KEEPING THE NATIVES poor and happy. And picturesque!

UPDATE: It’s the Green Man’s Burden!

A LOOK AT what’s a hate crime, and what isn’t, using the Channon Christian / Christopher Newsom murders as a springboard.

SO IS THIS GOOD NEWS OR BAD NEWS?

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed more than forecast in April as a weaker dollar pushed exports to a record and demand for imports waned.

The deficit fell 6.2 percent, the most in six months, to $58.5 billion, from a revised $62.4 billion in March, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. The gap declined even as the shortfall with China widened.

The dollar’s drop and expanding economies in Europe and Asia are fueling demand for American-made goods and the deficit is retreating from a record $67.6 billion in August. The gain in exports may also help economic growth accelerate after the slowest quarter in more than four years.

Good news, I think. Am I wrong?

BRINK LINDSEY’S NEW BOOK, The Age of Abundance, gets a very positive review from George Will:

It took confidence for Brink Lindsey, of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, to venture onto this well-plowed ground with “The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture.” This constantly stimulating book vindicates that confidence. His thesis, stated ironically with Karl Marx’s categories, is that in the second half of the 20th century, America left the “realm of necessity” and entered the “realm of freedom.” Americans “live on the far side of a great fault line” separating them from all prior human experience. . . .

Lindsey rightly says that “today’s typical red-state conservative is considerably bluer on race relations, the role of women and sexual morality than his predecessor of a generation ago.” And “the typical bluestate liberal is considerably redder than his predecessor when it comes to the importance of markets to economic growth, the virtues of the two-parent family and the morality of American geopolitical power.” In “the bell curve of ideological allegiance,” the large bulging center has settled, for now, on an “implicit libertarian synthesis, one which reaffirms the core disciplines that underlie and sustain the modern lifestyle while making much greater allowances for variations within that lifestyle.” If so, material abundance has been, on balance , good for us, and Lindsey’s measured cheerfulness is, like his scintillating book, reasonable.

As I mentioned a while back, I read Brink’s book and thought it was very good.

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER: “After hearing more than four hours of testimony and attorney arguments today, a McNairy County judge sentenced Mary Winkler, who shot her preacher-husband to death last year, to what amounts to a week in prison and 60 days in a facility where she can receive mental health treatment. . . . Winkler, 33, was charged with first-degree murder after shooting Matthew Winkler in the back with a shotgun on March 22 last year as he lay in bed.”

UPDATE: More here.

MORE EVIDENCE that your tax dollars are wasted.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED, prudishness would dominate the airwaves. And they were right!

JFK TERROR UPDATE: “The investigation into the thwarted plot to bomb Kennedy International Airport is widening beyond the four men in custody, with more suspects sought outside the U.S. for their suspected roles, a law enforcement official said Friday.”

Meanwhile, here’s a suggestion that the terrorists’ plan was poorly conceived.

RASMUSSEN ON WHY THE IMMIGRATION BILL FAILED:

The reality is much simpler and has nothing to do with legislative tactics. The immigration bill failed because a broad cross-section of the American people are opposed to it. Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters are opposed. Men are opposed. So are women. The young don’t like it; neither do the no-longer-young. White Americans are opposed. Americans of color are opposed.

The last Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll found that just 23% of Americans supported the legislation.

Bill Quick adds: “I have to say that the right blogosphere as a whole did an excellent job of revealing and mobilizing this sentiment. . . . Ten years ago, this bill would have been passed and signed by the president before most Americans were even aware that it existed. Those days are over.”

J.D. JOHANNES offers predictions for this summer in Iraq. Excerpt:

If the Anbar Awakening works, AQIZ is in trouble and will be seen as losing not only the war against the U.S. but of losing support among their core constituency–Sunni Muslims.

Baghdad will be increasingly violent because if the surge shows even some signs of success, it will be extended and therefore deny victory to those who profit by chaos and a U.S. departure.

The best way for AQIZ and Jaysh al Mahdi puppet masters to derail the surge and the awakening is through spectacular violence–truck bombs, suicide vest bombs, suicide attacks on coalition bases and increasingly violent ways to carry out the sectarian murder campaigns.

The spectacular generates news media coverage and ratings points that drown out all other facts and progress leading public opinion to an ill informed conclusion–that the whole project should be abandoned because it cannot be won.

As the summer wears on expect more spectacular and more frequent attacks.

I also predict the Anbar Awakening will not remain isolated to Anbar. The Sheiks of Anbar are already reaching out to other Sunni provinces. These Sheiks will embrace the Anbar model of local neighborhood watches, check points and an IP that works with the coalition.

The Sheiks of Anbar will also be sending more ‘qualified men’ to Sunni suburbs in Baghdad.

Read the whole thing.

SO AS I MENTIONED A WHILE BACK, I set up the weather radio that’s supposed to warn you if there’s a tornado warning or other threats. Then, of course, we immediately got the calmest spell of weather we’ve had in ages. But today we had a Severe Thunderstorm Warning and though no alarm sounded (I silenced it for most alerts, as we get a lot of those, and I don’t want to be awakened for something like that) it lit the little “warning” light and “Severe Thunderstorm Warning” scrolled across the display. So I guess it works!

GOODBYE TO TOTINO’S. There’s actually a Totino’s Restaurant behind the famous “Party Pizza?” Weird. That’s like hearing that your dad used to date Mrs. Filbert.

LIVE FROM LIFTOFF: The Popular Mechanics folks are blogging from the Shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral. Plus, ten tough questions for NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.

TERRORISM BY THE NUMBERS.

MICKEY KAUS has a roundup on the immigration bill’s failure.

A LOOK AT politics and Roe v. Wade.

WINNING BY LOSING in suing Gateway. Or is it losing by winning?

MICHAEL MOORE WOULD BE JEALOUS: A look at Russian film history.

ANOTHER PHOTO ESSAY from Michael Yon.

I PREDICT THAT THIS WILL DO WELL: The Fred Factor: How Fred Thompson May Change The Face Of The ’08 Campaign.

PROMISE BREAKERS:

The ABC News/Washington Post poll found that among all Americans, only 29 percent approve of the way Bush is handling the immigration issue. That’s the lowest Bush has ever been on the issue in the survey.

Note, too, that overall approval ratings of the Democratic majority in Congress are even lower than those of the president.

Clearly, most Americans don’t approve of promise breakers.

But that’s what we keep getting.

A NEW BOOK BY MICHAEL BARONE: Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers. (Via, er, Michael Barone.)

ACE OFFERS IMPORTANT THOUGHTS on leering and feminism. “Weird. Feminists continue insisting that it’s empowering to f*ck everything that moves, except your actual husband, who must be sexually punished as a state-sanctioned enforcer of The Oppressive Patriarchy.”

Plus this:

Old, Hateful, Barbaric Rule: Women must keep their eyes averted when speaking to their superiors, men

New, Empowering, Enlightened Rule: Men must keep their eyes averted when speaking to their superiors, women

Upside: On looking at Jeri Thompson’s actual age, as opposed to that originally imagined by feminist bloggers, I’m now declaring the Insta-Wife to be the “Insta-Trophy-Wife.”

UPDATE: Alex Bensky emails: “Hey, Glenn, why not consider the possibility that you’re Helen’s trophy husband?”

Good point! Yeah, that’s the ticket!

ANGEL FLIGHT: Alan Boyle looks at financing new commercial space ventures.