DAVID HARSANYI: Forget Death Panels, let’s talk Circumcision Panels.

Here’s the problem: Why is the CDC launching campaigns to “universally” promote a medical procedure? If you’re an adult (and nuts) or a parent, no one stands in your way of having a bris. Today 79 percent of men are circumcised already, and even if 100 percent were, the effect on the collective health of the nation would be negligible. If this is the standard, where does it stop?

And what would a proactive CDC mean if government operated health insurance? No, I don’t believe Washington would deploy a phalanx of grinning, twisted doctors to perform coerced circumcisions. But when the CDC dispenses medical advice of the “universal” brand, it’s difficult to accept that a government-run public insurance outfit wouldn’t heed advice and act accordingly.

What if the CDC, through meticulous study, were to realize that circumcision is an entirely worthless procedure? Why would “we” waste $400 a pop? Would the CDC campaign to “universally remove” the operation from hospitals? Today, incidentally, government-run Medicaid doesn’t pay for the procedure in 16 states. Most private insurers, on the other hand, do.

Though dismissed by public-option proponents, this is an example of how government persuasion can influence our decisions—first by nudging and then, inevitably, by rationing.

Indeed.

THE OFFICIAL Bacon Photo Contest. With bacon!

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple empire. Augmented reality, and more.

HOMELAND SECURITY: Ex-TSA screener gets 90 days. “A 30-year-old former Transportation Security Administration worker has been sentenced to 90 days in jail and five years of probation for stealing jewelry, gift cards and other items from tourists’ luggage as they were screened at Kahului Airport.” Seems like a rather light sentence for what was, after all, a breach of security as well as a crime.

AN AMUSING COMMERCIAL for the L.A. County Fair.

IN THE COMMENTS TO THIS VOLOKH POST on the right to bear arms and felons is a comment raising an important point:

I would start by pointing out that over the years, the legal system has “inflated” the value of a felony conviction, both by not adjusting the value of thefts for inflation over decades since these amounts were cast in statute, as well as multiplying the number of crimes that are felonies. The most recent example comes from, of all places, the Consumer Product Safety Commission where it is now a federal crime to sell a recalled product.

In my own state of Missouri, any theft over $500 is a felony. We can thank the Federal Reserve’s printing press that this is not nearly as much wealth as it used to be. How many golf club sets cost more than this?

In particular, we have downright multiplied the non-violent crimes that are felonies. A lot are more technical in nature. Having a blanket rule that felons lose their RKBA, in my opinion, does not serve justice at all.

Indeed, having felons lose any of their civil rights over nonviolent “regulatory” felonies strikes me as unjust, and I’ve meant for years to look at whether it might violate due process. At any rate, I believe the distinction between malum prohibitum and malum in se should come into play here. Here’s a related comment.

STIMULUS! A reader emails:

Who’s paying for upgrades to Aspen’s Pitkin County airport, where private jet usage dwarfs commercial jet operations? The taxpayer, of course.

The private jet tails made a nice backdrop for the shiny new “your tax dollars at work” sign at the airport this morning.

Thank goodness the Democrats are in power, or the fat cats would really be making out like bandits.

HOW TO HAVE SEX IN A SNUGGIE. Wouldn’t your chances of having sex be drastically increased by avoiding Snuggies?

THE IMPORTANCE OF DEATH RAYS FROM SPACE: “Although 30 light-years is small on a galactic scale, Fields thinks it likely that Earth has been caught in a supernova ‘kill radius’ as many as a dozen times over our 4.5-billion-year history.” I can live with those odds, I guess, but it would be better if we were widely dispersed throughout the galaxy.

Related (well, sort of): Make Plans Now: Earth to Be Destroyed in 2049.

HOW TO make a Marshmallow Gun.

IN THE MAIL — well, in the sense that they’ve put it in the mail, anyway — is Michael Leahy’s new book, Rules for Conservative Radicals. He urges combining the tactics of Saul Alinsky with the morals of Martin Luther King. Via email, he says he favors an “Army of Pauls” as a less-violent-sounding take on an Army of Davids. I’ll be interested to read that, though I’m temperamentally inclined to view giant-slaying favorably . . .

DOUG MATACONIS: Yes, American Middle Class, Barack Obama Will Raise Your Taxes. “Much like George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama could come to regret his ‘Read My Lips’ Moment.”

SIGN OUTSIDE THE BONEFISH GRILL. I assume this reflects corporate policy, but I couldn’t find anything on their website.

HOPE AND CHANGE SAME: A KINDER, GENTLER RENDITION UNDER OBAMA. Plus, Lawless Surveillance, Warrantless Rationales (a critique of Obama continuation of Bush policies).

IS THE STOCK MARKET RALLY TOPPING OUT? My answer is, as usual, who knows? But this bit interested me:

However, traders have been concerned that on several days in the past week, market volume was dominated by heavy trading in low quality financial names, like Fannie Mae [FNM 2.04 0.12 (+6.25%) ], Citigroup [C 5.23 0.18 (+3.56%) ], AIG [AIG 50.23 2.39 (+5%) ] and Freddie Mac [FRE 2.40 0.16 (+7.14%) ]. “If you took the top traded stocks and gave them normal volumes, overall volume would be down 30 percent,” said Hogan.

So much of the “rally” is in junk-financial stocks for companies that are, basically, controlled by the government? I’m not sure exactly what that means, but it’s hard to see it as anything promising.

UPDATE: A reader sends this link, which leads to this post at Zerohedge. What it all means, if anything, is, er, above my pay grade.

DO ACCOUNTING STANDARDS rule the world?

UPDATE: Somewhat related item, here. “When someone says that ‘an activity is socially useless’, what he or she really means is that ‘I don’t understand the use for it so it should be banned’.”

TWO AMERICAS: “There’s the America where Los Angeles is in the middle of an ongoing drought, and is thus subject to strong water restrictions – which are being pushed by its mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa (D). Then there’s the America where the mayor of Los Angeles was – illegally – watering his own lawn while everybody else’s was dying. And how does he explain this discrepancy? Heavy sleeping. No, really, that’s what Villaraigosa said.”

FOLLOWING UP ON HIS STAR WARS POST: John Scalzi’s Guide to Epic SciFi Design FAILs – Star Trek Edition.

But nothing beats this. I think it’s the halfhearted magic-marker on the side that really takes it to the next level.

CHARLES RANGEL UPDATE: CHARLIE’S MORTGAGE BARES HOME UNTRUTH.

Rep. Charles Rangel claimed on mortgage papers that a Harlem brownstone was his principal residence — even though he was living elsewhere at the time, The Post has learned. When the Democrat — who is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee — took out the mortgage in 1990, he said the property on West 132nd Street was his “principal residence,” records show.

But Rangel has been living since the 1970s in Harlem’s Lenox Terrace apartment complex, where he improperly amassed four rent-stabilized properties.

State law requires that rent-regulated apartments be the tenant’s residence. “I will reside in the Property (on 132nd Street) for at least six (6) months of every calendar year,” read Rangel’s mortgage contract with Citibank, which is on file with the city.

The terms of the $60,000 loan appear to be normal for that time, but lenders say claiming principal residency when you live elsewhere is a serious breach.

So, mortgage fraud?

UPDATE: “Rangel is in hot water here, and Democrats are doing their best to ignore this situation.”

Plus, Charlie’s angles: Rep. Rangel’s contempt for the rules needs to be reined in. “There are two sets of rules for Rep. Charlie Rangel – the ones he writes for everyone else and the ones that are, or were, beneath his compliance, powerful personage that he is. Over the past year, Rangel’s cavalier disregard of tax and ethics regulations became increasingly evident as his personal affairs were brought to light. There was a harrumphing alibi for each lapse, but the excuses became ever lamer as they mounted.”

IT’S TOUGH BEING A ROLE MODEL: “If only every blogger could link to stories the way Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit does. The libertarian blogger, with his hundreds of thousands of readers, offers up dozens of daily snippets that typically consist of a single sentence and a link. Sometimes it’s a headline or even a single word — ‘Heh.’ As a result, those being linked by Reynolds report above-average click-through rates to their content.”

Sending people elsewhere has been my philosophy since the beginning. They tend to come back. Meanwhile, I’ll note that the problem goes both ways — newspapers often lift story ideas from blogs without any credit.

THIS SITE CLOSED FOR YOUR PROTECTION.

TEST-DRIVING THE Power Wheels Mustang for kids. I would have liked an electric car when I was a kid. We got the Insta-Daughter a Barbie Jeep when she was 3, and it went over very well. When she outgrew it, we gave it to a nephew, whose dad converted it to an “Army Jeep” with a can of olive-drab spraypaint. I don’t know what ever happened to it after that, but it certainly held up well.

TIM NOAH: A CIA SWITCHEROO? “I spent two days trying to get an answer out of the Justice Department, expecting at any moment to be told that of course this was a clerical error and of course the Obama administration wouldn’t try to pull a fast one, especially given the near-certainty that it would be found out. But nobody was willing to discuss the matter at all. Finally, I got referred to the CIA, where Little finally said, in an e-mail, the following: ‘The documents that the former Vice President requested are being processed in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.’ In other words … the CIA hasn’t released the documents Cheney requested. Or, rather, it released one but not the other.”

MORE ON Snow Leopard, Macs, and Malware.

TRAVELING IN EUROPE, Roger Simon writes that he finds Al Jazeera better than CNN. Damning, but not surprising. “Al Jazeera was clearly better, more honest, more informative and more entertaining than CNN International or the BBC. And kinder to the US. In fact, it wasn’t even close. Also, since much of the news they reported was coming from the Middle East, they seemed better informed about such things as the death of the Iraqi Shiite leader Hakim (they referred to Saddam Hussein flatly as a fascist, something you rarely hear on CNN) and the Al Qaeda suicide bombing in Saudi Arabia (they had nothing but withering contempt for Al Qaeda – no pussy-footing ‘insurgent’ rhetoric for them).”