MICKEY KAUS: Did ACORN Elect Al Franken? “Maybe in pristine Minnesota even ACORN is clean. If so, the state would apparently be an outlier.”

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Hands Off Honduras! “The United States government, along with the rest of the Western Hemisphere’s governments, is so worked up about returning ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to power that it hasn’t thought through the long- or even medium-term consequences of its threats and demands. . . . Reality will force the U.S. to back down for one simple reason–it will be possible for the U.S. to back down, while Honduras could only surrender to our demands by using a time machine. We might as well play ‘chicken’ with an inanimate object.”

Don’t give them ideas.

JIM LINDGREN: Good artists are not necessarily good people and bad people are not necessarily bad artists. “When Orwell says that even a reborn Shakespeare couldn’t get away with ‘raping little girls,’ he was either reflecting the mores of the times (1944) — or he forgot about Hollywood.”

UPDATE: Whoopi Goldberg disgraces herself.

TIM BLAIR reports from the frontlines of the climate-change war.

MOE LANE: Schumer, Gillibrand, and the Wall Street Payoffs. It’s protection money. But they aren’t “honest politicians,” as they don’t stay bought. So watch out. . . .

BYRON YORK: Without Bush, Media Lose Interest in War Caskets.

HOT AIR: Hey, who’s up for another clip of kids chanting about Obama? “I’m honestly starting to lose count of how many of these there are. No ‘mmm mmm mmm’ in this one or creepy substitutions of The One for Jesus, but kudos to the teacher who came up with the ‘change has come’ drone. Reminds me of ‘one of us, one of us.'”

BENJAMIN WITTES CRITICIZES OBAMA’S DETENTION POLICY — AND SOME OTHERS: “The only point in Obama’s defense is that few political actors have given him reason to think he would have responsible partners if he did the right thing. Human rights and civil liberties activists are so keen to avoid legitimizing detention in legislation that they have treated as a victory the president’s decision to adopt the very policy they have spent the past eight years denouncing.” Or maybe it was just about attacking Bush, rather than “human rights,” all along. . . .

SUBPRIME UNCLE SAM: The FHA makes Countrywide Financial look prudent. You know, we may just find that all those “stuffy” and “uptight” traits that old-fashioned bankers used to be mocked for were actually a good thing. . . .

FRANK GAFFNEY: The Threat of a “Stealth Jihad.”

RON ROSENBAUM: Huge Intelligence Scandal: Will All the Pundits Who Relied on the Discredited 2007 NIE on Iran Now Admit That They Were Wrong? “Will the congressional intelligence committees demand to know how such a deliberately misleading report was being leaked and fed to the public by half-baked pundits even after (we now learn) they knew that some part of the ‘intelligence community’ knew — before the the NIE was issued — about the secret nuclear fuel facility we’re now reading about?”

Yeah, that’ll happen. The purpose of the N.I.E. was to paralyze us until after the election. It succeeded.

MORE ON THE Anne Applebaum / Roman Polanski conflict. You can tell a lot about a governing class from who it’s willing to cover for.

UPDATE: Col. Douglas Mortimer writes:

Well, let’s remember that in the book “Less than Zero,” the children of the Hollywood elite watch a 12 year old girl be bound, raped, and murdered at a party. That little nugget of joy didn’t make the movie, but the author obviously knew these people.

Our tastemakers.

ANOTHER UPDATE: HOWARD KURTZ:

If Polanski was an ordinary Roman, and not an award-winning film director, we wouldn’t be having this debate. There is sympathy for him because he’s considered a great artiste. The Hollywood elite wouldn’t give Polanski the plumber the time of day if he had sexually assaulted an underage girl. And that suggests to me a stunning double standard.

Suggests?

NEW YORK TIMES: In Europe, “socialism’s slow collapse.” But it’s doing okay here . . . .

UH OH: The Next Federal Bailout: ‘Great’ Public Universities? By “Great,” I suppose they mean “in blue states and unwise with their money.”

My advice: Try living within a budget.

UPDATE: On the other hand, look at Berkeley, where the authors are from.

OUCH: “You know things are bad when Obama’s squishiness as commander in chief is too much for Richard Cohen to bear.” Martin Peretz isn’t very happy, either. . . .

CHANGE: World Bank Head Sees Dollar’s Role Diminishing. “The president of the World Bank said on Monday that America’s days as an unchallenged economic superpower might be numbered and that the dollar was likely to lose its favored position as the euro and the Chinese renminbi assume bigger roles.” That’s what happens when the political class lacks self-discipline.

STANLEY KURTZ: Patrick Gaspard, ACORN, and Obama: “With the revelation that White House Director of Political Affairs, Patrick Gaspard, has close ties to Bertha Lewis and to ACORN, Matthew Vadum and Erick Erickson appear to be onto something significant.”

UPDATE: The Spectator quote from Rathke on Gaspard having worked for ACORN is accurate, but apparently Rathke is not to be trusted.

ROBERT SAMUELSON: Health Care As An Exercise in Ego Gratification:

What’s driving the great health debate of 2009 is not a popular clamor for universal insurance. “Many Americans are balking again at the prospect of health care reform,” writes pollster Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center. A new Wall Street Journal poll found 41 percent of respondents opposed to President Obama’s proposals and 39 percent in favor (the rest were undecided). The underlying driver is politicians’ psychological quest for glory. . . . Americans worried about this legislation may not know its details or may even be misinformed. Still, their skepticism is justified. Grandiose rhetoric obscures unflattering reality. The proposals don’t force the major structural changes in the delivery system that might curb uncontrolled health spending, which is the central problem. The bills Congress is now considering might marginally improve Americans’ health but would worsen the federal budget outlook and squeeze other public and private spending. Whatever bragging rights result will quickly erode in the face of the health system’s continuing problems.

Yeah, my prediction is that if it passes it’ll be like the Iraq war — in five or ten years most of the people who voted for it will be pretending otherwise. Hell, they’ll probably find a way to blame Bush . . . .

FREE SPEECH: Only for members of officially recognized aggrieved groups.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON ROMAN POLANSKI: “You would think we’d busted him for unpaid parking tickets. The guy drugged a thirteen year old girl in order to rape her. Perhaps the French have some sophisticated, European point of view on these things that I, with my puritan ancestry, simply cannot rise to.”

Or they could just be miserable shitheels. Related item here: “Let’s keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her.” Just remember: If he weren’t a member of the politico-artistic elite, he’d have done hard time already.

But, since he is, we get this: Hollywood Unites To Defend Polanski. “If his unspeakable deed doesn’t meet the standard, what exactly would Roman Polanski have to do in order to become a pariah in this town … I mean, besides vote for Sarah Palin?”

UPDATE: Reader Michael McElwee smells a rat:

Isn’t it obvious this arrest – out of nowhere – is a political move by Obama’s minders?

What better to keep Greta and America distracted for a week or so?

Don’t be silly. That would suggest that the justice system was entirely politicized.

HOW BROKE IS THE FDIC? THIS BROKE: FDIC expected to ask banks to prepay $36B in fees. “The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. may take the unprecedented step of ordering banks to prepay about $36 billion in premiums to replenish the deposit insurance fund that has been severely depleted by a rash of bank failures.” Can you give me an advance on my salary? I’m a little short this decade.

EARTH FARE RESPONDS on the “all men are pigs” incident. Good for them; they’re obviously using blogs as a source of useful information on their own operations.

LLOYD MARCUS on setting the rules.

“NOBAMA” MERCHANDISE gets mall kiosk shut down.

Gleichschaltung!

WHAT IF WE ACHIEVED SUCCESS IN IRAQ and nobody noticed?