ON BOARD THE TEA PARTY EXPRESS: Da Tech Guy. Plus, in Boston, an “amazingly diverse crowd.”

UPDATE: More on Boston, from Spitfire Murphy.

REASON TV: Taxes: The Price We Pay For Civilization!

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Handling Money Relieves Both Physical And Emotional Pain.

THE HEALTH INSURANCE MANDATE as a privacy right violation.

SOME DETAILS ON THE U.S. Plug-In Prius Test Program.

FEDS RAISE QUESTIONS about Big Media’s piracy claims.

IN THE MAIL: From Melanie Phillips, The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth, and Power.

PJTV: Alexis Garcia On Board The Tea Party Express: Next Stop Boston and Sarah Palin.

20 YEARS AT THE TROUGH: The 2010 Congressional Pig Book is out.

ASSOCIATE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE IOWAHAWK.

SISSY WILLIS: Boston Tea Party: What A Difference A Year Makes.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS ACCOUNTING PROF. MICHAEL GRANOF: Released to Near Silence, the U.S. Treasury 2009 Financial Report Shows Dire Course.

If you listen to certain politicians and talking heads you might get the impression that the federal fiscal sky is falling. Unfortunately, unlike Chicken Little, they may be right.

The Treasury Department recently issued the 2009 financial report of the United States government. Whereas there is lots of talk in Congress and in the press about the federal budget, the annual report was released to near silence. That’s too bad, not only because the annual report is untainted by creative accounting but also because its message is too important to ignore.

That message is that the sky is indeed falling.

Uh oh. On the other hand, Obama is optimistic.

UPDATE: Site seems to be down, but here’s the Google Cache version.

From the bio: “Michael Granof is the Ernst & Young Distinguished Centennial Professor in Accounting at McCombs. He is currently serving a five-year term on the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board. The views expressed herein are his own, not necessarily those of the Board.”

FOUNDER’S QUOTES: A transcript of Bill Whittle’s “Reasonable Men.”

I’VE BEEN A DEFENDER OF OBAMA’S NEW SPACE POLICY, but Neil Armstrong thinks I’m wrong. “The first man to walk on the moon blasted President Barack Obama’s decision to cancel NASA’s back-to-the-moon program on Tuesday, saying that the move is ‘devastating’ to America’s space effort. . . . The letter was released to NBC News just two days in advance of Obama’s trip to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a space policy summit. Obama is expected to flesh out his vision for the space agency’s future during his speech at the summit. . . . Armstrong and his fellow astronauts emphasize the bigger implications, however, and say in their letter that the decision would put the nation on a ‘long downhill slide to mediocrity.”’

For a more positive take, see Rand Simberg’s interview with NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, and his Report from the Space Access Society conference.

MORE ON MINI-VIDEOCAMS: A review of Flip’s latest, the SlideHD.

USA TODAY: Corruption cases put New Orleans cops up against wall.

Perez’s New Orleans visit came as federal authorities investigate eight local cases of alleged police misconduct, many in the aftermath of the August 2005 flooding.

“The Constitution does not take a holiday, does not get suspended during a storm, even one as catastrophic as Katrina,” says Perez, who’s in charge of the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Reader John Steakley writes: “This is a handy quote to have around the next time the government starts snatching guns at the first sign of trouble.” I’ll note that the New Orleans gun confiscation was found illegal by federal courts, and that Congress has since passed a statute making that clear.

STRIPPING SIGNS FROM TEA PARTIERS in North Carolina.

THIS HEADLINE — A state-run militia? What could go wrong? — is kind of dumb. State-run militias go back to, and actually predate, the founding of the Republic, and they exist even today in moribund form in the statute books, even if they don’t see much action. (I think the last time there was any significant state militia activation was in World War II, in a few coastal states.)

So the problem isn’t a “state-run militia,” but rather the notion of a state going to war with the federal government. That notion isn’t inevitably absurd or wrong, of course — if the federal government went far enough off the rails, it would be the right thing to do, though likely also very costly — but we are hardly in that situation today, and talk that suggests otherwise is kind of silly. On the other hand, that Washington Post headline is also kind of silly, as it suggests an ignorance regarding its subject, militias and the states, that makes it seem as if the headline-writer (who is probably not Dave Weigel) is going for snark without knowing anything regarding what is being snarked about. Some background can be found here. Also in Article I of the federal Constitution.

None of this should be confused with the Detroit Techno Militia or the Nebraska Guitar Militia.

REPORT: New Hampshire Dems Scrambling to Deploy Tea Party Crashers.

SHOCKER: Steny Hoyer Admits: Tea Party Spurs Members To Consider Retiring.

MEGAN MCARDLE ON the problem of public pensions. “I’d guess that broad public sentiment runs in favor of cutting the pensions. But the most motivated sentiment belongs to the pensioners.”

“SWAPPING THEIR BIRTHRIGHT OF FREEDOM FOR AN IPAD:” Prof. Bainbridge vs. Bruce Bartlett. “In the United States today, the thermostat is still set pretty low. The Heritage Foundation has warned us, however, that the Obamabots have turned up the heat a tad. It is the proper function of conservatives to resist and to seek to turn down the heat. It would be nice to have Bartlett and Joyner with us.”

RASMUSSEN: “The number of people who say they’re part of the Tea Party Movement nationally has grown to 24%. That’s up from 16% a month ago, but the movement still defies easy description.” It suggests that media efforts to smear the Tea Party movement as racist have failed.

UPDATE: It also suggests that complaints from Republican operatives about Tea Party amateurishness and lack of a national organization are wrong. When have those operatives ever achieved a 50% increase in identification in one month?

MORE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “When have Republican operatives accomplished any thing outside of a bondage club?” Now that’s just mean.

MARC DANZIGER: So a man in plain clothes and an unmarked car cuts you off and pulls a gun. . . .

PHYLLIS CHESLER: Jews Confront The Abyss. With eyes closed, frequently.