WHO DOESN’T PAY TAXES: a lot of people, apparently.

Bottom Line: “We need to restore the linkage between paying at least some income tax and being a voter. Otherwise, we can run into the dreaded scenario where those who don’t pay taxes can keep voting to raise them higher and higher for those who do. That’s a prescription for economic disaster ....”

CLEAN-UP CREWS are having trouble even finding the Gulf oil spill.

Recall former BP CEO Tony Hayward’s “spill is modest, Gulf is large” comment? Maybe he was right.

UPDATE (& BUMP): What oil spill?

HOW SMART ARE WE? Not too smart, judging from the nature of our political class.

COME TO THE USA

AN END-RUN AROUND CONGRESS? Memo outlines backdoor ‘amnesty’ plan. But a U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman argued a draft memo doesn’t mean the agency has embraced the policy. That’s more than just a bit disingenuous; in my experience, a draft memo usually means the broad policy has been accepted, and the draft memo is simply about i-dotting and t-crossing.

THE GREAT DIVIDE: More about America’s “political class.”

America's Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market [than are mainstream voters]. In fact, Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin.

Read the whole thing, and then follow the Michael Barone link.

MISSOURI VOTERS overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance in a campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.

Excellent!

POOR RICH FAMILY sails the world for 8 years.

What annoys me about this (front page) article is the smugness - just ordinary rich folk taking a few years off.

FOUR YEARS, 3083 POSTS. It's hard to believe it's been that long, and that many.

Here’s the first post on Friday, August 4, 2006.

WHEN SOMEONE WHO HAS EARNED THE MEDAL OF HONOR ENTERS A ROOM, a hush follows, like waters opening. The stillness in his wake is palpable. Men are filled with more than admiration. The emotion is a mix of awe, envy and wonder. "Would I be capable of that?" each asks himself.

Read the rest. And be grateful.

SARAH PALIN ENDORSEMENTS. Her “Mama Grizzlies” include an equal number of “Papa Grizzlies”. From April through July, Palin has endorsed 24 candidates, 12 women and 12 men. Of her endorsements, 10 have won; only 4 have lost in early primary battles. All of the endorsements were taken from Palin's Facebook page.

Here are her endorsements:

Governor

Karen Handel (GA)
Mary Fallin (OK)
Nikki Haley (SC)
Terry Branstad (IA)
Tom Emmer (MN)
Rita Meyer (WY)

Senate

Kelly Ayotte (NH)
Carly Fiorina (CA)
Todd Tiahrt (KS)
Joe Miller (AK)
Clint Didier (WA)

House of Representatives

Angela McGlowan (MS-1)
Anne Marie Buerkle (NY-25)
CeCe Heil (TN-5)
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-5)
Star Parker (CA-37)
Cecile Bledsoe (AK-3)
Bob McConnell (CO-3)
Paul Gosar (AZ-1)
Tim Scott (SC-1)
John Koster (WA-2)
Tim Burns (PA-12)
John Gomez (NY-2)
Michael Grimm (NY-13)

The Washington Post has an endorsement tracker here.

HIGHER EDUCATION? “[C]olleges and universities serve the people who work there more than the parents and taxpayers who pay for ‘higher education’ or the students who so desperately need it.”

And "the mediocrity of Harvard undergraduate teaching is an open secret of the Ivy League."

Linked from TaxProf Blog, where one commenter noted: “Kind of like a govt union... Support themselves, not the customer.”

MORE JOURNOLIST COVERAGE

You non-JournoList reporters are going to be tarred by association. “[Y]our credibility has just taken a big hit, because we, your faithful readers, don’t actually know who is or who isn’t [a JournoLister]. You can thank JournoList for that, you can thank Ezra Klein, and you can thank the Washington Post, which has done its outstanding professionals absolutely no favors in any of this.”

"[A] lot of the material on Journolist is actually pretty banal. In addition to being partisan hacks, a lot of these guys turn out to be pedestrian thinkers. Disappointing.”

Read them both.

THE MORE LAWS A CULTURE HAS, the more lawless you can tell it has become.

ELECTRIC LEMON: "[The Chevy] Volt appears to be just the sort of car one would expect to come out of 'Government Motors,' whose design is dictated by people who have not one iota of experience on how to design cars that people actually want to drive. The desire of people to be ecologically correct will only go so far. People do not want the driving experience to be an exercise in
self-abuse."

Read it all.

GARDEN ZOMBIE: Every flowerbed needs one.

Link from Instapundit.

PRIUS NOT A CHOICE OF CAR THIEVES: “I guess our friends in the car theft business haven’t gotten the environmental message.”

From the radio.

THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS ASSOCIATION voted unanimously Sunday afternoon to move Fox News to the front row of the White House briefing room.

The first comment (GL) tells you all you need to know about the Left: can’t read; can’t write; can’t spell; and thinks he – or she - is smart.

ANTI-MISSILE SHIELD IN EUROPE on track for 2011.

I’ll bet Europe is reassured ....

SEEM TO THINK? Victor Davis Hanson on Congress: “Right now, the American people seem to think that the main purpose of holding congressional office is to boost egos and get rich later on -- and in the process make the rest of us poorer.”

I think Hanson would be more accurate if he were to replace the phrase “seem to think” with the single word “know.”