Knoxville, Tennessee.

DON SURBER: “Oh crap, I agree with Ron Paul.”

ED DRISCOLL: The Great Airbrushing meets the Great Relearning on the Fourth.

WONDER WOMAN GETS PANTS, and, more significantly, ditches the American flag from her costume. Hey, a post-American President needs a post-American superhero.

Jim Treacher: “I like her old costume better. The new one looks stupid and dumb.” And from the comments, “Who designed this outfit? Kagan?”

SOME INDEPENDENCE DAY THOUGHTS from Walter Russell Mead in London.

THE HILL: Democrats sounding economic warnings after downplaying recession threat. “The shift in rhetoric and emphasis comes as Democrats head into tough midterm elections, in which Republicans charge the majority has failed to shore up the economy. According to a series of Pew polls, only one-third of voters believe the 2009 stimulus package helped the economy and less than half say additional spending would help a lot.”

ROGER SIMON: Happy Unbirthday, America.

WHAT LESSON DOES MCDONALD HOLD FOR THE TEA PARTY CROWD? My Sunday Washington Examiner column is up. (Bumped).

INSIDER TRADING INSIDE THE BELTWAY.

CAR LUST: More on the $2000 used car challenge.

Farragut, Tennessee.

POLITICO: Democrats In A Jam As Economy Slows.

OKAY, FINE — but what about us men who wear 14EEEs?

JIM TREACHER: Al Gore’s latest plan for reducing carbon emissions: refusing to do the Electric Slide.

YOUR DREAM CAR: Propane-Burning, Supercharged Studebaker Lark!

AT AMAZON, a 4th of July watch sale.

Durham, North Carolina.

TERRY TEACHOUT: The Best of All Possible Marches: John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.

And more versions at the link.

DARK WORLDS: Burch Goes Kindles. His Kindle sales rank isn’t bad.

GIVE US the freedom intended for us.

INDEPENDENCE DAY: More on marrying for money, from Jessica Wakeman.

MARTHA RADDATZ THANKS THE TROOPS, in her own, special way. “But it is helpful to have the unfiltered biases of journalists at least occasionally on public display so that we all know what they are, particularly when it comes to the lives of American servicemen and women, as viewed by our leading foreign correspondents.”

AT THE SPECULIST, it’s a Declaration Of Singularity.

A FLAVOR OF ICE CREAM I think I’ll skip.

KNOXVILLE’S CONGRESSMAN BLASTS REVENUE CAMERAS: “I think it’s just another way for cities to try to take money from the taxpayers. I think that’s become pretty obvious. It’s more about money than about safety. If it’s not, then let everybody who is fined contribute to some private charity (instead of paying the ticket).”

BREITBART LAUNCHES Big Peace.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Gun License Fees and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms for Self-Defense.

IMPORTANT lawn sprinkler advice.

IN THE MAIL: From Stephen D. King, Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity.

Happy Independence Day.

Quincy, Illinois. Taken with the Panasonic Lumix LX-3.

SHOCKER: Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse. Unless You’re in Law Enforcement.

Laws should be simple enough that law enforcement people can be held strictly liable for knowing them. You know, like the rest of us are.

SIGH: Republicans On Energy: More Pro-Business Than Pro-Market. Alas, that’s the Republicans on economic issues in general, all too often.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl on why the GOP apparat isn’t so hot on the Tea Party movement: “The grassroots and conservative movement are genuine free marketers and capitalists. The beltway establish, GOP and otherwise, is corporatist. This is also one reason why you have so called Reagan Democrats.”

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

Yeah, I linked this last week but it bears repeating.

AFGHANISTAN UPDATE: Michael Yon has a couple of statements from Gen. Petraeus.

CAR LUST: The RestoMod Challenge.

Farragut, Tennessee. Happy Independence Day!

TOM SMITH: Collegiality Over Constitutionality. “As Thomas More implies in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, nobody is obliged to go to hell out of good fellowship.”

THE HILL: Steele’s Afghanistan criticism highlights Democrats’ mixed message on war. “Michael Steele’s criticism of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan may be creating a headache for the Republican National Committee, but it’s also shining a spotlight on the Democrats’ mixed message on the war.”

EMPTY HOLSTERS.

IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIP ADVICE: “You can never have enough sex, especially when you’re in a relationship. One way to make sure that your man is happy is to be intimate with him as much as possible. Whenever, wherever, make sure that you’re doing it. Besides the fact that sex is so fun, it will also make you a stronger couple. There’s no excuse not to be getting busy all the time.”

JIM TREACHER: Dear Al Gore climax deniers: Why do you keep ignoring the computer models? There do seem to be a lot of them . . . .

WHY IS THE GULF CLEANUP SO SLOW? There are obvious actions to speed things up, but the government oddly resists taking them.

CHANGE: “Barton Biggs, whose investments in stocks 15 months ago gave his Traxis Partners LLC a 38 percent gain in 2009, said concern the economy will contract spurred him to sell almost all his U.S. technology shares this week.”

AT AMAZON, 30% off kitchen and dining stuff.

MAXIMUM LEADER John Scalzi.

A WARNING TO TRAVELERS ON I-40 WESTBOUND: It narrows to one lane in North Carolina at mile marker 7, just before the Tennessee line. For some reason, this produces a multi-mile backup that took us over an hour to get through. Alas, the alternate route on I-26 to I-81 adds . . . something over an hour to the trip itself, so I don’t have a lot of good advice for you. You can try going via Hot Springs on the 2-lane, but that will either be faster, or much slower, depending on traffic.

UPDATE: Donald Sensing writes: “I drove from Charleston, SC, to Williamson county today, 600 miles. Knowing about the blockage, I continued on I-26 W north of Asheville, then took Hwy 25N/70W thru mountains to Newport, TN, where I rejoined I-40. Not much traffic on this route and much shorter than the I-81 detour.”

S.S. UNITED STATES saved from the scrapper. For now.

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: Former U.S. prosecutor to testify on New Black Panthers charges.

TELEGRAPH: America is sinking under Obama’s towering debt.

HOW FIREWORKS PROS make brilliant pyrotechnics.

WASHINGTON POST: The odd responses of the attorney general to the oil spill. “The Justice Department frequently finds itself handling both the civil and criminal aspects of an issue, and the attorney general obviously is in charge of both; there’s nothing improper about that. But because decisions to indict must be made without any political influence and without any regard to political consequence, the attorney general must take great care to avoid even the appearance of conflict.”

Doing things without political influence or calculation isn’t Holder’s forte, and it’s certainly not why he was hired.

DIPLOMATIC LANGUAGE FROM THE STATE DEPARTMENT. I’d prefer something beginning You miserable barbarian thugs . . .

THE PURSUIT of happiness.

BUMMER: Arthritis Inevitable After Surgery On Ligament Repairs. “If you’ve had an ACL tear or cartilage damage then osteoarthritis lies in your future until cell therapies and gene therapies are developed that can do full repair. . . . Gotten yourself pretty banged up by sports, yard work, or an accidental fall? You need the development of gene therapies and cell therapies to render you fully repaired. Otherwise painful arthritis lies in your future.”

CONTROL: UK committee says fuel prices must stay high to force drivers into efficient cars.

AMAZON INTRODUCES a new generation of the Kindle DX, and cuts the price.

DAN RIEHL: A Lesson In New Media For The GOP From The GOP.

THE CRUEL ONES: “The path of big government and the welfare state is the path to broken promises and inter-generational warfare. The workers in California and vendors in Illinois are paying the price for the unsustainable public sector union contracts which preceded them, sometimes by decades. Yet those of us who call for fiscal sanity and reform are derided by people like Sheldon Whitehouse and other Democrats as having no compassion. Just the opposite is true. It’s called tough love. Those who feed the big government addiction are the cruel ones.”

Related: Why Cloward-Piven Will Eat Itself. Well, did that strategy actually do anything for NYC welfare recipients when it was first tried? I don’t think so.

FASTER, PLEASE: Stem cells from blood a ‘huge’ milestone. “Blood drawn with a simple needle stick can be coaxed into producing stem cells that may have the ability to form any type of tissue in the body, three independent papers report in the July 2 Cell Stem Cell. The new technique will allow scientists to tap a large, readily available source of personalized stem cells.”

ZOMBIE KILLERS in Afghanistan.

POLITICO: Gore Story Goes Mainstream.

ATOMIC FIREWORKS in the Cold War.

A BLOG FROM AN Army surgeon in Afghanistan. Recommended by Michael Yon.

IN THE MAIL: From Jack Martin, JOHN BROWN’S BODY: An Alphonso Clay Mystery of the Civil War.

PJTV: Kruiser Control: “Stark” Naked Truth About the Border, Plus Olbermann Connects the Big Biz Dots.

ILLINOIS: The Fiscal Poster Child For What Not To Do.

A LOOK INTO AMERICA’S FUTURE? More problems with Massachusetts’ health care plan.

THE ANSWER IS YES: Is Obama attempting to portray those who are against illegal immigrants breaking our laws as racists? Duh.

ROBERT BYRD and the privileges of aristocracy. “Of course, the NAACP’s embrace of Byrd has nothing to do with principle. It’s a heartless, soulless political calculation, made by a group that profits handsomely from the immense government Byrd nourished. . . . This moral barter system is available only to the aristocracy. . . . When we observe that no Republican could hope to have his biography re-written to transmute bitter racism into championship service in the cause of civil rights, we aren’t merely clucking our tongues at the unfairness of partisan dirty pool. We’re watching one of the supreme moral judgments of our society become another sharp fang in the jaws of the leviathan State. Few indictments in our culture are more devastating than the charge of racism… and this charge is applied, or neutralized, almost entirely on the basis of the target’s usefulness to the State.”

BYRON YORK: Liz Cheney Calls For Michael Steele To Step Down.

ED DRISCOLL: It’s Hard To Talk When You’re Sandbagging CNN. Heh.

GOOD GRIEF: NRA e-mail: You know who’s pretty great on guns? Harry Reid. They’re not helping Harry Reid here. They’re just hurting themselves.

UPDATE: A reader emails with a good point: “I’ll give you 4 words why NRA should support Reid. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.”

100 GREATEST movie insults of all time.

VETERAN COMPLAINS about Elena Kagan’s exclusion of military recruiters.

JOURNALISM! JournoList Member Eric Alterman Defends JournoList Enterprise.

Maybe I should say “JournoLism.”

FOR THE BLACK PANTHER CASE, a media blackout.

BLOGGINGHEADS: Megan McArdle on the joys of nerd marriage.

Plus, a nerd honeymoon: A man, a woman, an Xbox.

WISCONSIN DISTRICT ATTORNEY takes broad view of Second Amendment.

It’s nice to see this civil rights revolution gaining steam . . . ..

JOBS AMERICANS WON’T CAN’T DO.

TIM CAVANAUGH: California Still Going Off the Rails On a Crazy Train.

WHAT IS THE TEA PARTY? “A growing state of mind.” Emphasis on the “growing.”

PROTECTING MAYOR DALEY: “Since 2003 the city has paid some $7 million in legal fees to fight five police torture lawsuits it probably can’t win. The latest turn in this saga involves a secret settlement agreement designed to protect Daley.”

CNN: The feds are trying to block media coverage of how bad the oil spill is. Hope, change, and transparency!

A STRANGE DEFINITION OF “public domain.”

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Does the Madison Police Department understand the meaning of the word ‘genitalia’?

SUPERSONIC JETS without the sonic boom.

FROM RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE TO MERELY EXPENSIVE: 40% off Tag Heuer watches.

TESTOSTERONE GEL INCREASES HEART RISKS. At least in older men with diabetes, etc. Speculation: “The problem is that as we age lots of mechanisms have gone so awry that stimulating them just causes them to go wrong faster. Though another recent study found that ovary transplants improve the health of aged female mice. Those ovaries pump out a lot of hormones and yet they deliver a net benefit. Maybe the reason the transplants deliver a net benefit is that the ovaries excrete multiple kinds of hormones and with hormone release patterns optimized to improve health. Internal organs have complex regulatory mechanisms. Whereas testosterone gels are not released in ways that precisely mimic what the brain will do.”

SUPERMODELS, then and now.

TIP: Use Scotch Tape or Nail Polish to Relieve an Itchy Mosquito Bite.

GULF SPILL UPDATE: WH Admits Missed Oil Containment Deadline Missed.

Related: Volunteers Beached In Gulf By Feds? “Over 20,000 people have offered assistance in on-shore cleanup efforts in the region, but only a sixth of those have been put to work. . . . The cleanup effort has run aground, and it’s a failure of leadership. Small wonder House Democrats blocked its members from traveling to the Gulf to see the situation for themselves and the White House is blocking media access.”

VIDEO: Swarm of maggots forces plane to land. “There was no explanation given for why someone wanted to transport rotten meat or how the TSA screeners missed the live insects but won’t let anyone else through security with 4 ounces of contact solution.”

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

REASON TV: 3 Reasons The New Financial Regs Won’t Fix Anything.

EXPLAINING THINGS to Lindsey Graham.

WHY IS GAS so cheap now?

SCOTT ELLIOTT: So What’s Wrong with Research 2000’s Polling? “Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is suing the polling company for fabricating results. What were the tip-offs that led to R-2000′s downfall?”

AN INTERVIEW with Vox Day on his new and cheerful book, The Return of the Great Depression.

THE SCARIEST JOB CHART EVER gets uglier.

BILL ARDOLINO SENDS photos from Afghanistan.