WHILE LECTURING US ON CONSERVATION: Little-Known But Exploited Loophole Allows Politicians To Drive, Maintain Expensive Cars, SUVs On Taxpayer Money. Are you surprised?

YOUR, ER, TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Tax Court: IRS Attorneys Committed Fraud on the Court. “In an extraordinary 137-page opinion issued yesterday, Hartman v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2008-124 (5/1/08), Tax Court Judge Beghe held that IRS attorneys committed fraud on the court in the Kersting tax shelter project which affected more than 1,300 cases.”

IN THE BRINK’S COMMERCIAL, the burglar just runs away. In real life it takes more than an alarm to be safe:

Jon Sokol wasn’t trying to be a hero when he confronted a burglary suspect who had brazenly broken through the front door of his home in St. Paul.

Sokol, 49, said his adrenaline was flowing as he crept up the stairs, revolver in hand, from the basement bedroom he shares with his wife.

His wife had been awoken at about 4:45 a.m. Wednesday by their alarm system and initially thought Sokol had — again — opened the door to get the newspaper without turning off the alarm. But there he was, sleeping right next to her. . . .

“Down on the ground he went and I insisted, in a not very nice way, that he not move,” he said. “I held him at gunpoint until the police arrived.”

Michael G. Spencer, 31, of St. Paul, has been charged in Ramsey County District Court with two felony counts of burglary. He has a lengthy criminal record, including convictions for theft and burglary as recently as last year

Soon to grow lengthier, I’d imagine. He was carrying a knife.

UPDATE: Another report here, somewhat more vivid. Via Scott Johnson who adds: “Unbelievably, the story is followed by self-defense tips (also pasted in below) which do not include packing heat.” Self-defense tips are good. Here’s another one: Have a gun.

I’M AN ARTIST, DAMMIT, NOT A SCIENTIST. “The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, say the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened.” Growing like a cancer on externally supplied nutrients while creating nothing of value. A fit metaphor, anyway . . . .

AUSTIN BAY on Darfur.

MOST MONEY GOES TO ADMINISTRATORS AND THEIR PET PROJECTS: “Across sectors of higher education, only a minority of spending by colleges supports direct instructional costs, according to a report being released today as part of an effort to reframe the debate over college costs.”

“FOX TRUMPS NETROOTS, BLOGGERS REBEL.” Sorry guys, the Dems don’t need you anymore. “The Democratic leaders’ new openness to Fox reflects the liberal left’s diminishing power, at least at this point in the political cycle. Once feared by the Democratic candidates, these activists are now viewed at least in part as an impediment to winning the broad swatch of support needed to clinch the nomination.”

ANTI-INCOME TAX EFFORTS IN MASSACHUSETTS are moving forward. They lost last time, but did better than I would have expected. No wonder the Massachusetts legislature is thinking about taxing Harvard.

JERRY POURNELLE:

I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in nuclear power will do wonders for the economy. We build 100 1000 MegaWatt nuclear power plants — they will cost no more than 2 billion each and my guess is that the average cost will be closer to 1 billion each (that is the first one costs about 20 billion and the 100th costs about 800 million). The rest of the money goes to prizes and X projects to convert electricity into mobility.

Of course we won’t do that.

I detect a lack of confidence in our political class.

A DARK CLINTONIAN PLOT: Spike Lee suspects that Jeremiah Wright is being paid to keep talking.

CIVIL RIGHTS PROGRESS: In Louisiana, a bill to allow licensees to carry guns on campus advances. And it looks like we’ll see legal carry in national parks, too.

LESS PRESSURE ON GASOLINE PRICES? This is from a petroleum industry newsletter I get:

A surprising build in crude oil highlighted this week’s national inventory statistics. Crude oil built by +3.8 million barrels when only a slight +.3 million barrel build was anticipated. Likewise, distillate built by 1.1 million barrels (vs. a pre-stat guess of -.1 million) for the first sizable build in stocks since the second week of January. More builds are anticipated as we enter the month of May, the lowest demand month of the year. Refinery run rates were able to hold on to last week’s huge increase by only dropping .2% to remain at 85.4%. Maintenance programs are winding up, so more refinery recovery should be in store.

That’s good news. On the other hand, there’s this:

Two worker strikes, combined with a bit of sabotage, idled as much as 2 million barrels per day of production capacity in the UK and Nigeria. The UK strike at Grangemouth looks to be settled. Workers were called off for 48 hours, effectively slicing 700,000 barrels per day of production. In Nigeria, a strike against ExxonMobil’s Bonny Light field idled almost 900,000 barrels per day. As part of the negotiation, it appears that workers were going to return, but as of press time I haven’t found evidence of that as yet. The state owned oil company, NNPC, is more than urging the sides to get back to the table quickly. The strike is having the biggest impact of any strike since 1994 and has cost the government billions of dollars in lost revenue. What’s the status of the rest of the volume? That’s from the ultimate strike…blowing up their own oil pipelines and infrastructure.

So that’s not so good. But it wouldn’t surprise me to see crude oil prices fall a bit in the next few months.

THAT’S A PRETTY HIGH ERROR RATE: More than 10 percent of speed camera tickets rejected.

MAYBE THIS EXPLAINS THOSE GULFSTREAM ORDERS: Optimism Begins to Ease Onto Wall St.

ANOTHER PLANTED QUESTION at a townhall meeting.

JOHN HINDERAKER: “The Democrats’ domestic policies are an incoherent jumble: they want lower gasoline and heating oil prices, but they block the very things, oil drilling and the construction of new refineries, that would actually reduce them. At the same time, for reasons of ‘climate change,’ they want less consumption of oil and gas, which implies higher, not lower, prices.” I think they want higher prices, but without taking responsibility for that outcome. In which case there’s nothing incoherent about the approach at all.

WILL BLACK VOTERS STAY HOME if Obama loses nomination?

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE DIRTY GUV’NAHS, who won Best of Knoxville this week. They’ll be opening for Robert Earl Keen, who I know from way back in the Ella Guru’s days, at Sundown in the City at the end of the month.

ON MAY DAY, REMEMBERING the victims of communism.

WHY A CURVEBALL curves.

BAD NEWS FOR POLITICAL CONSULTANTS: Robocalls, Direct Mail Don’t Work.

PEW POLL: Obama’s Image Slips, His Lead Over Clinton Disappears.

There’s also this bad news: “Public Support for Free Trade Declines.”

Meanwhile, Indiana Poll Shows Clinton With Big Lead Over Obama.

DONATIONS: I don’t mention the tipjar much — I prefer to encourage donations to folks like Michael Totten or Michael Yon, or embattled Canadian bloggers — but I just checked the balance and for some reason a lot of people have donated. So I used the money to order a new blogging tool that I’ll review. Everyone wins!

ENDOWMENT DEBATE seeps into the states:

With college endowments a favorite target for politicians in Washington, and many states struggling to find enough tax revenue to make ends meet, it’s almost a surprise that it took state legislators this long to start casting their eyes on colleges’ funds. But it’s perhaps not a shock that if the issue were to emerge anywhere, it would be in Massachusetts, home to the university (Harvard) whose nearly $34.6 billion endowment has become the poster child for higher education wealth. . . .

“Why do we want to tax the poor all the time, but we let off the hook the richest of the rich?” said State Rep. Angelo Scaccia, a Democrat, said during the course of Monday’s debate, according to the Metrowest Daily News. “We’re not going to break them,” he added of colleges’ endowment funds. “We just want a little.”

From each according to his ability. . . .