold water on Big Media hopes: “So if you drink the Kool-Aid, you’ll be reading Newsweek and Time and all the dying print magazines and newspapers on the iPad. No matter that you are not reading these journals now. For some unexplained reason you’ll want to read them on the iPad. How does that make any sense?”

MORE: Gizmodo answers your questions.

CNN: Disgruntled Democrats Join The Tea Party. “I should’ve listened a lot closer when he talked about ‘spreading the wealth.’ . . . I feel lied to, cheated and raped.” Well, the Tea Party movement is now mainstream politics.

RASMUSSEN: 53% Now Trust Republicans More Than Democrats on Health Care. “Following the passage of the health care bill, 53% now say they trust Republicans on the issue of health care. Thirty-seven percent (37%) place their trust in Democrats. A month earlier, the two parties were essentially even on the health care issue.” So, when I predicted a “bounce” after ObamaCare passed I was right — I was just wrong as to who would get the bounce!

ED DRISCOLL: In the future, everyone will be a Klansman for 15 minutes. And Steve Cohen’s already had his turn under the sheets.

I’ve always liked Steve Cohen — perhaps because he got me great tickets to see John Fogerty’s first performance in more than a decade, at Mud Island back in 1986. But his behavior in smearing the Tea Partiers as Klansmen, especially after the racist and anti-semitic attacks that Cohen himself has endured from his Democratic primary opponents, is really quite disappointing.

Meanwhile, a lot of Tea Party folks seem to like Vernon Parker.

UPDATE: “The wrong kind of white people.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Moe Lane now regrets defending Cohen when Cohen was attacked by other Democrats. “PS: (Republican) Charlotte Bergmann for Congress. She doesn’t hate people.”

CZAR WARS: Can The Rebels Fight Back?

COMING SOON: Most women in space ever. “One woman already is circling Earth in a Russian capsule, bound for the International Space Station. Early Monday morning, NASA will attempt to launch three more women to the orbiting outpost — along with four men — aboard shuttle Discovery. It will be the most women in space at the same time.”

SOME PICS FROM THE Tea Party Express, courtesy of Third Wave Dave.

UPDATE: A report from Little Rock.

MOBILE DATA TRAFFIC now beats out voice traffic.

PREDICTING BOX OFFICE SUCCESS with Twitter?

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Despite Harsh Criticism, Tea Party Slips Into The Mainstream. “The release of the top three ‘tea party’ issues this week gives a glimpse of a small-government movement growing, maturing, and looking increasingly more like middle America. . . . Moreover, polls show that the anger at big government exhibited by tea party protesters is shared by many, if not most, Americans.”

Related item here. “The conventional wisdom about the Tea Party has not yet settled on any one definitive portrayal of the movement, but the data tell a fascinating story – over four out of 10 self-identified Tea Party members aren’t Republican, and a third don’t consider themselves conservative. . . . But what truly sets the Tea Party apart from even Republicans or conservatives broadly is its commitment to economic conservatism. Tea Party members, like voters overall, are very focused on the economy and jobs; some 36 percent say it is their top issue.”

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: The Greatness That Is Top Gear.

REX MURPHY: Please don’t call it “Human Rights.” “The core concept of human rights is the protection of the irreducible safety and dignity of the individual from the massive and arbitrary power of the state. Not, the state wandering in, with its apparatus and procedures, its boards and tribunals into the doings, or speech, of the individual.”

IN THE MAIL: From David Ignatius, The Increment: A Novel. About Iranian nukes.

STUDENT FEARS IN A “jobless America.”

LISTEN MY FRIENDS: A Tea Party report from Omaha. “It is telling that the organizers expected hundreds and instead got thousands.”

UPDATE: Reader Ernest Gudath writes: “No problem. The media, seeing thousands, will report dozens.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Eric S. McErlain applauds the Golden Palominos reference. But it was really a Moby Grape reference, though the Palominos’ cover is a creditable one.

WELL, TO BE FAIR, IT’S NOT LIKE THEY’D HAVE SAID ANYTHING DIFFERENT IF THEY HAD READ IT: Media Matters Criticizes Study Without Even Looking at It.

THE MANDATE: A fun hypothetical. This really isn’t a hypothetical, and it’s one with its own Constitutional clause.

FROM IOWAHAWK: Journo-politico Violence: Deadly Threat or Menacing Trend?

At the Media Violence Project, our charter is to protect public safety by researching, documenting and raising awareness about the ever-increasing wave of violent, disgusting crimes perpetrated by members of the American news media. It is a largely thankless task — often requiring a cast iron stomach — but if our work has prevented one more American child from falling victim to a criminally insane anchorman or newspaper reporter, it will all have been worth it. . . .

In the two years since the MVP issued our first report, another tidal wave of media-related bizarre or violent crimes has come to light, each more shocking than the last. Like CNN reporter Richard Quest, arrested in New York’s Central Park in 2008 brandishing a noose or ABC Miami reporter Jeffrey Weinsier, charged with entering a school with a firearm. Or New Hampshire Union Leader sports writer Kevin Provencher, charged with operating a prostitution ring. It is unknown whether Provencher’s alleged activities were related to WABC New York sports anchor Marvell Scott, who was arrested earlier this year for allegedly raping a 14-year old prostitute. It is also unclear whether this Granite State “mack daddy” used a “strong pimp hand” with his “bitches,” but he might have shared tips and techniques with fellow journalists like Jason Scott Kidd, charged in 2009 with hitting a woman in the face at a Mexican restaurant, Gawker editor Richard “Date Rape Tips” Blakely, arrested for domestic violence, or Boise anchorman and alleged wife beater David Tester.

Shocking as they are, these incidents scarcely scratch the surface of the global crime wave caused by rampaging journalists. Our in-depth biennial 30 minute Google search uncovered a seemingly endless catalog of journalist-related crimes, astonishing as much for their depravity as their number.

I sleep better knowing IowaHawk is on the job.

THIS IS COOL: Apps that provide better iPhone pics.

PHOTOS FROM BEN CHERTOFF: Good Friday at an Orthodox Cathedral. Ben emails: “I stumbled upon a stunningly beautiful Greek Orthodox Good Friday service (at 10pm) at a cathedral I never noticed existed, and the two church ladies in the back were publicists to the max; gave me full access to shoot the mass.” Another reason to have a camera with you all the time. . . .

ON NEIL CAVUTO, BLOGGER ADAM SHARP explains why I’m always encouraging people to have small cheap videocameras.

Here’s his blog, Sharp Elbows.

NO CRIMINAL CHARGES in AIG collapse?

MORE ON PRESS FRIENDLINESS.

TIM CAVANAUGH: Anti-Deadbeatism: Not Just For Heartless Libertarians Anymore!

CORY DOCTOROW: Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either). “I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who’ll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff.”

UPDATE: A response. “Now, now, you boys. Moms may not care about fiddling with the inner workings of technological devices, but that doesn’t mean we’re not mentally sharp. And — mom-o-phobia aside for a second — in general, smart people are not interested in paying attention to computer stuff. We just want tools to get to and engage in the things we’re interested in. Maybe, you’re missing that because computers happen to be one of the things you’re interested in.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Lee Willis writes: “Can I point out that Cory Doctorow’s criticism of the iPad and Apple applies equally to ObamaCare? Both the description of the problem of a top-down, closed system, and of the sycophantic press.”

STATING the obvious.

HEADING TOWARD THE CARTER ZONE? Actually, I think this is the exploitative sequel: Attack from Beyond The Carter Zone. With a cast of unknowns, and unconvincing special effects.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Tea Party-haters see racism everywhere — except in themselves. The point of seeing racism everywhere, of course, is so that they may disregard it in themselves. Motes and beams.

WELCOME TO THE DEPENDENCY ECONOMY.

ELIZABETH SCALIA — also known as The Anchoress — Today, On Good Friday, Here’s Why I Remain Catholic.

Plus, Easter thoughts from La Shawn Barber.

CHANGE: CBS poll: Believe it or not, support for ObamaCare still eroding. “Fifty-three percent of Americans say they disapprove of the new reforms, including 39 percent who say they disapprove strongly. In the days before the bill passed the House, 37 percent said they approved and 48 percent disapproved.”

AUSTERITY: Lessons from Lithuania.

DON SURBER: “The federal government now pays more to borrow money (3.93%) than I do on my mortgage (3.375%). I have better credit.”

UPDATE: Fabius Maximus calls Surber a liar. That’s a dangerous thing to do to a West Virginian, though I suppose being disguised as a dead Roman general makes it safer. However, I think that Fabius is wrong here:

Surber might have an adjustable rate mortgage. So his rate is lower because he (the debtor) bears the risk of rising rates. The creditor bears that risk with a Treasury bond, and gets a higher rate in return. To minimize the risk of rising rates breaking the Treasury, the government sensibly borrows a substantial amount in long-term fixed rate debt.

Long-term rates, however, are rising. I’m not sure of the percentage of federal debt that’s in comparatively short-term instruments, and I couldn’t find it easily on Google, but I believe it’s much larger than this passage makes it sound. Meanwhile, a recent Washington Post article suggests that Treasury and the Fed are playing a political game that may backfire.