HYPOCRITE, NAILED: ‘Saint Bono’ the anti-poverty campaigner facing huge Glastonbury protest – for avoiding tax.

Taxes are for the little people.

DAN MILLER: How Low Can Higher Ed Go? “Higher education should build upon solid learning foundations built from elementary to high school. Alas, the issue before us is one of damage control and course correction. Where to begin? Perhaps with teachers themselves.”

Somewhat related item here.

AT AMAZON, downloadable tunes for 69 cents.

SYRIA UPDATE: Syrian opposition: Anti-Israel rioters paid $1,000. I guess Assad is really desperate for a distraction.

EURO UPDATE: Portugal election: Socialists admit defeat.

CHUCK SIMMINS: E. Coli Infection No Stranger To New York.

THE DAILY: Weiner’s Tale Unraveling.

UPDATE: Moe Lane: What Is The Weinergate Endgame?

READER AND KNOXVILLE-EXPAT SAM HUNG wrote the other day asking for more Knoxville pictures, which made me realize that I haven’t posted any in a while. So here are a couple from the Farmer’s Market downtown. This is the Cruze Dairy ice cream truck. The Cruze Dairy folks have a blog, too.

ANN ALTHOUSE: What is Glenn Reynolds saying about the Wisconsin protesters? By the time I read this, her commenters had already pretty well thrashed it out.

WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY, CONT’D: “Michael Segal said he was filming the protesters for a website, manchfree.com, when a police officer took his cellphone and arrested him when he inquired about how he would get it back. Segal, 25, of Coral Springs, Fla., was charged with disorderly conduct.”

And, see, when they’ve got your cellphone they’ve got your contacts and other information, too. That’s an advantage for the cheap dedicated videocams, unless you’re using the cellphone to stream the video elsewhere for safekeeping.

NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY: What Is A College Education Really Worth?

Executives at U.S. companies routinely complain about the lack of reading, writing and math skills in the recent graduates they hire. Maybe they too will get tired of using higher education as a credentialing system. Maybe it will be easier to recruit if they don’t have to be concerned about the overwhelming student debt of their new employees.

Employers may decide that there are better ways to get high school students ready for careers. What if they returned to the idea of apprenticeship, not just for shoemakers and plumbers but for white-collar jobs? College as a sorting process for talent or a way to babysit 18-year-olds is not very efficient for anyone involved. Would students rather show their SAT scores to companies and then apply for training positions where they can learn the skills they need to be successful? Maybe the companies could throw in some liberal arts courses along the way. At least they would pick the most important ones and require that students put in some serious effort. Even a 40-hour workweek would be a step up from what many students are asked to do now.

If tuition continues to rise faster than inflation, and colleges cannot provide a compelling mission for undergraduate education, we may move further away from Obama’s vision of education and closer to Peter Thiel’s.

It’s like there’s been some sort of bubble going on or something. (Via NewsAlert).

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama Tunes Out, And Business Goes On A Hiring Strike. “The signal was clear. Obama had already ignored his own deficit reduction commission in preparing his annual budget, which was later rejected 97-0 in the Senate. Now he was signaling that the time for governing was over and that he was entering campaign mode 19 months before the November 2012 election. People took notice, especially those people who decide whether to hire or not. Goldman Sachs’s Current Activity Indicator stood at 4.2 percent in March. In April — in the middle of which came Obama’s GW speech — it was 1.6 percent. For May it is 1 percent. . . . The message to job creators was clear. Hire at your own risk. Higher taxes, more burdensome regulation and crony capitalism may be here for some time to come.”

SO I WENT SHOOTING WITH SAYUNCLE and local lawyer extraordinaire John Lucas. It was a competition run by the Glock Sport Shooting Foundation, and it prized both accuracy and speed. I’m better at the former than the latter since I don’t shoot competitively, but “not bad, for a law professor” is good enough for me, especially when shooting with a special forces veteran and America’s top gunblogger. The Glock folks did a great job running it, keeping things going smoothly even though there were twice as many people this year as last year. If you like to shoot, and you’ve never tried anything like this, I recommend it.

NEWLY UNCOVERED PHOTOS of postwar Oak Ridge.

AT AMAZON, 60% off men’s pants.

WEINERGATE: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Meet Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

SHOCKING DISCOVERY: Arab newspaper: Why, Arab dictators are worse than the Zionists!

Hey, maybe there’s hope for Andrew Klavan’s one-state solution after all.

DAFYDD AB HUGH: I like Paul Ryan, but . . .

A CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY: Chicago Must Pay for Denying Second Amendment Rights.

WHAT A NOVEL IDEA: ‘Breastaurants’ Ring Up Big Profits. “Restaurants that woo men with attractive waitresses, big beer selections & giant TVs are winning loyal customers–and raking in revenues.” I’m shocked that this is making money. Who’d have thought it?

ROBOTIC CLEANING: Reader Ray Heasman writes:

Hi Glenn,

I saw your comment about cleaning robots not being as advanced as you hoped. Well, I have owned a Neato XV-11 for a week now, and I have nothing but good things to say about it. It is a breakthrough in that Neato figured out how to build a cheap but effective rotating laser rangefinder (the DIY robotics folks out there are pretty excited about it), which allows them to build an affordable robot that can properly navigate complex floorplans.

The Neato does a great job of mapping your house and recognising where it is. I have owned a Roomba, and I was very disappointed with it; it’s basically a glorified clockwork toy that wanders around randomly. The Neato actually knows where it is, and first vacuums around the edge of the room, then fills in the rest by vacuuming in straight lines. It divides the house into 15 foot square sections and vacuums each one, moving from room to room. If it runs out of power, it goes back to its base station and completes the job after recharging. It can be given a weekly schedule to clean on, too.

It is possible for the Neato to get stuck, but it is a very deterministic device, and tends to get caught in the same places and in the same ways. I watched it vacuum my entire house twice (which was very entertaining), and tweaked things a little so there were no worries about it getting stuck. Since then, I have just let it go.

In terms of getting stuck, the biggest problem is loose hanging cables. They seem to be invisible to the range finder, and if a cable gets hooked on the front of the device, it triggers the bumper no matter what the vacuum does to escape. Other than that, I’ve had no problems with it navigating furniture leg forests, errant shoes, or under the bed.

I would say the Neato is a much better design all around, compared to other robots in its price range. It vacuums everything at least once, does a good job, and gets pretty close to the walls (you will need to sweep/dust the last half inch yourself, or use another vacuum for that), and behaves in a fairly predicable way, making it easy to “robot safe” your home.

In my opinion, it’s the true robot vacuum cleaner that is also affordable.

Hmm. Well, I was disappointed with the Roomba — I bought one, but returned it — so this is an alternative. Still waiting for Rosie, though. But the price isn’t bad.

AT POWER LINE, more on the importance of mockery.

ESCALATION: Russia: NATO ‘one step’ from land war in Libya.

IN THE MAIL: From Glenn Beck, The Original Argument: The Federalists’ Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century.

X-MEN: MATT WELCH AND NICK GILLESPIE on why we are all mutants now. “In short, it’s not only easier now for all of us to let our freak flags fly, it’s easier to find somebody who will help us design and produce them in the first place.”

THE WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY (CONT’D): Miami Beach Police Ordered Videographer At Gunpoint To Hand Over Phone: But video survived even after police tried to destroy phone. Reader Matthew Hennessy writes: “Dunno if this was already linked, but I’d recommend UStream.tv for videographers at live events where this might happen, as it runs on smartphones and will save copies of livestreamed videos for later viewing.”

MICHAEL BARONE: Who Put The Chill On American Business?

Related: A Tornado Of Destruction.

PIPELINE NEWS: Reader Jon Shore writes:

I noticed that you posted on the Keystone XL pipeline the other day. The State Department is accepting public comments until tomorrow, June 6th. There is no reason that the State Department should be stalling on this issue because first of all, we ALREADY use Canadian crude from oil sands in our energy mix and secondly, this will be a huge job creator from a very friendly nation. If the Obama administration nixes this, they can never speak credibly on energy security ever again (not that they can now but I digress).

Here is a link to the State Department’s comment site.

If you’ve got something to say, say it. Some background is here.

THE HILL: Ron Paul And Austan Goolsbee Agree: Debt Ceiling Deal Is Likely.

BRIDE ASKS WEDDING GUESTS to buy her new breasts.

DAN MITCHELL: Crikey, Australia’s a Good Role Model. “Australia is not exactly Hong Kong. Marginal tax rates are still far too high. The burden of government spending is lower than in the United States, but is still far too onerous. Nonetheless, the Aussies have made impressive strides in reducing the overall size, scope, and level of government interference and intervention. And this has translated into much better economic performance.”

FROM SUITS TO SWIMSUITS: At Amazon, the Clothing & Accessories Outlet Sale.

MY SUNDAY WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMN IS ON WISCONSIN: It’s Hard To Find Good Goons These Days.

When people who are used to dealing with cave-ins, or ladles of molten metal, hit the streets, they’re putting those traits to work in an environment that’s probably less dangerous than the one they work in every day. That makes them pretty formidable. . . . But miners and steelworkers are one thing. When the public employees of, say, Wisconsin hit the streets, it looked more like a bunch of disgruntled DMV clerks and graduate teaching assistants, because, well, that’s what it was.

Er, read the whole thing.

DISTURBING TRENDS IN NUCLEAR SMUGGLING: “There is another danger that is of great concern . . . It is the growing connection between nuclear insiders and organized criminal networks in this volatile part of the world.”

GATEWAY PUNDIT is all over the Weinergate story. Just keep scrolling.

A RIDE IN the Weinermobile.

WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: ACLU welcomes MTA’s response on photography. “The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland welcomed the decision of the Maryland Transit Administration to disavow efforts of some of its transit police to prevent photographers from taking pictures of its facilities and the agency’s vow to promulgate policies emphasizing the rights of photographers.”

Related: MTA chief repudiates photographer curbs.

READER JOHN MACDONALD EMAILS, “WHY DO WE HAVE TO GET ALL THE NEWS FROM THE BRITISH PAPERS?” Daily Mail: What would Michelle say? President Obama wolfs down TWO chili dogs and fries… the day after his wife unveils new dietary guide. Their photo choices are different than what you see in the American papers, too.

UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails an answer to MacDonald’s question:

Because they don’t have to suck up to the White House to get their most important stories.

This is one of the many little revolutions brought on by the Internet and Web. As the Clinton administration discovered, the existence of well-written, well-researched newspapers in English, readily available to the American reader, but beyond their ability to control, threaten, or manipulate has permanently changed the media landscape. Merely by being able to read the British press, we start to see how much the American press has always been manipulated by the American political establishment.

Somebody should write a book about this.

Yeah, they should.

JERRY POURNELLE on bioterror. Plus this: “As to garage biochemists, you grossly underestimate what many of them are capable of doing.”

DAVID FREDDOSO: More than three-fourths of House members believe Libya operation is questionable, illegal or unwise.

OBAMA ADMINSTRATION Facing Internal Divisions Over Drone Strikes in Pakistan?

SYRIA UPDATE: Tanks Move in on City as Thousands Mourn Protesters’ Deaths. “The government’s violent crackdown against a three-month-old popular uprising continued, with helicopter gunships killing 10 people in a neighboring province and residents of Hama bracing for a military assault that would be the first on the city since the government bombed it in 1982, killing at least 10,000 people.”

YA THINK? Anthony Weiner’s bulging controversy a classic example of abysmal damage control.

IT’S NOT MY FAULT! Reuters: Obama Blames Europe, Japan for US Economic Woes.

MARKDOWNS ON Duracell batteries.

MY COLUMN FOR TOMORROW’S WASHINGTON EXAMINER is now online.

HOW NOT TO choose a Presidential candidate.

THE TRUTH ABOUT GUNS: Mexico Wakes Up. “Ever since I began covering the gun violence in Mexico, I’ve been banging on about two elements of the conflagration. First, the drug thugs are armed with weapons funneled from legit sales (not Bob’s Gun Store). Second, arming the Mexican populace is the only possible ‘solution’ to the cartels’ reign of terror.”

WHICH IS MORE THAN YOU CAN SAY FOR SOME MEDIA OUTLETS: Andrew Breitbart Did Not Run ‘Weinergate’ Evidence Which Turned Out To Be Fake.

PAUL RAHE: Paul Ryan’s Strategic Vision.

IAIN MURRAY: Deregulation Now!

Regulations cost the economy $1.75 trillion each year. It is regulation that is dragging us back to recession.

The president should instantly upbraid his cabinet members and agency heads for the derisory responses to his call for deregulatory efforts, which will barely scratch the surface of the problem. He should demand total regulatory relief to the tune of at least $500 billion a year, and make it clear that it’s just a start. His agency heads have so far found a sum two orders of magnitude smaller than that, a clear sign that they don’t understand what’s wrong with the economy.

Send ‘em a copy of this piece by Steve Carter.

MARK STEYN ON WEINERGATE: “It’s the political class doing all this relentless “work for the American people” that’s turned this country into the brokest nation in the history of the planet, killed the American Dream and left the American people headed for a future poised somewhere between the Weimar Republic and Mad Max. So, if it’s a choice between politicians getting back to work for the American people or Tweeting their privates round the planet, I say, Tweet on, MacDuff. Tough on our young college ladies. But, as Queen Victoria advised her daughter on her wedding night, lie back and think of England. Download and think of America.”

IN WISCONSIN, a “Walkerville” fail. Are they suffering from protest fatigue?

CHANGE: Stocks Post Fifth Straight Week Of Losses.

KENNETH ANDERSON: A Book Length Account of Fannie and Freddie and Their Role in the Financial Crisis. “Homes were seen as a way of inducing savings for a generation that was starting to see retirement down the road. Home ownership would develop equity, assets, things that would see a generation through to the end. There was a deep problem with that logic, of course, called supply and demand.”

THOSE AMAZING GURKHAS:

A Gurkha soldier who single-handedly defeated more than 30 Taliban fighters has been awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross by the Queen.

Corporal Dipprasad Pun, 31, described how he was spurred on by the belief that he was going to die and so had nothing to lose in taking on the attackers who overran his checkpoint in Afghanistan. . . . The soldier fired more than 400 rounds, launched 17 grenades and detonated a mine to thwart the Taliban assault on his checkpoint near Babaji in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, last September.

At one point, after exhausting all his ammunition, he had to use the tripod of his machine gun to beat away a militant who was climbing the walls of the compound.

(Via Blackfive).

A BLOG REPORT on the Sturbridge tornado.

SURVIVING A TORNADO in a Kevlar bunker. “Swenson said her shelter, made by the Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont Co., didn’t budge, even as the twister blew a hole in the garage ceiling above. . . . Swenson stayed inside that shelter until the tornado passed. When she exited, unlike her shelter, her entire neighborhood was demolished. More than 130 people in her town were killed.”

AT AMAZON, the Blu-Ray Deal Of The Week: James Bond.

IF NOMINATED, I WILL NOT RUN. IF ELECTED, I will not serve.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Bank Of America Padlocked After Homeowner “Forecloses” On It. It was actually a default judgment for unpaid legal fees and court costs after BoA foreclosed on a homeowner with no mortgage, but close enough. “Sheriff’s deputies, movers, and the Nyergers’ attorney went to the bank and foreclosed on it. The attorney gave instructions to to remove desks, computers, copiers, filing cabinets and any cash in the teller’s drawers. After about an hour of being locked out of the bank, the bank manager handed the attorney a check for the legal fees.”

ROGER SIMON: Rahm Emanuel, Waterboy. “Who actually is Rahm Emanuel and why is he saying these things? More precisely, why is a putative Zionist, someone with deep family and personal ties to Israel, carrying water for Barack Obama on this matter?”

RATHER A LOT, REALLY: What Will A Nuclear-Free Germany Cost? Economic suicide by policy-fad? “Blackouts are a near-term concern because, under Merkel’s plan, Germany’s eight oldest reactors—seven of which she ordered offline for safety inspections in March, and another undergoing maintenance—would never run again, and ramping up supply from other sources could prove difficult. Germany’s Federal Network Agency has determined that southern Germany, which stands to lose five reactors producing 5,200 megawatts, could run short of power this winter. During cold snaps, demand for power is at a peak, and output from Germany’s more than 17,000 megawatts’ worth of solar capacity is also at a minimum. Electricity imports are also harder to come by during the winter, as neighboring countries confront their own power peaks.”

Give the Obama Administration credit for avoiding such flightiness.

UPDATE: Reader Robert L. Crawford writes:

Economic Suicide is exactly it, and the first case I’m aware of by a dynamic western democracy. Communist 5-year plans, starving the kulacs, Great Leaps Forward, etc., can be explained considering the sources, but for Germany in 2011? They are sacrificing their economic future and standard of living for political correctness. Stunning.

Indeed.

I PREFER MINE AGED IN OAK BARRELS: Company that transforms garbage into ethanol attracts big investors.

WHY YES, YES IT IS: 1 Gbps for $20 a Month? That’s Cheap Broadband! “In the U.S., if you want a 50- to 100-Mbps connection, it is going to cost you plenty: about $105 with a triple play plan. On the other side of the planet, however, you can buy a 1 Gbps broadband connection for $20 a month, as long as you sign-up for a 24-month triple play contract with Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited, a division of local Internet service provider, City Telecom.”

JAMES TARANTO: All The News That’s Fit To Scrub. “In fairness to Abramson, this didn’t happen on her watch, which doesn’t begin until September. Still, if she turns out to be as gaffe-prone as this incident suggests, her tenure at the Times will be a lot of fun for us.”

NEW YORK POST: Airbrushing History At The New York Times. “‘As someone who spent time in the Soviet Union while it still existed, the notion of airbrushing kind of gives me the creeps.” Indeed.

HUFFINGTON POST: Pollster Stan Greenberg Warns Democrats To Face ‘The Real Economy.’ “There is a real economy out there, that’s not changing.”

IN THE MAIL: From Christopher Anvil, Rx for Chaos.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: “The US has killed Ilyas Kashmiri, one of al Qaeda’s most dangerous military commanders and strategists, in a Predator airstrike yesterday in South Waziristan.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Death Of The American Dream, Part II.

One way to summarize the kind of change we need. During the farm era the focus of American domestic policy was to create the most favorable possible environment for millions of ordinary Americans to launch flourishing small businesses. Rather that focusing on home ownership, American social policy should probably be looking at small business formation as the key to mass middle class prosperity in the next fifty years.

The American Dream is not in the last analysis a farm or a home and a good job. It is the dream that through hard work and good choices the average American can be prosperous and independent, and that ordinary people with these life experiences can govern themselves wisely and well without the ‘guidance’ of their ‘betters’.

As always, read the whole thing.

WELL, WHY IMPORT OIL FROM A STABLE FRIENDLY NEIGHBOR, ANYWAY? The Hill: Administration Blocks Restart of Massive Oil Pipeline Citing Leaks. “The order comes at a politically sensitive time for TransCanada. The company is seeking federal approval to expand its Keystone pipeline to carry Canadian oil sands from Alberta to Texas. The proposed project, known as Keystone XL, is currently undergoing a multi-agency review that is being headed up by the State Department. Comments on the project’s latest layer of environmental review are due by Monday. Environmental groups have mounted a campaign against the Keystone XL project, arguing that it puts the country at risk of major oil spills and noting that oil sands production results in more greenhouse gas emissions than traditional oil production.” I smell something, and it’s not carbon dioxide.

TIMOTHY DALRYMPLE: Battle Of The Bulge: Is The Weiner War Worth It? “The comic value alone is priceless.”

I think there’s an important point in the comic value: The people who think they’re smart enough, and morally superior enough, to run everyone else’s lives are risible. They’re not smart enough to run their own lives competently, and they’re actually, overall, morally inferior — I mean, John Edwards, DSK, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barney Frank, Tax Cheat Tim Geithner, just go down the list — and mocking them is inherently valuable. They pursue power, and they exercise power, as much for deference as anything else. Deny them that, and make it painful for them whenever possible. That’s my take.

UPDATE: Reader Walter Oster writes: “You talk about the moral inferiors and incompetents who want to run our lives. I recently re-read Atlas Shrugs and was saddened by the incredible parallels. Geithner and Frank and those guys are James Taggart and Wesley Mouch. I agree that comic value is important but man, is it sad.”

LOOKING AT Germany’s Energy Incoherence. If carbon’s as bad as they say, it’s crazy to be abandoning nuclear power. So what does it mean that Germany is abandoning nuclear power?

SALE, TODAY ONLY: Pirates Of The Caribbean Trilogy on Blu-Ray.

MICKEY KAUS: Occam’s Comeback.

WHAT COULD BE WRONG? China Has Divested 97 Percent of Its Holdings in U.S. Treasury Bills. “China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury. . . . China’s ownership of the U.S. national debt has decreased in each of the last five months on record, including November, December, January, February and March.”

UPDATE: ZeroHedge says don’t worry, be happy. Which is unusual for them . . .

A NOT-VERY-CHEERY VIEW from Nile Gardiner in The Telegraph: After 29 months of the most left-wing presidency in US history, the American superpower is heading towards the economic abyss.

WHAT A GREEK DEFAULT will look like. “I’ve only been writing about finance for seven years, and I’ve already watched a bunch of ‘unthinkable’ and ‘impossible’ actions, from Argentina’s devaluation and serial defaults, to my own government nationalizing GM. The unthinkable gets thunk surprisingly often.”

A CIVIL-RIGHTS SETBACK: ‘Campus Carry’ Bills Fail in Texas and Louisiana. Well, we didn’t get rid of Jim Crow overnight, either. Protecting civil rights is a process, not an event. It takes time to educate people out of their fears and prejudices.

THOUGHTS ON The New York Times, Memory Holes, And Online Journalistic Ethics.