BRYAN PRESTON: Dissing The SOTU, George Will Speaks For Me.

OH, CANADA: Man faces jail after protecting home from masked firebomb attackers. “His surveillance cameras caught the attackers lobbing at least six Molotov cocktails at his house and bombing his doghouse, singeing one of his Siberian Huskies. But when Mr. Thomson handed the video footage to Niagara Regional Police, he found himself charged with careless use of a firearm.”

So the Niagara Regional Police are a bunch of clowns. Or just corrupt. Noted.

UPDATE: Reader Jim May emails:

The problem is not the NRP, it is Canada itself — in particular, its antipathy towards self-reliance in the realm of self-defense. Along with socialized medicine, this topic is one of those where dissent has been quite rare, and has often been derided with comments to the effect that the “anti-Canadian” dissenter should just emigrate to the States. I ended up doing just that.

That being said, your post confirms something peculiar that I noticed on my last two visits home last year: suddenly, I was hearing angry stories about people being brought up on charges after successfully defending themselves at home. That was notable in and of itself, but what was more surprising was the reaction to my expression of gratitude that I now live in the U.S., where I own guns and have the relative freedom to use them in self-defense. Instead of the usual condescension about American “violence” or “gun culture”, I got a surprise; more than a smidgeon of actual envy of that freedom.

After a spate of these stories nationwide, most notably that of David Chen, a Toronto retailer who detained a repeat shoplifter in his store and called police — only to be charged with kidnapping — it seems like Canadians may finally have had enough.

You have to be in my shoes — from Canada, but having been away for some years — to appreciate the significance of this shift.

Americans defending against the Left’s latest spot of gun-control opportunism would do well to take note of where the Left’s road leads, for you’ll find Canadians standing there — disarmed. And not too happy about it anymore.

No reason they should be, but I’m glad they’re waking up.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Global Price Fears Mount: As Food, Raw Materials Soar, Europe’s Central Bank Head Warns on Inflation.

JENNIFER RUBIN: Not so fast on trying to narrow the 2012 Presidential field. Read the whole thing, which is full of good advice. Let the primaries do the winnowing.

Meanwhile, I’d note too that it’s a mistake to get too distracted by Presidential politics. Here in Tennessee, for example, our new governor, Bill Haslam, is a competent country-club Republican, but no Tea Party type. Nonetheless, the big news is that the legislature has gone Republican. That was a much bigger deal than the gubernatorial election, even though it was harder to see while it was happening. For what it’s worth, my advice to Tea Party activists would be to focus on Congressional elections now, and worry about Presidential politics later.

PENETRATION: The Obama hair-dye story has reached the women’s / style websites like The Frisky and StyleList. And I think it all started with an observation by Ann Althouse.

JACK LALANNE dies at age 96.

FORBES: DO WE NEED A DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY OR A TSA? No. Next question?

BEWARE OF BUREAUCRATS BEARING GIFTS: When a bureaucrat calls for accountability, it means he has found a way to game the system.

AT AMAZON, markdowns in kitchen and dining.

OLBERMANN’S SNIT:

I don’t begrudge Olbermann wanting more money, even though I thought he was wildly overpaid. If you think you can fetch a better price from a giant corporation for your low-rated show, why not go for it? Of course, putting your “greed” ahead of the cause you consider yourself vital to is a nice bit of hypocrisy for a prog like Olbermann.

But letting your staff sit in the dark until they hear the news on air, strikes me as precisely the sort of thing you’d expect from a self-involved jerk.

Indeed.

SO, HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” GOING? “Chinese Pianist Plays Propaganda Tune at White House: US humiliated in eyes of Chinese by song used to inspire anti-Americanism.” This seems like quite an expression of contempt toward one’s hosts. It’s certainly quite a slap in the face to Obama, and a demonstration that our State Department remains not ready for primetime. On the other hand, it should remove any shreds of guilt I might otherwise feel when China dissolves into civil war after we default on our bonds. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Aaron Krol counsels caution: “I did a little digging on the story about the Chinese pianist
allegedly playing an anti-American propaganda piece at the White House. It looks like the original source of this story is the Epoch Times, which according to Wikipedia is a Falun Gong outfit. The story may or may not be true, I don’t know, but the source does have an agenda given their persecution by the Chinese government.”

Well, the only pushback I’ve seen is the claim in the NYT that it was unintentional. I’m skeptical about that.

WHO’S HURT BY FEDERAL BUDGET CUTS?

The federal employee unions gave nearly $5 million to Democratic House and Senate candidates between 2001 and the 2010 campaign, according to data cited by MAPLight from the Center for Responsive Politics compared to just over $1 million to Republicans.

In other words, Democrats got 82 percent of the campaign cash contributed by federal employee unions.

MAPLight points to another interesting aspect of this question, noting that contributions from defense industry firms are almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, though with a slight tilt in favor of the latter.

Since 2001, defense firms contributed more than $23.5 million to Republican incumbents, compared to just over $21.2 million to Democrats, a 52-47 percent division between the two parties.

Defense industry contributions are not infrequently assumed to be tilted very much in favor of Republicans who consistently more solidly in favor of bigger defense budgets than do Democrats.

We need these cuts to avoid bankruptcy. Somebody needs to remind the cuttees of all that “shared sacrifice” talk from before the election.

NORM AUGUSTINE: America Is Losing Its Edge In Innovation.

In fact, scientists and engineers are celebrities in most countries. They’re not seen as geeks or misfits, as they too often are in the U.S., but rather as society’s leaders and innovators. In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers. In the U.S., almost no engineers or scientists are engaged in high-level politics, and there is a virtual absence of engineers in our public policy debates.

Why does this matter? Because if American students have a negative impression – or no impression at all – of science and engineering, then they’re hardly likely to choose them as professions. Already, 70% of engineers with PhD’s who graduate from U.S. universities are foreign-born. Increasingly, these talented individuals are not staying in the U.S – instead, they’re returning home, where they find greater opportunities. . . .

Global leadership is not a birthright. Despite what many Americans believe, our nation does not possess an innate knack for greatness. Greatness must be worked for and won by each new generation. Right now that is not happening. But we still have time.

Read the whole thing.

THE MAINE VERSION OF A PRANK: “Instead of vandalizing his house when he wasn’t home, we shoveled his driveway.”

AT AMAZON, up to 60% off on men’s and women’s boots.

“SIMPLY INDEFENSIBLE:” Dave Hardy on the District Court’s denial of attorney’s fees in the McDonald case. Hey, can’t encourage those damn gun nuts with civil rights attorney’s fees. They might bring more lawsuits for those damn “civil rights” of theirs. Judge Milton Shadur is looking a bit petty here.

COMING THIS WEEK FROM TYLER COWEN: The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better. “In a figurative sense, the American economy has enjoyed lots of low-hanging fruit since at least the seventeenth century: free land; immigrant labor; and powerful new technologies. Yet during the last forty years, that low-hanging fruit started disappearing and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau and the trees are barer than we would like to think. That’s it. That is what has gone wrong.The problem won’t be solved overnight, but there are reasons to be optimistic. We simply have to recognize the underlying causes of our past prosperity—low hanging fruit—and how we will come upon more of it.”

WHEN FOUL becomes fair.

AT OAK RIDGE, double dismantlement milestones. Since I’m pretty sure I’m less than nine megatons away from Oak Ridge National Lab, I’m happy to hear of this.

HMM: Twitter and Facebook don’t connect people – they isolate them from reality, say a rising number of academics. That hasn’t been my experience. I had some related thoughts here.

UPDATE: Reader Bob Hicks writes: “Aren’t academics more in danger of being isolated from reality?” Yes.

MAURICE STUCKE: Lessons From The Financial Crisis.

IN THE MAIL: Drowning in Oil: BP & the Reckless Pursuit of Profit.

SHOULD YOU GET a Verizon iPhone 4? Here’s something I didn’t know: “The Verizon iPhone will act as a five device mobile hotspot.” That’s handy.

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: “It seems Glenn Back, by accurately quoting Francis Fox Piven, has gored the Ruling Class ox again. Professor Piven wrote, and The Nation published, an article calling for violent, angry protest. . . . Beck and The Blaze have publicized the piece . . . The reaction in the Times? Why obviously, to accuse Beck of fomenting threats against Piven.” If you don’t want your inflammatory statements publicized, perhaps you should think before making them? But Piven’s stuck in the old world, where selective media attention would have ensured that inflammatory statements made in The Nation wouldn’t have received national exposure. It doesn’t work that way any more.

UPDATE: Here’s a flashback on Piven’s call for violent riots.

And, just so people are clear, here’s what those Greek riots she was calling for Americans to emulate looked like:

At the same time, tens of thousands of protesters marched through Athens in the largest and most violent protests since the country’s budget crisis began last fall. Angry youths rampaged through the center of Athens, torching several businesses and vehicles and smashing shop windows. Protesters and police clashed in front of parliament and fought running street battles around the city.

Witnesses said hooded protesters smashed the front window of Marfin Bank in central Athens and hurled a Molotov cocktail inside. The three victims died from asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, the Athens coroner’s office said. Four others were seriously injured there, fire department officials said.

Praising riots involving Molotov cocktails and people burning to death? Fine. Criticizing a lefty on a cable TV network? Why that’s “hatemongering” and incitement.

REMINDER: A quote from Robert Heinlein:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

Related: Post-tax-increase, the exodus from Illinois begins.

Also: America’s Dying Cities: “In several dozen cities nationwide, the population actually declined significantly as residents presumably began to flee the region’s toxic financial atmosphere, or perhaps in some cases, even held off on having kids due to a lack of resources.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: IGNORE OBAMA’S SPEECH:

We all know what is coming in 2012 — the most well-financed, Wall Street-subsidized, vitriolic camping in modern memory, in which Obama’s rivals will be metaphorically reduced to caricatures of racist, selfish, and cruel nativists. The 2011 Tucson speech will have about as much resonance with Obama’s impending campaign style as the 2004 oration affected his 2004-9 political behavior. . . .

And finally, why not an iota of presidential follow-up when in nanoseconds Obama’s own progressive supporters returned to form and took up the old successful hate tropes? Rep. Cohen (D-TN) was soon comparing conservative opponents to Nazis in their Goebbels-like propaganda that likewise would, we were to believe, result in a Holocaust-like denial of basic human compassion. Columnists in Slate were back to the old Jonathan Chait-style (“I hate George Bush. There, I said it”) of declaring their unabashed loathing for political opponents (“Why I Loathe my Connecticut Senator”). All that was left was the reemergence from his Atlanta peace center of a smiling Jimmy Carter, quoting scripture as he might yet again remind us that the elder Bush was “effeminate,” Vice President Cheney was a “militant,” the younger Bush was the “worst” president, and Israel is an “apartheid” state.

Running dogs, I think they used to call them.

TODAY ONLY: An exercise bike sale.

THE GREAT 2010 CASHOUT: Evan Bayh becomes a hedge-fund lobbyist. Sometimes I get the feeling that our political class sees things unraveling and is trying to grab what it can, while it can. Of course, it’s pretty hard to tell that from simple unrestrained greed. . . .

I’M PRETTY SURE THAT “TARGETED INVESTMENTS” TRANSLATES AS “more taxpayer money diverted to my cronies.” I don’t think that’s what this country needs, or wants. It’s probably what Obama will offer at the State of the Union, though.

“I’M NOT A RACIST, I know people who voted for Obama.”

WITH CLIMATE BILL DEAD, Obama Faces Pressure From Greens. And, probably, pressure for green . . . .

TED KOPPEL: 30 years after the Iran hostage crisis, we’re still fighting Reagan’s war. Um, wasn’t Jimmy Carter President when the Hostage Crisis began? And if he’d taken decisive action instead of dithering, we probably wouldn’t still be fighting this war, and doing badly enough that supporters of the current Democratic President are trying to blame Reagan. Instead, Carter temporized, much as Obama has been doing on numerous fronts. I don’t remember Koppel sounding bellicose back then, but of course I was young and might have missed it.

On the other hand, I can’t help but think that to a lot of Democrats, heating things up with Iran now might seem to have short-term political benefits. It would distract people from what’s going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and, for a while, at least, in the American economy.

AMERICA’S TOP fitness model.

“A lot of times they want you to smile while you’re holding a squat for two minutes. It’s burning, and you’re trying to keep your form,” Strother says. “Sometimes you forget to smile.”

I pretty much always forget to smile during my workouts. On the other hand, I was next to Jessica Putnam on the stairclimber the other day, and she wasn’t smiling either, just sipping steadily from a gallon jug of water as she went on and on and on. But then, there were no cameras present.

VIOLENCE AND RACIAL EPITHETS TO overrun Sunday television.

BREAKING: FoxNews Hires Keith Olbermann.

SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? Here Comes $4 Gas, $5 Cups of Coffee.

SIGH.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on business, home-office, and tax-prep software.

LASER INCIDENTS INVOLVING AIRCRAFT are on the rise.

POWER LINE: Jeffrey Immelt, Obama’s Pet CEO.

REDESIGNING the Gadsden Flag.

ROBERT HEINLEIN AND THOMAS JEFFERSON ON the real meaning of political parties.

JOHN HINDERAKER: THE LEFT’S TUCSON STRATEGY, STAGE TWO. Glenn Beck accurately quotes France Fox Piven’s calls for violence, then gets called evil when she gets “threats.”

Glenn Beck has pulled back the curtain on this disgraceful specimen by quoting her accurately. No one has identified any statements he has made about Piven that are incorrect, or claims that he has in any way threatened her. Unlike Piven, Beck is a staunch opponent of political violence. But the mis-named Center for Constitutional Rights–another Orwellian touch–thinks there is such a thing as too much free speech. They want Fox News to shut Beck up because of the “sheer quantity” of Beck’s references to Piven.

They can take anything except honest discussion.

LITTLE MISS ATTILA WILL BE A GUEST ON DATECHGUY’S RADIO SHOW, at 9 PM Eastern tonight. You can listen live right here.

IS THERE A GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS IN THE WORKS?

TEA PARTY CANDIDATE JACK KIMBALL elected to head New Hampshire GOP. And note the picture Politico chose for this story. No hidden agenda there, Politico! No, really, the agenda isn’t hidden at all . . . .

SCREENSHOT OF THE DAY, from Memeorandum.

Kinda sums up the whole “new civility” thing, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: Reader Allen S. Thorpe responds to Gail Collins: “Now if we can get through the SOTU without the President insulting the Supreme Court, . . .”

MORE NEWS THAT DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE.

In September 2010 Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was scheduled to speak at Penn Valley Community College in Kansas City.

At some point, wearing black clothes and a bullet-proof vest, 22 year-old Casey Brezik bolted out of a classroom, knife in hand, and slashed the throat of a dean. As he would later admit, he confused the dean with Nixon.

The story never left Kansas City. It is not hard to understand why. Knives lack the political sex appeal of guns, and even Keith Olbermann would have had a hard time turning Brezik into a Tea Partier.

Indeed, Brezik seems to have inhaled just about every noxious vapor in the left-wing miasma: environmental extremism, radical Islam, anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism and Christophobia, among others.

Read the whole thing.

BALDING MEN worry about marketability. This was all explained in The Simpsons.

THE DRESSMAKING SKILLS might have been a clue. Or, hey, maybe not.

A BLEAK OUTLOOK ON THE FUTURE, but not bleak enough?

AT AMAZON, a roundup of new cameras and camcorders.

MICHAEL MUKASEY ON the decline of the Justice Department under Eric Holder. I’m quite surprised to see this from the mild-mannered Mukasey; things must be even worse than I thought.

MORE ON what happened to the antiwar movement.

HOW TO SET UP multiple computer monitors.

VIOLENT RHETORIC: Is Chris Matthews “A Ticking Time Bomb?”

GETTING AROUND CHINA’S RARE-EARTHS CHOKEHOLD by designing motors that don’t need ‘em.

MORE ON THE DECLINE AND FALL OF BORDERS:

Borders was a major force in redefining Americans’ reading habits, selling millions of books in places where they had once been scarce and helping scores of novels to become movies and subjects of national conversation. Now, Borders faces a pool of potential customers who quickly spread culture themselves, one viral video or status update at a time.

Somebody should write a book on this phenomenon.

CASUALTIES OF OVER-REGULATION? The Phantom 15 Million: Taming unemployment starts with solving the mystery of the jobs that were supposed to have been created in the past 10 years but weren’t. Or is it illegal immigration and outsourcing? Or something else?

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I saw that National Journal story the other day (on the mysterious lack of new jobs this last decade) and it contains its own answer: Look at the graphs of investment in plant and equipment, and national job gains. The investment graph is pretty spiky, but average the (down) slope from ’99 on and it’s a good match for the jobs downslope.

We’ve been getting fewer new jobs in the US these last ten years because we’ve been investing less in plant and equipment in the US these last ten years. QED.

Presumably we’ve been investing less here because the US is no longer the best place to invest. The whys of that are left as an exercise for the student. Hints: Sarbanes-Oxley, EPA, OSHA, roving packs of feral lawyers (no offense), ever lousier schools, an ever more uncertain tax regime… And we’re shocked – shocked, I say – that structural unemployment here is rising to European levels.

No offense taken.

AS PEOPLE LOOK AT BUDGET CRISES, these thoughts on “shared sacrifice” from 2008 are worth noting.

OWEN BRENNAN’S Keith Olbermann prediction seems to have been pretty close.

IN THE MAIL: The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr.

LAW SCHOOL BUBBLE BURSTING? LSAT Test-Takers Down 10%, Law School Applications Down 12%. I suspect that potential applicants are beginning to react to the stories of law-school grads with heavy debt and no jobs.

Or maybe they’re seeing things like this.

UPGRADING THE WORLD: Andrew Klavan reviews Jane McGonigal’s Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.

ALAN BOYLE: Don’t get too scared by this California Superstorm talk. “We don’t really have to wait until 2012 for a wakeup call on the threats posed by severe storms: All you have to do is look at what’s been happening in Australia and Brazil this month.” If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it’s not working.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Did Obama dye his gray hair away? Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

TODAY ONLY: A sale on the Sony Dash Personal Internet Viewer. Like a poor man’s iPad? Well, sorta I guess. Anyway, it’s a lot cheaper.

UPDATE: Reader Tim Gee emails: “We gave our 13 yo son a Chumby a few years ago. He listens to it every night, and has had fun using and trying out all the widgets. I’ve just ordered the Sony Dash for his birthday as an upgrade — thanks for the heads up.”

“POLITICS:” ProPublica: Why a Gruesome Pennsylvania Abortion Clinic Had Not Been Inspected for 17 Years.

According to the grand jury report [2][PDF] released this week by Philadelphia prosecutors, Pennsylvania health officials deliberately chose not to enforce laws to ensure that abortion clinics provide the same level of care as other medical service providers. . . .

The grand jury report said that one look at the place would have detected the problems, but the Pennsylvania Department of Health hadn’t inspected the place since 1993. Here’s the grand jury report, in surprisingly strong language:

The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.

“Even nail salons in Pennsylvania are monitored more closely for client safety,” the report states. “Without regular inspections, providers like Gosnell continue to operate; unlawful and dangerous third-trimester abortions go undetected; and many women, especially poor women, suffer.”

I’m surprised to see the lefty outfit ProPublica pick up on this.

JOURNALISM: Washington Post Organizes News Boycott of Sarah Palin; Starts Twitter Campaign Against GOP Star.

JESSE WALKER: Unpacking Jared Lee Loughner: If you’re the Southern Poverty Law Center, the media will mistake your guesses for gold. Even when they turn out to be crap later.

THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING TAMPON BRAND. “Drugstore shelves have been mysteriously empty of o.b. nonapplicator tampons since late fall, leaving the feminine hygiene product’s devotees puzzled and peeved. The popular product is in such short supply that eBay users are bidding up to $76 for three packs, which usually sell for just $8.79 a pack.” This reminds me of the Seinfeld “spongeworthy” episode. Well, sort of.

A. BARTON HINKLE: CIVILITY IS NICE, NONVIOLENCE IS BETTER:

The frenzy surrounding Jared Loughner’s rampage in Tucson this month has finally died down. As tempers cool, perhaps distance could turn reflection toward some bigger questions. Many Republicans and Democrats have lamented the frequency of violent rhetoric in politics. Fewer seem to have regrets about the actual use of violence itself.

I’m not referring here to death threats, terrorism, assassination attempts, and similar heinous acts. Nobody considers those violent deeds by non-state actors legitimate. But what about violence by the state? Liberals and conservatives alike often embrace it as a means to an end they desire. . . . The debate over the size and scope of government, then, is an argument over when to use violence to change things and circumstances consensual activity cannot. . . .. Force is sometimes necessary. We must have police and courts and national defense and environmental protection and so on. But government at all levels does much more nowadays than is strictly necessary, because both liberals and conservatives delight in using it to make other people do what they would not do through mutual consent.

In the wake of the butchery in Tucson, it has been nice to hear many people say we should not speak so well of violence. It would be even nicer to hear more say we should not vote for it quite so often, either.

Read the whole thing.

USAID MONEY: Part of our national security budget.

TONY BLAIR ON IRAQ; Stop with the whining apologies, you pathetic wimps. “Be sure to spend a few minutes watching the video in the Guardian’s report. Blair responds with barely-concealed disdain to the notion that he hid his policy decisions from his cabinet, almost laughing aloud at one point.”

LISA MURKOWSKI proves the Alaska Tea Party right.

IN THE BOSTON GLOBE: Mike Stopa: The Reality of “Death Panels:” ObamaCare’s end-of-life planning comes down to economics.

PROF. JACOBSON: If “she can’t win” is the means by which one of the candidates wins the Republican nomination, then we can’t win either.

THIS IS OLD NEWS TO INSTAPUNDIT READERS: New Hampshire GOP Faces Tea Party Takeover? It won’t just be New Hampshire, either, I suspect.

THAT DIDN’T TAKE LONG: Sheriff Dupnik now facing recall bid.

TIM PAWLENTY’S BOOK SALES NOT TOO IMPRESSIVE. Well, he wrote a book called Courage to Stand, but then — the week it came out, when tested publicly at a crucial moment — he sat.

And yeah, that matters. As I write this, his Amazon rank is 5,185 — which seems about right.

WORRIES ABOUT THE GROWTH IN “populist resentment of public employees.” Now where could that come from? Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. The current system of public finance can’t go on forever.

MSNBC SAYS SAYONARA TO KEITH OLBERMANN.

Or as some call him, he who must not be named.

UPDATE: Reader Adam Kiwiatkowski emails: “His viewer is going to be bummed.”

And, apparently, Comcast has now become the evilest corporation on the planet.

Plus, from Don Surber:

The FCC just approved GE’s sale of MSNBC’s parent company — NBC/Universal — to Comcast. The Obama administration just hired GE’s CEO to a big position.

I think some moves are being made behind the scene.

Hey, Olbermann, this was the president you wanted.

He was a useful idiot for a while. Now he’s no longer useful. Expect to see more of this kind of thing.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Goodbye to one of the world’s worst people.

MORE: Top 10 New Job Suggestions For Keith Olbermann. My favorite: “Audition for the part of the creepy gym teacher on MTV’s ‘Skins.’”

I was only on Olbermann’s show once, on election night 2004, when he was still more or less sane.

LAW PROFESSORS KISS A PIG FOR CHARITY.

RELEASES: New Fantasy and Science Fiction Releases For The Kindle.

POLIWOOD: Predicting the Oscar nominees. Plus why conservatives should stop dissing Hollywood and take it over.

THE MOST-EMAILED New York Times Article Ever. That this parody is spot-on doesn’t make me feel good about the NYT’s future.

JON STEWART blasts Steve Cohen for Nazi comparison.

WELL, THAT WOULD BE NICE: A biofuel breakthrough that could yield $30/barrel oil?

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

MILITANT ISLAM in Norway.

BACKDOOR BILINGUALISM? “As Stoll notes, legislation that did what the FCC just did would never pass Congress. I don’t even think it would have passed last year’s Congress. But don’t lawmakers have the power to reverse the FCC?”

IOWAHAWK: Dear Nazi.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Everything Starts With Repeal.

THIS MUST BE MORE OF THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” I’VE BEEN HEARING ABOUT: CHINESE TIGER ATE U.S. DOVE FOR LUNCH.

COMPANY FIRES LAW FIRM because of unfounded legal threat on company’s behalf. As I’ve noted before, lawyers need to be more careful about these threats. There’s even potential professional-responsibility liability for making unfounded legal threats, and — thanks to the Internet — more and more people are willing to punch back twice as hard, and expose you as a bully and a fool if you overstep.

MICHAEL WALSH: Cultural Vandalism.

JENNIFER RUBIN: Mike Pence: Will He, or Won’t He? Plus this: “And if he doesn’t run for president, what better figure is there to primary Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.)?”

TIM PAWLENTY: Don’t Raise The Debt Ceiling — Reform Entitlement Spending.

DAN BAUM IN THE HUFFINGTON POST: After Tucson: Stricter Gun Laws Aren’t the Answer.

Gun control not only does no practical good, it actively causes harm. It may be hard to show that it saves lives, but it’s easy to demonstrate that we’ve sacrificed a generation of progress on things like health care, women’s rights, immigration reform, income fairness, and climate change because we keep messing with people’s guns. I am researching a book on Americans’ relationship to their guns, and keep meeting working-stiff gun guys — people whose wages haven’t risen since 1978 and should be natural Democrats — who won’t even listen to the blue team because they’re convinced Democrats want to take away their guns. Misguided? Maybe. But that’s democracy for you. It’s helpful to think of gun control as akin to marijuana prohibition — useless for almost everything except turning otherwise law-abiding people into criminals and fomenting cynicism and resentment. All the talk of a new large-magazine ban hits gun guys’ ears like liberals using this disaster to trim back gun rights a little. It reinforces the toxic narrative that the Democrats are the enemy of regular guys, which is the last thing we need right now.

Well, the toxic narrative is pretty much true, but this is a good piece.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Hogue on the “toxic narrative:”

Older white males are the enemy of every TV show, commercial, and the Democrat party.

We got the memo they sent decades ago.

Sorry Dan. Too little, too late.

Ouch.

HMM: Oilman: Bakken holds 20 billion barrels of oil. Well, that’s several times the official estimates, but I hope he’s right.

UPDATE: Sadly, numerous readers wonder when the Feds will figure out a way to shut them down.