Popular Mechanics: Is taking photographs in a public place a crime? No, says a lawyer.

Investors Business Daily:

The Internet is a large-scale version of the "Committees of Correspondence" that led to the first American Revolution — and with Washington's failings now so obvious and awful, it may lead to another.
People are asking, "Is the government doing us more harm than good? Should we change what it does and the way it does it?"

Read this. It is increasingly clear that the government can do and will do anything it wants to.

Sheriff Andy Griffith, 84, is now a pitchman for Obamacare. So sad.

NYT: Is GM's Volt an electric lemon?

Amazon's new Kindle is out.

The Clintons are spending $3-5 million on Chelsea's wedding. I'm impressed.

We ate at Charlotte's Eats and Sweets in Keo, Arkansas, today. I ordered the Keo Klassic sandwich and my wife ordered the Fruit plate special. We loved both of them. And as a rare treat, we ordered a slice of cocunut pie, and split it. Wonderful. Just like old times. Highly recommended. You should  probably call ahead and make reservations. No kidding. Let me make it easy for you: 501-842-2123.

Read the review in Tie Dye Travels. Thanks, Kat.

AP: Debt settlement companies, which I see advertising on TV all the time, will face new regulations as of October 27.

Did Popular Mechanics invent the shoulder pad used in football?

AP: Amazon will release a new Kindle e-book reader soon. This one is Wi-Fi capable.

Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen: Obama promised to unite the country in a post-partisan euphoria, but he has divided us along class and party lines.

But here is a reaction. 

GM's electric Volt will cost $41,000. Wow! It's a "green" car, all right.

Michael Barone on the 2010 elections. Dems will lose big unless Repubs screw it up.

The Hill: The majority of seniors are unaware of what Obamacare will do to them. When they find out they're going to be pissed.

PajamasMedia: "If there are only 39,697 African-American farmers grand total in the entire country, then how can over 86,000 of them claim discrimination at the hands of the USDA? Where did the other 46,303 come from?"

It's a little disturbing to walk into stores and see back-to-school sales. Where is the summer going?

I'm not in education any more, but I guess this is an old primordial fear of mine.

AP: BP has replaced Tony Hayward with Robert Dudley.

Google has quite a collection of photos of Mississippi River bridges. A quick glimpse will show you the contrast with these bridges and the new cable-stayed bridge across highway 82. See the photo at this link.

Nine years and $336 million later, the highway 82 bridge at Greenville, Mississippi, is being dedicated today. But it won't be open to traffic until later in the week. The bridge has its own website.

AP reports on the speculation that Bob Dudley, BP's managing director, could take over for Tony Hayward. Dudley spent time growing up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

American Thinker: Reviewing the Obama administration's use of the race card.

AP: Tony Hayward, BP CEO, will be replaced over the Gulf oil spill.

In 1981 Ray Perkins took over from Bear Bryant at Alabama but left mysteriously in 1986.

A pilot ejects from his airplane at an airshow. Photos and video.

AP: You can now follow the British royal family on Flickr. Go here.

Talking about polls and tea parties, Blanche Lincoln is still taking the view, as she did a year ago, that her opponents are sunk into "hate and anger and rudeness." I don't believe that she sees what is really out there.

Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe wants to cut the grocery tax again, and if possible remove it completely.

WSJ: Wal-Mart will start tagging every article of clothing with a new type of radio tag.

Want an iPad? How about this one for $35?

Stephen Green has the best column that I've seen recently on where politics are heading. It was prompted by James Webb's column in the WSJ entitled "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege."

Need to protect your cash when traveling? Of course. Here's are some ideas for stashing your funds in separate places. Or you can use a disposable mugger's wallet.

When I was a kid, I worked in grocery stores and saw older women standing in line to pay at the cash register. They dug through their stuff looking for money, which was stashed in more than one place. One common trick was to twist it up in handkerchiefs or something.

John Kerry, a consistent tax hiker, is avoiding Massachusetts taxes by docking his yacht in Rhode Island. Hey, it's cheaper.

Reason: Do public sector unions drive states into bankruptcy?

The ADG has this headline on a story about a baseball game: "Two late touchdowns propel Naturals." I looked for some clue as to why but didn't find it. I wish I'd had seen that game, lol.

Women's breasts are getting larger. And it's not just implants either.

Harry Reid says that auto bailouts probably saved Ford, but Ford accepted no bailout money, LOL.

Gallup: Congress is now the least trusted institution in American life. Drudge says, Pack your bags!

Angelina Jolie wants to play James Bond.

Shirley Sherrod, who is in the middle of the current racial storm in Washington, says that Obama does not understand the black experience.

Michael S. Malone: AntennaGate -- the flaw in the new iPhone 4, may be a major turning point in Apple Computer.

On the other hand, Apple's 3Q income has just jumped 78 percent, mostly on the sales of the iPad.

Full disclosure: I just bought an iPhone and I llike it.

Chokepoint Charlies

Tom Blumer on the chokepoints in higher education. Don't make waves, keep your head down. But the biggest one is research. You can't afford to go against established leftist orthodoxy.

Everybody who's anybody in the SEC is in Hoover, Alabama.

Tax Prof: The percentage of professors who have tenure or on a tenure track is declining.

Today is the anniversary of Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon in 1969.

The Hill: The critics of Obamacare were right!

This book, Stephen J. Pyne's Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds in the Third Great Age of Discovery, is intriguing. He compares this outer space probe to the seagoing expeditions of the 16th and 18th centuries. They were all inspired by the same motives. Glenn Reynolds reviews it in the WSJ.

I've always thought it was interesting that the dawn of the computer age reintroduced such terms as Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. 

Ann Althouse comments on the idea that Obama himself pushed the idea that he would be a post-racial president.

I think this idea that electing a black President would redeem us from all things racial was something that developed as a shared and mostly unspoken delusion. Obama presented himself as another candidate, running on issues, and throwing out high-level abstract platitudes. Those who voted for him because they believed his election would make us post-racial — and I'm not one of them, though I voted for him — need to take responsibility for their own distorted, exaggerated thoughts.

Mountain Meadows Massacre Descendants have a nice website.

Victor Davis Hanson: "The truth is that the real big money and the lifestyles that go with it are now firmly liberal Democratic."

David Limbaugh: Obama claimed to be our post-racial president, but he's the most racial president.

Market Watch has a rundown on smart phones, including the iPhone and BlackBerry and the new Droid X.

USAToday Travel: You should be skeptical of travel discounts. AARP discounts are "the most disingenuous." 

Every Prius owner needs to know how to jump start their car. See here:

AP: Blanche Lincoln along with a Republican is proposing a federal estate tax.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that the iPhone is not perfect. But what's he gonna do about it?

UPDATE: Apple will give iPhone owners a free protective case and will refund the cost of the $29 Bumper case. Here's more.

Michael Barone has a long essay entitled "The Return of the Jeffersonian Vision and the Rejection of Progressivism." He summarizes American political philososphy from the Early Republic, Progressive Era, the New Deal and to the present day. He has many good quotes. I like his final paragraph:

The major political development of the last 17 months has been an inrush of hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans into political activity, an inrush symbolized by but not limited to the tea party movement. It is fascinating to me that the tea partiers have adopted the language and in some cases even the costumes of the Founders. While the Progressives’ descriptions of a “horse and buggy” Constitution and their sense that giant auto factories and steel mills were the harbinger of the future seem tinny and out of date, the language of the Founders continues to resonate with the clear timbre of a silver spoon tapping a crystal glass. The majority of the American people seem to firmly agree with the Founders’ insistence that no one should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. And so we can take satisfaction that most of our fellow citizens in our freeholders’ republic still hold these truths to be self-evident.

But what is taught in American history courses in colleges and universities across the country bears little resemblance to Barone's view of our history. 

NPR: Driver error was behind many Toyota crashes that presumably led to the brake recall.

Bloomberg: Apple knew in advance that the design of the iPhone 4 would interfere with reception.

Fox News: After 86 days, BP has stopped the flow of oil into the Gulf.

The EPA says that the Chevy Volt will not get a 230 mpg rating when it appears.

TaxProf: Stanford University is trying to "nudge" its aging faculty to retire with its "Retirement Incentive Program," or RIP. LOL.

The 50 ugliest cars of the past 50 years.
I note that the PT Cruiser is one of them. So is the Prius, which is said to look like a soybean.

Andrew Ferguson: Newsweek magazine is up for sale. Here's why. They don't give readers what they want.

AP: George Steinbrenner is dead at 80.

Reason: The population bomb, so long feared, is a dud.

Mort Zuckerman: "There is a widespread feeling that the government doesn't work, that it is incapable of solving America's problems. Americans are fed up with Washington, fed up with Wall Street, fed up with the necessary but ill-conceived stimulus program, fed up with the misdirected healthcare program, and with pretty much everything else. They are outraged and feel that the system is not a level playing field, but is tilted against them. The millions of unemployed feel abandoned by the president, by the Democratic Congress, and by the Republicans."

State Politics: John Boozman has announced the opposes the federal lawsuit over Arizona's immigration law. Blanche Lincoln said... well, read it for yourself.

More American women are choosing to opt out of motherhood. Very understandable. Raising children is a lot of work and it is filled with disappointment.

Consumer Reports is critical of the iPhone because of reception issues.

Ann Althouse: "For me, using the computer has also made cable news unwatchable. It's just too slow. And they are always going to commercial with a teaser like "And wait until you hear what happened when..." Either I already know what happened or, if I care, I will find out in 2 seconds, before the commercial even begins, or I do not care. I just feel sorry for the people who would sit patiently waiting to ingest that stale nugget of information."

That's it exactly.

I was waiting in a car dealership today. CNN was on. So easy to tune out. 

Jason Tolbert: Mike Ross opposes the federal lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law. Where do our other Congressmen and Senators stand?

Blake's Think Tank has some more thoughts on immigration.

Love Buzz: 25 secrets to a loving, lasting marriage. Very informative.

We are having a small historical controversy right here in Arkansas. On July 6, columnist Mike Masterson published a column in the ADG that was based on a speech he had attended. What he learned in his history classes was all wrong, he reports. Oh my. It seems like the Democrat party supported slavery in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and so on.

But today Elliott West of the Fayetteville history department takes issue with this version of events. As West says, the Missouri Compromise banned slavery north of Arkansas except for Missouri. The Fugitive Slave Act was part of the Compromise of 1850, which was put together by the Whig Henry Clay. Democrat Stephen A. Douglas was the leading force behind the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The GOP did not opposed slavery, West notes, only the expansion of slavery into new territories.

These events involved complex issues and compromises. There is enough blame to go around over slavery.

What we learn here is more about current politics of these writers than about American history. That is what this little tempest is all about.

Tax Prof: The real reason LeBron James moved from Cleveland (OK, Akron) to Miami was taxes. He will save between $6 million and $8 million by moving to Miami. Sounds good to me.

Fox News: Ron Baity, a North Carolina Baptist minister, was fired as honorary chaplain of the state House of Representatives for closing a prayer with the name Jesus.

Karen Flanagan has an article about the Sugar Thieves, people who steal your sugar and replace it with artificial sweeteners in the belief that they are helping diabetes. Sugar-free foods are not carb free. It took me a long time to learn that simple lesson. She says:

For example a regular chocolate chip cookie has approximately 26 grams of carbohydrate in it. A similar sugar-free cookie has about 20 grams. Real apple pie has about 40 grams of carbohydrate per serving, and the sugar-free variety has about 37. A slice of yellow cake with frosting has about 40 grams of carbohydrate while the sugar-free version still delivers about 28 grams. The sugar-free ones are not free foods.

For years I believed that sugar is what drove up my blood sugar. I checked sugars on food labels and ignored carbohydrates. But your body doesn't know the difference between a chocolate chip cookie and a baked potato.

According to news reports today, six Arkansas Division II schools are still moving toward breaking away from the Gulf South Conference and forming a new conference, still unnamed. The main motive is the growing cost of travel. They have to travel to George, Mississippi, and Alabama as well as to Florida for non-football schools. They can't just put their teams on an airplane and go.

Krauthammer: "Obama is not the first president with a large streak of narcissism. But the others had equally expansive feelings about their country. Obama's modesty about America would be more understandable if he treated himself with the same reserve. What is odd is to have a president so convinced of his own magnificence -- yet not of his own country's"

Is the tan tax reverse racism?

The Huey P. Long bridge in Baton Rouge will be widened.

Popular Mechanics debunks ten top energy myths.

John Brummett does another of his "arrow" columns. Blanche Lincoln is a goner, he says. Joyce Elliott gets an up arrow.

Rasmussen: Most Americans are not willing to pay higher taxes for public employees and entitlement programs.

The last PT Cruiser will be built this week. Change happens.

Michael Barone asks Why aren't businesses hiring? He quotes a Democrat who believes that the past year has created too much uncertainty.

This is exactly the same reason that explains why the New Deal did not end the Depression. Government programs create uncertainty in imposing taxes and regulations or the threat of them.

"Historian" Michael Belllesiles, who made the preposterous claim ten years ago that gun ownership was rare in colonial America, is back in the news.

Dan Mitchell: "The fault line in American politics is often not between Republicans and Democrats, but rather between taxpayers and the Washington political elite."

This AP's report on how healthcare reform is "starting to kick in" plays up the good news, and ignores the bad. Nothing really happens until 2011 anyway.

Top 20 photographs from the Gulf that Obama doesn't want you to see.

This image is from the Europe's Planck telescope, which was sent into space last year to study the oldest light in the universe.

Happy birthday, America!

Historians are again engaged in one of their most meaningless exercises, rating presidents. I think if you turned their rankings upside down you would get a more accurate result.

Jack Martin's John Brown's Body sound like a good read.

Charlie Cook: The GOP tidal wave is coming whether Democrats believe it or not.

I believe the possibility of Hillary Clinton challenging Obama for the presidency in 2012 is a very real possibility. The Clintons and Obama have a rivalry going on. The Clinton's sense of entitlement can never be under-estimated. See here.

At that point the economy will be in shambles. Heath care reform will be more unpopular than it is now. Obama's numbers will be lower than they are now, etc. 

InfoWorld: Dell Computer has sold computers with defective parts and put itself on hard times.

Bill Kristol writes an open letter asking Michael Steele to resign as chairman of the Republican Party.

Ole Miss is considering adopting a new mascot or a new concept of the Ole Miss Rebel mascot. I vote against all of the ideas listed on this site.

The AP is just now discovering that Obamacare will mean longer waits and more crowding in emergency rooms.

Ten reasons why sex is good for you.

John Brummett says that the gap between Lincoln and Boozman will close as the election approaches this fall.