BERKELEY EAST? Toledo to Marines: Get Out.

UPDATE: Reader Ryan Kelley thinks this is unfair:

There’s a huge difference between Berkley giving Code Pink a parking spot in front of a recruiting center and the mayor of a city which has been hosting Marine training since 2004 getting miffed because -he- wasn’t informed that they were going to train. The rest of the City was perfectly fine with it.

This is Ohio – not California. That kind of behavior towards our armed forces isn’t tolerated. Unfortunately the ignorance by Ohio city leaders on display in Toledo is tolerated.

True, this seems to be more about petty personal pique on the Mayor’s part. Several readers also noted that this is a Name That Party scenario, and that, unsurprisingly, the Mayor turns out to be a Democrat.

PIMP MY RIGHT: Extreme Mortman wonders why Keith Olbermann never got the Shuster treatment.

DO DEPARTMENT STORES have a future? “I can’t help wondering if the decline of local brands didn’t sever some psychic bond people had formed with the very concept of department stores. In the short run, I’m sure they made money streamlining the brands, but in the end they made them interchangeable and rootless.” Yeah, when Proffitt’s in Knoxville turned into a Belk’s, I found I liked ’em less.

HERE’S A FRIENDLY HEADLINE: Old Friends Say Drugs Played Only Bit Part in Obama’s Young Life.

Plus, flip-flops on drug decriminalization.

BARACK OBAMA, in Being There.

WHY PAPER CUTS hurt so much.

FRED THOMPSON ENDORSES JOHN MCCAIN.

IN THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE David Sirota notes that Obama is the corporate fave: “Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric. . . . Obama, who was schooled by the same organizing networks as Cesar Chavez, is being endorsed by hedge fund managers.” Actually, that makes me feel better about him . . . .

MITT ROMNEY 2012?

OBAMA DEIFICATION?

IF HE WERE A REPUBLICAN, this would be a bigger story.

STEVE CHAPMAN says that threats of terrorism are exaggerated. I certainly hope he’s right, but haven’t we heard that sort of thing before?

LEPROSY IN ARKANSAS, imported from the Marshall Islands. Fears of an epidemic seem overstated, though, as leprosy is not terrifically contagious.

Dan Collins notes the tornadoes, followed by plague, and concludes that God is mad at Mike Huckabee.

IN HIS CAPACITY AS PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE, Dick Cheney has signed a pro-individual-right amicus brief on the D.C. gun ban case that was joined by a majority of both the House and Senate.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, TV News correspondents who angered the First Family would be booted by network brass afraid of offending the powers that be. And they were right!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ACE, who won the CPAC Blogger of the Year Award.

A BUNCH OF CPAC PODCAST INTERVIEWS, over at Captain Ed’s.

HMM: “As the late Yusuf Bey built Your Black Muslim Bakery into an empire of wealth and influence, he also orchestrated a systematic welfare fraud scheme at his Oakland compound, three of his former wives have testified. By the wives’ sworn account, Bey directed many of the 100 women whom he considered his wives to make fraudulent applications for government aid programs intended to assist poor families, then diverted the benefits to himself.”

IF YOU’VE GOT KIDS, you’re probably very familiar with Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon. Now it turns out that there’s a new sequel, which was discovered in her papers after her death.

A POST-TRAUMATIC Presidency.

TENFOLD HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION in nematodes.

VICE PRESIDENT SARAH PALIN? “How can you not like the idea of a Vice President who looks comfortable bagging a deer?”

WHY JOHN MCCAIN just might win.

IN THE HELLER CASE, an amicus brief on the racist history of gun control laws from the Congress On Racial Equality. Direct PDF link here.

STILL NO LINK between cellphones and cancer.