NO IGNORING PROTESTS: “President Obama will return from his island idyll to a political landscape completely remade. He still will be greeted by swooning crowds and enthusiastic cheers. But his signature domestic policy is weakened, the result of a resurgent Republican Party that only months ago was on life support. The irony here is that the Republicans played little role in their recovery, and are instead the innocent and passive beneficiaries of a grassroots (and radio-inspired) insurgency that, if they examine it carefully, may yet bite them as fiercely as it has bitten the president and his congressional allies.” Yes, those who think the Tea Party crowds are inherently pro-Republican are missing something.

UPDATE: More from the Milk Carton files. Plus, from the comments, a scathing remark on the “tele-townhall” failures:

My wife signed up to participate. We got a reminder call on Saturday to be by the phone 7 pm on Sunday. The phone rang a minute before 7, my wife answered the call, got put on hold for about 15 minutes. Then Sen. Klobuchar got on and after about 4 minutes of listening, the line went dead, she was dropped.

That led to a rather scathing email back to Senator Klobuchar.

When calling in to complain this morning, my wife could hear other lines being answered in the background apologizing for the technical difficulties, that it wasn’t their fault.

Is this how government run healthcare is going to be like? Wait, wait, hello, click, we’re sorry, it’s not our fault.

Indeed. Plus, a report from the Russ Carnahan Recess Rally.

And here’s a report on the Heath Shuler Recess Rally. “The meeting was part of a series of ‘Recess Rallys’ being held nationwide by Tea Party groups in opposition to the current health care reform legislation. ‘He (Shuler) and a lot of other congressmen held town hall meetings over the telephone and that really isn’t a town hall meeting,’ said Gary Shoemaker, who helped organize the event. ‘We wanted to have the real thing.'”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Failure Accompli: The Excuse-Making Starts.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Ma’ariv vs. Joe Stork.

From now on, every HRW report on Israel is going to be greeted with “you mean the Saudi-funded HRW,” or “you mean the report written by the woman who lobbied Kofi Annan against Israel in the middle of the Second Intifada,” or “you mean the report written by the guy who supports the anti-Israel boycott movement and has been venting his hostility to Israel for almost forty years” or “you mean HRW, the organization that fails to take down from its website anti-Israel reports even when it has admitted they are inaccurate,” and so on.

Er, yeah, that one.

PENSION PROBLEMS: THE “VIAGRA EFFECT.” “The widespread tendency in Brazil for men to remarry women several decades younger — called the ‘Viagra effect’ — is undermining the country’s pension system, researchers warned Tuesday. The report, by Brazil’s National Social Security Institute (INSS), showed that a trend of men in their 60s marrying women half their age was leaving a big pool of young widows collecting benefits for much longer than anticipated. . . . Under current laws, when a retired man dies, his wife continues to receive his full pension until her own death. According to the INSS, 94 percent of pensions go to women.” (Via Tyler Cowen.)

A BRIEF HISTORY of photo fakery. I love this: “In a preview of celebrity magazine cover techniques, a popular image of Abraham Lincoln is actually his head grafted to the more majestic body of John Calhoun, a senator and vice president.”

MORE ON Candidate Scott Ott.

FISH, BARREL: Jesse Walker on Frank Rich.

SOMEWHERE, DICK CHENEY IS SMILING: White House Sets Up Special Interrogation Unit. “A senior administration official told The Associated Press Monday that Obama has approved establishment of the new unit, to be known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, which will be overseen by the National Security Council. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the program has not yet been officially announced.”

UPDATE: Reader Randy Tollefson writes: “Does this mean Obama now has a Torture Czar?” I’m sure it doesn’t. The United States doesn’t torture.

TIM BLAIR: The Power of JeffS.

THE ENERGY DEPARTMENT should be paying more attention to space solar power.

ROSS DOUTHAT: “As the health care debate enters its decisive weeks, the left doubts President Obama’s commitment, and the press doubts his competence.”

MORE CHARGES OF politics in the Justice Department.

GREG MANKIW: “Before you read this story, here is one number you need to know: the U.S. federal government’s debt is now about $7.4 trillion. That is the accumulation from past budget deficits.” But we’ll (much) more than double it soon, under the Obama Administration’s plans.

THIS’LL ENHANCE HIS POPULARITY WITH SENIOR CITIZENS: Millions face shrinking Social Security payments. “Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise. The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won’t be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn’t happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.” Not that I’m against this, but I suspect it’s causing heartburn in the White House.

CALLING FOR More Troops in Afghanistan. Michael Yon has been saying that for quite some time.

THE HILL: Conyers Looks Vulnerable in 2010 Re-Election Poll.

JIM HOAGLAND: Is Obama Weak?

I NEVER WOULD HAVE HEARD THE WORDS “LISKULA COHEN” AND “SKANK” TOGETHER if it hadn’t been for her blogger-outing litigation efforts. It seems to me that terms like “skank” and “hag” are expressions of opinion anyway, though apparently the judge disagreed. But Ann Althouse notes: “Note that Liskula Cohen is now dropping her defamation suit against Port. That’s good for Port. It’s bad to be sued for $3 million. But it suggests that the disclosure of the name was the point of the lawsuit. Courts should not allow themselves to be used for that purpose. And Google’s lawyers should fight hard to make courts see it that way.”