THE HILL: Rep. Flake takes earmark fight beyond PMA.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, bluenoses would be outlawing sex between consenting adults. And they were right!

MICHAEL BARONE: “For all the favorable coverage he’s gotten on mainstream media, Barack Obama seems to be having a hard time selling the American public on his policies.” Obama’s still pretty popular himself, of course. But if you’re a member of Congress voting on one of Obama’s not-so-popular policies, the question is whether Obama’s popularity will rub off on you — if it’s still there — come election time.

JESSE WALKER: The Paranoids Are Out to Get Me! The return of the militia scare.

We’ve heard a lot of warnings about extremist paranoia in the months since Barack Obama became president. We’ve heard much less about the paranoia of the centrists; indeed, the very idea that the sober center could be paranoid sounds bizarre. But when mainstream columnists treat a small group of unconnected crimes as a “pattern” of “rising right-wing violence,” their thesis bears more than a little resemblance to the conspiracy theories of the fringe figures they oppose. In both cases, the stories being told reflect the anxieties of the people discerning the patterns much more than any order actually emerging in the outside world.

This isn’t the first time the establishment has been overrun with paranoia about the paranoiacs.

Read the whole thing.

TODD BENSMAN: Convicted Hamas Fundraisers On The Run: “Haithem Maghawri and Akram Mishal, both naturalized U.S. citizens, remain international fugitives from American justice. And it appears that no one is particularly interested in hunting them down or even talking about it.”

TWIN THREAT: Jobless Rate, Deficit.

BYRON YORK: How Republicans Can Crack the Americorps Scandal. You’d hope, of course, that Democrats would be concerned about abuses of executive power, too. They used to be . . . .

JOHN HINDERAKER: “The days when ‘whistle blowers’ were popular on the left are gone, I guess.”

MICKEY KAUS: Stimulus bill race quotas? Hope and change!

ERIN MCCARTHY: Bears and Other Predators Invade U.S. Neighborhoods. “As once-threatened animal populations including black bears, mountain lions and alligators rebound and people move into former wildlands, predators are showing up precisely where they don’t belong: in backyards. And the wildlife isn’t as afraid of us as we might think. Welcome to the food chain.”

David Baron’s landmark work gets a mention. Plus, advice on predator-proofing your home.

GAY UNHAPPINESS WITH THE WHITE HOUSE: Dan Savage proposes civil disobedience: “Here’s the idea: one gay or lesbian couple—a couple currently denied their rights under DOMA—shows up at the entrance to the White House grounds. A different couple every day. They ask to speak to the president about DOMA. They’re refused. They sit down. They refuse to leave. They’re arrested, carried away by the police. Couples would be recruited from all over the country, demonstrating that gay marriage isn’t just an issue in liberal California or godless New England, and the media in each couple’s home city and state would be notified in advance of their arrest.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan says Cut off the DNC’s money! “One way to get the Obama administration’s attention on civil rights is for gay people to stop funding the Democrats. That’s all these people care about anyway when it comes to gays: our money. If the Democrats refuse to support us, refuse to support them.”

I recommend Nick Gillespie’s words of wisdom here, too.

CONGRESS ON GUANTANAMO — KEEP IT OPEN: “Legislation to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year is on its way to President Barack Obama, but it provides no money for closing the Guantanamo detainee prison and sets tough restrictions on the transfer of its inmates.” Ah, the fierce moral urgency of change.

MORE INSPECTOR-GENERAL QUESTIONS, AT THE L.A. TIMES: Timing of Treasury Department challenge, AIG probe raises concerns.

A Treasury Department challenge to the authority of government bailout watchdog Neil M. Barofsky came just as he had begun a sensitive investigation of the department’s role in approving bonuses to executives of insurance giant AIG, sources said Thursday. . . .

Asked why Barofsky’s legal authority was challenged by the department just as the AIG inquiry began, Treasury Department spokesman Andrew Williams said: “It is entirely a coincidence.”

Hmm. Stay tuned. (Via Dan Riehl).

FIDDLING while Tehran burns.

WELL, DANG: Stimulus Has Done Little for Tennessee Jobs. “Four months after President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion recovery package, stimulus spending has done little to stem job losses in Tennessee, and, long term, according to one economist, isn’t likely to create ‘an extraordinary number of jobs.'”

SOME DEPRESSING ECONOMIC DATA.

ONE OF MY PRODUCER-HEROES: Joe Meek. There’s a line of pretty good studio equipment bearing his name, though I think the actual connection is kind of tenuous.

DAZED AND CONFUSED: Something in the water at the White House?

LOTS OF MARKDOWNS on computers and accessories.

ANOTHER IRAN ROUNDUP at The Berman Post.

PETA SAYS OBAMA SHOULDN’T HAVE SWATTED THAT FLY.

I think they’re just responding to competition from People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects.

RADLEY BALKO on problems with no-knock raids.

FINANCIAL REFORM: Don’t rush things.

HOPE AND CHANGE SAME! Barack Obama, Unitary Executive Theorist. “What Obama’s firing of Walpin reveals is very simple: Obama is a believer in the Unitary Executive Theory.”

IN SALON: Chris Geidner: Obama Has Not Betrayed the Gay Community.