MICHELLE MALKIN’S CULTURE OF CORRUPTION is #1 on the New York Times bestseller list again this week.

NEW HAMPSHIRE CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION Under Fire for Failing to Engage Constituents During August Recess. “Members of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation are under fire today from the editorial pages of the conservative New Hampshire Union Leader and the liberal Portsmouth Herald.”

MICKEY KAUS isn’t letting up on the John Edwards story.

MORE ON TROPICAL STORMS ANA AND BILL, from Brendan Loy.

THE WHOLE HOW NOT TO ACT OLD THING IS DEEPLY PATHETIC IN SO MANY WAYS, but it’s also a font of really lousy advice. For example, #145: Do Not Listen To Your Sorry-Ass Old Music. “When my daughter threatened to jump out the window of the speeding car, I hit on the idea of letting her download new songs for me, and in the process give me a musical education.”

My own experience is precisely the reverse: Like James Lileks, I find that “Techno does for me now what rock used to.” But my daughter and her friends are all into classic rock — at a sleepover Friday night they all watched Tommy. My daughter got me to put some classic rock on my iPod for car trips — The Who, Stones, Beatles, Zeppelin– and it’s actually encouraged me to listen to that stuff again after going years without doing so. But when I picked ’em up from The Time Traveler’s Wife I was listening to “Acid Hustle” by the Plump DJs.

ANN ALTHOUSE IS UNHAPPY WITH “THE MODERATE VOICE” over a Whole Foods boycott post. Well, it’s a guest-post, so I dunno. But regardless of TMV’s general moderation, here’s the bit I liked:

I am all for freedom of speech. Mr. Mackey had every right to express his views on health care in the WSJ, even as anathema as those views might be to progressives. Similarly, we progressives have every right to decide whether or not we want to spend our food dollars in a store whose CEO clearly doesn’t support the most important progressive cause of the moment.

Fair enough. Of course, Obama’s plan — and Big Government in general — is all about ensuring that we don’t have the right to decide how to spend our dollars but should instead let somebody else take them at gunpoint and decide how they’re spent. If the health care “reform” passes, you won’t have the option of directing your health care dollars where you think they should go (and I’m not so sure about your food dollars, either . . . ) . And to the pro-Obamacare folks, that’s not a bug, it’s the whole point.

THE PIRATE PARTY: A European version of the Tea Parties? Well, sort of.

MAN’S INHUMANITY TO ALIEN: PETER SUDERMAN on District 9.

ROBIN GIVHAN sneers at the dress of Town Hall protesters, thus underscoring the press’s identification with the rulers rather than with the ruled. There was a time when journalists were badly-dressed working stiffs, rather than upper-middle-class strivers putting on airs. That time is long past. But — since although she’s a snob she’s sometimes an insightful one — she nonetheless hits upon a key insight: “Washington’s power brokers have suited up to underscore their authority and the seriousness of the subject matter. And bully for them. But their attire also says: I am the boss of you. All those howling citizens — in their T-shirts and ball caps and baggy shorts — are saying: No, you’re not.”

UPDATE: Reader Thomas Prewitt writes:

The article by Robin Givhan in the Washington Post leads one to wonder, “What do I wear to a town hall event?’
Are protestors part of an astroturfed Brooks Brothers brigade, or are they unserious, ill-kempt, bloviating whiners?

Ms. Givhan’s commentary tells us more about Washington D.C. than it does about the Tea Party movement. The government-political-media establishment cannot seem to understand that their employers/customers are furious. This isn’t about a civil discourse; this is a really bad job review.

The people are hoppin’ mad and are trying to say, “We aren’t taking it anymore.” The recipients of this sentiment ignore it at their own peril.

Indeed.

THE HILL: Town halls not resulting in more presidential threats.

Funny, if you saw this ABC News report you’d draw a different conclusion. (Via Troglopundit). Maybe ABC should have, you know, asked somebody who knew first, instead of just regurgitating stuff from alarmist nonprofit fundraising . . . .

SAFETY CONCERNS REGARDING swine flu vaccine.

10TH CIRCUIT: Gun Rights Don’t Apply in Domestic Violence Cases.

Doug Berman writes: “As I have said before and will say again, anyone seriously committed to the Second Amendment and gun rights getting serious constitutional respect should be seriously disturbed by how willing and eager lower courts have been to accept federal prosecutors’ arguments that Heller is of no consequence for an array of broad and severe federal gun possession crimes.” Domestic violence is real problem currently enjoying the status of “moral panic,” meaning that the Constitution doesn’t apply, much as it doesn’t apply to the drug war.

THE CHICAGO WAY: City Government Closed For Business On Monday due to budget problems.

AT THE BLOG PROF: Macomb Township Tries To Repeal 2nd Amendment, Fails Epically.

JIM DICKINSON HAS DIED: “During the course of his colorful half-century career, Dickinson built a worldwide reputation as a session player for the likes of Dylan and The Rolling Stones, a producer for influential groups including Big Star and The Replacements, a sometime solo artist and the patriarch of a small musical dynasty through his sons, Cody and Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars. . . . As a student at Whitehaven High School, Dickinson formed his first band, The Regents; he later had the distinction of singing on The Jesters’ 1966 garage-rock nugget ‘Cadillac Man,’ the final release on Sun Records.”

BYRON YORK: The Netroots’ Agenda: War? What War? “I attended the first YearlyKos convention, in 2006, and have kept up with later ones, and it’s safe to say that while people who attended those gatherings couldn’t stand George W. Bush in general, their feelings were particularly intense when it came to opposing the war in Iraq. It animated their activism; they hated the war, and they hated Bush for starting it. They weren’t that fond of the fighting in Afghanistan, either. Now, with Obama in the White House, all that has changed. . . . Not too long ago, with a different president in the White House, the left was obsessed with America’s wars. Now, they’re not even watching.”

Yeah, funny how the fierce moral urgency drained out of the antiwar movement as soon as a Democrat was elected President.

IT’S NOW TROPICAL STORM ANA: “Mark it down: on August 15, two-and-a-half months into the Atlantic hurricane season, we finally have our first named storm. Tropical Storm Ana formed overnight.” And we just got our second, Bill, which is expected to become a hurricane.

UPDATE: Steven Den Beste emails:

Related: it’s now been 36 days since the last sunspot.

Based on previous cycles, solar cycle 24 should have begun a year ago, and we should have been well into it by now. But the sun has been amazingly quiet, and that’s probably why it’s been so damned cold lately.

My tomatoes are just starting to bear. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a few before the first frost. But it’s been hot some places.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Braue emails:

Den Beste’s comment is misleadingly benign. There are other measures of the beginning of a sunspot cycle, such as reversal of magnetic polarity and the latitude of disturbances. Every one indicates that cycle 24 began with 2009…except the presence of sunspots.

We’re not seeing a prolonged tail-off to cycle 23, or an inexplicable gap, or anything like that; we’re seeing a spotless cycle. We don’t have good data, but it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the Maunder Minimum began like this.

We’ll find out, I guess. And gardenblogger Dave Walters writes:

Ditto on the tomatoes here in Alberta. I just picked a pink one, more to save it from the slugs than because it is ripe. Everything has been 11-14 days behind this year and with a frost warning on Friday and 2 C (~34 F) at the International Airport this morning and the hummingbirds and yellow warblers already migrating south, it looks like it will be another bumper crop of hard green tomatoes wrapped in newspaper in the basement. Good news is that green tomatoes, unlike green potatoes, are edible and with their firm consistency are good for a number of treats like green tomato pie and fried green tomatoes with bacon.

Trouble growing tomatoes in Alberta is one thing, trouble in Tennessee is another. I got more than we could eat from a couple of plants last year; I’ll be lucky to get a few salads from twice that many this year. I’m only guessing that it’s the cold, rainy summer — I don’t think we’ve broken 90 even once — but I don’t know what else it could be.

MAKING THE IRS the new health-care enforcer?

TAKING THE BACKDOOR ROUTE? Overlawyered on David Michaels, The Gun-Control Proponent Named to Head OSHA. “Senators have put nominations on hold for less. It will be interesting to see whether they take an interest in Michaels’ views on gun restrictions and their place in OSHA’s agenda.”

TEN MINUTES OF CLASSIC TOYS. Plus, classic Tinkertoys.

PJM POLITICAL: The Bioethical Plot Against The Astroturfing Evil-Mongers!

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Rick Perlstein’s Asinine Take on the Health Care Town Yells.

UPDATE: Perlstein and Bainbridge engage in the comments.

NEW YORK TIMES: HEALTH DEBATE FAILS TO IGNITE OBAMA’S WEB: “Mr. Obama engendered such passion last year that his allies believed they were on the verge of creating a movement that could be mobilized again. But if a week’s worth of events are any measure here in Iowa, it may not be so easy to reignite the machine that overwhelmed Republicans a year ago. . . . ‘People came out of the woodwork for Obama during the campaign, but now they are hibernating,’ Ms. Smith said.” Yes, it’s pretty clear where the grassroots energy is, and isn’t. Even in San Francisco.

AN OPERATING SYSTEM for the Cloud.

TIM CAVANAUGH: Would Obama-As-The-Penguin Posters Have Been OK? Nope. Obviously racist.