OBAMA LISTS HIS EARMARKS, challenges Hillary to release hers.

UPDATE: Related items here and here.

WHEN GOOD NEWS ON IRAQ isn’t news. Which is pretty much all the time.

THOUGHTS ON Jews, Blacks, and political power.

IN THE MAIL: Space Vulture, which Gene Wolfe calls “a real slam-bang heroic space opera written by men who haven’t forgotten a beloved book they shared as boys. Read it, and have a thrilling adventure that would have been serialized in Planet Stories.” Stan Lee blurbs it too. I think it’s a takeoff on the old Space Eagle series, which I vaguely remember.

Plus, a rather unconventional coauthor!

MORE ON McCain’s vaccine blunder. “Politicians such as McCain are very efficient at giving voters what they want. If he wants to be a responsible leader, he should not buy into such flagrant untruths. Unfortunately, as long as there are voters who need to believe those untruths, other politicians will follow suit.”

MICKEY KAUS on Obama and affirmative action.

UPDATE: Related stuff here.

DAN RIEHL: Obama Responds Weakly As Wright Problem Worsens. Yeah,this is a place where he could learn from the Clintons.

UPDATE: Much more here. America created the AIDS virus? Is there any loony anti-US theory this guy doesn’t subscribe to?

JESSE VENTURA ’08? I may be wrong, but it seems to me that his moment has passed.

A UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA STUDY says that red-light cameras lead to more crashes.

I can’t say I’m surprised.

GOOD INFLATION NEWS: “U.S. consumer prices were unexpectedly flat last month, a government report showed.” Let’s hope it stays that way.

PINK PISTOLS: Can guns protect gays?

HAPPY PI DAY! Finally, a reason to celebrate 3/14.

LAPTOP BANS spread from classrooms to business.

SPITZERPALOOZA! If you missed PJM Political on XM Satellite radio last night, you can hear it online for free right here.

HOW IT WORKS: The airborne laser cannon.

MEGAN MCARDLE EXPLAINS why she is not a prostitute.

OINK, OINK: Via email, I learn that the earmark moratorium failed in the Senate, 29-71.

MARK PENN: Obama “really can’t win the general.” Yes he can.

THE CHICAGO WAY: Obama earmark goes to hospital where his wife works, shortly after his wife gets a big raise. If he were a Republican, this would be a scandal.

UPDATE: But there was also an earmark for the “High Explosive Air Burst Technology Program.”

SO ANN ALTHOUSE has been taking (and posting) lots of pictures with her new fisheye lens. I’m kind of jealous, because I don’t have a fisheye lens. But I do have a 12-24mm zoom that’s almost a fisheye. With today being the last day before spring break I was too busy to get out and take exciting pictures around town, but I did carry the camera to the Law School.

Here’s a picture of the seldom-photographed Insta-Office at the Law School, somewhat neater than usual:

Here’s a look down at the rotunda floor, which reminds me of the Star Trek episode set on Triskelion. I always want to bet twenty quatloos on the newcomer.

And here’s a look up at the other rotunda, named after Howard Baker, Jr., a local boy who made good.

Some earlier lens-blogging here. Also here.

UPDATE: GayPatriotWest emails to ask where the books are – the bookshelves are to the left, outside the picture except for a bit of corner. Though I’m trying to keep only books I’m actually using in the office, to hold down the clutter. Which leads to his next comment: “It’s funny how we imagine other bloggers — and how wrong our images are. I had always imagined you in a very cluttered office, with piles of law journals on the desk and books on the floor.”

That was my old office. I moved into this one over the Christmas break and haven’t managed to crap it up yet. (With the retirement of so many of the folks we hired in the 1970s, I’m suddenly one of the senior faculty and thus qualify for one of the big offices, though I actually had a nicer office back when I practiced law). I’m vaguely hopeful that I’ll do better these days, as when I threw away the astounding amount of paper that filled the old office, it seemed that most of it was old and that my mess-production rate had fallen.

And readers want to know what’s on the banner over the desk. It says — complete with the quotation marks for academically acceptable irony – “For God, For Country, and For Yale.”

RECORD SNOW in Wisconsin: “This is the first time in Green Bay’s modern-day weather history that more than 80 inches of snow has been measured (117 years of snowfall data).” I wish we’d gotten, say, 8 inches of that. It hasn’t done more than flurry here all year. Not that I want to re-enact the Blizzard of 1993.

U.N.C. MURDER SUSPECT ALSO suspected of a murder at Duke.

CHANGE AND OBEY.

OUCH: “Obama is being Jesse-ized by the day. The Clintons began the job, and Wright is finishing it.”

Plus this: “We’ve previously heard an unorthodox assessment of the American character from Michelle Obama; that, we were told, was a poor word choice or that she couldn’t have meant what she actually said. Well, now we’re hearing about how rotten a place America is from Obama’s pastor as well as from his wife. It’s getting harder and harder to believe Barack Obama himself doesn’t at least partially share their opinion.” Especially in light of the flag-pin and pledge-of-allegiance kerfuffles. Obama may have been admirably courageous in refusing to engage in public displays of patriotism he regarded as pointless, but he will likely learn why other politicians go out of their way to do so.

Also, “The Audacity of Hate.” And Tom Maguire asks:

What are the odds that, of all the ministers on Obama’s “African American Religious Leadership Committee”, only Wright is this far out in left field? What are the odds that the MSM will push down that road? My answers – slim and none.

That depends on how hard the Clinton folks push behind the scenes, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: The Anchoress says it’s not a case of the race card being played: “It’s a victim card. This is about the Primacy of Victimhood over all else. And frankly, I think if white America falls for this and starts freaking out over Wright’s “racism” then they will be submitting to a HUGE and insidious manipulation by the Clinton team.”

MEGAN MCARDLE: “I’m not distressed to hear that the Feds were spying on Eliot Spitzer. No, not because I don’t like the man, but because I think maybe we should spy on our politicians, all the time. No probable cause, you say? I fling back at you Mark Twain’s observation that America only has one distinct criminal class: Congress. . . . I think it’s entirely appropriate that the anti-corruption police watch politicians like hawks. They’ve chosen public office; that conveys a lot of responsibility to the public, including assuring them that your votes aren’t being bought outright. I also think that politicians, when caught in a crime, should automatically get the maximum penalty; if they think the law is such a good idea, they ought to suffer heartily when they disregard it.”

UPDATE: Reader Dan Duffy emails: “Megan McArdle’s idea of constantly investigating and heavy sentencing requirements would no doubt be rejected by politicians as intrusive and unfair as no other Americans are treated this way. Really? I was a designated nuclear attack pilot during my Navy days and also held a top secret clearance. We were under constant observation on every part of our lives. Financial, medical, domestic life, drug use, prescriptions, I mean everything. In the Navy, a junior enlisted man with marijuana in his system would get fined a few hundred bucks and lose a stripe. A designated nuclear attack pilot would get ten years in Leavenworth.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Scott Blanksteen emails: “It’s also the case that all IRS agents are audited *every* year. Same exact thinking…”