A SECOND AMENDMENT FREEDOM RALLY IN CHICAGO, scheduled for July 11.

HO HUM, A GOVERNMENT SUCCESS STORY:

Much of the Mississippi River Valley is now underwater, and the Associated Press reports from East St. Louis, Ill., that FEMA’s performance has been exemplary . . . . Now, we’d like to see some investigative reporting into the differences between the Gulf Coast in 2005 and the Upper Midwest in ’08. We’re not prepared to accept on FEMA’s say-so that its leaders learned the lessons of Katrina and everything works now. It’s possible that Katrina was simply a harder-to-manage challenge because it was such a massive storm and because it hit an area (especially New Orleans and Louisiana) with weak social structures and poor government.

Either way, though, the claims that Bush deliberately neglected disaster preparedness have been disproved. If the Katrina-era problems have been remedied, then the Bush administration’s shortcomings were real but inadvertent. If not, then FEMA always was up to the task of an ordinary-scale disaster, and those who expected better of it in Katrina were unrealistic.

Or, possibly, things in New Orleans weren’t as bad as the media claimed at the time.

A FOOD SCARE REALITY CHECK.

Plus, healthier livestock, with nanotechnology.

CHARLES MARTIN: Why trains just don’t work in America.

THE COOKWARE YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED. I certainly never knew that I needed it.

UPDATE: Reader Michelle Dulak Thompson emails:

Oh, you do want one of those. Seriously. Ebelskiver are fantastic. I never tried using ordinary pancake batter, actually — I have a recipe via a Danish grandparent involving buttermilk and beaten egg whites, which is why I don’t make them all that often. But I grew up with these as a special breakfast treat from my Mom, and there’s nothing to top them. Well, except blueberry preserves ;-)

Yes, flipping them over is a bitch, because what you have halfway through the cooking process is a thin, crisp shell conforming to the hemispherical depression in the pan, surrounding a pool of batter that’s not cooked at all and will splash everywhere unless you flip neatly. I never tried chopsticks, I must say, and I can’t see how it would even work, but then my chopstick technique is lousy. I use a really, really cheapo metal spoon — the kind stamped out of a thin metal sheet. That seems thin enough to get between the pan surface and the cooked crust without kludging things up.

Just what I need, something delicious and bad for me . . .

SUBPRIME SIX UPDATE: Cornyn, Boxer Propose That Senators Disclose Their Mortgages. Horse, barn door, yada yada.

UPDATE: Much more here. But the real issue isn’ t the mortgages — it’s the, dare I say it, culture of corruption that makes getting a special deal as a “friend of Angelo” seem perfectly okay to Senators who are involved in legislation affecting the industry.

HOMELAND SECURITY REMAINS A JOKE: Seizing Laptops and Cameras Without Cause. Just not a very funny one. As I’ve said for the past six years, I don’t understand why the Democrats haven’t made a bigger deal about this kind of thing.

GOOD NEWS FROM IRAQ THAT NOBODY SEEMS TO CARE ABOUT: “What remains worrisome is the reaction of leading Democrats. Two years ago they were arguing that we should leave Iraq because the war was lost; now they are saying we should leave Iraq because the war is won.”

Meanwhile, David Brooks looks at the past few years and says conventional wisdom was backwards: “In fact, when it comes to Iraq, Bush was at his worst when he was humbly deferring to the generals and at his best when he was arrogantly overruling them.”

A FUNDRAISER FOR “deadbeat Congresswoman” Laura Richardson.

DON IMUS: Thank Jeremiah Wright for your job.

THEY SAID THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, we’d see unlicensed back-alley abortions in America. And they were right! “‘This defendant preyed on women in the Hispanic community’ by passing herself off as a doctor, the prosecutor says. Bertha Bugarin, 48, at one point ran six clinics in Southern California.” Thanks to reader Mark Warner for the tip.

PRODUCTION OF THE CHEVY VOLT will be ramped up slowly. Probably a good idea; minimize problems and get people talking about how they want one, rather than rushing them out and having people talk about why they don’t. GM is also lobbying for a tax credit for Volt owners. (Via FuturePundit).

MORE ON THE BOUMEDIENE DECISION, from Professor Kenneth Anderson. “It is as though the Boumediene majority somehow does not believe any of this has anything to do with, well, war and, to the extent that it is about war, the Court seems to be marking out a long-term trajectory of forcing a reconception of war, even combat, as a form of police work. . . . although the Court wants, as the chief justice said, control over federal enemy combatant policy, it does not want to be accountable for it.”

JOHN TIERNEY: Diamonds or Oil, Is a Cartel Forever?

THOUGHTS ON sex and housework.

SORRY KOS KIDZ: Obama tacks away from his left-wing base.

IN THE MAIL: Dick Morris and Eileen McGann’s new book, Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us … and What to Do About It. If long subtitles make bestsellers, this is going to the top!

SANDEEP JAUHAR: “I have been hearing physician colleagues voice a level of dissatisfaction with medical practice that is alarming.”

It’s become a crappy job, mostly because of health insurance companies’ paperwork demands. The Insta-Wife has had a similar experience, which is one reason why she shifted her practice to forensic work, where people pay in cash. As the article illustrates, lots of physicians are responding similarly, or quitting medicine entirely. In this area, as in so many, Atlas, tired of being taken for granted, is quietly shrugging.

ANBAR GOES OVER TO IRAQI CONTROL: And that’s just part of a story that’s not getting enough attention. Somewhere, T.M. Lutas is saying “I told you so.” Well, he did.

JOHN BIRMINGHAM: How did our oil get under their sand?

UH OH: Internal documents:Capitol ill-prepared for bomb attack.

JUNE 24, 1947: The first “flying saucer” sighting.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: pointing and shooting.

HARNESSING THE UNTAPPED POWER of breast motion. With nanotechnology!