MORE DOUBTS about whether Republican Chrysler dealers were actually targeted. Given the bullying that went on with the secured creditors — and the way the whole Chrysler restructuring deal was set up to favor Obama constituencies — these charges were certainly plausible. But the evidence doesn’t seem to be there.

POPULAR MECHANICS: Test-Driving the Chevy Volt. A generally positive review. I was pretty interested in the Volt, but now that it’ll be a government product I’m not so interested any more. Maybe an Aptera, though . . . .

THE HITS KEEP COMING: Defense contractor with ties to Murtha suspended.

CAR LUST: 1974: It Was A Very Bad Year. But not so bad that it can’t be repeated . . . .

I REMEMBER WHEN POLITICIZING THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BAD: Career lawyers overruled on voting case: Black Panthers had wielded weapons, blocked polls. “Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews. The incident – which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube – had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms. Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as ‘the most blatant form of voter intimidation’ that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.”

Obviously, we need to allow voters to carry weapons to the polls, to protect themselves from such thuggery. . . .

UPDATE: More thoughts, and some video, from Power Line.

PETER ROBINSON: The Problem With California.

The state of California employs some two-and-a-quarter million people, includes almost 400 state agencies, oversees 29 different legal codes, administers a tax code that runs to more than 60,000 clauses or sections and spends more than $100 billion a year.

You’ll hear it said these days that all this complexity makes California ungovernable, and I suppose that even when the economy is booming, not gasping, California will always prove more of a trick to run than the tiniest state, Rhode Island, or the least populous, Wyoming.

Yet the central problem in the Golden State–the disorder that affects every aspect of state government–can be described very simply: The political class in Sacramento believes the people of California exist for the state government, not the other way around.

Read the whole thing.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: The Mother Of All Myths: “The biggest problems in the Middle East – and Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons surely is one of them – have little or nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

THOUGHTS ON THE SPELLING BEE, from Suzanna Logan.

DAVE KOPEL: Guns in Parks: The Hoplophobes’ Travel Guide to the United States.

ILYA SOMIN: Sotomayor May be Wrong About Race, but She is No Racist.

Related post here.

CONNECTICUT DEMOCRATS encouraging Chris Dodd to quit? “The Connecticut State Senate is rushing through legislation to strip (Republican) Governor Jodi Rell of her power to appoint a successor to Senator Chris Dodd, if he should resign his office.”

UP NEXT: Interest rates?

MICHAEL BARONE: Massively higher U.S. spending driving up government’s interest rate. “The ability to borrow money cheaply is a tremendous asset to any government, and we seem to be squandering it.”

Plus, You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, America! “These milestones remind that what we’ve seen ‘nuthin’of so far during the Obama administration is the aggressive accountability journalism relentlessly aimed at the Bush administration during the eight years prior to the ascension of President Obama.”

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: GM Shows Obama Is No Vulcan. “Given all that intelligence and self awareness, it’s surprising to find Team Obama’s approach toward GM (and Chrysler, for that matter) marbled with so much illogical economic policy that could have a terrible long-run impact. . . . By favouring a political ally over the rule of law — in this case, the fundamental principles of contractual rights — the White House has created both a terrible precedent and enormous uncertainty (perhaps resulting in even higher interest rates for borrowers with worrisome debt loads) as the government continues to inject itself into the private sector.”

P.M.A. UPDATE: Visclosky’s office subpoenaed.

SCHWARZENEGGER: We’re Broke, But We’ll Keep Supporting Hydrogen.

MAKE EVERYTHING TASTE LIKE BACON! Reader Paul Havemann writes: “All’s right with the world. Or will be when my order arrives!” Because nothing’s better than bacon!

THE GENERATION GAP: Remembering Knoxville’s own Partridge Family. Er, except that they actually played their own instruments.

UH OH: US official in France diagnosed with swine flu. “A U.S. official in Normandy to prepare President Barack Obama’s upcoming visit has been diagnosed with swine flu and is being treated in a hospital, French authorities said Friday. Eleven other members of the U.S. delegation were placed in isolation for 24 hours in their hotel rooms and given medical treatment, said an official at the Calvados region administrative headquarters.”

AN UPDATE ON what’s happening with fusion research.

RIDING THE RAILS IN STYLE. And you can still rent private rail cars, an idea that’s always appealed to me, though I assume it’s a bit pricey for us law-professor types.

RON BAILEY: Really Great Stem Cell Research News. “Researchers at Harvard and Advanced Cell Technology are reporting that they have been able to turn ordinary skin cells into stem cells by dousing them with the proteins made by four specific genes. The researchers were then able to turn the stem cells into mature cells of various tissues.”

WELL, DUH: Obama says nation needs more nerds. “Increased education efforts” are nice, but why would a rational person go into engineering and computer science unless the payoff looked better than, say, law school? Perhaps we should increase the rewards for nerddom? (Nerdhood? Nerdosity?)

UPDATE: Reader Greg Smith writes:

Your comment about the lack of rewards is accurate, but it’s worse than you think. Lower pay, lower respect, and lower job security do not add up to a compelling combination.

My father was an aerospace engineer (inspired by the moon program) and retired a few years ago after a long career. I followed in his footsteps as an electrical engineer in the networking industry. While I did start out in R&D, today I’m in marketing, both because of the higher compensation and the superior recognition. The “nerds” are largely viewed as interchangable by management and face a much higher risk risk of being outsourced overseas (esp. China and India).

While I still believe that an engineering education provides an excellent background for many careers, what I tell young people today, including my own kids, is that you either want a skilled trade like auto repair or plumbing where the work has to be done on site here in America, or a college education that can lead to a career that cannot easily be sent overseas. Computer science and many branches of engineering do not meet that requirement.

Perhaps if we had more engineers who actually understand the challenge of getting things built instead of lawyers in Congress we wouldn’t be in the mess we face today.

Our political system (and, heck, our overall culture) rewards those who divide up pies far more lavishly than those who bake them. This is probably not sustainable over the long term.

IN THE MAIL: From Tony Jeary: Strategic Acceleration: Succeed at the Speed of Life.

WHY DID THE TALIBAN attack the ISI?