SCOTT JOHNSON: “Anyone who spends time looking at crime statistics will discover the basics of race and crime before too long, but you better be careful not to talk about them in polite society. They are protected by a taboo even stronger than the Victorian taboo against public discussions of sex, but with good reason. The facts are painful. No one can take joy in publicizing them. . . . If race hustlers like Al Sharpton really had the interests of the black community at heart, they would devote themselves to doing everything in their power to have violent black criminals separated from the community of law-abiding black citizens.”

WASHINGTON POST: Cheney doing ‘exceedingly well’ after heart transplant.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: “One conceit among Eurocrats has been that although the United States may carry the ball militarily, it’s the Europeans who do the dirty, behind-the-scenes work of promoting international human rights through diplomacy. But in fact what’s been demonstrated is that the same qualities of indiscipline that have made the Europeans unimportant in military affairs have carried over into the diplomatic sphere, too.”

REPORT: Thousands Turn Out At “Road To Repeal” Rally In Washington, DC. I like the “Breitbart Is Here” signs.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): $270 Billion In Student Loans Are At Least 30 Days Delinquent.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Mullis writes:

The parallels between this and the housing crisis 4 years ago are too significant to ignore. Consider this thought experiment. The Student Loan Bubble comes to a crisis point, with or without a Black Swan Event. This happens just before the November election, making it a really big October Surprise. Which political party is better positioned to capitalize on this crisis? Which political Party can count on the narrative being shaped to its liking by major media? If promises of major government “help” or loan forgiveness are made by this political party, how do you suppose those several million student borrowers and their families are likely to vote?

And to take this a bit further, how likely is there to be a groundswell of support for “free” higher education as a result of all this? Any politician who opposes the above does so at his own risk.

Hmm.

DOES THIS MEAN THE PRESS ACTED STUPIDLY? Black friend defends shooter of Florida teen. “George Zimmerman is not a racist and cried for days after shooting dead a black Florida teenager, a black, longtime friend of Zimmerman said on Sunday in a sympathetic portrayal of a man maligned by critics as a trigger-happy bigot. Zimmerman, 28, a white Hispanic, shot Trayvon Martin, 17, in what he said was self defense during an altercation in the gated community Zimmerman was watching on February 26 in Sanford, Florida. After attracting little notice initially, the case gained widespread attention, sparking protests and renewing a national debate about race.”

Actually, it’s a national debate about press irresponsibility and political dishonesty. And the more information that comes out, the less there seems to be to debate.

Plus this:

“All these people who are threatening George, what makes them any better than the person they think he is?” Oliver said. “You’ve got all these people wanting to lynch the man and they don’t know the whole story. There are huge gaps that are being filled in and interpreted without evidence.”

Yep. The “have you no decency” crowd is once again demonstrating its utter lack of decency.

UPDATE: Blog comment of the day: “Remember Obama saying about Major Hasan [how] we shouldn’t jump to judgement?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ouch.

MORE: Reader John Oglesby writes: “Zimmerman is a ‘White Hispanic’? t seems they’ll use whatever fits their narrative. If a Caucasian man had shot a hooded Zimmerman, there’s no way they’d be calling him a White Hispanic.” No, then he’d be a Latino, full-stop.

WHEN THE ART IS OVERLY INTEGRATED WITH THE CANVAS.

ECO-NOMICS: Video: Elon Musk, Craig Venter, and Dean Kamen on changing the energy sector.

IN WISCONSIN, IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYBODY’S PART OF THE BIG BLUE MACHINE: “A Gannett Media executive was red-faced this weekend after nine of her employees were caught doing exactly what their paper had exposed 29 circuit judges for doing: trying to bring down Republican Gov. Scott Walker.”

JENNY ERIKSON: The Violence Against Women Act Should Help Broads, Not Frauds. “Republicans trying to stall VAWA are bound to come off looking like jerks. Why do you hate womyn, Mitch McConnell? Why won’t you help these poor battered ladies escape their abusers, Chuck Grassley? What is wrong with you guys? There’s nothing wrong with Republican Senators that don’t support VAWA, there’s something wrong with the legislation. Originally passed in 1994, the act has had bipartisan support through two 6-year reauthorizations, but this time around it contains new provisions and fails to protect against potential fraud and abuse.”

Why is violence against women worse than violence against men?

PROF. JACOBSON: Spike Lee didn’t “Do the right thing.” Nope. He tried to help incite a lynching.

UPDATE: From the comments: “All that ‘anti-bullying’ cr@p down the proverbial toilet.”

HOW TO DECLARE WAR, as of 1429 A.D.

AT AMAZON, special offers in Computers & Accessories.

ANTHONY RANDAZZO: No, This Is Not A Housing Recovery. “The numbers are just not adding up to recovery.”

UPDATE: Reader Stephen Johnson writes: “Just got back from a weekend on the Northern Oregon Coast. The number of ‘Home For Sale’ signs was shocking. Homes on the Oregon coast are primarily either 2nd homes or vacation rentals, and I would guess more than half had signs in their yards.”

MULTICULTURALISM: Book tells Muslim men how to beat and control their wives. If you criticize this you’re a racist bigot, or something.

TIM LEE: Why Patent Lawyers Are Clueless About The Software Industry.

WHY IT’S EASY FOR HACKERS to steal credit card information from restaurants.

DOWNLOADABLE DEALS: 100 Albums For $5.

NGOs AND NEOCOLONIALISM:

When Mrs. Goldblog and I were living in Liberia, one of the best jobs to be found in Monrovia for actual Liberians was at a makeshift car-washing center near UN headquarters, where, every day, dozens of brilliant-white SUVs — Toyota Landcruisers, mainly – belonging to the dozens of NGOs in town were scrubbed clean of mud. It was a bizarre thing to see, these $50,000 vehicles belonging to “non-profits,” flyspecked by Liberians the NGOs were ostensibly there to help.

Taking up the white car’s burden.

CHANGE: North America has the potential to be energy world’s next Middle East, report argues.

LEFTY CIVILITY: Twitter explodes with Cheney hate following heart transplant.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE Burying Our Future Under A Mountain of Debt: The Real Meaning of $1 Trillion in Student Loans.

The CFPB is currently trying to estimate the size of the private student loan market. It’s breadth, and its current rate of growth, will tell us just how onerous America’s education debt load has become. Federal student loans come with certain protections, such as low interest rates and income-based repayment plans that can cushion the impact on a borrower’s finances. Private loans don’t have that. If a college freshman naively takes out too much money from a bank, they’re stuck paying on the bank’s terms. Between 1999-2000 and 2007-2008, private borrowing grew fourfold, from $4.5 billion to $21.8 billion. One study found that one third of the class of 2008 graduated with such debt, averaging $12,800 each. The CFPB says it will have a more complete picture by this summer, but if private borrowing has continued on its dramatic upswing, it will spell more trouble ahead. Certainly, we should expect more delinquencies and defaults.**

In any event, all signs point to this situation getting worse before it gets better.

Yep.

CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER: Tom Friedman praises Victor Davis Hanson for a “brutally clear-eyed piece in The National Review, looking back at America’s different approaches to Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan and how, sadly, none of them could be said to have worked yet.”

Well, nobody’s tried the Ann Coulter plan. But hey, if we’ve reached the point of Friedman praising Hanson, anything’s possible. And if Obama does it, he can count on plenty of support from the media . . . .

HOW GOOGLE STOPPED BEING GOOGLE.

IS THIS AN ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF DAYCARE? Early Exposure To Germs Has Lasting Benefits.

WHY IS THE RECOVERY SO SLOW? David Boaz rounds up just one day’s worth of reasons.

STALINESQUE MEDIA HATE SPEECH: CNN’s Roland Martin Prescribes ‘Shock Therapy’ for PJ Media’s David Steinberg, on Twitter.

Related: “Though tempting, it might not be a good idea to lobby CNN to suspend Martin again. I sort of like how he’s showing the world who he really is, and what his continued employment says about the network which employes him.”

DON SURBER: Say Goodnight, Newt.

A FAKE HATE CRIME IN KANSAS CITY? Tom Maguire Smells A Rat. Well, stay tuned.

IN THE MAIL: From Philip Mulivor, Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said About the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: How Green Gullibility, Hyperpartisanship Are Wrecking The Climate Movement. “One of the biggest intellectual failures of the global green movement against climate change is the persistent failure of its leaders and spokespeople to grasp the way their own advocacy fatally undermines their credibility.”

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: ‘Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse’ & Other Hot New College Courses.

Mock all you want, but some people take this pretty seriously. Others think you should broaden your focus.

JOHN GALT WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: Lisa Belkin: Women Should Be Angry At Men’s “Opting Out.”

Apparently, women should always be angry.

MICKEY KAUS: “Hunger Games is a compelling allegorical plea for social equality, against unchecked illegal immigration and union bureaucracy. Seneca Crane is a maybe-too-obvious stand-in for the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).” Heh.

WHEN A DISSERTATION GETS “HEAVY EDITING.” “Thomas Sowell views the white professor writing a dissertation for a black student as engaging in a misguided act of sympathy. At some level, I wish that as deplorable as the act is, it was out of compassion. My own observations revealed anything but compassion.” It is not compassionate to allow your students to learn less than they should.

One might respond, of course, that the entire dissertation process has little value except as a form of hazing and as a barrier to entry. But such an argument might prove too much, as we lawyers say.

AT AMAZON, an Outlet Sale on clothing and accessories.

Plus, today only: Norelco 8250XL Shaver for $49.99.

THE FRACK NATION DOCUMENTARY: Doing quite well on Kickstarter.

TODAY’S KINDLE DEAL OF THE DAY: 77 cookbooks for all tastes, $2.99 and under.

ROGER SIMON: Europe Will Never Forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. “The Jews are living reminders of the moral failure of Europe. This leads to the projection of guilt on Israel and the remaining European Jews.”

TEST-DRIVING THE 2012 Ford Taurus Ecoboost.

LINE UP HERE to be rescued by the alien spaceship. I can’t think of a worse place to wait out the apocalypse than among thousands of New Agers.

SURPRISINGLY SOUGHT-AFTER: Turkish Bootleg Star Wars Figures From The 1980s.

CHANGE: A GOP Grows In Brooklyn. “Officials this week may formally crown Republican attorney David Storobin the winner in last week’s special election for ex-Sen. Carl Kruger’s seat in the borough’s 27th Senate District. (Kruger was convicted of corruption and forced to step down.)”

WHO LOVES INFLATION? Wall Street Loves Inflation.

HAS THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION been good for women? Did it elect more Democrats? Because as far as I can tell, that’s always good for women.

DUDE, WHERE’S MY HATE CRIME? “This is what you deserve. You get what you deserve, white boy.” Not worthy of media attention, since it can’t be used to promote the Democrats.

UPDATE: But see this.

CHANGE: IRS Increased Audit Rate of Richest Americans by 63% in 2011.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? “I was in Australia earlier this month and there, as elsewhere on my recent travels, the consensus among the politicians I met (at least in private) was that Washington lacked the will for meaningful course correction, and that, therefore, the trick was to ensure that, when the behemoth goes over the cliff, you’re not dragged down with it. It is faintly surreal to be sitting in paneled offices lined by formal portraits listening to eminent persons who assume the collapse of the dominant global power is a fait accompli. . . . Greece’s total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of treasury bonds every month — or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India — every year. And those numbers don’t take into account the huge levels of personal debt run up by Americans. College-debt alone is over a trillion dollars, or the equivalent of the entire South Korean economy — tied up just in one small boutique niche market of debt which barely exists in most other developed nations.”

No organization can survive corruption and ineptitude at the top forever. And we’ve had the worse political class in American history for a while now, though its rottenness has really accelerated lately.

UPDATE: A longtime reader emails:

I’m a Canadian, and you might be interested to know that the Harper government are working very hard (in the background) along the same lines as the Aussies. They are doing everything possible to diversify Canada’s export markets away from the US as fast as possible, for example the pipeline to move Alberta and Saskatchewan oil to world markets via the sea, not to the US. Ditto aeroplanes, rail cars, fibre-optic electronics, robotics, lumber, and a wide range of other products.

The quiet back-room planning is driven by the alarming extent to which the Obama administration has already deeply damaged the US economy (compared to Canada) with its policies, actions, and insane deficits. The Harper government are now moving to shut down US environmentalist activity in Canada — “We’re not going to be your National Park.” says the PM — and are already developping scenarios for maximum-possible disconnect from the States in the event Obama and his crew are returned to power in the coming elections. [no name please if published ... in spite of my present location I continue to follow Canadian politics very closely and have children living there. If it weren't for Canada's lack of truly free speech, draconian gun laws, and miserable health system, I'd be moving back.]

Ugh.

HMM: Tungsten-Filled Gold Bar Found In UK. So how many of these are there?

MEDIA DOUBLE STANDARD UPDATE: Hey, remember when high gas prices were all Bush’s fault?

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT:

THE NIGERIAN MINISTRY OF JUSTICE has essentially declared Sharia law unconstitutional by stating that it violates the principle against discriminatory punishments in the Nigerian constitution. This will be very unpopular among the Saudi-backed Muslims in the north who have been pushing the strict Saudi Hanbali version of Sharia (source of the recent stoning-for-adultery sentences) at the Saudis’ behest. Stay tuned.

Not so happy in the North, still.

JIM TREACHER: Get Ready For Beer Summit 2. “Go ahead and say it, President Obama: The Hispanic guy acted stupidly.”

MANY AMERICANS FEEL THE SAME WAY: “Freedom, in Shin’s mind, was just another word for grilled meat.”

MYSTERIOUS CLOUD SPOTTED ON MARS.

HOW TO BE a living doll.

DANA LOESCH: Did City of St. Louis Suppress Story On Occupy Violence?

FOX PROJECTS a Santorum win in Louisiana.

UPDATE: A big roundup from Stacy McCain, who’s been there covering events.

DICK CHENEY is recovering from a heart transplant. I wish him a speedy recovery. And Obama should thank him.

EXOPLANETS: NASA’s Kepler Discovers 11 Systems Hosting 26 Planets.

CAN THE “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORK ONCE THE RUBES HAVE CAUGHT ON? Ah, hell, it’s not like it was working before. . . .

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals in Lawn & Garden.

NEW FROM JERRY POURNELLE, LARRY NIVEN, AND STEVEN BARNES: The Secret of Black Ship Island. A $2.99 Kindle book. I just bought it.

IS OBAMACARE WAGING A TAX WAR ON WOMEN? “Obamacare contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and employers. Five are especially-harmful for women, be they Moms, singles, or retirees.”

TAR AND FEATHERS: NHTSA May Make In-Car Navigation Unusable.

Last month, the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency published a dense document with guidelines for automakers on how to minimize the distractions caused by in-vehicle electronics. Buried among equations for determining optimal display viewing angles and testing procedures is the recommendation that navigation devices should only show static or near-static images, which would essentially eliminate their usefulness. . . . Every current installed navigation system uses the car as a fixed point, and shows the map moving around it. NHTSA wants that changed so as to keep the map fixed. Even showing the position of the car moving on the map could be considered a dynamic image. The recommendation seems to suggest that the position of the car could only be updated every couple of seconds. Likewise, the map could be refreshed once the car has left the currently displayed area.

This recommendation would essentially make navigation unusable. The system could still give an auditory warning for the next turn, but without being able to glance down at the map and see how close the next street is would likely lead to a lot of missed turns and resultant frustration. And although NHTSA includes the results of driver distraction studies in the guidelines, it has no testing directly related to using a navigation system. Instead there are more general conclusions against any tasks that require looking at a device for periods of more than 2 seconds, or a series of glances that amount to more than 12 seconds at at time.

I would think that looking at a static map, and trying to find the particular street which you are on, would by much more time-consuming than seeing your exact position on a dynamic map.

The whole “distracted driving” thing is a fix in search of a problem. I have some related thoughts here.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS: “Silence and demonize.” “Independent researcher Vivian Krause unearthed more than $300-million of such eco-laundering, which has been used to campaign against B.C. fish farming and bring the Canadian forest industry to heel. Recently, both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver fingered foreign funding in clogging up the regulatory process for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the latest front in the green industry’s war against the oil sands.”

RANDY BARNETT: Dahlia Lithwick Distorts My Blog Post on Justice Scalia. I doubt the distortion was intentional. She probably just didn’t understand.

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Tulane Prof. blasts music to drown out Newt speech.

UPDATE: Reader Barry Dauphin writes: “My cousin, a Tulane Law grad, plans to print that blog post from Legal Insurrection and send it to the school when they send out the next alumni request for funds.”

DOING BETTER AFTER HEART TRANSPLANTS by listening to classical music?

RED-LIGHT CAMERAS FACE pesky due-process problem. Surely such trivialities shouldn’t stand in the way of the state filling its coffers. . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails:

This, from the linked news article, about says it all, don’t you think?

“This is not the first court that has ruled it unconstitutional,” said Hillsborough County Sheriff’s spokesman Larry McKinnon. “We’re going to keep operating as we have been.”

Indeed.

SO IS THIS WHOLE ZIMMERMAN THING STARTING TO LOOK LIKE A CROSS BETWEEEN BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES and the Richard Jewell affair? Progressives, Spike Lee tweeting Zimmerman’s address, making death threats.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in knives and camping tools.

MEMORIES OF communist Romania.

NOTHING IS SAFE FROM THE NANNIES: California Porn Condom Law Will Ruin More Than Porn.

What happened to “my body, my choice?”

IN RESPONSE TO YESTERDAY’S ENGINEERING POST, reader Jody Dorsett writes:

For the last ten years the National Association of Rocketry has been conducting a contest with the AIA. Our goal is to get kids interested in science and particularly in Aerospace sciences. Like Peter Kalogiannis, our hope is to bring more young adults into science tracks so we have a continuing supply of engineers and scientists for the Aerospace Industry. This year’s contest will end in May. But next year’s contest starts in September. If your readers have children in High School and they are interested in science and the future as a I suspect most are…they need to be asking their High School why their kids aren’t competing.

Very cool.

IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Penny Lee and Kirsten Powers: Our message to Mr. Maher and his ilk is: Please start apologizing. “While others have been held to account for their sexism, Mr. Maher remains unrepentant for his attacks on women in public life.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ABC News catches up with InstaPundit: Is College Tuition The Next Bubble?

SCIENCE: STUDIES LINK ASPIRIN TO REDUCED CANCER RISK. “The findings add to a body of evidence suggesting that cheap and widely available aspirin may be a powerful if overlooked weapon in the battle against cancer. But the research also poses difficult questions for doctors and public health officials, as regular doses of aspirin can cause gastrointestinal bleeding and other side effects. Past studies have suggested that the drawbacks of daily use may outweigh the benefits, particularly in healthy patients.”

RANKING LAW SCHOOLS by debt-load per graduating student. “Overall, law students graduated with an average of $100,584 in debt. … Among the 10 law schools that lead to the most debt load per graduating student, the average debt burden was $147,717 in 2011.”

GEORGE WILL ON OBAMACARE AND CONTRACT LAW, with a nice shout-out to Elizabeth Price Foley.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON WALTER DELLINGER ON OBAMACARE “MYTHS.”

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Red Wine, Tartaric Acid, and the Secret of Superconductivity. “Last year, physicists discovered that red wine can turn certain materials into superconductors. Now they’ve found that Beaujolais works best and think they know why.”

NEW WITNESS IN THE TRAYVON MARTIN CASE: 17-year-old was ‘beating up’ gunman, according to anonymous witness.

Related item here. Well, as I said, stay tuned.

UPDATE: More comments from Tom Maguire. “Yesterday I noted Obama’s remarks and offered that our President was not speaking stupidly. Upon booth review, I beg to differ. . . . No apparent evidence? Zimmerman had a cut on the back of his head, a bloody nose, and grass stains on his back. Some (presumaby disputed) witness accounts say that Trayvon Martin was on top and beating him. There may not be conclusive evidence, since we don’t know what precipitated the scuffle, and there may not be evidence that Trayvon Martin was doing something wrong when Zimmerman first called 911 to report suspicious behavior but to say there is ‘no apparent evidence’ that Zimmerman fired in self-defense is the quality of reporting we have come to expect from the Duke Lacrosse cheerleaders. All The News That Advances The Narrative.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Not so new: Reader Jeff Brown notes this report from Feb. 27:

Investigators with the Sanford Police Department are still trying to figure out exactly what happened during an altercation which resulted in a fatal shooting in the Twin Lakes area. The shooting happened just after 7 p.m. Sunday evening on Twin Trees Lane. A man who witnessed part of the altercation contacted authorities.

“The guy on the bottom, who had a red sweater on, was yelling to me, ‘Help! Help!’ and I told him to stop, and I was calling 911,” said the witness, who asked to be identified only by his first name, John.

John said he locked his patio door, ran upstairs and heard at least one gun shot.

“And then, when I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point.”

So Trayvon Martin was on top of a guy he was beating, and then he got shot. I suppose this doesn’t entirely prove self-defense, but it should certainly count as “apparent evidence” — evidence that was apparent long before the media and Al Sharpton (but I repeat myself) began packaging the narrative here.

THE FASTEST-ADOPTED GADGET OF THE PAST 50 YEARS? Not the iPad, not the iPhone, but the Boom Box.

IN THE MAIL: From Robert Buettner, Overkill.

HAPPY TENTH BLOGGIVERSARY to Baseball Musings.

GEORGE WILL: The Inexorable March of Creative Destruction.

By the middle of the 20th century, Sears, Roebuck had come to town as the nation’s largest retailer, with stores that defined many towns’ downtowns. But in Bentonville, Ark., Sam Walton had an idea for bigger stores on the outskirts of towns. Sears has become a casualty of Wal-Mart’s retailing revolution.

Today new mothers sign up at Amazon Mom for regular deliveries of diapers. This is a 21st-century permutation of an innovation in long-distance commerce that began in 19th-century Chicago.

Creative destruction continues in the digital age. After 244 years – it began publication five years before the 1773 Boston Tea Party – the Encyclopaedia Britannica will henceforth be available only in digital form as it tries to catch up to reference Web sites such as Google and Wikipedia. Another digital casualty forgot it was selling the preservation of memories, a.k.a. “Kodak moments,” not film.

America now is divided between those who find this social churning unnerving and those who find it exhilarating.

Plus a nice shoutout to Virginia Postrel.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Is Iced Coffee So Expensive? “Cold-brewed java is a whole different production. Here are four ways the chilly stuff is more expensive to make.”

MICKEY KAUS: VW IS SUCCEEDING SO THE UAW MUST DESTROY IT. “It’s On: An unannounced, semi-stealthy UAW effort to collect signature cards from workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga factory comes to light. … The timing is inauspicious, TTAC notes, because sales of VW’s America-sized nonunion Passat are booming and the company just announced plans to hire 800 more workers. But the UAW has little choice but to try, because sales of VW’s America-sized nonunion Passat are booming and the company has plans to hire more workers. . . . Could Obama intervene somehow to save the UAW? I don’t quite see how, but perhaps I lack imagination.”

AT AMAZON, Top Deals In Video Cameras.

Also, today only: Lorex video baby monitor for $99.99.

HEH: Conservatives hijack #ILikeObamacare hashtag on Twitter. “Conservatives on Twitter today quickly hijacked the #ILikeObamacare hashtag, which had been launched by President Barack Obama’s campaign to highlight supporters of the Democrats’ signature health care reform law. The Twitter hashtag was the most popular in the world Friday afternoon, but not for reasons the Obama campaign wanted.”

Two of my favorites: “#ILikeObamacare because I hate the government listening to my phone calls, but I want them to decide if I get a pacemaker.”

And: “#ILikeObamacare Because I’m too poor to pay for insurance – Sent from my iPad 3.”

ENTHUSIASM: GOP Primary Turnout Up, Higher Than 2008.

JAMES TARANTO: Contempt of Court: How to lose friends and alienate justices. “Perhaps her goal in insulting the justices is not to win them over but to discredit them in her readers’ eyes should they dare to defy her.”

(Via Ann Althouse, where a commenter observes: “Lithwick’s essay, like Greenhouse’s, is clearly part of the left’s effort to pre-emptively undermine the legitimacy of a possible Supreme Court ruling against the constitutionality of the ACA. (See also the attacks on Thomas’s participation in the case.)”).

RATHER A LOT, REALLY: How Many Negative Images of Men Do You See on TV in 10 Minutes?

Plus, what gets an ad removed.

UPDATE: Reader Tom Kazazes reminds me of this post from four years ago.

CRYING FOUL ON Google’s name policy. “The G+ names policy remains evil. It punishes people for not having Western-style dual names. It punishes people for using a name which is what they are actually called, rather than what’s on their ID. It punishes people, in short, for being in any of a number of minorities, and does so in a particularly dissociated and hostile way, denying any chance for communication about what your identity is or why that is the right identity for people to use.”

RAND SIMBERG: The New Neo-Nazis: “Is Islamism of the right? The left? Or is it just wrong?”

UPDATE: Rex Murphy: It’s Not “Islamophobia” To Call A Jihadist A Jihadist. “Blindness as a form of social or ethnic courtesy is never good policy.”

Related: “The Muslim fanatic who killed seven people in France was so proud of his unspeakably evil work that he uploaded sickening video to the Internet showing him executing a helpless, terrified 8-year-old girl, officials said.” No wonder everybody wanted him to be a nice, prejudice-confirming right-wing Aryan.

ROBERT WRIGHT: DOES OBAMA THINK HE’S DIVINELY ORDAINED?

ILLINOIS: LAWMAKER HITS PENSION JACKPOT. “In his new job, Eddy will not only stay in the Teachers’ Retirement System, he can collect more in benefits from it. He has been working both as a state representative and superintendent for Hutsonville Community Unit School District 1. He has been part of TRS through his Hutsonville job, where he earned a salary of $107,400. His new salary is expected to be at least $200,000, and his pension will be based on that. . . . But that’s not the end of Eddy’s pension largesse. He’ll be eligible in two years to begin collecting a pension of about $24,000 a year from his nine years of part-time work in the Legislature. Illinois Statehouse News projected his lawmaker pension carries a lifetime value of $584,273. Eddy is 53 years old.”

K.C. JOHNSON: A Union’s War on University Quality. “The recent story of the City University of New York is a tale of CUNY leadership making a series of bold and positive moves, and having each one blocked or opposed by leadership of the faculty union.”

STATISTICS: CRIME AND THE NUMBERS GAME:

The present media wave about the tragic death of Trayvon Martin is for me, an outsider, a fascinating lesson in race, politics, and media perversity in America.

The impression is being generated that young black men are continuously hunted by white men, and killed.

So I wanted to know the exact figures. The most recent, those of 2009, I could find are on the site of the Department of Justice, called Crime in the United States. . . . The main problem for young black men is not violent white men chasing them. It is black on black violence.

But there’s less political hay to be made.

Related: Tom Maguire on Jesse Jackson, Obama’s Grandma, and looking down on welfare recipients. “FWIW, I deplore the attitude Jackson is promoting here.”

MICHAEL WALSH: The Consequences of No Consequences.