MICKEY KAUS: Chrysler + Fiat = Chooch! “Prediction: It will either fail or suck up continuing annual taxpayer subsidies in the billions. In the process it will keep flooding the market with cars and make it harder to save GM and Ford. It didn’t have to be that way. … And there is something creepy in the way many analysts simply accept that, of course, banks receiving TARP funds must now do Obama’s bidding on unrelated matters like the Chrysler bankruptcy. This is a long way from JFK using his presidential power to face down a steel price hike–a long way toward an unpleasant economic model that creates at least the potential for political thuggery, that preserves capitalism’s inequalities without its freedoms and efficiencies. Let’s not give it a name.”

IN THE MAIL: From Hugh Hewitt and Hank Adler, The Fairtax Fantasy.

MURTHA UPDATE: ALL IN THE FAMILY:

Powerful Democratic Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania has long treated defense contractors as if they are a part of a large dysfunctional family he controls. We are less than surprised he is patriarch of a clan that appears to survive by feeding on the government teat.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that in 2008, nearly $4 million in no-bid Pentagon logistics contracts went to a Glen Burnie, Md., business owned by Robert C. Murtha Jr., nephew of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chairman. The nephew said he does not advertise his relationship to his uncle and the Pentagon. The Pentagon reportedly says Mr. Murtha did not apply pressure or have any say in hiring his nephew’s not-so-slyly named firm, Murtech Inc. We suspect he doesn’t have to. . . . The family connections to the defense spending Mr. Murtha oversees do not stop with Murtech. The New York Times reported last week that another nephew, Col. Brian Murtha, joined the Marine Corps’ legislative liaison office last July. He was previously a helicopter pilot. Robert C. “Kit” Murtha, the lawmaker’s younger brother and father of Murtech’s owner, was a longtime defense appropriations lobbyist. Mr. Murtha has reportedly directed millions in earmarks to clients of KSA Consulting Inc., where Kit Murtha was once a lobbyist. He also reportedly earmarked millions in federal funding to St. Vincent College when his cousin, the Rev. John F. Murtha, was its president. The family name carries a lot of weight.

Read the whole thing. Plus, from Roll Call: Hoyer Defers Questions About Murtha to Ethics Panel. “With the ethics troubles of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) continuing to make headlines — and headaches for Democratic leaders — Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday again deferred any action on the matter to the House ethics investigators.” I’m sure they’ve got top people working on it . . . .

SMART DIPLOMACY: Secret U.S.-Israel nuclear accord in jeopardy. Plus, this: Israel would inform, not ask U.S. before hitting Iran. If I were the Israelis, I’d go rogue. You’re obviously better off being a problem to be placated, a la Iran or North Korea, than an ally, which just gets you jerked around.

FOR WHEN HYBRIDS AREN’T ABOUT SAVING MONEY: I stopped by the local Lexus dealer to look at the Lexus 600h. It’s a souped-up hybrid version of their standard big sedan, at a bargain price of $116K, though the saleslady made it sound like I could have probably gotten it for 100K if I’d dickered. I explained that this was a bit out of my price range, but I have to say it was a very nice car. Seemed like a car for someone with a driver anyway, though, as the cavernous back seat (it reclines!) was the nicest part. Not my idiom, I’m afraid, but it does let you drive a really expensive car that gets not-very-great mileage while smugly proclaiming “it’s a hybrid!”

ROGER KIMBALL: Push back, or the real culture war, 21st-century style.

I’VE NOTICED A LOT OF THIS: Tea Party Organizer a Fed-Up Mom.

FREE SPEECH IN THE AGE OF OBAMA: Prison Awaiting Hostile Bloggers.

NEW YORK POST: OBAMA’S TAX DODGERS:

Here’s a tip for President Obama: Next time you excoriate tax cheats, try to keep Rep. Charles Rangel’s name out of the discussion.

Somehow, it doesn’t further your case. . . . Rangel, of course, knows a thing or two about offshore tax shelters: He’d been operating one for years.

The congressman had to fork over nearly $11,000 in back taxes last year after The Post reported that he failed to disclose more than $75,000 in rental income on his Dominican Republic villa.

Plus, he’s under investigation by a House committee for allegedly helping a company preserve its offshore tax loophole — in exchange for a million-dollar gift to a school named in his honor. Though perhaps that’s not exactly what Obama meant when he gushed that the problems with tax havens “have been highlighted” by Rangel, among others.

Rangel wasn’t the only tax dodger lauded by Obama. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, too, won praise for “taking far-reaching steps to catch overseas tax cheats.” Takes one to know one, we guess.

Geithner, after all, was confirmed despite failing to pay, until nominated, some $43,000 in self-employment taxes.

Obama would be wise to tuck those two safely out of sight when he starts talking, as he did Monday, about paying taxes as “an obligation of citizenship.”

Indeed.

CHRIS DODD UPDATE: Must Senators Disclose Good Deals on Property Sales? There seem to be a suspiciously large number of them.

MICHAEL BARONE: White House Puts UAW Ahead of Property Rights. So will they treat Treasury bondholders better than they’ve treated Chrysler bondholders? I think the answer is — only if they feel they have to. It certainly won’t be because of respect for property rights, or a belief in the sanctity of contract . . . .

U.K. BANNING PEOPLE for what they think. Well, the Michael Savage thing was just protective cover as they banned some real terrorists. Because they lack the moral fiber to ban actual threats without a beard.

POLITICO: Obama bites rich hands that fed him. “One striking, if little-noted, trend of the past presidential election was that Obama won the affluent vote — those making more than $200,000 annually — with 52 percent. . . . Beyond the obviously wealthy voters, people who in many places are no more than upper middle class find themselves targeted to pay for a wide range of Obama policies aimed at leveling the economic playing field.” Obviously, he’s not worried about winning re-election.

FOUR DIFFERENT KINDS OF LIBERTY. I had some related thoughts a while back, in this piece for The Guardian.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA from Wilhelm II, German kaiser and king of Prussia. “Americans have been calling powerful Washington figures “czars” since the early 1830s. What do you see in the Romanovs that makes them such models of good government?”

BRIAN DOHERTY on life after Heller. “More lawyers, more guns, some nunchuks, and the 14th Amendment.”

BACK DURING THE CAMPAIGN, Obama criticized Bush for “just airraiding villages and killing civilians.”

Now the Red Cross complains that Obama is just airraiding villages and killing civilians. But the antiwar movement isn’t showing the degree of moral grandstanding that it showed when Bush was President. This I-told-you-so from Moe Lane is worth repeating.

MORE LOCAL ACTIVISM: Tucson Tea Party sends 1000 activists to City Council Meeting.

Jim Geraghty is pleased. And this kind of thing does seem to be a phenomenon. And even a few dozen can make a big impact.

AMY ALKON: The Terms Of Child Neglect Have Changed. “If any of us posting or commenting here were growing up today with the parental supervision we had when we actually did grow up, our parents would very likely be in jail for child neglect and we’d be in foster care.”

MASS-MURDER PREVENTED: College Student Shoots, Kills Home Invader:

A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they’re thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment. . . . Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.

“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’” said George Williams of the College Park Police Department.

Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough,” said Bailey.

That’s when one student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.

The student then ran to the room where the second gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Calvin Lavant, was holding the women.

“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window,” said Bailey.

If more home invaders had this experience, there would be fewer home invasions. Clayton Cramer comments: “If you have any doubt as to whether keeping colleges gun-free zones makes sense, I think this answers the question. This student didn’t draw a gun and start shooting when it looked like a robbery. When the bad guys made it clear that they were going to kill them all, he drew and fired–and probably saved ten lives.”

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST? Fed Directors’ Ties to Banks Spur Calls for Changes.

PHYLLIS CHESLER: Let Us Praise Extraordinary Activists Who Stood Against Radical Islam in Times Square.

THE REAL REASON Caroline Kennedy didn’t become a Senator.

THE NEXT BIG THING: Resilience.

Plus, Resilience, sustainability, and loosely-coupled systems. (Both via Virginia Postrel.)

DOM DELUISE has died. Funny, but 75 seems kind of on the young side to go, now.