DOUBLING DOWN: Obama To Endorse Public Plan In Speech.

TIM NOAH: Please God, no more health reform speeches.

HEH: “We learn from Mr. Bowden that the NY Times is now a part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, so we can’t say he didn’t break news.”

ALFONZO RACHEL ON keeping the poor poor.

THE U.S. ARMY HOSTS a robotics rodeo.

HMM: Olbermann Flip-flops, Tells Kossacks NOT to Dig Up Dirt on Beck. Probably thought about what happened to the last guy to declare war on Beck . . . .

QUESTION A DOCTOR, LOSE YOUR CHILD? “The mother of a 13-year-old girl who became partly paralysed after being given a cervical cancer vaccination says social workers have told her the child may be removed if she (the mother) continues to link her condition with the vaccination.”

JACOB SULLUM: “I agree with Jesse Walker and Nick Gillespie that the worst thing about President’s Obama’s speech to the students today (aside from the fact that he had no business giving it to begin with, since it’s well beyond his constitutional job description) is the creepy collectivism implied by sentences like these.”

I asked the Insta-Daughter how it went off in her class and she responded, “My class was laughing . . . which really upset Mrs. _____, because she thought it was a great speech.”

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey corrects E.J. Dionne.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More kid reactions rounded up here.

WHO SET UP GOVERNMENT “PROPAGANDA” CONFERENCE CALL? Newly revealed White House, NEA audio contradict.

VALERIE JARRETT’S show.

STIMULUS! Another 1,000,000+ Guns Added to American Homes in August: Background Checks On Firearm Sales Up 12% In August.

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE, in treating someone who may have been exposed to the AIDS virus. “The first dose of antiretroviral drugs should be given as soon as possible, and patients who think they may have been exposed to the virus through sex, drug use, contact with blood or in their work should be given high-priority, emergency status.”

STARTING TODAY: The E-Bomb “Doomsday Conference.”

OVER AT THE SHOP FLOOR, CARTER WOOD WRITES: OIRA Position is No ‘Czar’ and Sunstein Understands Regulation. “The resignation of the White House’s green jobs adviser, Van Jones, for his radicalism and outrageous statements has been accompanied by a serious outbreak of anti-czardom, i.e., criticism of the Obama Administration for creating “czars” with great authority but no accountability. . . . It’s a good, legitimate issue, but too much of the criticism about czars has been indiscriminate and wrong. . . . One can certainly oppose his confirmation on the merits, but the efforts to paint him as a far-out animal rights, anti-gun or organ-harvesting extremist are only tangentially related to reality.” Read the whole thing. As I’ve said before, I think there are far more worthy targets than Sunstein, including Ron Bloom and John Holdren.

FROM SPACE-STATION RESEARCH, a vaccine against salmonella?

SO IS A NETBOOK WITH AN 11+ INCH SCREEEN really a “netbook” at all? It’s cheap, so I guess the answer is yes, but where’s the line?

A KINDLE ISSUE: Gadget Makers Can Find Thief, But Don’t Ask.

FIRST BUDDHIST ARMY CHAPLAIN is from Tennessee.

A POTENTIAL LINK BETWEEN A VIRUS AND PROSTATE CANCER. “A virus known to cause leukemia and tumors in animals can be found in some prostate tumors and might be one cause of prostate cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.” (Via Americablog).

FRANK GAFFNEY: EMP and You. Another reason for building resilience into the system — the topic of my next Popular Mechanics column in fact. And that’s true even if things don’t turn out as awfully as in One Second After.

ANOTHER EMBARRASSMENT for Human Rights Watch. I’m not sure this is actually a “bombshell,” but at this point, the embarrassments have certainly become a pattern.

IS OUR CULTURE falling into a Copyright Black Hole?

INSIDERS selling out?

THE CARNIVAL OF SPACE is up!

TERRY TEACHOUT: Things I miss. I remember William Windom as James Thurber — both in the show, and in a movie.

UPDATE: James Lileks sends a correction: “I don’t think Windom played Thurber in a movie. You may be thinking of ‘The War Between Men and Women,’ which had Jack Lemmon as the Thurberesque character – much twitchier than Windom’s beleaguered and dyspeptic curmudgeon version.” That is the movie I had in mind, but I guess my memory that it was Windom was wrong. I was young, then.