U.S. NEWS: Millions Spent On Healthcare Debate As Public Sours On Obama’s Plan. Plus this: “Staffers working for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., had the police remove a group of retirees from the senator’s office in West Los Angeles. The seniors, who wanted to talk with Feinstein about healthcare reform, would not leave when asked, even after sitting in her conference room “for more than six hours.” Whichever side of the issue they were on these retirees exhibited a kind of intensity of commitment that the political class will not be able to ignore. And which is becoming the norm at town meetings across America.”

EDWARD TENNER ON RETIREMENT: The Future of “Statutory Senility.”

HMM: Lunar Crater Stats Indicate Hidden Population of Asteroids. “The asymmetric distribution of craters on the Moon may have been caused by an undiscovered population of near Earth asteroids.”

JOAN HEMINWAY ON Martha Stewart, Steve Jobs, and the duty to disclose executives’ health problems.

IN THE MAIL: From Michael Ashton, Maestro, My Ass! How We Got Into This Mess. A book about Alan Greenspan.

MOE LANE is feeling the Hope. “PS: Looks fun, doesn’t it?”

CROWD EXPLODES when Arlen Specter says “do it fast.”

This kind of thing just keeps happening. And it’s happening all over.

Plus, planning to eliminate private insurance?

And, at Power Line, Taking The Deliberation Out of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. “The Senate fancies itself ‘the world’s greatest deliberative body.’ But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Senate is not a deliberative body at all — not when Senators concede that they would vote on legislation to overhaul one-sixth of our economy, and arguably the most important sixth, without having read the legislation. Specter’s defense that there’s not enough time for him to read it all himself simply raises the problem in a more acute from: why would the world’s greatest deliberative body consider legislation on a timetable that leaves Senators with insufficient to see for themselves exactly what’s in the bill?”

Is it representative government when your representatives don’t read the bill?

TIM CAVANAUGH RESPONDS TO JAMES SUROWIECKI: “We have now seen 18 months of Federal supports, bailouts, loans, nationalizations, used-car purchases and other forms of spending-based stimulus, yet GDP in this period has declined nearly 2 percent. Nevertheless I’ll accept for the sake of argument the Keynesian assumption that countercyclical spending actually strengthens the economy. (Keynesians can always argue that things would have been worse if the government had done nothing.) . . . The difference between Federal and state spending isn’t ideological but structural: Washington D.C. can create its own money; Topeka can’t. If you want states to spend as drunkenly as the Federal government, just give them the power to coin money and emit bills of credit. “

CHRIS DODD UPDATE: Mortgage Issue Sticks With Dodd.

THE “WORST FAMILIES IN BRITAIN” aren’t the ones getting telescreens put in their homes, but rather the ones that turned out the people who came up with this idea. If this story is true, they should be publicly shamed, starting with “Children’s Secretary” Ed Balls. (Via Slashdot).

HOWARD KURTZ: The Prez, the Press, the Pressure. “In the days before President Obama’s last news conference, as the networks weighed whether to give up a chunk of their precious prime time, Rahm Emanuel went straight to the top. Rather than calling ABC, the White House chief of staff phoned Bob Iger, chief executive of parent company Disney. Instead of contacting NBC, Emanuel went to Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric. He also spoke with Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, the company spun off from Viacom. . . Tensions have been building behind the scenes. Some television executives say the Bush administration informally floated possible news conference dates in advance, while Obama officials basically notify the networks of their plans.”

BREITBART: On Race, No He Can’t.

GERMAN RADICALS turn to arson. “In a city haunted more by its extreme right-wing past, Berlin is in the throes of a renaissance of extremist, left-wing political activism. And torching cars, particularly expensive ones, has become the crime de rigueur. . . . Demonstrations and protests in Berlin have also become more violent. During the past seven months traditional street marches or political celebrations such as May Day — when 21 police were hurt and 102 arrests made — have degenerated into ugly confrontations between left-wing activists and an increasingly frustrated police force.” (Via Bruce Sterling).

ORBIT YOUR OWN SATELLITE for $8,000.

FIRE-TESTING THE LATEST Nerf assault weapon.

A little pricey for a Nerf gun, but I would have loved one when I was a kid.

TUNKU VARADARAJAN: Why was Biden at the Beer Summit?

ABC NEWS: Geithner Won’t Rule Out New Taxes For Middle Class. Hey, wait, I thought Obama promised that no one making less than $250,000 a year would see a tax increase?

(Bumped). Maybe this is why we’re seeing this kind of thing.

UPDATE: Refusing to make the hard choices.

Congressional Republicans lost their majority, in large part, because they refused to make the hard choices voters elected them to make, to stand up to interest groups and lobbyists and hold the line on government spending. Democrats did well these past two election cycles in large measure because the people had lost confidence in Republicans’ abilities to make such choices.

Now, we see Democrats refusing to make such choices and contending that their only “choice” is to make a very hard choice, Obama’s campaign promise notwithstanding, and raise taxes on the middle class.

Will we ever elect politicians who choose to cut spending?

When cutting spending is better for them than increasing it, they’ll cut. And not until then.

MARK STEYN: “What’s a columnist to do? It’s getting a little old to blame Bush for the horrors of the Bush presidency. So why not blame Bush for the horrors of the Obama presidency?”

CYBERWARRIORS HELD BACK by excessively cautious rules of engagement?

GOOD QUESTION: “Suggesting that Hillary Clinton drink Mad Bitch beer is offensive and sexist, I agree. But frankly I’m distracted by another issue: sweet god in heaven, what the f*ck is the purpose of this thing? Does the Washington Post have a comedy channel now?”