BELIEVING AT LEAST ONE THING Shepard Fairey says.

FIREWORKS at Western CPAC. Well, sparklers and smoke-bombs, anyway.

LOONIE: Canadian Dollar Climbs Toward Parity With U.S. Dollar.

TEST-DRIVING plug-in Volvos.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Maoist explains herself: egg, face at the White House. “When will voters begin that long countermarch through the institutions in order to take back the country? If not now, when?”

VIDEO: Chris Matthews vs. Texas Tea Partier.

PETER BERKOWITZ: Academia Goes Silent On Free Speech. It was a useful slogan when countering anti-communists, but now that’s not an issue anymore. . . .

MATT WELCH: Corporate Welfare For Baseball’s Richest Team.

A BIG PROFILE OF ANDREW BREITBART IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Taking On the ‘Democrat-Media Complex’. Nice piece, but the conclusion is weak.

Even if one accepts Mr. Breitbart’s critique of the mainstream media, nobody should root for their downfall or destruction. Their role—that of impartial watchdog and broker of information—is a vital one, whether or not they perform it well. While Breitbart-style opinionated journalism can provide healthy competition, it cannot substitute for straight news. As Mr. Breitbart himself says, in an unusually modest moment, “I’m not looking to slay the dragon . . . but I wanted to embarrass the dragon into being a more reasonable dragon.”

The question is whether the dragon remains capable of embarrassment. And whether — forget performing their role well — the “mainstream” media still perform it at all. Recent evidence is not encouraging, and wishing that someone would perform that role doesn’t entail giving credit to those who could do so, but do not.

PLAYING the Wiktionary game.

IILYA SOMIN: Asian-American Applicants and Competing Rationales for Affirmative Action in Higher Education.

NATURAL GAS CHANGES THE ENERGY MAP: “Vast amounts of the clean-burning fossil fuel have been discovered in shale deposits, setting off a gas rush. But how it will affect our energy use is still uncertain.”

UPDATE: Reader Stuart Wagner writes:

I have been in the energy industry for nearly 30 years, much of it as an investment banker and am now the CFO of a private exploration and production company who is exploring in the Marcellus and Barnett shale plays, both in the lower-48 states. I found the article to be well done and fairly complete, particularly on the technical issues surrounding natural gas. However, I found the content addressing how it stacks up against alternative energy to be disappointing.

In comparing nat gas to coal, coal is definitely cheaper on a BTU basis than nat gas (which in turn is cheaper than fuel oil). However, nuclear power is a fraction of the cost of coal on a BTU basis. Alternatively, nuclear power plants are far more expensive to build on an output equivalent basis than coal, which is in turn far more expensive on an output-equivalent basis than gas. Point is, its simplistic to compare the two on just the cost of the fuel. Moreover, the cost of the waste product for each again makes gas the clear victor–nuclear waste versus high levels of carbon dioxide of coal versus moderate levels of carbon dioxide for gas (although I’m a GWT skeptic).

That issue works against natural gas, though, in that the high cost of plant construction for coal and nuclear plants is borne by rate-payers and are owned by powerful, politically-connected utilities who have successfully lobbied for exemptions in the Waxman-Markey bill (which is why Waxman-Markey is a joke–this is about control of the means of production–socialism–not cleaning the environment). The article does address the fact that coal loses its competitive edge when emissions costs are included, but its very questionable as to whether Waxman-Markey puts ANY emissions costs on coal.

Most of us in the energy industry know that alternative energy is a joke and is unlikely to ever meet a meaningful amount of this country’s energy needs. Put aside the fact that its not cost-competitive and unreliable. It has its own environmental issues. Bird kill and surface disturbance for wind and surface disturbance and water for solar (did you know solar panels need to be washed once a week?) not to mention the huge amount of power lines that need to be built. Nimby or Banana (build absolutely nothing, near anything) are already rearing their head vis a vis alternative energy. Even if alternative energy were to meet a meaningful amount of our electricity needs, natural gas-fired power generation will be needed in large volumes because they are the only plants that can cycle up and down rapidly to keep maintain the integrity of the grid as the wind stops blowing or clouds pass over solar panels. Coal and nuclear are base load–meaning the size of the plants necessary for the economies of scale needed are not conducive to easily turning them on and off.

The point is, natural gas is the bridge fuel whether we acknowledge it or not. While Pennsylvania will not become the OPEC of natural gas, there are many more shale plays than were mentioned (the Fayetteville and Haynesville come to mind) plus there are huge deposits in Canada (Horn River) and the North Slope that weren’t even mentioned, plus nat gas offshore that has not even been explored for to date. In addition, liquified natural gas is even cheaper than U.S. supplies and come from places like Australia, Equatorial Guinea, Norway, and Qatar. I would also point out that a national natural gas grid is already in place to move natural gas to market (most cities already have natural gas lines under the streets) so refueling cars would actually be very easy. Most likely it will be conversion of fleets to nat gas, but that could be significant.

I know this has been long and a little rambling, but I believe natural gas will play a tremendous role in our energy future and also believe that the ultimate answer is nuclear.

Thanks, Stuart. And I agree about nuclear.

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple empire.

MORE ON THAT NY-23 congressional race.

UPDATE: Why Is Sarah Palin MIA?

REASON TV: Whole Foods And Health Care.

JOHN TIERNEY: The Non-Tragedy of the Commons.

The 2009 Nobel Prize for economics is a useful reminder of how easy it is for scientists to go wrong, especially when their mistake jibes with popular beliefs or political agendas.

Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University shared the prize for her research into the management of “commons,” which has been a buzzword among ecologists since Garrett Hardin’s 1968 article Science, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” His fable about a common pasture that is ruined by overgrazing became one of the most-quoted articles ever published by that journal, and it served as a fundamental rationale for the expansion of national and international regulation of the environment. His fable was a useful illustration of a genuine public-policy problem — how do you manage a resource that doesn’t belong to anyone? — but there were a couple of big problems with the essay and its application.

First, Dr. Hardin himself misapplied the fable. Declaring that “overpopulation” was a tragedy of the commons, he warned that “freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.” He and others advocated a “lifeboat ethic” of denying food aid, even during emergencies, to poor countries with rapidly growing populations. But “overpopulation” was not even a theoretical example of the tragedy of the commons. Parents are not like the cattle owners who profit individually by adding cows to the pasture (while collectively destroying it). Parents, unlike the cattle owners, have to pay to feed and house and educate their children, and the high economic costs of children are one reason that birth rates have declined around the world — without any of the coercion discussed by Dr. Hardin and some other ecologists (like Paul Ehrlich).

Read the whole thing. Sometimes I think the desire for coercion comes first, then the theory to justify it. . . .

MICHAEL MALONE: Sorry, “the cloud” ate your data.

INVASION OF THE giant snakes.

GOOD NEWS FOR APTERA: DOE Funds for Three-wheelers.

IN THE MAIL: 1989: The Struggle To Create Post-Cold War Europe.

PJTV: Fred Barnes: The Future of The MSM & Why The Press Hated The Gipper, But Loves Obama.

DAN RIEHL: NY-23: The Rubes Are Inside The Beltway, Folks.

Plus this: “Huckabee is easily dispatched. He is not a conservative. Anyone suggesting that remains blinded by those wonderful crosses they saw dancing across their TV screen in last year’s Huckabee campaign ads. Fiscally, he’s a populist, at best. And he actually has quite a liberal streak. Distributing income is just as much a desire with Huckabee as it is with the Left. He simply wants to use those tax dollars in a different way.”

IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, Rush Limbaugh Responds to His Critics.

Numerous sportswriters, CNN, MSNBC, among others, falsely attributed to me statements I had never made. Their sources, as best I can tell, were Wikipedia and each other. But the Wikipedia post was based on a fabrication printed in a book that also lacked any citation to an actual source.

I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.

How long before we start reading on Wikquotes that Rick Sanchez called black people genetically inferior? Of course, no one would run that without checking . . . .

THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST: Harvard admits to $1.8b gaffe in cash holdings: Operating funds were lost to stock, hedge fund trades. “Harvard University, one of the world’s richest educational institutions, stumbled into its financial crisis in part by breaking one of the most basic rules of corporate or family finance: Don’t gamble with the money you need to pay the daily bills.” (Via NewsAlert).

HOPE: And deception. Shepard Fairey just doesn’t seem very admirable.