MEDIA BALANCE requires a Senator.

I’M PRETTY SURE THAT THIS MEXICAN ARSENAL didn’t come from an American gun shop. Or, if it did, I’ve been shopping in the wrong places. . . .

MORE ON DAWN JOHNSEN: Earlier, I noted my agreement with this post on why Dawn Johnsen should be confirmed. Let me spell things out a bit more. Some people don’t like Dawn Johnsen because she’s a liberal feminist. Okay, fine — if you’re President, you don’t have to name somebody like that to the Office of Legal Counsel. But the chance that Obama will name someone who’s to the right of Dawn Johnsen is relatively low, so if you succeed in knocking her off, you’ll still get a lefty. Just a different one.

What kind of different one? Well, Johnsen has spent years arguing for openness and independence in the OLC. In that position, she’s likely to try to live up to those arguments, both because she believes them, and because she knows that people will be watching to see if she can live up to the standards she set out. This will probably constrain her, and by extension, Obama, to a degree that won’t apply if you succeed in knocking her off and she’s replaced by someone more in the mold of Eric Holder or Rahm Emanuel. This would seem to me to be a feature, not a bug. But hey, if you disagree, by all means oppose her confirmation. Just don’t complain when someone more pliable gets named instead.

ONLINE FREE SPEECH: Judge won’t seek to limit online comments on carjack case. “A Knox County judge this afternoon issued an order refusing to require local media to shut down anonymous commentary allowed on their Web sites. Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner’s ruling comes in the case of the fatal carjacking and torture slaying of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.” This is the right decision, not least because such an order would be unconstitutional, and probably in violation of statute, too.

GLENN GREENWALD looks at the DHS’s lame report on right-wing “extremism” and argues that people on the right are reaping what they sowed over the past years.

This would be more persuasive if it weren’t the case that — as Dave Kopel and Paul Blackman exhaustively documented — this was all going on before Bush, too, with massive law-enforcement overreaching (aimed mostly at the right) during the Clinton years. Greenwald writes: “When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you. If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it’s going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity.” But some of us were pointing that out to Dems who complained back in 2002.

And, really — are these tongue-in-cheek comments by Mark Steyn an “elaborate, detailed martyr fantasy”? I think, rather, they’re a mockery of same. But Greenwald’s always been deaf to irony.

UPDATE: Questioning the Timing: Limbaugh says the DHS report release was an attempt to distract from the Tea Party message.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Correcting the lefty cackling:

Andrew Sullivan chooses to miss the point and savor an “I told you so moment”, exulting in his criticism of Bush’s shredding of the Constitution and expansion of the “Surveillance State”. Uh huh – the problem with this DHS study is not that they are threatening extra-Constitutional surveillance and interrogation of people; it is that they are coming very close to attempting to criminalize non-violent political dissent. That is deeply problematic even if they do it with all the proper warrants.

But don’t let that stop the point-scoring, even if the points scored are entirely delusional.

PJTV HAS OVER 500 CITIZEN REPORTERS SIGNED UP FOR TOMORROW, and they’re testing things out here if you’re one of them and want to help.

TECH-ADVICE BLEG: My Canon GL2 has suddenly become invisible when connected to either my Mac or PC via firewire. I can’t find any changes in the camera or settings that would account for it, and I’ve tried another cable to no avail. Anybody out there have any ideas? Or is it just “get a different camera?”

HMM: Tea Party Protesters Gird for Possible Liberal Backlash. Well, you can bet that where press coverage of A.N.S.W.E.R. or ACORN marches paints all the participants as ordinary Americans who are just fed up, press coverage of the tea party protests will look for the most offensive and outlandish fringe characters and treat them as emblematic. One question is whether that matters, much. All politics is local, and the primary audience here is the marchers’ House and Senate delegation. Also, given the massive alt-media coverage, how much will the spin in national media really do?

MORE FROM OUR FRIENDS AT HOMELAND SECURITY:

(U) Leftwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular economic classes, and religious groups, particularly Christianity), and those that are mainly pro-government, preferring federal authority and particularly federal judicial rulings over state or local authority. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to restrictions on abortion immigration, or gay marriage.

(U//LES) Leftwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many leftwing extremists are antagonistic toward the Bush administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including treatment of prisoners in Guantamo and its Iraq policy, restricting affirmative action to minorities, and funding restrictions on abortions overseas and embryonic stem-cell research. Leftwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2004 election timeframe to the present, leftwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers.

Be sure you read the whole thing . . . .

THE BEAUTY OF TACO TRUCKS. I wish we had those around here.

“THIS WHOLE THING IS RUSH LIMBAUGH’S FAULT.” Isn’t it always?

HOME IMPROVEMENTS THAT qualify for tax breaks.

SILICON GRAFFITI: “P.U.M.A. Power!”

MORE ON THAT DHS “DOMESTIC TERRORISM” REPORT, from Powerline. I’m just happy to see that someone in the Obama Administration is willing to use the “T” word at all. Maybe next they’ll apply it to actual terrorists. Baby steps. . . .

UPDATE: Heh. It all makes sense now.

MURTHA’S IMMUNITY CLAIM UPHELD: “A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Rep. John Murtha cannot be sued for accusing U.S. Marines of murdering Iraqi civilians ‘in cold blood,’ remarks that sparked outrage among conservative commentators. The appeals court in Washington dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by a Marine who led the squad in the attack. The judges agreed with Murtha that he was immune from the lawsuit because he was acting in his official role as a lawmaker when he made the comments to reporters.”

A PARODY VIDEO AIMED AT BARBARA BOXER: All She Wants to Do Is Tax. Don Henley’s got nothing to worry about.

A DIETARY NON-SURPRISE: A review of a large set of diet and heart studies finds that the Mediterranean diet and predictably healthy foods like vegetables are good for you.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

SLOW PROGRESS ON ETHICS PANEL:

For the past eight months, the House ethics committee has been without its top staffer and chief counsel, a vacancy that comes as the panel struggles to forge ahead on investigations of high-profile Democrats.

William O’Reilly, the panel’s former staff director, left the committee last summer and has not been replaced. But the committee is trying to launch an inquiry into the finances of Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, and is under pressure from Republicans to launch a probe into lawmakers’ relationship with the PMA Group, the now-defunct lobbying firm.

All of this work is much more difficult without an expert staffer running things behind the scenes.

How convenient. More background here:

The PMA scandal is also unfolding as the ethics committee tries to work without its chief staffer. The FBI raided the firm’s offices in November, and it imploded afterward. Investigators are reportedly looking into alleged “straw man” donations to lawmakers from PMA lobbyists, including the former owner, Paul Magliocchetti, although no one has been charged in the case at this point.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has offered six privileged resolutions calling on the ethics panel to investigate PMA and its ties to members, but so far Democrats have defeated Flake’s resolutions. Reps. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) and Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) have attracted most of the attention as the PMA scandal has unfolded, but dozens of other lawmakers had ties to the firm as well.

I don’t think Democrats feel any urgency about looking into these matters.

TAXPROF: Why Faculty Are Like AIG Executives.

THIS IS COOL: PG&E Makes Deal For Space Solar Power. “California’s biggest energy utility announced a deal Monday to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from a startup company that plans to beam the power down to Earth from outer space, beginning in 2016.” Hope it works out; we could use this.

THE DOWNSIDE OF ANTIBIOTICS: “What is so frightening about C. difficile is that it is often spurred by antibiotics. The drugs wipe out the targeted illness, like a urinary tract or upper respiratory infection, but they also kill off large portions of the healthy bacteria that normally live in the digestive tract. If a person comes into contact with C. difficile, or already has it, the disruption to the beneficial bacteria creates an opportunity for the harmful bacteria to flourish.” More reason to put more effort into phages.

TAXPROF: Where do our tax dollars go?

UPDATE: Hmm: “You know, minus entitlements, we would actually be sitting pretty, no?” Well, at the state and local level there would still be all those underfunded pensions.

MARK LEVIN’S LIBERTY AND TYRANNY is still #1 on Amazon. And they’re actually shipping copies again. He’s printing books almost as fast as the Fed is printing money . . . .

JIMMY CARTER’S KILLER RABBIT: A puzzle.