MARY KATHARINE HAM JOINS WITH ANDREW SULLIVAN in decrying a morbid fascination with birth-related conspiracy theories.

QUESTION: If Congress can tax plastic surgery, can it tax abortion?

CUT HEALTH COSTS by banning divorce? “If studies show that divorce damages health, then horning into our marriages will become the government’s business too. Obviously another blue pill. You expect us to pay for the red pill, when there’s a blue pill?”

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME: A Biofuel Process to Replace All Fossil Fuels. “A startup based in Cambridge, MA–Joule Biotechnologies–today revealed details of a process that it says can make 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year. If this yield proves realistic, it could make it practical to replace all fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels. The company also claims that the fuel can be sold for prices competitive with fossil fuels.” Hope it pans out, but let’s wait for a large-scale demonstration before we get too excited.

JUNK: How to make crappy stuff awesome.

HUNDREDS ATTEND anti-Obamacare rally in Denver.

WENDY KAMINER: Law Students Flunk Academic Freedom 101. Silly Wendy. Academic freedom is about freedom for the academy to irritate the outside world without consequences. It’s not freedom to depart from the conventional wisdom of the academy.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

DELL NON-HELL: Yeah, I know Jeff Jarvis had his problems, but my luck with Dell service has been good. The Insta-daughter’s machine died over the weekend — stone dead, wouldn’t do anything. I called the support number off their website, a guy showed up yesterday and installed a new motherboard, now everything’s working fine. I wasn’t even stuck on hold very long when I called. Credit where credit’s due.

SILICON GRAFFITI: Legacy: Walter Cronkite and the Apex of Mass Media.

ILYA SOMIN: “Exploitation” of the Poor is a Poor Reason to Ban Organ Markets. Plus, more thoughts from Sally Satel.

Also, don’t miss this piece from Virginia Postrel. Who donated a kidney to Sally Satel a couple of years back.

COOL: Photo: Docked Space Shuttle and Station Cross the Sun. “You couldn’t just aim your digital camera at the sky and get results like this.”

MICKEY KAUS: Postrel 1, Orszag 0.

FLYING MACH 2.0 in an open cockpit? No thank you.

NOT LONG AGO, people were saying that right-leaning books didn’t sell. Now reader Gordy Dalman writes: “Michelle Malkin’s Culture of Corruption is now #1 on Amazon. It’s good to see both Glenn Beck and Mark Levin in the Top 10 as well.”

I THOUGHT THE WAR ON TERROR WAS OVER: Feds: 1 N.C. terrorism suspect still sought. “Federal authorities were searching Tuesday for a U.S. citizen charged with plotting ‘violent jihad’ as part of a North Carolina group suspected of international terrorist aspirations. . . . Investigators arrested seven men involved in the group Monday, accusing them of military-style training at home and plotting terrorist attacks abroad. The men purchased several weapons over the past year, and in June and July, three of them went to private land in north-central North Carolina to practice ‘military tactics,’ according to the indictment.”

THE SINGULARITY APPROACHETH: Gene Editing Sped Up By Orders of Magnitude.

POLITICO: WILL HEALTH CARE “REFORM” PROMOTE EUTHANASIA?

TESTING the Tesla Roadster. “I’m on a three-day, 460-mile mission to challenge the Tesla hype and decide if living on 375 volts is actually enjoyable in the gas age. First order of business: I never got close to Tesla’s claimed 244-mile range in which the car can drive without a recharge. Had I driven like a maniacal hypermiler and avoided highways, which drain the battery much faster than back roads, I might have hit 200 miles.”

VARIOUS PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SENDING ME THIS DAVID FRUM PIECE. I do think that there are a some cheerfully-gloomy folks on the Right, people who would rather talk about how things are going down the tubes than, you know, actually do anything about it. I don’t know why Frum picked Mark Levin as an example, though. Even Levin’s detractors would admit that he’s a fighter, not a Gloomy Gus. And if you actually read Liberty and Tyranny — as I did for my Levin interview — it’s clearly a call to action, not a counsel of despair. What’s more, if you look at things like the Tea Party movement, which Levin supports, there are obvously a lot of people out there doing things, and having fun doing them.

Which is more than you can say for Frum, lately. The tone of his stuff seems closer to the problem he diagnoses than does Levin’s. Pundit, heal thyself.

UPDATE: Various readers inform me that Frum and Levin have been going at it for a while, something I was vaguely — but only vaguely — aware of. Okay, whatever. My advice is to stop taking shots at each other, when there’s such a target-rich environment elsewhere. And, frankly, I think that conservatives and libertarians should be feeling a lot better than they did a few months ago, as the Obama aura is dissipating much faster than even the most optimistic might have expected.

A WHILE BACK, I REPORTED ON THE CLAYTON I-HOUSE. Now they’re working on green multi-family dwellings.

TROUBLE FOR THE APTERA? “Apparently, all is not well in Aptera Motors fandom land. After something of a sustained burst in marketing and promotional appearances earlier this year that included a visit to TED and to Washington D.C., it seems a recent lack of announcements and unresponsiveness to customer emails is leading some Apterans to begin stressing big time about what is up with the company that’s supposed to begin building their first model, the all-electric 2e, this autumn.” But the Aptera folks say they’re just kinda busy starting up a new car company. Fine, whatever, but where’s mine?

TRYING TO BUILD A BETTER BATTERY. Faster, please.

PRIVATE SPACE TRAVEL DEAL to be announced today.

WELCOME TO POSTRACIAL AMERICA: Black female cop who voted for Obama says she won’t do it again. “I supported him, I voted for him. I will not again.” (Via Jules Crittenden, who has more thoughts).