CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG? Glenn Beck vs. Charles Johnson.

TEA PARTY TURNOUT NATIONWIDE: A roundup of counts.

THOUGHTS ON WHAT’S NEXT FOR TEA PARTIERS: “If 100-1,000 people show up at a rally, the event may or may not get media coverage, and that coverage may or may not be snarky or dismissive. Congressmen may or may not notice, and the President’s spokesman will announce he’s not aware of them. But if 100-1,000 people show up at a town council, city council, etc. meeting, in most places, that’s an earthquake.” Or a Congressman’s meet-and-greet.

Meanwhile, reader Brett Deal emails: “Have you heard tell of anyone picketing ACORN offices for enabling voter fraud?” Nope.

UPDATE: Nope, haven’t heard of anyone staging a sit-in at CNN, either.

JOURNALIST ACTIVATES immune response. But unlike the swells at the Annenberg affair, nobody used physical force. “What do you think the Internet is for?”

Meanwhile, CNN flops in ratings.

CLIMBDOWN: Napolitano Apologizes for Offending Veterans After DHS Eyes Them for ‘Rightwing Extremism’. Plus this:

The report follows a similar DHS assessment released in January that detailed left-wing threats, focusing on cyberattacks and radical “eco-terrorist” groups like Earth Liberation Front, accused of firebombing construction sites, logging companies, car dealerships and food science labs. The report noted that left-wing extremists prefer economic damage to get their message across.

“Their leftwing assessment identifies actual terrorist organizations, like the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front,” House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said in a statement issued Wednesday. “The rightwing report uses broad generalizations about veterans, pro-life groups, federalists and supporters of gun rights. That’s like saying if you love puppies, you might be susceptible to recruitment by the Animal Liberation Front. It is ridiculous and deeply offensive to millions of Americans.”

Shoddy work at DHS. But, then, I’ve always seen DHS as a Department of Bureaucratic Security, and not of much actual use.

Evidence that my skepticism was justified:

Civil liberties officials at the Homeland Security Department flagged language in a controversial report on right-wing extremists, but the agency issued the report anyway.

The intelligence assessment issued to law enforcement last week said some military veterans could be susceptible to extremist recruiters or commit lone acts of violence. That prompted angry reactions from some lawmakers and veterans’ groups.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the report was issued before officials resolved problems raised by the agency’s civil rights division about analysts’ definition of right-wing extremism.

And they told me an Obama Administration would be more sensitive to civil liberties.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Levy has a theory: “DHS rushed out their report before the Civil Rights division had a chance to look it over. Why the hurry? The only relevant, imminent event was the nation-wide Tea Party.”

AN OBLIQUE APPROACH TO GUN CONTROL? Obama to Push to Ratify Treaty on Gun Trafficking.

JERRY POURNELLE: “Apparently the Tea Parties were a success: at least they seem to have upset Pelosi and Company. The media doesn’t quite know what to make of all that.” That’s not really the goal, but it’s a bonus.

Plus this advice, in case things don’t work out as we hope: “The way things are headed now, the best career is a government job. Use the time you have to put in to learn how to do something you want to do, then use your retirement time to do it. It’s not spectacular, and having the best and the brightest become government time servers won’t do much for the economy, but you won’t have to work very hard and you can retire without having to scrabble for your next meal. At my age that seems far more attractive than it did thirty years ago. Given the economy and the war on business and success ushered in the last election — and the steps now being taken to make the new trend toward Europeanization of America permanent and irreversible — young people ought to think hard about where they will be in thirty or forty years. Live long and prosper. But do not take the government as an example. Save, be thrifty, and do all your paperwork. Your real life will begin when you retire.”

THE TORTURE MEMOS ARE OUT, and CIA agents won’t be prosecuted. Has a deal been cut? Or has Obama decided to keep his options open? Ann Althouse has some comments. Will Jane Hamsher break out her pitchfork for Obama? The memos are here.

My guess, actually, is that prosecution would have been awkward for Congressional Democrats:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Obama’s not ready to do anything like this to Pelosi yet.

UPDATE: An alternative theory: No prosecution because no crime.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Not so happy at Wired. With this graphic:

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MCCAIN, WE’D SEE JOURNALISTS ARRESTED IN THE STREETS FOR REPORTING. And they were right!

DOES NASAL IRRIGATION ACTUALLY HELP ALLERGY SYMPTOMS? Yes.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY, now available for pre-order on Blu-Ray.

LOSE YOUR AMAZON ACCOUNT and your Kindle dies?

HOPE AND CHANGE: Foreclosures 46% higher in March than a year ago.

CADILLAC VOLT IN 2011? I’d like that. But it would have to be approved by the Obama Administration.

TEA PARTY CROWD ESTIMATES: Nate Silver estimates “262,025, with a fair number of (probably mostly smaller) events still unaccounted for.”

The Pajamas Media citizen journalist count is pretty close, at “more than 281,000. . . . The number of participants will continue to rise as more of our field observers upload their photos and videos of the events and send us their attendance figures.”

UPDATE: Jim Geraghty counts 333,682. Meanwhile, reader Tom Glennon sends this picture from Des Moines.

OKAY, I LINKED THIS NSA SURVEILLANCE STORY THIS MORNING, but here’s a bit that deserves more attention:

And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.

The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.

So which member of Congress was it, and who was the “extremist” in question?

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Heh. According to DHS probably one of those right wing extremist Republicans….” Maybe even — shudder — a military veteran? Nah. If a Republican were involved, the Times would have told us.

THE HEARTBREAK OF Spaghetti-Os.

ARE FAT KIDS HAPPIER? And, if they are, will they smile more and thus avoid divorce?

SMILE AND THE WHOLE WORLD SMILES WITH YOU: Smiles Predict Marriage Success. “In one test, the researchers looked at people’s college yearbook photos, and rated their smile intensity from 1 to 10. None of the people who fell within the top 10 percent of smile strength had divorced, while within the bottom 10 percent of smilers, almost one in four had had a marriage that ended, the researchers say.”

PATHETIC: “Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) blasted ‘tea party’ protests yesterday, labeling the activities ‘despicable’ and ‘shameful.'”

Ironic: “The husband of an Illinois congresswoman pleaded guilty Wednesday to tax violations and bank fraud for writing rubber checks and failing to collect withholding tax from an employee. Robert Creamer, a political consultant married to four-term U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, could face four years in prison on the two felony counts when he is sentenced Dec. 21.”

Tax hypocrisy abounds in Washington, but they’re angry that people are protesting. . . .

UPDATE: Moe Lane comments: “Why do people like Creamer think that they can get away with tax evasion? Because when you’re married to a Democratic Congresswoman, very often you can. That’s because people like Schakowsky don’t think that the rules apply to them. Which is her problem with the Tea Parties, really: the people involved with them have a distinctly different opinion, and they aren’t the sort that get amused with the argument that social justice sometimes requires bank fraud. Best to try to squash them quick.”

Good luck with that. The folks I met yesterday didn’t look very squashable.

I’LL BE ON FOX BUSINESS at about 4:40 Eastern, talking about tea party protests and Internet politics.

A BIG ONE-DAY GPS Markdown.

THE DRINKING AGE: The government pressured states to raise it to 21. So why didn’t the move save lives?

THE RETURN OF BEDBUGS.

A CALL FOR new privateers.