ANN ALTHOUSE: Who invited Peter Yarrow to the Wisconsin protests? And why was he the only entertainer on the bill? Plus, some political-media history.

I CAN’T BELIEVE TEDDY rented the whole thing.

FRANK BUCKLES, THE LAST LIVING U.S. WORLD WAR ONE VETERAN, has died.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “In judging teachers’ claims, we might compare their lives with the lives of, say, farmers or welders or interstate truckers.”

DEAD TALIBAN IN CHORA. Be sure to click through and view the panoramic photo.

IN ITALY, worries about a flood of Libyan “boat people.”

RON RADOSH: Blaming Israel, Ignoring Radical Islam at J Street’s National Conference. Yeah, yeah, I know: Dog bites man. But somebody’s got to point it out now and then.

STILL MORE ON WISCONSIN: New Media Meade catches protesters leaving the Capitol and the scene outside — including the scoop from police that anyone who wants to stay will be allowed.

SO THE RADIO-CONTROLLED HELICOPTERS WERE PRETTY POPULAR: I even got an email from a former student last week saying that her husband was happily playing with one that he’d ordered through the site, which was cool. But a reader sends this on where to go next if you want to:

I guess you’re getting inundated, but hey, it’s a distraction. I’m not a flack for the Blade company, just a really happy hobbyist who enjoys their products.

There’s actually a “growth path” for micro helis for those who find they love their little syma but want something more flexible/quicker/better performing. The Blade company has created three different micro-helis, one for each skill level (beginner / intermediate / advanced). They’re all roughly the size of the syma, but are much more flexible & responsive. For example, they all include replaceable rechargeable batteries and external chargers, allowing you to have longer flight times by using multiple batteries. They are also available as “Ready to Fly” (RTF) or “Bind and Fly” (BNF). RTF versions cost ~ $30 more and include an inexpensive transmitter/controller. BNF versions allow you to use a “for real” digital transmitter/controller, which is more expensive but can be used with any BNF vehicle, including helis and other aircraft. They are more expensive than the Syma, but they’re by no means outrageous, and parts are common & cheap.

Beginner: Blade mCX2 RTF.

Intermediate: Blade mSR RTF.

Advanced: Blade mCP X BNF.

A radio “to rule them all:”

That last helicopter is due out in March. Check out the video (under “media”), it lets a skilled pilot do all the wacky stuff the big ones do in his or her own living room.

I never got into RC aircraft because I thought the price of getting started was going to be in the thousands, and I’d just drill whatever I got into the ground at the first try and that’d be it. The truth is there’s a world of fun to be had for very reasonable prices.

Yes, and even grown men need toys. Or maybe it should be “especially.”

UPDATE: Reader Thomas Love writes: “Or, you could head down to the airport and start taking lessons in personally controlled helicopters. It adds a whole new level of realism.” And expense. Though my nephew had his helicopter license by 18. He financed it by working for a helicopter-flight place and getting the instructor-rated pilots to give him time.

AS THEY SHOULD: Tea Party Members Vow To Hold GOP Accountable.

UBIQUITOUS VIDEOCAMERA UPDATE: Reader Paul Stinchfield emails: “With all the recent videos of leftists and union thugs assaulting Tea Party people, now seems like a good time for you to do another post on compact, easy-to-use video cameras. If it’s not on video, it didn’t happen.”

I think most people who are out marching or covering marches have a camera by now. But I like the Kodak Zi8 (which can take an external microphone) and the rugged, waterproof Playsport. And, of course, the old reliable Flip Mino.

UPDATE: Reader Richard Palmer emails: “Glenn, The advice to conservatives about recording everything is important. The fact that Sarah Palin did her interview with Katie Couric without bringing her own camera crew still amazes me. The stakes are just too high. Besides, the payoff could be huge.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Kevin Rahm writes: “Two cameras should be used when possible and three would be ideal. One to chat with the psycho thug, one about 10 feet away to record the thug punching a 5’1″ super girl and the third from a higher angle to put it all into perspective.” Yes, I’ve recommended the multi-camera approach myself in the past. The main camera should be conspicuous, the others less so.

WISCONSIN: MEADE IS THE NEW MEDIA. “And watch for the indications that the police are on the protesters’ side.”

UPDATE: Related: “There is hate in their eyes.” “These are people who don’t respect diverse viewpoints. In fact, they’re so afraid I’ll present a diverse viewpoint, that’s why they try to heckle me and shut down every live shot. They’ve made it clear, that what they want to make it harder for me to do my job. They are proud of that when they disrupt a live shot, when they really trample over the First Amendment rights or the First Amendment’s obligations of a reporter. Now, I am not saying that’s all of the people. Those are the people that come here and heckle and try to disrupt things. I look in their eyes – there is hate in their eyes. They don’t want to hear any kind of viewpoint that is different from their own. That’s why they do what they do.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: “The left hates violence. Unless they lose an election, that is.” “Now the most interesting thing about this stuff is this is going up on the net, right on twitter. No attempt to hide it, spoken openly. . . . because the left counts on the media to ignore it.”

MORE: V Is For Vitriol.

STILL MORE: Union Chief Doesn’t Condemn Comparisons of Wisconsin’s Walker to Hitler.

MORE STILL: Reader Phil Dean emails:

I don’t think it’s fair to presume that the police in the clip are “on the protesters’ side”. What he said was, “All these people have decided that they are working with us to help with their protest.”

Police “work with” protest groups of all political stripes to manage events. That does not equal any kind of endorsement. It also seems from what the cop says that he seems to assume that Meade is actually one of the union protesters.

Eh, good point.

LOTS OF COVERAGE OF THE TEA PARTY POLICY SUMMIT, at PJTV.

WELL, WELL: Breaking: Iran Has Several Military Bases in Libya.

MARKDOWNS ON Levi’s For Men.

Also, boys’ denim.

A FIRSTHAND REPORT FROM a Jasmine Revolution rally in Shanghai.

YA THINK? We Should Be Drilling For Oil In the U.S.

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: Marxists. I Hate These Guys. Eric Hobsbawm was a nasty old tyrant-lover and enabler of mass murder. That he flourished is evidence that the academy will accept the worst into its bosom, so long as they lean left. Even after the Wall came down and the true horror and failure of Marxism could not be denied, he didn’t really change his views, just the excuses. He was no hero. That he is being praised by a man whose latest book is On Evil only completes the irony. He should be remembered as the horror, and the cautionary example to academia, that he was.

Yes, I know: Do not speak ill of the dead. But when that maxim was originated, there were no communists or nazis yet.

UPDATE: Father Do Not Forgive Them. They Know Damn Well What They Do.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oh, my mistake. I thought, somehow, that Hobsbawm had died. Oh, well — all the more reason to speak ill of him now, then. He might even hear it.

EZRA LEVANT: For Europe, Alberta oil is too dirty. Isn’t Libyan oil too bloody?

Where did Moammar Gadhafi, the brutal dictator of Libya, get the money to pay the foreign mercenaries who are butchering his people? How did he pay for those French-made fighter jets strafing protesters?

Europe, mainly. Europe buys 80% of Libya’s oil. Other than terrorism, that’s pretty much the only thing Libya exports. . . . None of this is news. It’s olds. It’s been going on for years. What’s new is last week, the very week when Gadhafi and his son told the world they’d fight democracy protesters to the last bullet, was the week the European Union chose to criticize Canada’s oilsands because — get this — they say we have 20 more grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of oil than Libya does.

It’s true, it takes more energy to produce oil from Canada’s oilsands than from Libya’s desert because we have to steam it out of the sand.

European oil imports from Iraq and Nigeria have the same carbon footprint as our oilsands. Those countries burn off the natural gas that comes up when they pump oil — an illegal environmental practice in Canada. And oil from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela has even higher carbon emissions.

Our European friends are silent on all of this.

It’s showboating, since Canada only exports oil to the United States. If Europe wants to make a big deal out of not liking the oil we’re not selling to them anyway, that’s fine. But fair’s fair. If they don’t like Canadian oil because of 20 grams of CO2, let’s insist they swear off oil with blood in it.

It’s like all this green stuff is just a political tool or something.

ON WISCONSIN, IN THE DETROIT NEWS: AWOL Dems defy ballot box.

It’s part of a disturbing trend by Democrats to embrace a by-any-means-necessary approach to governing. We saw it during passage of Obamacare, when the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate blew up the rules to block a filibuster. In Massachusetts, Democrats used after-the-fact law changes in a failed attempt to keep a Republican from succeeding Ted Kennedy.

Obama trashed bankruptcy law to move the United Auto Workers ahead of General Motors’ and Chrysler’s secured creditors. And his regulatory agencies are bypassing Congress to enact policies he knows the elected representatives would never approve.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

IN FLORIDA THIS MAY, a conference on suspended animation.

AT AMAZON, markdowns in HDTV and video.

PJTV: Alexis Garcia interviews Ron Paul at the Tea Party Policy Summit.

SHIKHA DALMIA: Long Live The American Dream: There are many reasons why India and China have nothing on us.

SO TODAY IS BEING CALLED THE TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE TEA PARTY. The ramp-up was more a process than an event, beginning a couple of weeks earlier. But here’s a post from two years ago exactly. Here’s one from Feb. 21st, and here’s another, plus an Insta-Poll. Here’s a post from Denver on Feb. 17, and here are pics from Seattle on Feb. 16. Plus, getting in Obama’s face in Mesa, Arizona that weekend.

Plus, my early look at the movement from April 15, 2009. And give InstaPundit reader Donald Gately credit for prescience. On December 27, 2008 he wrote:

You say that A.N.S.W.E.R. would love to see Icelandic-type protests here. But what if folks under 30 or 40 or 50 started staging large public protests about the Ponzi-scheme that is Social Security? What if taxpayers started staging massive protests about public pensions that let government employees (many of whom don’t have to participate in Social Security) retire at 50 with 90% pay – even while common taxpayers have to ratchet back their own retirement dates? What if financial and real-estate workers started staging protests about their jobs disappearing while the Democrats in congress do everything in their power to preserve cushy UAW deals? What if parents in neighborhoods with failing schools started actively protesting the stranglehold that the teachers unions have over their childrens’ education?

Those types of protests would likely un-nerve the left, and might actually lead to Change that the rest of us can believe in.

Pretty much how it’s worked out. . . .

UPDATE: A reader points out the importance of the March 15 Cincinnati Tea Party. Yeah, I think that overhead shot of the crowd by Russell Sayre actually did a lot to convince people that these events were getting big.

STRATEGYPAGE: Marching Through The Other Georgia. “Since their August, 2008 war in Georgia, Russia has been scrutinizing its performance, looking for useful lessons.”

A 2011 MUSIC FESTIVAL GUIDE.

OBVIOUSLY, I SHOULD BUY ONE RIGHT AWAY: Porsche Panamera Emits Less CO2 Per Horsepower Than the Prius. Gaia would want me to. For the planet!

SPECULATION: 2013 Nissan 370Z Goes Hybrid?

THE IMPORTANCE OF PROPER WOUND CARE. As with sanitation, antibiotics can induce complacency.

MORE FROM WISCONSIN: Althouse and Meade return to the Veterans Memorial and encounter apologetic protesters, the police, and a rudeness expert. I’ve had a lot of readers email that Althouse and Meade deserve the blog-equivalent of a Pulitzer for this coverage, and I think that’s right. More here.

COVERING THE TEA PARTY POLICY SUMMIT, all day on PJTV.com.

IN THE MAIL: From Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, Revolt!: How to Defeat Obama and Repeal His Socialist Programs.

MICHAEL BARONE: Voting For The National Interest, Not Self-Interest.

The recoil in 2010 against the Obama Democrats’ vast expansion of the size and scope of government seems to have a cultural or a moral dimension as well. It was a vote, as my Washington Examiner colleague Timothy P. Carney wrote last week, expressing “anger at those unfairly getting rich — at the taxpayer’s expense.”

Those include well-connected Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs that got bailed out and giant corporations like General Electric that shape legislation so they can profit. They include the public employee unions who have bribed politicians to grant them pensions and benefits unavailable to most Americans.

A government intertwined with the private sector inevitably picks winners and losers. It allows well-positioned insiders to game the system for private gain. It bails out the improvident and sticks those who made prudent decisions with the bill.

Modest-income Americans think this is wrong. They want it fixed more than they want a few more bucks in their paychecks.

Traditionally, most Americans have opposed crony capitalism and corruption. But people in Washington have tended to misunderstand what’s behind this, interpreting it as a negotiating strategy rather than a values question.

BEWARE OF Food-Related Injuries.

PROTESTS IN CHINA: “Large numbers of police – and new tactics like shrill whistles and street cleaning trucks – squelched overt protests in China for a second Sunday in a row after more calls for peaceful gatherings modeled on recent democratic movements in the Middle East.”

VIRGINIA POSTREL: How to make the Oscars less boring.

THE HILL: Libyan turmoil, $100 per barrel oil fuel Republican drilling push on Capitol Hill.

Related: Interior officials won’t offer timeline for issuing offshore drilling permits.

AT AMAZON, up to 50% off in Sports & Outdoors.

Also, markdowns in Exercise & Fitness.

CLAYTON CRAMER ON HARRY REID’S CAMPAIGN TO END PROSTITUTION IN NEVADA: “Remember when people called Harry Reid’s opponent a crazy right-wing religious fanatic? Now Senator Reid says that Nevada should prohibit prostitution in the rural counties that still allow it — and his reasoning makes me wonder who is paying him to push this. . . . What always causes me to shake my head in disbelief is how strongly the Democratic Party imagines Republicans as a bunch of Puritans about to sew scarlet letters on the clothes of today’s Hester Prynnes. I can see a legitimate argument about whether prostitution should be legal. What I can’t see is why one of the most prominent leaders of the Democratic Party is making this argument — and making it on such astonishingly moralistic grounds.”

FRIENDS OF ANGELO IN HIGH PLACES: Angelo Mozilo Skates. And there’s more: “Most of the other Wall Street bigwigs whose firms took unconscionable risks — risks that nearly brought the global financial system to its knees — aren’t even on Justice’s radar screen. Nor has there been a single indictment against any top executive at a subprime lender. The only two people on Wall Street to have been prosecuted for their roles in the crisis are a pair of minor Bear Stearns executives, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, whose internal hedge fund, stuffed with triple-A mortgage-backed paper, collapsed in the summer of 2007, an event that anticipated the crisis.” Well we know — some of — the people who got bargain loans from Countrywide as “Friends Of Angelo.” And we know who Wall Street gave money to in record amounts in 2008. So no big surprise here.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Harlow writes: “They told me if I voted for McCain, Wall Street millionaires who caused the financial crisis would get off scot-free, and they were right!”

TEN WAYS rising oil prices endanger the U.S. recovery. Such as it is.

SOBRIETY, LIKE TAXES, IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Former President of MADD Arrested For DUI. I thought maybe this was a case of defining intoxication down to catch even social drinkers, but blowing a .239 on a breathalyzer is more serious than that . . . .

UPDATE: Reader John Bade points out that this is just a local story, really, and he’s right — she’s the former President of a chapter, not the national organization. “Any large organization is going to have hypocrites and backsliders. In my opinion It’s when they get through their organization’s vetting process to high levels of national leadership that they become legitimate targets for national news stories.” True enough.

ERIC SCHEIE: Breaking The Narratives That Enslave Us.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: The administration’s pathetic, dithering response to the Arab uprisings has been both cynical and naive.

I think what we’re seeing is a sort of John Birmingham-lite scenario. In Birmingham’s page-turner books Without Warning and After America, the mysterious disappearance of most of the United States causes all sorts of economic and security chaos to unfold, once America is no longer there to keep the lid on things.

Whether deliberately or accidentally, the Obama Administration has substantially reduced the United States’ military and economic leverage over the past couple of years. The result is that we’re seeing a lot of stuff bust loose. America hasn’t vanished. We’ve just become, as Hitchens says, about as important as Switzerland.

UPDATE: The CNN folks just emailed me a transcript from Candy Crowley’s State of the Union, — sorry, not online yet — but here’s a key bit from John McCain:

CROWLEY: You sound slightly critical, if I’m reading between the lines, of the Obama administration kind of holding back on its criticism of Libya, administration officials tell us because they were worried that Americans in Libya would be taken hostage or worse.

MCCAIN: Well, the British prime minister and the French president and others were not hesitant and they have citizens in that country.

America leads. America is — here we’ve been to these countries and every place we go they are looking to America for leadership, for assistance, for moral support and ratification of the sacrifices they have made in defense of democracy. America should lead.

The president should reverse the terrible decision he made in 2009 to not support the demonstrators in Tehran. Stand up for democracy in Iran and tell those people that we are with them. And that should be true not only throughout the Arab countries but as far as china and other parts of the world as well.

Emphasis added. Looking, but not finding.

GOVERNOR RICK PERRY: Make the federal government as innocuous as possible.

I BOUGHT SOME DELICIOUS MILK YESTERDAY from Cruze Farm Dairies in Knoxville. Here’s a thought for you disaster-prep people — if we really face a disaster that introduces big and lasting disruptions into transport and the economy, wouldn’t it be nice to have people producing food somewhere close by? Not a reason to bankrupt yourself buying only “locavore” food, but something to think about.

MESSAGE TO CHRIS MATTHEWS: You’re next.

Better listen to Jerry Springer before it’s too late.

WHO TO TRUST? “Benjamin Barber, who only resigned this week from the Qadaffi Foundation and still belives Saif Gadaffi could be a saviour of his country?” Or “Bush and Reagan advisor Elliot Abrams, who wants Colonel Gadaffi to go down in history as a grotesque and bloody dictator like Bokassa and Idi Amin.” Stupid Neocons. Obviously we should trust Barber!

UPDATE: Pretense And Delusion: Libya Edition. Paid pretense, it seems.

YOU KNOW, I’ve never bought a drink for a strange woman. Not now and not when I was single. That’s for suckers. Are there really men who don’t know this? Apparently.

UPDATE: Phil Bowermaster emails:

You link to these game sites every now and then. Do you buy into their worldview?

I think it’s important for a guy not to be taken advantage of. But I find the arrogance of these game douchebags unbearable, and their contempt for the majority of the human race — virtually all men are sniveling “betas;” virtually all women are manipulative gold-digging whores — has a kind of Taliban ring to it.

Imagine the Taliban was totally focused on getting laid, rather than enforcing Sharia. I think they’d sound a lot like these guys.

The “game” stuff pretty much is for douchebags, or at least the otherwise hopeless. It involves taking the sophisticated approach that someone with actual interpersonal skills might employ, and boiling it down to a set of simplified rules that produce a sort of cartoon version — much as you might boil down social interactions into rules for an autistic person; the result is better than nothing, but not the real thing. But although it’s a cartoon — and focused largely on picking up women in bars, a fairly limited and artificial environment to begin with — the simplification process does reveal things that might otherwise be obscured or ignored. And it’s interesting to see some of these insights going mainstream. (The other thing you learn from perusing some of these sites is just how much some men need the help. And I’m not sorry to see them get it.)

The Taliban are about cartoonishly oversimplified rules of a different sort, but hey — if we could get them to start cruising singles’ bars instead of dynamiting them, that would be progress. As with all the Islamist fanatics, much of their energy comes from blocked and distorted sexual impulses, after all.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some surprisingly non-profane thoughts from Ace. And reader Anthony Argyriou writes: “I’ll cop to having bought drinks for strange women, but only after I was already dating them.” Heh.

MORE: Reader Jeff Younger emails:

You’re uncharitable towards “game” and PUAs. You shouldn’t be. Here’s why:

* Boys aren’t taught basic social skills, because they lack males to teach them.
* Most boys are raised by divorced women with an axe to grind against men. These women teach boys to be the perfect romance novel, self-sacrificial clod. They teach boys to put women on a pedestal.
* “Game” fills the avuncular void and educates young men about how modern women really are: hypergamous.
* Every new skill is broken down into rules, at first. You progressively gain judgement until you become prudent, and then you know how and how to apply and break the rules to achieve a good outcome. There’s nothing wrong with teaching rules to learn successful social behavior.

Well, I thought that was more or less what I said, but all of this is basically right. It’s a second-best solution, but much of the world runs on second-best solutions.

AN L.A. TIMES EDITORIAL ON the public-pension crisis:

Many state and local government employees have been promised pensions that the public couldn’t have afforded even had there been no crash. . . . The commission is right about the importance of reducing the liabilities posed by current employees. And though picking a fight with unions over unilateral reductions in pensions probably isn’t the solution, the report should persuade both sides to do more at the negotiating table to prevent pension costs from swamping state and local budgets. As the commission notes, public employees in California enjoy some of the most generous pension plans in the country. Those plans won’t do them much good, however, if their employer can’t afford to keep them on the payroll.

Read the whole thing.

WELL, THIS ISN’T THE “HOPE,” SO I GUESS IT’S THE “CHANGE:” Analysis: Oil prices could be game-changer for world economy. “Soaring oil prices are reaching levels that could threaten to brake improving but tentative global economic recovery, with an outside chance of a new recession or that most destructive of conditions, stagflation.”

MISERABLE FAILURE? Prof. Jacobson: 50-State Union Protest Falls Far Short Of Predicted Turnout.

UPDATE: Dems Left Red-Faced; Protesters Fail to Materialize at National MoveOn Rallies.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Troy Hinrichs emails: “It seems that unless government workers get a paid day off (from us) they’re not too interested in taking their unpaid days off to protest.”

MORE: DaTechGuy notes that it’s all about maintaining the fiction.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY of government-employee unions.

WISCONSIN FUGITIVE SENATOR UPDATE: Hundreds Turn Out for Recall Senator Wirch Rally in Wisconsin.

MARKDOWNS ON bestselling power tools.

ERIC LIPTON RESPONDS, and the verdict is in. “Eric Lipton and the New York Times owe Tim Phillips, Americans For Progress and Charles and David Koch an apology, and they owe their readers a correction.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

The story of a NYT reporter bastardizing statements made by a conservative is an excellent example of why cell phone cameras, digital recorders and the like are necessary instruments for any conservative in the public light. There should be a record of everything so that the truth has a chance to embarrass the S.O.B.s. The Army of Davids can’t travel without today’s version of a slingshot with which to repel the Goliaths.

The reporter makes it a point that he doesn’t record his own interviews. How convenient! It’s as if he wants to create no record, no paper trail, no evidence of actual malice. That’s fine. But now that the ground rules are abundantly clear conservatives must do some heavy lifting of their own.

To all potential 2012 GOP candidates for President, listen well: Record every encounter with the press. Tape everything. And then try to push back, twice as hard, when the inevitable attacks begin.

Good advice. I had some related thoughts here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

In this post, http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/115783/, your reader says politicians should record every encounter with the press. In fact, conservative politicians should record every moment of their day, not just encounters with the press. There is too much opportunity for misleading clips or snippets to derail a potential campaign. And more important than recording everything is keeping it. The price of storage has decreased to the point that days and days of decent resolution footage can be stored for little money. I own multi-drive NAS that can store a few thousand hours of 720p video. The cost was less than $2500 with the drives. Campaigns by conservatives will need to be able to fight the active opposition they can expect from the news media, and there is no better way of doing so than with video.

BTW, I work in the news bureau of a major international/financial news service. The comments I have heard are astounding. The only saving grace is that since I work with financial journalists, there are several libertarians/conservatives in the mix. Sadly though, there are none in the regular news units.

Please do not use my name if you decide to publish this.

I understand.

THE CHANGING FACE OF FAME: Comparing modern stars with stars from Hollywood’s Golden Age: “There seem to be two correlated trends here: 1) more feminine features for both males and females, and 2) more youthful features for both males and females.”

RADIO NEW ZEALAND: Quake Death Toll Stands at 146; Expected To Rise.

SOMEBODY SHOULD HAVE SHOT MUGABE YEARS AGO: Zimbabwe Prof Arrested, Tortured for Watching Viral Vids. And plenty of Zimbabweans know where the people who arrested him live. They should do something about it. Rule-of-law concerns don’t apply in a murderous dictatorship, which Zimbabwe’s certainly is.

UPDATE: M. Simon emails:

I do agree with you but it causes problems “after”. Look at France’s post WW2 with governments changing every year or less because of the loss of rule of law caused by guerrilla warfare. It also explains why Franco was so good for Spain long term. It was still suffering from Wellington’s Peninsula Campaign 120 years later.

May I suggest reading B.H.L. Hart’s “Strategy” (a classic in the field and recommended reading for every member of the military from E-1 up) on the problems of irregular warfare. I re-read the book every year.

I read that back in high school. But yeah, it’s dangerous medicine, only applicable in extremis. But Zimbabwe is really sick, and has been for a long, long time. If it doesn’t justify guerrilla resistance, not much would.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on multitools. Leatherman, Gerber, and more.

UPDATE: Just hope you never have to use your Leatherman for an emergency amputation.

WHAT ABOUT BRINGING DEMOCRACY TO IRAN? Report: Iranian democracy leaders Mousavi & Karoubi taken to secret prison.

PJTV: Sheriff Joe Arpaio at the Tea Party Summit.

Also, Tim Pawlenty: The Government Is Too Damned Big, and the Obama Administration Is Incoherent.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Thugs Win Again. We would, of course, be better off in a society without thuggery. However, so long as thuggery is rewarded — and at the moment, it pretty clearly is — many people who would otherwise avoid thuggery will choose to engage in it, because the incentives point that way. I have been warning of this phenomenon for a while, but I predict that it will change only when we start to see thuggery emanating from groups whose thuggish behavior tends to threaten, rather than entrench, the position of those establishing the incentives. In that sense, this may be a mildly hopeful sign . . . .

TEA PARTY SCRUTINY: Each member of Congress to get a dedicated blogger.

LOS ANGELES MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA: Hey, maybe building a fence to keep people out isn’t such a bad idea.

ROBERT SHIBLEY: The Greek Tragedy of Campus Censorship.

RADLEY BALKO: Obama’s War On Whistleblowers. Even Glenn Greenwald is incensed. Well, they told me if I voted Republican we’d see rampant coverups involving cronyism and corruption — and they were right! Again.

UPDATE: Message to Greenwald: You reap what you sow.

SO LAST NIGHT my brother Brad’s band Copper, which has been on hiatus for a while, put on a new show at the Valarium as they gear up again. My other brother Jonathan came down, and we went — along with my sister Katy — for a family musical reunion. (All pics taken with the Lumix –the old one, not the new one. I took the old one because a rock club is a high-threat environment for cameras. . . .)

A rare appearance by all three Reynolds Brothers at once:

Brad hasn’t lost his rock & roll moves:

And a good time was had by all.

For those unfortunates who weren’t there, here’s a song. It’s one of my favorites, and not just because of the cool bass-solo intro by my brother.

UPDATE: Reader Light Maleski emails: “I just bought their latest album. The kicker was the youtube video you posted. Perhaps you could post their MySpace page which has more music to listen to, after which I went to their website and bought the CD. I’ve been reading you for a decade, but this is the first I’ve bought or even really listened to music from Copper. They have a great sound.” Yes, they do. Here’s the MySpace link.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Three Law Schools Freeze Tuition. Put this together with Sewanee’s tuition cut, and I wonder if we’re seeing an upper limit on pricing here.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Impact of Earmark Ban Already Being Felt:

When House Republicans were searching for cuts to offer Senate Democrats as part of a temporary spending plan to avert a government shutdown, they were able to reach into accounts set aside for earmarks and find nearly $2.8 billion that would have previously gone to water projects, transit programs and construction programs. No earmarks, no need for that money, and the threat of an imminent shutdown was eased.

Lawmakers said the absence of earmarks also allowed for a more freewheeling debate on the House floor during consideration of the Republican plan to slash $61 billion from this year’s budget since Democrats and Republicans were not caught up in protecting the special provisions they had worked so hard to tuck into the spending bill.

“This is a completely new experience, and a good one,” said Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who had lost scores of attempts on the House floor to strip earmarks from spending bills.

While spending on earmarks is a tiny portion of the budget, critics like Mr. Flake and Mr. Boehner said they played an insidious role in pushing up federal spending through what is known in legislative terms as logrolling. . . .

Top members of the Appropriations Committee might, for instance, grant a lawmaker’s request for a few million dollars for an important project back home. That lawmaker would then be obligated to support the entire multibillion-dollar bill despite possible reservations. . . .

“You get millions for an earmark and end up voting for billions of dollars that you may oppose,” said Steve Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog group.

Can I just say I told you so? Because, you know, I did.

DANA MILBANK WONDERS IF THE WHITE HOUSE HAS ANY IDEAS. The Carterization proceeds apace — though, as I’ve said before, at this point a Carter rerun is the best-case scenario.

RESEARCH: Moderate alcohol consumption can prevent heart disease. “An alcoholic drink a day can help keep heart disease at bay, according to a review of 30 years of research. The work, published in the British Medical Journal, showed a 14% to 25% reduction in heart disease in moderate drinkers compared with people who had never drunk alcohol.”

A NEW WEB AD targeting those fugitive Wisconsin legislators.

IN THE MAIL: From Walter Olson, Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America.

SEX ON CAMPUS, and the implications of female hypergamy. “As just about everyone (from Dennis Prager to pickup artists) has figured out by now, women tend to want men of high status, men they look up to — literally, in terms of height, and figuratively, in terms of social standing, income, and education. If women systematically outpace men on these status markers — as they are beginning to — they will have to compete for men they deem suitable at a less-than-even ratio. There’s nothing we can do about this that I can think of, but it will not be good for marriage.”

And here’s a much longer treatment from Slate. “When attractive women will still bed you, life for young men, even those who are floundering, just isn’t so bad.”

A PERFECT STORM in undergraduate education.

EUGENE VOLOKH ON Suppression of Jury Nullification Advocates’ Speech Outside Courthouse.

UNEXPECTEDLY: GDP Growth Revised Down.

PROTECTING CONSUMER PRIVACY in an era of rapid change.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Protesters at the Wisconsin Capitol disrespectfully have taped signs on and piled junk against the Veterans Memorial. “Meade and I confront them, and we’re told we’re the first people who’ve had a problem with it. I try to explain how that attempted defense of the behavior is only going to make it look worse. It means that of all these crowds of people in the Capitol, no one else has noticed or cared enough to say anything.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns on electronics.

REASON TV ON STATE BUDGET SHOWDOWNS.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER:

We have heard everyone — from Obama’s own debt commission to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — call the looming debt a mortal threat to the nation. We have watched Greece self-immolate. We can see the future. The only question has been: When will the country finally rouse itself?

Amazingly, the answer is now. Led by famously progressive Wisconsin — Scott Walker at the state level and Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan at the congressional level — a new generation of Republicans has looked at the debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting the question to the nation: Are we a serious people?

I’m thinking, I’m thinking!

SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY: Pharmacy association can’t sue Georgia over copyright.

HOW TO CASH IN on Borders’ bankruptcy.

HOW SEA TURTLES Navigate.

FATHERS separated from their kids.

HAPPY BACON DAY! “The Iowa House has declared Feb. 26 Bacon Day in honor of ‘nature’s perfect food.’”

FUN FACT: Rep. Michael Capuano, recently seen calling for union protesters to “get a little bloody,” has a wife whose maiden name is “Teebagy.”

BANNED IN AUSTRALIA: The new Mortal Kombat release.

ERRORS AND ODDITIES on the U.S. Citizenship test.

TAXPROF: U.S. Effective Corporate Tax Rate Among Highest in World.

TWO PLANETS sharing one orbit. “Buried in the flood of data from the Kepler telescope is a planetary system unlike any seen before. Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would bolster a theory that Earth once shared its orbit with a Mars-sized body that later crashed into it, resulting in the moon’s formation.”

BRINGING MOBILE PAYMENTS to Afghanistan.

MARKDOWNS ON Brother printers, labelers, and faxes.

POLIWOOD: What Wisconsin Unions Could Learn from Hollywood Unions. Former union officials Roger Simon and Lionel Chetwynd offer advice.

AND ABOUT TIME: State Budget Battles Herald The Return Of The Grown-Ups.

SO IT’S SEVERE WEATHER AWARENESS WEEK, and Dave Foulk was on the radio here in Knoxville encouraging people to buy one of those automatic-alert weather radios. I’ve had this model for several years. I turned the audible alerts off except for the highest-level (tornado, tsunami, etc.) and it’s worked fine, letting us know when there’s a tornado warning and not bothering us over trivia. No tsunami warnings for Knox County yet, and frankly, we’d all better hope it stays that way . . . .

STILL NOTHING from Eric Lipton.