JEFF JACOBY: Thuggish censors in the marketplace of ideas.

[T]his is what the marketplace of ideas is turning into. The ruthless determination not just to silence opposing points of view, but to humiliate and crush even allies willing to hear an opposing point of view, violates every liberal principle of tolerance, reason, and dialogue in the public sphere.

My take: the progressives are scared, very scared, that they're going to lose and lose big in the very near future. First they were ignored; now ther're being laughed at; and soon there will be anger.

Progressives don't do very well when anger is directed at them.

BARACK OBAMA: pathetic at three levels. The intellectual depth of the Obama administration reminds me of this line from Deteriorata: a walk through the ocean of Obama's intellect would scarcely get one's feet wet (paraphrased, of course).

AN IRS TALE:

A father and son are in a restaurant, and he gives the young boy 3 pennies to play with to keep him occupied. Suddenly, the boy starts choking, going blue in the face.

The father realizes the boy has swallowed the pennies and starts slapping him on the back. The boy coughs up 2 of the pennies, but keeps choking, the father is panicking, shouting for help.

A well dressed, attractive, serious looking woman, is sitting nearby reading a newspaper and sipping her coffee. At the sound of the commotion, she looks up, puts her coffee cup down, neatly folds the newspaper and places it on the table, gets up from her seat and makes her way, unhurried, across the restaurant. Reaching the boy, the woman carefully drops his pants; takes hold of his testicles and starts to squeeze and twist, gently at first then gradually more firmly. After a few seconds the boy convulses violently and coughs up the last penny, which the woman deftly catches in her free hand.

Releasing the boy's testicles, the woman hands the penny to the father and walks back to her seat without saying a word.

As soon as he is sure that his son has suffered no ill effects, the father rushes over to the woman and starts thanking her saying, he had never seen anything like that before, it was fantastic. "Are you a doctor?"

"No," the woman replied. "I'm with the IRS."

All good jokes require some level of plausibility; this one certainly qualifies....

IT'S NOT OBVIOUS? Does Obama want better reporting, or just more favorable coverage?

What he wants is the media to be his personal propaganda arm, and with few exceptions, he's already got what he wants.