PROF. JACOBSON ON CROWLEY, GATES, AND OBAMA: We Need The Truth, Not Beer And Apologies. “The best evidence as to the truth will be the recordings of the 911 call which precipitated the police going to Prof. Gates’ house, Sgt. Crowley’s radio calls once on the scene, and the accounts of eyewitnesses, including neighbors, passers-by, and the two other policemen on the scene.”

TOM MAGUIRE: MOVE ON? “If the Cambridge Police Dept had besmirched my behavior and deportment by telling people I was ‘tumultuous’ and acting strangely, I would demand the release of the dispatcher tapes to blow away their lies.”

And Ann Althouse says, “Release the tapes!”

STIMULUS: “A big mistake, a failure.”

SOMETHING WE CAN “LIVE WITH?”

How about “Keep your grubby laws off my body?” Just a thought . . . .

DOES THIS BLOG make me look fat?

IF ED RENDELL ISN’T “GOVERNOR X,” he should probably say or do something pretty definitive soon. But, then, I imagine we’ll find out one way or another soon enough.

UPDATE: A reader thinks it may be Blagojevich. Well, the Daily News ruled out Arnold, but that leaves 49 other suspects. But the talk seems to be focused around Rendell. [Maybe this is why Palin is resigning. People thought she might be ducking a scandal! — ed. I’d rate her as even less likely than Phil Bredesen. But hey, a lesbian hooker-tryst might be just what it takes to get Palin into Hollywood’s good graces!]

ACORN TRYING TO shut down anti-Obamacare protests? So far it doesn’t seem to be working very well. But be sure to bring video cameras. And, if you anticipate trouble, lawyers!

UPDATE: Related: Peter Roff, U.S. News: Democrats’ Healthcare Censorship Shows How Desperate They’ve Become. “A clear sign of their growing desperation is the way in which the Democrats are censoring the GOP’s official communications to their constituents. On Thursday Roll Call reported the majority party is ‘preventing Republican House Members from sending their constituents a mailing that is critical of the majority’s health care reform plan.’ . . . Republican staffers say this kind of censorship of the minority by the majority is almost unheard of on Capitol Hill, certainly during the years the GOP was in power. Moreover, they say, it is a clear sign that the Republicans are, for the moment, winning a fight once thought unwinnable. Rather than get them down, they are taking the efforts to suppress their message as a badge of effectiveness.” The anti-Obamacare marchers should feel the same way.

OUTSTANDING humility.

THE GEORGE COSTANZA APPROACH to health care reform.

FILE THIS UNDER “THINGS I’D LIKE TO BE TRUE:” Hydrocarbons in the deep Earth? “The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth’s crust. Scientists have debated for years whether some of these hydrocarbons could also have been created deeper in the Earth and formed without organic matter. Now for the first time, scientists have found that ethane and heavier hydrocarbons can be synthesized under the pressure-temperature conditions of the upper mantle —the layer of Earth under the crust and on top of the core. The research was conducted by scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues from Russia and Sweden, and is published in the July 26, advanced on-line issue of Nature Geoscience.” Abiotic hydrocarbons is an old theory; it would be nice if it were true.

RACHEL SKLAR: Twitter Blocked On White House Computers…Maybe. Or maybe not, since the main source for that story is Robert Gibbs . . .

HOW TO RUIN A PROFESSIONAL AGITATION GROUP’S DAY.

“MAINTENANCE SEX?” So what do you think? Is this important in a relationship? I wonder if we’d see something of a male/female split on this. Maybe not!

LABOR UNREST: Chinese Workers Kill Manager. “About 30 000 Chinese steelworkers clashed with police in a protest over plans to merge their mill with another company and beat the company’s general manager to death, a human rights monitor said on Saturday. Several hundred people were injured in the clash . . . Workers were angry that Chen was paid about $438 000 last year while some retirees received as little as $29 a month, the centre said. Beijing is trying to streamline China’s sprawling steel industry, the world’s largest, by orchestrating a series of mergers aimed at creating globally competitive producers. The mergers often are accompanied by layoffs that sometimes spark complaints that workers receive too little severance pay.”

Remember: Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, while under socialism it is exactly the reverse.

TEN FUN FACTS about writing a sex blog.

Hey, when even men of the cloth are suggesting that InstaPundit needs to be a bit spicier, I figured maybe I could learn something. But I’m not so sure. . . .

STACY MCCAIN reports from the Richmond Tea Party.

GLENN LOURY: Obama, Gates and the American Black Man. “The Gates arrest is a made-for-cable-TV tempest in a teapot. It is the rough equivalent of a black man being thrown out of a restaurant after having berated an indifferent maître d’ for showing him to a table by the kitchen door, all the while declaring what everybody is supposed to know: this is what happens to a black man in America. . . . It is depressing in the extreme that the president, when it came time for him to expend political capital on the issue of race and the police, did so on behalf of his ‘friend’ rather than stressing policy reforms that might keep the poorly educated, infrequently employed, troubled but still human young black men in America out of prison.”

BLUE ON BLUE: Sen. Robert Byrd blasts “cap and trade.” (Probably best if the protesters to the right don’t meet these people, and vice versa.)

Plus, Senator Kent Conrad: Democrats Don’t Have The Votes On Health Care.

JUPITER — OUR COSMIC PROTECTOR? “Part of what makes the Earth such a nice place to live, the story goes, is that Jupiter’s overbearing gravity acts as a gravitational shield deflecting incoming space junk, mainly comets, away from the inner solar system where it could do for us what an asteroid apparently did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.” But wait, there’s a downside! “Jupiter is just as much a menace as a savior, he said. The big planet throws a lot of comets out of the solar system, but it also throws them in.”

THE HYUNDAI GENESIS: A Star Trek angle.

MARK STEYN: He Said / VIP Said. “Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sergeant Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to ‘educate him about the history of racism in America.’ Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents re-mortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.”

I’d rather listen to David Hasselhoff sing Hooked On A Feeling. Or even Hoogie-Boogie Land.

PHIL BOWERMASTER: What we really need are Robocops. “Accusing a robot of racial profiling or having power go to its head (assuming that those truly are things outside the scope of its design) would make about as much sense as accusing my lawnmower of sexually harassing the women in my neighborhood.”

LATEST CBO HEALTHCARE REPORT, illustrated on video.

Plus this: “The sweetest part of this? Obama tried to strong-arm the CBO the last time they sent up a red flag about what an awful boondoggle his pet program will turn out to be. Here’s what he gets for trying things ‘the Chicago way.'”

BAILOUT POLITICS, TIM GEITHNER, and the need to line up a scapegoat.

IT’S NOT JUST TEA PARTIES! I was at Market Square for brunch today, and we saw a protest against TVA coal-fired power plants by United Mountain Defense and the local chapter of Earth First! A nice lady handed me a pamphlet and said “We’re against coal-fired power plants.” “So am I,” I replied. “They should all be replaced by nice, clean nukes!” This produced dumbfoundment. But, hey, burning coal is lousy. (And coal — and oil, and natural gas — should be saved for chemical feedstocks anyway). Nuclear plants are much better. And while they have issues, too, if we’re in a greenhouse crisis we should be prepared to depart from business as usual, right?

Anyway, in a shocking default I had forgotten my camera, but luckily I had my cellphone. So the pics aren’t Lumix-quality, but they’re acceptable.

I think there were about 40-50 people there, though it was hard to tell how many were protesters and how many were interested onlookers.

Although giant puppets are, of course, de rigeur at such events, it wasn’t obvious to me what they had to do with coal mining. The Insta-Wife thought that this one was supposed to be Barack Obama, but I’m not so sure. It kind of looks like Martin Luther King, but I don’t think he ever took a position on global warming or acid rain. Note the extremely white sandaled feet, which I thought a nice touch.

Anyway, more breaking-news coverage from InstaPundit, where there’s usually at least one backup camera somewhere. . . .

And if this interests you, here’s the website for United Mountain Defense. The request for protesters to wear “suits and ties” seems to have gone unheeded, though.

UPDATE: More giant puppets. Look like Sojourner Truth and Gandhi, maybe. Connection to coal-fired power plants still unclear. Clearly, however, the Tea Party crowd still faces a serious Giant Puppet Gap.