WHEN RACIST GRAFFITI doesn’t matter.

FROM CANADA: The Human Cost of Government-Controlled Health Care.

MICKEY KAUS: “The problem facing health care reform, as Dick Morris and others have been arguing for months, isn’t these tediously subtle legislative complications. They’re what we see on the surface. The problem is the crude, primal politics underneath them–the legislature’s’ ‘id.’ It’s the fear, among power-lusting Democratic Congresspersons, that if they vote for health care they won’t be Congresspersons much past November, 2010 (or that even if they win, they will no longer be in the majority party). They’re not worried about Cadillac plans. They’re worried about castration.”

Plus this: “‘[Y]ou should get behind his plan and benefit from the from the political cover he’ll work to give those who support him,’ Dickerson has Obama saying. You mean like the cover he gave Jon Corzine in New Jersey? …”

DON SURBER: Lefties complain that conservatives sell too many books.

It wasn’t too long ago — just before Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism came out, if I recall correctly — that the same people were happily pronouncing the death of right-leaning publishing. Oops!

JERRY POURNELLE: “There were plenty of indications that Major Hassan was behaving in an odd manner. Nothing was done about that. In my judgment it is not stupid to ask why nothing was done.”

WANT TO HELP WOUNDED WARRIORS? Support Project Valour-IT.

BIG GOVERNMENT HAS the police report on Ken Gladney’s beating by SEIU people. “The police report is unambiguous about what happened on August 6th in St. Louis. The White House, through SEIU, did indeed ‘punch back twice as hard.’ What is ambiguous, however, is why prosecutors haven’t pursued the charges against SEIU. As you will learn, there is a lot to suggest that Bob McCulloch, the St. Louis DA, is trying to cover-up SEIU’s crime. Stay tuned as the truth comes out.”

MORE ON THAT CASE WHERE COOK COUNTY PROSECUTORS ARE HARASSING NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY JOURNALISM STUDENTS:

A Cook County judge is expected to hear arguments Tuesday in the case of a Northwestern University professor and journalism students who are being asked by prosecutors to turn over grades, emails and other notes from their investigation of a 1978 murder.

The students spent three years investigating the case of a man convicted in the 1978 killing of a security guard, and they believe they have evidence that shows prosecutors put the wrong man behind bars.

Cook County prosecutors have outraged the university and the journalism community by issuing subpoenas to professor David Protess seeking his students’ grades, his syllabus and their private e-mails. Prosecutors claim that, since the team was made up of students, they may have been under pressure to prove the case to get a good grade.

DAVID WARREN: “For a person with old-fashioned values, and an old-fashioned sense of English word meanings, the reports of the Fort Hood massacre were almost as provoking as what happened there. In the larger view of things, they may be more consequential.”

INSTAPUNDIT READER DR. ARIE FRIEDMAN is running for Congress. In the primary for Illinois Republican Mark Kirk’s seat.

UPDATE: I misunderstood the email — he’s running for Kirk’s seat, but not against Kirk, who’s running for Senate. But anyway, good for him!

BAD NEWS FOR BRICK-AND-MORTAR: Amazon opens a new denim shop, with free shipping and returns.

JOE WHO?

HALF WORKS FOR A LIVING, HALF VOTES FOR A LIVING.

STATE DEPARTMENT comes out against the assault on Cuban bloggers by that country’s government.

MORE UNSURPRISING NEWS:

The Army psychiatrist believed to have killed 13 people at Fort Hood warned a roomful of senior Army physicians a year and a half ago that to avoid “adverse events,” the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released as conscientious objectors instead of fighting in wars against other Muslims. . . . In late June 2007, he stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, both Muslim countries, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The Washington Post.

“It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,” he said in the presentation.

“It was really strange,” said one staff member who attended the presentation and requested anonymity because of the investigation of Hasan. “The senior doctors looked really upset” at the end. These medical presentations occurred each Wednesday afternoon, and other students had lectured on new medications and treatment of specific mental illnesses. . . . The last bullet point on that page reads simply: “We love death more then (sic) you love life!”

But, you know, if you’d complained someone might have called you a racist.

ALLAHU AKHBAR! CNN REVISES ITSELF, to preserve the preferred narrative.

BERLIN WALL FREEDOM MEMORIAL shut down by Washington University as too offensive? Good grief. (Via Divas For Geeks).

UPDATE: From the comments: “So basically, the university got into the spirit of the thing and helped make it more real.” Heh.

POLIWOOD: Woody Allen’s “Whatever Works” Doesn’t Work.

MANGY DOG BITES MAN: Media Matters Charged With “Cheap Shot.”

50 GREAT BLOGS by and for law professors.

TOO MUCH TIME INDOORS causes myopia? This would explain our political class . . . .

VIRTUE, LOYALTY, and taboo.

JOHN LOUDON OFFERS an apology to Europe.

VIDEO: Spoofing Twilight on Saturday Night Live.

REASON TV: Remembering the victims of Communism.