A LOOK AT THE FUTURE OF GREEN GASOLINE, made from waste biomass, plastic, etc.: “If we can get 100 percent yield, we estimate the cost to be about a dollar per gallon. . . . Right now we’re at 50 percent.”

IN THE MAIL: Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out.

HAROLD FORD, JR.: Obama must win Indiana.

MORE PEACE DEALS IN PAKISTAN.

MICKEY KAUS: “How Crappy Were the Exit Polls? Pretty crappy! They certainly didn’t capture the 10 point Clinton win. . . . If the exit polls are this unreliable for press’ result-predicting purposes, why aren’t they also unreliable for all the scholarly purposes they are supposedly put to? Garbage is garbage, no?”

TAXING THE INTERNET IN TENNESSEE? I got an email from the folks at Waller, Lansden, Dortch & Davis on the “technical corrections” tax bill in the state legislature, and it included this bit:

The Bill contains sweeping legislation that would subject downloaded sales of digital media, including music videos, motion pictures, news and entertainment programs, music, ringtones, electronic books, etc. to the retail sales tax. Under current law digitally delivered goods are not taxable unless delivered in a tangible form.

Hmm. That seems significant.

MORE WEATHERMAN STUFF FROM POWER LINE, plus the beginning of an exculpatory spin in this New York Times oped: It was the poison of Vietnam that made people crazy. And, apparently, has kept them that way ever since.

IT’S A FREE SPEECH FUNDRAISER at SteynOnline! Mark Steyn writes: “Until midnight Eastern tonight, for every copy of America Alone sold at the Steyn store, we’ll give 50 per cent of the cover price – ie, our entire profit – to the legal defense funds for the five beleaguered bloggers fighting for free speech in Canada. That’s 50 per cent of the cover price of the paperback, hardback, audio book (in CD, tape or MP3 format) and our America Alone Anniversary Special. And we’ll also put 50 per cent of every other book, T-shirt, mug or anything else we sell today to the Freedom Five.”

Plus, he’ll autograph ’em. Go for it!

ED TV: This Year’s Model.

KATIE GRANJU looks at the raids on Texas polygamists and asks where is the ACLU?

HILLARY’S VICTORY:“Did we not all agree that the game would be transformed if she hit that mark?” Yet some are trying to minimize it.

The New York Times is unhappy. Meanwhile, is Hillary emasculating? And is Obama McGovern?

UPDATE: Team Obama’s spin: “a slimmer margin than most thought possible.”

P.J. O’ROURKE: What you can learn about America on the deck of the USS ‘Theodore Roosevelt.’

SUPERDELEGATE SUCK-UP: “A thousand or so people are going to decide this primary. It behooves those people to have this go on as long as possible, because that is how they are going to get the most goodies. Maybe this is what Hillary truly understands.”

A LOSS FOR the media army. “We are at the beginning of a contest likely to repeat itself through November: between that part of the press prepared to put hard questions equally, and all the rest, including those who’ll mount the barricades when their candidate is threatened with discomfiture. Let the wars begin.”

ED RENDELL: Hillary’s win is a game-changer. “Superdelegates have to re-evaluate. Everyone of them has to. And if she keeps winning in the face of being out-spent like this, well, that is stunning, just stunning.”

A BIG WIN FOR HILLARY: Here’s her spin: “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton celebrated another must-win victory Tuesday night in Pennsylvania, with a convincing win over Sen. Barack Obama that she sought to frame not just as a sign of her strength but of Obama’s abiding weakness. . . . In her victory speech, Clinton cast her 10-point margin — larger than late polls suggested — as a pivot. ”

Plus, this:

Barack Obama could not “close the deal” in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night. Hillary Clinton said so, and just about every talking head on TV used that phrase.

Though Obama has won twice as many contests as Clinton, this man clearly suffers from a failure to close. . . .

While Clinton did not actually call Obama a wimp in Pennsylvania, she did say he was “elitist and out of touch” and “demeaning.” She can also drink him under the table. (And he stinks at bowling.)

Clinton continues to do well in big states, having previously won primaries in California, Massachusetts and Ohio.

The good news for Obama, however, is that in the contest that actually counts — who wins the most pledged delegates to the Democratic Convention -— his lead appears to be unassailable.

In other words, he probably “closed the deal” when, after Super Tuesday, he won 10 contests in a row, running up his pledged delegate lead while Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn, was still trying to figure out what was happening. (Clinton, who fired Penn, still owes him $4.5 million. I could have come up with a losing strategy for half that.)

Ouch.

UPDATE: Hmm: “Exit polls showed that only slightly more half of those who voted today consider Hillary Clinton trustworthy. Yet Clinton has won a decisive victory. Obama must be fairly unpopular in Pennsylvania.” That’s likely to be the HIllary spin with superdelegates, since Pennsylvania is a must-win state for the Dems.

TOP 100 WEBWARE APPS, according to Webware.com.

THE BIG QUESTION: “With the race now moving on to Indiana and North Carolina on May 6 — and probably West Virginia (May 13) and Oregon and Kentucky (May 20) — here’s my question: will Clinton and/or Obama attend the Kentucky Derby? It’s on May 3.” Mint Juleps beat boilermakers, anyway.

TIGERHAWK:

Hillary’s victory speech was pretty good, at least by her standards. She is no Obama, but certainly made it seem as though she were in for the long haul. Frank Luntz, by the way, agreed, calling it “fantastic, absolutely the best speech I’ve heard her give.”

I cannot recall her giving a better one, but that doesn’t make it “fantastic.” But here is the key point: Hillary Clinton will not quit at anything she truly dedicates herself to do. In that regard, she reminds me of none other than George W. Bush. . . . I noted, by the way, that New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine was in the background behind Hillary, clapping away for the cameras to record. He has apparently recovered from his bout of superdelegate vapors.

Watch those weathervanes over the next few days.

UPDATE: Now Obama’s on, and he’s declaring victory because, well, he just is. Also, Bush is evil. TalkLeft has more.

MORE: Jennifer Rubin thinks Obama sounds bitter. More here.

STILL MORE: Marc Ambinder: Clinton Internet Fundraising: 100K in 20 minutes?

FINALLY: A foolproof prediction: Six more weeks of pandering!

CARLY FIORINA FOR VICE PRESIDENT? I don’t see it. She certainly doesn’t come off very well as a manager in Michael Malone’s book on HP.

Here’s our interview with Malone, by the way.

RACE AND GENDER in the Pennsylvania exit polls.

MCCLATCHY: Clinton’s win in Pa. leaves Obama battered, party reeling.

FOOD SHORTAGES in Japan? This is getting a lot of (probably exaggerated) attention in the survivalosphere. Those folks are like Paul Krugman, having predicted 9 of the last 0 food crises, but the news story, at least, is real.

I wonder, though, if this isn’t something like a bank run: “Costco Wholesale Corp. is seeing higher-than-usual demand for staple foods such as rice and flour as consumers worry about a global food shortage, according to a Tuesday report by the Reuters news service.” Of course, the solution to a bank run is to pass out the cash until people get tired. But it’s easier to create cash on demand than food. Today’s supply-chain practices tend to produce skimpy inventories, too, which makes it easier for stores to sell out, and thus for consumers to panic.

UPDATE: Stephen Clark sends along Spengler’s take on the global food shortage. “The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America’s attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: What food shortages in Japan? asks a blogger . . . in Japan. What, press reports unreliable?

MORE: And here’s a blogger in Thailand who says that news reports of food riots there are bogus. More here.

STILL MORE: M. Simon thinks Spengler is wrong.

BILAL HUSSEIN GOT RELEASED UNDER A GENERAL AMNESTY, but Michael Totten observes: “I don’t know if he’s guilty or not, and he deserves the presumption of innocence. Either way, his case brings attention to an issue most consumers of news from Iraq rarely consider: the fact that large media companies–the Associated Press and other news wire agencies and newspapers–work with some sketchy characters in Iraq.”