BYRON YORK: How Dems Outmaneuvered GOP On Acorn. Republicans are insufficiently relentless.

TOM MAGUIRE ON the latest Afghanistan leaks: “Now, I am all in favor of an informed electorate, and I admire the preservation of the diplomatic niceties. However, I wish Obama could deliver the bad news about Afghanistan a bit more directly. If different factions are jockeying for favor in the press it makes the Administration look divided and confused.”

MICHAEL BARONE: Four races test the strength of Obama’s majority.

HOW THE MEDIA HAVE failed America on healthcare reform.

NOW IT’S PHONY SCALIA QUOTES. It’s almost like there’s a campaign to spread these.

SHOCKING RESEARCH FROM THE DOG-BITES-MAN DEPT: Study: More Gov’t Funding Of The Press, Less Political Corruption Reporting. “There’s been some talk of having the government bail out newspapers or somehow fundamentally support newspapers. Of course, for good reason, that scares a lot of people who believe that news organizations (not just newspapers, mind you) play an important role in acting as a government corruption watchdog. So it’s interesting to see a new study that found that the more government support the press gets, the less they covered government scandals.”

ADVICE FOR THE N.E.A.: Weep When You Consider That Alexander At His Age Had Conquered So Many Nations, And Obama Has Barely Conquered One.

BRITAIN’S NEW STAR on the far, far right. “A media circus starring the Holocaust-denying, openly racist leader of an openly racist party.” Well, given how acceptable antisemitism has become in Britain, generally, it’s less of a stretch than it would have been a few years ago. And the general failure of the political system there has opened things up to what amounts to an opportunistic infection. “The economic chaos that accompanied the fall of the Labour government in 1979 was exploited by racist and nationalist groups, and it’s no coincidence that now, as then, such elements are growing in popularity during the death throes of a Labour administration. Thatcher was largely able to repair the damage. These days, however, the malaise runs deeper.”

OBAMA GIRLS SWINE FLU UPDATE:

Malia, 11, and Sasha, 8, fall within the priority groups, and they received their injections last week from the White House doctor, who applied for the vaccine through the District of Columbia Department of Health “using the same process as every other vaccination site in the District.’’

Dena Iverson, a spokeswoman for the District of Columbia Health Department, says that while there are lines at the District’s vaccination clinics, no one who is in a priority group has been turned away.

The vaccinations are bound to raise questions about whether the Obama girls were given special treatment. The administration is grappling with questions about why the vaccine is not more readily available. Officials, including the secretary of heath and human services, Kathleen Sebelius, say the holdup is with the manufacturers, whose production process has been slower than anticipated.

Hmm. Is this consistent with what Robert Gibbs said just the other day?

MEGAN MCARDLE: The Parlous Public Option:

The only way the public option saves money is by using fiat to slash reimbursement rates to some variation on Medicare reimbursements: Medicare +5%, +10%, or whatever rate they finally settle on. Otherwise, it’s unlikely that the thing will even compete on an even basis with private insurers, who have a lot more experience managing billing, claims experience, and negotiations with providers.

The problem is, Medicare doesn’t pay the average cost of providing services in many cases–in some cases, it doesn’t even pay the marginal cost of providing services. . . . But moral calumny aside, the thing about patients whose insurance doesn’t cover the average cost of treating them is that they cannot be 100% of your patient pool. Someone has to cover the cost of that MRI machine. If the public option does manage to crowd out other insurance–as it might well do, with the ability to dictate price controls–then suddenly, the public option won’t be cheap any more. Hello, fiscal crisis.

That’s the financial problem. Here’s the political problem: if you insert a strong public option, the providers will revolt.

And rightly so.

DUMB ATTACKS ON BLOGGERS in Arizona.

SHOCKINGLY, men don’t find super-skinny women attractive. Plus, from the comments: “Quite honestly, men are so happy to have any interesting pretty woman be with them.” As Marlene Dietrich once said, a man is more interested in a woman who is interested in him, than a woman with the most perfect legs in the world.

UPDATE: Important butterface research.

ALFONZO RACHEL: Conservatives Don’t Need A Leader. Well, they’d better not . . .

POLITICO: Defections have some Democrats casting about for Plan B.

IS THAT GOOD SALESMANSHIP? Comparing Barack Obama to Julius Caesar. So now we know someone who isn’t among the great writers of our time, anyway . . .

MARK STEYN ON TERRORISM: “Two US residents, one an American citizen, one a Canadian citizen, educated and assimilated, and enjoying a nice enough living to be able to afford to fly to Demark to kill a couple of guys over a cartoon. In the long run, Afghan cave-dwellers and Waziristani goatherds are less of a threat than fellows like Messrs Headley and Rana. The company name – ‘First World Immigration Services’ – is a rather droll jest.” This behavior has been empowered and encouraged by the cowardice of enablers at places like Yale University.

A RIGHT TO COUNSEL in civil litigation?

DEMOCRATS SENDING UP WARNING FLARES.

FRANK MUNGER: “Atoms For Peace,” all over again?

JAMES TARANTO: While the President Golfs: Afghanistan, once a necessary war, is downgraded to someone else’s mess. “Hang on a second. It has now been 51 weeks since Obama was elected president, and more than nine months since he took office, and he’s just now getting around to asking the ‘questions . . . that have never been asked’? But that’s not really fair to Obama. After all, he has a busy schedule, what with golf games and pitching the International Olympic Committee and date nights and Democratic fund-raisers and health care and the U.N. Security Council and Sunday morning talk shows and saving the planet from global warming and celebrating the dog’s birthday and defending himself against Fox News and all.”

NEEDING MORE HELICOPTERS IN AFGHANISTAN. Paging Amy Klobuchar!

NOT LIVING UP TO THE DIVERSITY RULEBOOK: Obama And His Good Ol’ Boys.

IRAQPUNDIT ON angry Iraqis.

TERROR UPDATE: Two Chicago Men Charged in Alleged Danish Terror Plot.

HEALTH CARE UPDATE: A new episode of The Senate Doctors’ Show. Is it my imagination, or do they seem to be getting better quality than most YouTube videos? I wonder how?