IT’S NOT DELL HELL: The computer in the studio just died; sounds like a hard-drive crash. Fortunately, I just did a backup. It’s an HP, though, not a Dell. I’ll let you know how the warranty service goes. We’re doing a podcast interview tomorrow, but luckily I’ve got a backup computer. Belt-and-suspenders — it’s the only way to go!

ARNOLD KLING:

If you think that libertarianism is incompatible with “family values” conservatism, then think again. And read Jennifer Roback Morse’s book.

Single moms and the welfare state go together. Strong families and free markets go together. Morse argues that a combination of weak families and free markets is much less likely to persist.

That seems plausible. And Arnold’s essay leads Megan McArdle to discuss the virtues of nagging.

HELICOPTER PARENTS: They just keep hovering.

THE UN-SILENCED BILL HOBBS offers advice on how George W. Bush can save his presidency.

FOREIGN POLICY makes a shocking omission.

“MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF MOE AND CURLEY.” Yes, it is a great title.

WELL, IT’S HARD TO ARGUE WITH THIS:

Illegal immigration to the United States is “Mexico’s disgrace,” caused by the government’s failure to create enough jobs, the country’s leftist presidential candidate said on Tuesday.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who trails conservative Felipe Calderon in polls ahead of July 2 elections, accused President Vicente Fox’s administration of causing the flight of millions of Mexicans to the north, which prompted President Bush to order National Guard troops to the border.

“They are the ones mostly responsible for what is going on because there is no employment, there are no jobs in Mexico so people need to emigrate,” Lopez Obrador said on his morning television show.”

Upside: If Mexico goes communist, Bush won’t have to do anything: they’ll build a wall themselves!

IT’S A PORKBUSTERS PODCAST INTERVIEW with House Majority Leader John Boehner, about spending, earmarks, and more. He talks pretty tough, and says that the climate on spending has changed because of constituent pressure.

So, if you care about spending, keep the pressure up!

UPDATE: Yes, this was recorded via my studio, and yes the sound is better than most of the Glenn and Helen podcasts. That’s because I used my new digital phone interface, which gives a much clearer signal and a much lower noise floor — which also lets me use a lot more compression on the mix, helping even out the volume and make it punchier. It also helped that Boehner was on a good phone — N.Z. was on a cordless, and you can hear the difference. One problem I’ve discovered in doing these things is that lots of people literally don’t own a wired phone handset anymore.

WARD CHURCHILL UPDATE:

An investigation of a professor who likened some of the Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi found serious cases of misconduct in his academic research, including plagiarism and fabrications, a University of Colorado spokesman said Tuesday.

One member of the five-person investigative committee recommended that ethnic studies professor Ward Churchill be fired, and four recommended he be suspended, university spokesman Barrie Hartman said.

Pirate Ballerina has much more, including a link to the full report.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh has several posts on topic — scroll down from this one.

TONY SNOW AND HELEN THOMAS: Video here.

SOME ADVICE TO PUBLIC BROADCASTERS:

The universe of public broadcasting today is “an embarrassment of niches.”

This topic statement, uttered by Jake Shapiro of the Public Radio Exchange, launched a torrent of speculation and anxiety over both the future and funding of public media — whether radio, television or otherwise. . . .

“The challenges and the problems that public media face are not at all different from what private or commercial media faces,” said Diane Mermigas of the Hollywood Reporter. “You could be Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone from Viacom or Ted Turner, and they’re asking the same questions you are. I know because I sit down with them all the time.”

The trick, said Terry Heaton of media consulting firm Donata Communications, is to meaningfully tap the expertise of one’s audience. Whether a program’s subject is antiques, history, baseball or brewing, the advice is the same.

“You’re setting yourselves up for problems in the future if you’re going to be only a content provider,” he said. “That to me is suicide, because the real value is at the opposite end.”

That’s probably right.

DESPITE THE GOP’S PROBLEMS, it’s gaining in Minnesota. Go figure.

BUSH’S SPEECH is reportedly polling better than I would have expected.

INSTAPUNK says that big media are winning via a Chinese water-torture approach:

While the bloggers were fighting their various and diverse battles in the name of truth, justice, and common sense, the MSM ocean was harnessing its entire immensity on just one story, told an infinite number of times, in every possible inflection, from every direction, and with the deadly persistent accuracy of a dripping tap: George W. Bush is no good.

It doesn’t have to be true, it doesn’t have to be fair, it doesn’t have to be consistent in its terms. All that matters is that it is repeated with uniform constancy: drip, drip, drip. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. Change the headlines, seem to change the subject. Abu Ghraib. European disdain. Tom Delay. Katrina. Deficits. Valerie Plame. Gas prices. Karl Rove. Death in Iraq. Angry mothers. NSA wiretaps. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, the lede is always the same. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. George W. Bush is no good. Forget the good news, bury the accomplishments or ignore them altogether. Drip, drip, George W. Bush is no good, George W. Bush is no good, George W. Bush is no good.

It took the MSM three years to bring George W. Bush’s approval ratings down from their post 9/11 high to 52 percent on election day 2004. It’s taken them just six months to bring him down another 20 to 25 points. They never forgot their mission. While the princeling bloggers pissed and moaned about Harriet Miers, and immigration, and federal spending, the MSM kept on dripping out its one story, and now they are within reach of their goal .

Read the whole thing. It’s an interesting perspective, though it assumes a shocking degree of cynicism, partisanship and commitment on the part of Big Media.

GASOLINE: Still cheap, by historical standards.

ALPHECCA’S WEEKLY REPORT ON MEDIA GUN COVERAGE IS UP: Among other things, he actually finds a positive story on guns from Time magazine.

RYAN SAGER OFFERS advice for libertarians.

Meanwhile, Jim Geraghty offers advice on how frustrated conservatives can reassert control over the GOP.

In both cases, the advice goes well beyond staying home in 2006.

A BOGLE BLOG: Jacob Corré emails: “Jack Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group, father of retail passive investing and the most important advocate of individual investors alive, has started a blog. This I think is an important event for both his industry and the world of blogging (to which the term “industry” doesn’t quite seem to fit).”

It’s here.

IN THE MAIL: Richard Posner’s new book, Uncertain Shield : The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform.

This Posner column from the WSJ (free link) captures some of the gist.

NATIONAL GUARDSMAN JOHN TAMMES has thoughts on deploying the Guard at the border.

TRAFFIC CAMERAS: Guilty of racial profiling.

HUGH HEWITT’S SHOW LAST NIGHT ran for an extra two hours, as an extended symposium on immigration and the President’s speech. Lots of it is posted, as transcripts and audio, over at Radioblogger.com. Hugh thought the President’s speech was a good start, but was deeply unimpressed with Julie Myers’ followup.

JOHN PODHORETZ on the immigration debate: “The immigration debate is a very heated and passionate one, and the heat and passion on the part of those on the restrictionist side have been useful tools for pushing the conversation in your direction. But there’s a difference between heated disagreement and the insistence on lock-step uniformity. . . . This inability to stomach disagreement on a hot-button issue should be troubling to anyone and everyone who has found an intellectual home on the Right — in part to avoid the kind of crippling self-censorship that has afflicted the P.C. Left.”

Yes. If you find yourself sounding like a Kos diarist, step away from the blog and take a break, lest you do for your cause what the Kossacks have done for theirs.

MICHAEL BARONE:

As Washington insiders pore over the latest low job-approval ratings for George W. Bush, and as aficionados of British politics ponder the latest low ratings of Tony Blair, let’s take a longer look at the political ebb and flow in America and Britain over the last quarter century or so. There is a certain parallelism.

Read the whole thing.

CHESTER says to stop moping.