THE CHATTERING CLASS IS AGHAST at Arizona's new immigration law.

"Harkens back to apartheid," says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker. "Shameful," says the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne. "Terrible…an invitation to abuse," says the New York Times' David Brooks.

For his part, President Obama calls the law "misguided" and says it "threaten[s] to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans." Obama has ordered the Justice Department to "closely monitor the situation and examine the civil rights and other implications of this legislation."

Has anyone actually read the law?

Of course not. Facts don’t matter when your mind’s already made up.

EUGENE OREGON is a hate-free zone ...


... so this cannot be an example of hate speech.

Right? Uh, ... right?

IN HIS DEFENSE OF LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE, I was amused by Peter C. Pfeiffer’s assertion that elite colleges require foreign language study to “allow students to take on an alternative identity and see the world in different ways.”

President Obama went to not one, not two, but four “elite” schools: Punahou, Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard Law. He can’t speak Austrian, but he does speak Australian.

And he certainly does “see the world in [a] different way.”

NANNIES RUN AMUCK: Officials in Santa Clara [CA] are convinced that luring kids into eating foods with high sugar, sodium and fat by using toys will make them overweight and cause long term health problems.

Sorry, kids, no more Happy Meals. Sorry, parents, you just thought you were responsible for your kids.

NOT TOO ‘HIP’ AND ‘EDGY’ FOR CENSORSHIP. Mark Steyn writes on Comedy Central’s caving and censoring South Park in response to terrorist threats: “We should be grateful to its jelly-spined executives for reminding us that the cardboard heroes of the American media are your go-to guys for standing up to entirely fictitious threats. But for real ones? Not so much.”

AN AMUSING MOMENT: I just walked past my pickup in the garage and noticed the T.E.A. party sticker on the bumper - and a pitchfork in the truck bed.

But no tar and feathers.

CONTEMPT OF FOR CONGRESS. The experienced motorist will have seen a multitude of road signs warning of children crossing, elderly pedestrians and wildlife. Now Italian prostitutes get their own road sign to warn motorists of impending hookers. The sign is here.

Instapundit suggested somebody should put one in front of the Capitol building:


It fits.

WILL DEMOCRATS 'go for it' on immigration reform? Obama, Pelosi and Reid seem to be driven by a desire to avoid, not confront, the voters' top priority, which is the economy and jobs.

Well, of course. They tried – and failed spectacularly. Now it’s time for Plan B: divert America’s attention from that failure.

What’s Plan C for when B fails?

AVATAR SETTING ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY. "Actress Sigourney Weaver testifies before the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on the topic of ocean acidification. Because, you know, she played an environmental scientist in Avatar."

Yes, real scientists are just so ... so .... icky.

IN MEMORIAM


Dixie (1996-2010). Rest.

PENSION REFORM? Oh, my, this one is good! Especially the reader comment that “prevailing unemployment” be extended to Congress.

POLICY CHANGE: progressives rename themselves.

WORSE THAN A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS: A Plague of ‘A’ Students.

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT - so I’ll have more of it to enjoy for myself.

Link from Instapundit.

IF PRESIDENT OBAMA IS 'AMUSED’ by the Tea Partier’s distaste for ObamaCare, then what must he think of the Constitution?


by Nate Beeler at the Washington Examiner.

DEMOCRATS AT THE EDGE OF THE ELECTORAL CLIFF with a long fall to the bottom.

We can only hope.

POPULISM OF THE PRIVILEGED: the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto laughs at the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne.

OBAMA’S SPACE PROGRAM; more conservative than Bush’s space program.

Rand Simberg, who blogs at Transterrestial Musings, argues in favor of the Obama plan for restructuring America’s manned space program, believing it is, at least, a (poorly conceived and badly executed) step in the right direction toward space colonization.

Others, including Neil Armstrong and many in the astronaut corps, strongly disagree.

In the long run, I have to agree with Simberg. Manned spaceflight will never be more than a ‘lab curiosity’ until the next Pan Am starts scheduled suborbital and orbital service. In the short term, though, the astronauts are correct; Constellation is needed to ‘keep the dream alive’ until Pan American World Spaceways is in operation.

The pity is that this argument should have been had - and settled - 15 years ago.

OBAMANOMICS: coming to an economy near you. Read it and weep for the America you thought you knew.

CLIMATEGATE IS DEAD; long live Climategate. The IEEE’s energy correspondent sees the handwriting on the wall: the British House of Commons's attempted whitewash of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit failed.