“NOTHING HAS CHANGED:” Administration Official: “Sebelius Misspoke.” Of course she did.

RAGE AGAINST A REAL MACHINE: Russian punk rockers rage against the Putin machine.

“We live in a feudal society,” Nikonov fumed in a backstage interview before a recent concert. “Everything is decided by one person, the dictator. The dictator decides everything.”

Actually doing what western rock stars pretend to do. Following up on The Plastic People of the Universe. With similar results, one hopes.

HAVING TROUBLE taking the GOP seriously.

VALERIE JARRETT hissed and booed at Netroots Nation. Not the love Obama got last year.

Meanwhile, The Advocate says he’s not delivering on gay rights.

RADLEY BALKO: Why “Reading The Bill” Won’t Matter.

USA Today notes that even forcing legislators to read the health care legislation in the House probably wouldn’t do much good. The bill is so bogged down with bureaucrat-eze, few of them are likely to understand it. . . . This is another argument in favor of posting bills in their final form online for a considerable period of time before voting on them, or before they’re signed into law. Crowdsourcing by people who have experience wading through the parentheses and em-dashes might at least help decipher some of the mess to get a clearer picture of what it all means. As it stands, we’re left with the few politicians who helped craft the bill saying, “Just trust us.”

That rarely works out well.

Well, it works out just fine for some people, which is why they do it that way. But this raises another issue. My thought has been that — in order to avoid the perception of an Obama defeat — Congress would eventually pass some sort of watered-down bill, proclaim health care “reformed,” and declare victory. But the trust-level is so low now — with a majority of voters saying that it would be better if nothing passed at all — that I’m not sure that approach is viable. Once you don’t trust reports of what’s in the bill, you’re not likely to trust reports that “we’ve fixed all the problems.” Indeed, I think opposition to health care is largely about distrust of the entire political class, which is something you can’t fix with a few amendments. So they may try, but they may find it harder to pass anything than they think.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Barker emails:

You hit the nail on the head when you posted that citizens don’t trust their lawmakers or the legislative process that has produced “health reform.” Our leaders’ reluctance to place themselves under the laws and programs they create for the rest of us is a big part of this mistrust.

Yes. And trust, once lost, is hard to regain. Just ask the Republicans . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader David Good writes: “His argument is not an argument against making them read the bill, it is an argument for slowing the process down. He even says so. Doesn’t mean we can’t do both.” True enough!

A BUNCH OF INTERESTING FOOD LINKS. And how have I managed to live without a cherry pitter? Or — I never knew there was such a thing — a “strawberry huller.” Obviously, I’ve been deprived . . . .

GUNS ON CAMPUS: A Sheriff opines:

“In actual shootings, citizens do far better than law enforcement on hit potential,” said White. “They hit their targets and they don’t hit other people. I wish I could say the same for cops. We train more, they do better.”

To be fair, that’s because citizens tend to draw and shoot only in pretty clear-cut circumstances, while for police it’s often murkier. (Via SayUncle.)

TOM MAGUIRE: Obama’s Talking About His Grandmother Again; People Who Listened Last Time Are Now “Dishonest”. We have always been at war with EastAsia Obama’s grandmother.

ARE WE HAVING A CONVERSATION YET? “Man, ‘conversation’ has become one of those Orwellian words.” I think a “conversation” is where they tell us what we want, and we say “yes sir.”

DRAWING A CONTRAST BETWEEN BOB DYLAN AND SKIP GATES. On the other hand, there’s this: “I find it pretty depressing. There was a time when we condescendingly used the term ‘your papers, please’ to distinguish ourselves from Eastern Block countries and other authoritarian states. Post-Hiibel, America has become a place where a harmless, 68-year-old man out on a stroll can be stopped, interrogated, detained, and forced to produce proof of identification to state authorities, despite having committed no crime. I guess I just don’t see the punchline.” Nope, but there’s a Ray Bradbury story reference. . . .

POPULAR SCIENCE: 9 Overhyped Health Headlines Debunked.

COMBINING NANOWIRES AND PROTEINS for nanobioelectronics.

CONTROLLING LIVING CELLS with light. “University of Central Florida researchers have shown for the first time that light energy can gently guide and change the orientation of living cells within lab cultures. That ability to optically steer cells could be a major step in harnessing the healing power of stem cells and guiding them to areas of the body that need help.”

CAR LUST: The 1969 Lincoln Continental Executive Limousine by Lehmann-Peterson.

RETREAT? White House Appears Ready To Drop “Public Option.” I suspect it’s a Parthian retreat.

UPDATE: On the other hand, you’ve got a real marketing problem when your own people are having to publicly pledge not to kill old people.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Related thoughts. “This is not a victory.”

MORE: A “Parthian retreat” is a feigned retreat, luring the enemy into a prepared counterattack. See, e.g., Crassus.

KATE MOSS: Before and after airbrushing.

SILENCING THE CRITICS: “A 34-YEAR-OLD woman, the mother of a 12-year-old girl, has been locked up in a Virginia jail for three weeks and could remain there for at least another month. Her crime? Blogging about the police. Elisha Strom, who appears unable to make the $750 bail, was arrested outside Charlottesville on July 16 when police raided her house, confiscating notebooks, computers and camera equipment. Although the Charlottesville police chief, Timothy J. Longo Sr., had previously written to Ms. Strom warning her that her blog posts were interfering with the work of a local drug enforcement task force, she was not charged with obstruction of justice or any similar offense. Rather, she was indicted on a single count of identifying a police officer with intent to harass, a felony under state law.”

Two thoughts: (1) This arrest is almost certainly illegal; and (2) Regardless, they’d never do it to an employee of a traditional media organization. Plus this: “All this information was publicly available, including the photograph, which Ms. Strom gleaned from municipal records. The task force’s officers may have worked undercover on occasion, but one wonders about their undercover abilities, given that Ms. Strom was able to out them so consistently. . . . It should not be a crime to annoy the cops, whose raid on Ms. Strom’s house looks more like a fit of pique than an act of law enforcement.” It’s not a crime to annoy the cops. Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo has a lot of explaining to do.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire does some research and suggests that there may be more to this story than the Washington Post editorial suggests, though it isn’t clear how that might justify an arrest for blogging. And if Strom had connections to drug-runners — or even what’s left of the KKK — wouldn’t she be able to make a measly $750 bail?

DECLINING HOPLOPHOBIA: More anecdotal evidence. Related item here. My own story here.

One of the goals of gun-controllers over the past several decades was to “denormalize” gun ownership, stigmatizing it instead as something deviant and suspect. It appears to have failed. (And, as Brannon Denning and I note in a forthcoming Hastings Law Journal article, the Heller case makes a big difference there.)

WHY MEN break up with women.

STEPHEN GREEN OFFERS “The greatest thing in the history of all stuff ever.” “It’s girls in bikinis reading Star Wars.” Now that’s art.

WOMAN’S DAY: 15 Vintage Household Ads. I wonder when granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances will go out of style, to be replaced by formica and Harvest Gold.

IN THE MAIL: From Bill Donohue, Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America. He and I probably disagree on, well, most of the issues he cares about, but way back in 1991 when I was on Larry King, he was on in the segment before me and he gave me some good TV sound-bite advice in the green room: Figure out the idea you really want to get across — one sentence, maybe two — and then, at some point, just say it whether it fits where the host is trying to go or not. That sentence is your payment for going along with the host the rest of the time.

TOM MAGUIRE: The Pen May Be Mightier Than The Sword But A Pump Shotgun Trumps Fine Architecture.

EDITORIAL: THE NEED TO CONTROL PRIVATE PERKS FOR POLITICIANS:

Election to Congress should be an opportunity for public service, not personal enrichment. But given the examples of Sens. Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad, Congress needs to strengthen disclosure rules to help prevent special-interest favors from subverting the public interest.

The Senate Ethics Committee this week dismissed complaints against Dodd and Conrad regarding preferred mortgage terms they received from Countrywide Financial. Ethics rules bar legislators from accepting mortgage terms “not generally available to the public.” Yet, on orders of Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo, the company in 2003 cut a half-point off the interest rate on Dodd’s $750,000 loans, saving him $75,000. Also on Mozilo’s orders, Countrywide loaned Conrad $96,000 in 2004 to buy an apartment building — a breach of company rules on residential loans.

The mortgages put off a strong whiff of unethical conduct. Dodd heads the Senate Finance Committee, which develops legislation to regulate the mortgage industry and to subsidize home ownership. Conrad leads the Budget Committee, which sets spending targets for home-ownership programs. Both were in a position to grant preferred treatment to Countrywide in exchange for mortgage favors. But the ethics committee decided that special deals were also available to “Friends of Angelo” outside of government, and so Dodd and Conrad did not violate the rules.

Seems kind of iffy to me, but the Senate Ethics Committee is a toothless watchdog. Plus this: “The ethics committee’s decision was an indictment of the rules, not an exoneration of Dodd and Conrad.” Indeed.

HARTFORD COURANT: LEGISLATORS CAN’T ANSWER HARD QUESTIONS:

Members of Congress are cosseted from direct contact with large groups of restive voters. Their constituents usually show no interest in spending time with them. These “town hall” meetings are traditionally forlorn, scripted events featuring a small group of people prodded into attending by staff, lobbyists or local political supporters.

This summer’s rowdy events are jarring our leaders. . . . Another serious problem is that politicians disdain short answers to clear questions. They mistake a cloud of nonsense for a clever reply. This fuels the skepticism permanently infecting political discourse.

Indeed.