A VILLAGE CAN’T RAISE A CHILD WITH NUCLEAR ARMS, OR SOMETHING: Obama Breaks With Gates, Cancels Nuke Program. “Obama’s new budget plan includes a little-noted sea change in U.S. nuclear policy, and a step towards his vision of a denuclearized world. It provides no funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, created to design a new generation of long-lasting nuclear weapons that don’t need to be tested. (The military is worried that a nuclear test moratorium in effect since 1992 might endanger the reliability of an aging US arsenal.) But this spring Obama issued a bold call for a world free of nuclear weapons, and part of that vision entails leading by example. . . . Obama’s budget kills the National Nuclear Security Administration program once and for all.”

So, a question: If Obama were trying to wreck America as a superpower, what would he be doing differently?

IDENTITY POLITICS: “At a press conference addressing Carrie Prejean’s disputed title in the Miss USA competition, pageant owner Donald Trump compared Prejean’s stated views on gay marriage to Obama’s. ‘It’s the same answer that the president of the United States gave,’ Trump said. ‘She gave an honorable answer. She gave an answer from her heart.’ In her own remarks moments later, Prejean echoed Trump’s statement, telling reporters: ‘The president of the United States, the secretary of state, and many Americans agree with me in this belief.'” Wonder why she left out Joe Biden? Oh, right.

DO EVERYBODY A FAVOR: Take a sick day when you’re sick.

MICHAEL YON POSTS ANOTHER REPORT on training with the Gurkhas.

IN THE MAIL: From Bruce Bawer, Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: The Future of Iraq, Part I. Like Michael Yon, he depends on reader donations for support, so if you like his work, consider hitting the tipjar.

THE MUDVILLE GAZETTE: CONVERSATIONAL SUGGESTIONS for Pelosi and the troops. “This year I’m sure the ‘hot topic’ that would be interesting to start discussions with war zone troops with is waterboarding. (Or maybe not.)”

Plus, from The Hill: Nancy Pelosi’s waterboarding questions No. 67 and 68. “These are just a few of the questions Pelosi needs to address; I am sure my Capitol Hill colleagues have their own. Until the Speaker does a better job of answering them — in the words of the Southwest commercial — she might not be free to move about the country without being hounded.” Nice Chicago reference there, too. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Sean Ryan adds extra Chicago geekery: “Questions 67 & 68 – technically, a Chicago Transit Authority reference — coming as it did from their debut album, before they were sued by the agency of the same name.” True, if hypertechnical. By the way, another excellent public-utility-named band from that era is Pacific Gas & Electric. They’ve actually got a MySpace page where you can hear some tunes.

Here’s a video:

THAT’S “FRAHNKENSTEEN:” In Attics and Closets, ‘Biohackers’ Discover Their Inner Frankenstein:

In Massachusetts, a young woman makes genetically modified E. coli in a closet she converted into a home lab. A part-time DJ in Berkeley, Calif., works in his attic to cultivate viruses extracted from sewage. In Seattle, a grad-school dropout wants to breed algae in a personal biology lab.

These hobbyists represent a growing strain of geekdom known as biohacking, in which do-it-yourselfers tinker with the building blocks of life in the comfort of their own homes. Some of them buy DNA online, then fiddle with it in hopes of curing diseases or finding new biofuels.

But are biohackers a threat to national security?

Read the whole thing.

BANKERS PARTYING IN LAS VEGAS: BAD. Obama partying in Las Vegas: Good. “And what better way for a new Democratic administration to symbolize cutting out excess in a time of hardship for millions of Americans than to hold a mega-fundraiser in Las Vegas, that urban personification of understatement, for a guy with millions in hand already and no one to spend it against?”

POLITICS DAILY: 5 Dead-Weight Democrats for 2010. Chris Dodd made the list. (“Dodd has more financial blood on his hands than any other Democrat in Washington.”) Also John Murtha! (“It’s hard to clean up Washington when your party can claim the greatest source of political pork this side of Alaska. Murtha has wasted untold millions of taxpayer dollars on airports named after himself, and it doesn’t help that he called his own constituents a bunch of racists.”)

WELL, SHE PROBABLY VOTED FOR OBAMA, SO IT’S FAIR: Dead Woman Gets Federal Stimulus Check. “Millions of Americans on Social Security are receiving $250 checks as part of the president’s stimulus plan — including an Anne Arundel woman who died more than 40 years ago.”

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE on The Bank Stress Tests.

PELOSI FLOATS ANOTHER DEFENSIVE TRIAL BALLOON: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees but didn’t protest directly out of respect for ‘appropriate’ legislative channels, a person familiar with the situation said Monday. The Pelosi camp’s version of events is intended to answer two key questions posed by her critics: When, precisely, did she first learn about waterboarding? And why didn’t she do more to stop it?” It also answers the question of “how weaselly can Pelosi’s defense get?”

She’s getting pretty close to Frank J.’s recommendation: Good line for Pelosi: “Yes, I heard about the waterboarding, but it was so traumatic I repressed it.”

WHO’S MINDING THE STORE at the Federal Reserve?

THE EXAMINER: Feds Are Broke, But Keep Right On Spending. “Even today, with Obama just beginning to manage the government, Geithner’s Treasury department must offer higher interest rates on bonds it sells to finance planned deficits because bondholders worry about Washington’s future repayment ability if taxes are not soon hugely increased. But those increases would kill economic growth, sending government revenues spiraling downward and eventually leaving Washington only one choice – repudiation of debt or bankruptcy. Either way, American prosperity will be a distant memory for generations to come. Intervention cannot come too soon.”

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

A HOT NEW RELEASE: Obama Trek: The Search for More Money.

ANDY KESSLER: You can have a jobless recovery but you can’t have a profitless one.

A SELF-CONFESSED GREENHOUSE CRIMINAL: Oprah: It’s Great to Have a Private Jet. When the People’s Eco-Trials begin, she’ll be first. Though I’m expecting a presidential pardon in her case . . . .

HEY, WAIT, I THOUGHT THIS STORY WAS OVER: Swine flu spreading too fast to count, CDC says. The good news, though, is that it doesn’t seem to be especially bad. But I agree with those who say that companies and government agencies should be looking at lessons learned, and refining their preparations, over the summer, in case it comes back worse in the Fall, a la 1918. And even if it doesn’t, the preparation probably won’t be in vain, as some sort of pandemic disease outbreak is bound to happen eventually.

BRIAN DOHERTY: Tea Party: Drink Up, Democrats! “But for this to work to the Dems’ advantage in terms of dampening hostility toward them (not even Levison thinks they can win these Partiers’ votes), they will have to stop doing all those things that the Partiers don’t like, from taxing to deficit spending to regulating to bailing out banks. And that isn’t happening, nor is there a single force or figure within the Democratic Party power structure who wants or intends it to.”

HAROLD FORD, JR.: I would have voted for torture. Ford fan Andrew Sullivan will be so disappointed . . . .

JOHN MURTHA UPDATE: “Do you know who my uncle is?”

“I was always thinking, ‘Why is the government paying this company?’ ” said Curtis, 29, who is now doing engineering work in North Carolina. “If it’s fair to have this kind of no-bid work, I’ll start a company and do it for half as much. Because this company didn’t do anything.”

Hope and change! More from Moe Lane, who thinks the WaPo’s choice of Murtha picture is a hint as to where this is going . . . . “The important point is that, some time in the last few months, a certain layer of protection was quietly stripped from Jack Murtha and at least a few other politicians. He’s now fair game, and that means that his value to his district is going to take one heck of a nosedive in the next year or so.”

RICHARD EPSTEIN: The Deadly Sins of the Chrysler Bankruptcy: Why Mortgage Priorities Matter.

MOE LANE: Rasmussen and the quietly rusting Democratic advantage. Nothing takes the shine off a political party like giving its politicians a free hand . . . .