THIS EXPLAINS A LOT: Expert Financial Advice Cuts Brain Activity.

DANIEL HANNAN: The rise of a free-market star. “Am I the only person who would just love to see him debate Barack Obama?”

STIMULUS! D.C. STYLE: “Mayor Adrian M. Fenty is raiding the Neighborhood Investment Fund for earmarks for arts groups and other non-neighborhood-investment purposes. ‘Under the proposed budget, only $5.4 million of the $17 million will be set aside for neighborhood groups. About $1.6 million will be transferred to the Commission on Arts and Humanities and distributed through grants of mostly $250,000 to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Washington National Opera, the D.C. Jewish Community Center and other groups, all based in Northwest.’”

NORM COLEMAN’S database debacle.

MICHAEL TOTTEN REPORTS FROM BAGHDAD.

And Michael Yon notes a change. Both are supported by readers, so consider hitting the tipjar if you like their work.

SPORT THAT RON PAUL BUMPER STICKER WITHOUT FEAR: Missouri Highway Patrol retracts controversial report on militia activity. “The Highway Patrol also will open an investigation into the origin of the report, which linked conservative groups with domestic terrorism and named former presidential candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. The Highway Patrol’s announcement followed a news conference in which Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican, suggested putting the director of public safety on administrative leave and investigating how the report was produced.”

An investigation? How can you issue a report whose provenance is unknown? But I’d start my investigation with these Missouri Sheriffs and prosecutors. . . .

IN THE MAIL: One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy. A plea for diversity in higher education.

THE NEW ERA OF SPEND AND BLAME: “After running a campaign against the $1 trillion deficit he ‘inherited’ from President Bush and the Republicans, Obama quickly matched it. During his first 50 days in office, he and his Democratic-controlled Congress spent $1 billion an hour. Under Obama’s proposed budget, the overall national debt doubles in five years and triples in 10.”

UPDATE: “Rather than making a clean break with Bush’s failed economic policies, Obama is doubling down on them.”

HOPE AND CHANGE: “Many economists and analysts are worrying that the United States might go the way of Japan, which suffered a ‘lost decade’ after its own real estate market fell apart in the early 1990s. But I’m more concerned that the United States is coming to resemble Argentina, Russia and other so-called emerging markets, both in what led us to the crisis, and in how we’re trying to fix it. . . . The parallels between U.S. policymaking and what we see in emerging markets are clearest in how we’ve mishandled the banking crisis. We delude ourselves that our banks face liquidity problems, rather than deeper solvency problems, and we try to fix it all on the cheap just like any run-of-the-mill emerging market economy would try to do.”

SIMON JESTER lives. Background here.

Plus, “I aim to misbehave.”

THE FIRST THING WE DO, LET’S HANG ALL THE BANKERS. Apparently, this remark was not well-received. Under U.S. law, this probably wouldn’t constitute punishable incitement, but I’m not entirely sure of that given the context. I would suggest, though, that professors of anthropology might want to think twice before stirring up violent populist mobs inflamed with class resentment. . . .

NOT EXACTLY A CLASH OF TITANS: Chris Dodd vs. Tim Geithner.

DIRTY MONEY: Rep. Pete Stark. “Stark did not respond to a phone call and email message seeking a response.” Hey, if politicians gave back every donation they got from an iffy source, they’d be broke.

JOSH GERSTEIN: WH preserves secrecy option for tax panel. “I think I have a better idea now why the White House was so sensitive about my story Monday questioning the legality and wisdom of secret meetings held by subcommittees of President Obama’s economic advisory panel. It was because officials planned to announce within days that Obama intended to use just such a subcommittee to prepare his tax simplification and enforcement initiative. And it looks like they’re laying the groundwork to allow the new tax panel to do its work behind closed doors.”

Hmm. How did that work out for Hillary’s healthcare reform panel?

STANDING IN LINE FOR nuclear-waste jobs.

GLENN BECK OUTDRAWING KEITH OLBERMANN? That’s gotta hurt.

NO MORE BLENDER? OH NO! Oh, wait, just the magazine. Whew!

PJTV ANNOUNCES A $20,000 “GENERATIONAL THEFT” CONTEST. “PJTV is looking for the best method or tool to forecast a bachelor’s degree holder’s annual income in 2014, 2019, 2024 and 2034 after factoring in the cost of current government programs, including TARP and TALF, and stimulus packages, including their associated interest payments, health-care reform, inflation, taxes, etc. The grand prize-winning entry will earn $10,000 for the participating college student or student team, and $10,000 for the aiding professor.”

MICKEY KAUS: JournoList Revealed. Plus the important disclaimer: “This is not a parody!” Maybe a self-parody, though.

UPDATE: Heh: “It turns out it’s exactly the kind of thoughtful and high-brow policy salon we all imagined it to be.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Three lessons from Moe Lane. #3 is the key. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. (Bumped).

MORE: “The JournoList sure has a lot of antisemitic commenters.” Plus this: “They seem pretty tedious and unattractive.”

STILL MORE: I thought the story never made Memeorandum, but apparently it did. Must not have stayed up for long. . . .

WELL, THERE ARE SEVERAL VACANT CABINET POSITIONS FOR WHICH HE MIGHT BE SUITABLE: Marion Barry, tax cheat. “D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) owes the federal government more than $277,000 in back taxes and skipped at least six months of recent payments on taxes owed to the D.C. government, according to federal authorities.”

Taxes are for the little people.

HE’S A WITCH! BURN HIM! Oh, wait — “Christopher Pohle, of New Canaan, was falsely identified as an AIG employee who received a retention bonus, State Representative John W. Hetherington, said in a news release Thursday. To be clear, everyone, he did not get a bonus. Pohle is demanding that the State of Connecticut, including the Attorney General and the legislature’s Banks Committee, apologize and issue a retraction.”

But the government folks were exercising due diligence: “State officials obtained the names from media accounts about the bonuses.”

RASMUSSEN: More Voters Than Ever Say Tax Cuts Help the Economy. “Democrats in the Senate are talking of cutting back President Obama’s pledge of tax cuts for most Americans in the face of record deficits. But 63% of U.S. voters now say tax cuts would help the economy, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.”

OUCH: U.S. couldn’t even join EU due to debt levels. So is that a bug, or a feature . . . .

CHANGE: DEA Raids Pot Dispensary in San Francisco. “Federal agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco Wednesday, a week after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signaled that the Obama administration would not prosecute distributors of pot used for medicinal purposes that operate under sanction of state law.”

ON PJTV, I talk with Michael Patrick Leahy about the future of the Tea Party movement.