Also, today only: 3M TEKK WorkTunes Hearing Protector and AM/FM Radio, $34.59.

Likely response: “But … but … Bain!”

Inasmuch as Schoen is arguing that Obama’s actions as president are more pertinent than those before he took office in reaching a judgment about his re-election, we tend to agree. It sounds as though the proposed Ricketts ad would have been a waste of money (especially now that the New York Times has demonstrated its willingness to propagate the message free of charge).

But Schoen’s appetite for government censorship of political speech based on his disapproval of its content, and his insouciance about even articulating a coherent standard to explain his disapproval, shows why it is so important to guard our First Amendment rights vigilantly. Schoen is in no sense a political extremist, yet he is eager to stifle dissent.

Not so many free-speech Democrats around, these days.

UPDATE: More criticism from Democrats:

President Barack Obama took over the country in 2008, but he never took full control of the Democratic Party — a state of affairs that became painfully clear this week as the White House struggled to distinguish friends from enemies.

A series of Democrats, most prominent among them Newark Mayor Cory Booker, raised doubts about Democratic attacks on Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s former venture capital firm. And while Booker was forced into a long, slow, painful walkback of his worries, other figures — like former Rep. Harold Ford — remained unapologetic markers of the party’s independence from its president. . . .

Former Pensylvania Governor Ed Rendell said it would be unfair to compare Obama’s aides to Clinton’s operation.

“You’re comparing them to the gold standard,” Rendell told BuzzFeed. “They’ve done a good job.”

He added, however, that he hasn’t heard of officials getting Clinton-style calls from Obama at 11:30 at night to ask about local issues. That, said a former Clinton aide, is simply a product of how Obama rose to power.

“He’s not as engaged in building Democratic institutions in different states,” the consultant said. “If you think about how he came to beat Hillary and become president, he did not go through typical Democratic institutions — he ceded that to Hillary. Eventually some started to come his way. I don’t know if there’s as much of a reliance on building these operations state by state.”

And Rendell joined the chorus of criticism of Obama’s attacks on finance, whose leaders have written checks to many members of both parties.

Read the whole thing.

But ’tis a common proof
that lowliness is young ambition’s ladder
whereto the climber upward turns his face

But when he once attains the utmost round,
he then unto the ladder turns his back
looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
by which he did ascend. So Caesar may.

Funny how little time these lefty domestic terrorists did.

Compare my post on low-budget disaster prep.

Related: ABC News: Obama Campaign Does Damage Control After Dems Question Anti-Bain Strategy.

UPDATE: Awkward: Obama campaign looks to explain spreading heavily edited version of Cory Booker ‘hostage’ video.

On the other hand, the Euro-Chinese rivalry leads to this conclusion: “The contrast with the US couldn’t be clearer.” Ouch.

Related: Chester College Will Close. “The economic downturn that started in 2008 has been particularly tough on very small private colleges that lack much in endowment income or national name recognition. Dana College shut down in 2010. Mississippi’s Wesley College closed that same year. Lambuth University, in Tennessee, closed last year after losing accreditation.”

All I can say is, I told you so. I also have some thoughts on what comes next.

According to a recent poll by the Associated Press and CNBC, 46 percent of respondents think Facebook will “fade away as new things come along.” That’s an ominous data point for a company whose IPO dominated the news cycle last week, and claims some 900 million worldwide users.

Facebook seems to be infiltrating every facet of our lives. “Like” buttons appear on every website. “Like us on Facebook!” shouts at us during TV commercials. And more and more apps rely on Facebook to simply log in. It’s starting to feel more than a little oppressive — it’s like we’re living in a blue-and-white-painted jail cell.

And all this IPO madness is just foul icing on the cake.

So where do you turn when the world’s been stricken with Facebook fever? We rounded up seven apps that could satisfy your social networking needs should Facebook go down the tubes — or you just can’t take it anymore.

Facebook has two main problems: (1) People don’t trust them on privacy; and (2) Each successive “improvement” in the platform seems to make it worse.

The title is taken from a quote by Chicago newspaperman and humorist Finley Peter Dunne, who, channeling through his famous character, Chicago South Side saloon keeper Martin J. Dooley, wrote this:

“A man that’d expict to thrain lobsters to fly in a year is called a loonytic, but a man that thinks men can be tu-rrned into angels be an iliction is called a rayformer an’ remains at large.”

The quote is used to introduce the chapter on Barack Obama.

So buy it!

Really? Really? Can this be what it sounds like? Somebody is trying to out-crazy Stacy McCain? That’s not going to end well . . . .

UPDATE: If Kimberlin was trying to stop negative Internet attention, it’s not working.

See, I’ve warned people about this kind of thing. More than once.

The one man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has died, three years after being released by the Scottish Nationalist government for what was advertised as his last few weeks of life.

Evidently determined never to apologize, SNP leader Alex Salmond defended that release today, saying that “regardless of people’s views they can have complete confidence that it was taken on the basis of the due process of Scots Law.”

The application of Scots law instead of British law is the result of what the Scots call devolution. A remarkably apt name that, when you think about it.

Ouch. Not sure about the Scottish law, but I think he should have been drawn and quartered, as suggested in the comments.

On the other hand, there’s this observation in another comment: “It’s not like he committed self-defense, or used a firearm.”

As you can see from this link, the Chronicle hosts twenty families of blogs, of which Brainstorm is only one. Brainstorm contains twelve bloggers now that Riley is gone. Now there is no visible right-wing female voice in the entire publication.

Keep in mind that the Chronicle lacks not only ideological diversity. Browse through the blogs and you will see a parade of old, white, liberal faces, all of whom have the dainty air of Elizabeth Warren, our purportedly Cherokee darling from Harvard. I have nothing against old white people, but the Chronicle is far worse than the Republican Party at fostering racial class diversity. At least we have Nikki Haley.

Diversity is the most important thing there is, but it’s not nearly important enough for old white men to surrender their cushy jobs for. It is, however, important enough to deny young white men similar access to those cushy jobs.

But then, I’m married to a cyborg. And you know what they say about cyborgs — once you’ve gone metal, you’ll never settle!

UPDATE: A reader emails: “The funny thing is, Booker seems to _actually be_ the politician that Obama claimed to be in the 2008 campaign. Lo and behold, Republicans, while not agreeing with Booker on specifics, are willing to work with him. Also, leftists hate him.”