“WE NEVER MAKE ASSERTIONS.” A gaffe or did Ayn Rand have “a really, really dry sense of humor”?

YIKES: Reuters reports that South Korea plans to officially blame North Korea for sinking its warship in March.

OUTSTANDING PALESTINIAN JOURNALIST Khaled Abu Toameh explains why an imposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a terrible idea. Meanwhile, former PLO ambassador Ali Kazak accuses him of being a traitor for exposing corruption in the West Bank and Gaza.

IF THE SUPREME COURT CHANNELS “THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE,” how exactly do “the people” communicate with the Court? Barry Friedman answers — in the SCOTUSblog live-chat — “gosh, the justices *are* living in the world with us; they read the papers, watch the news, go to cocktail parties. chief justice rehnquist discussed this in print. the people don’t have to speak directly to them – as president obama did at the state of the union – the constitutional conversation just goes on around them.” Good thing MSM tells it straight… and in vino veritas.

“NOW THAT THE SEX LIVES of Supreme Court justices have become grist for commentators, we are finally free to discuss a question formerly only whispered about in the shadows….”

“YOU KNOW WHAT NAYSAYERS ARE SAYING?” Well, I‘m saying I’m no naysayer when it comes to Crackskull Bob drawing TV pundits.

Hop on my 2020 Harley? No, not for real, but Autoblog has an artist rendering of what the Hog might look like in a decade. These things are typically speculative and often turn out to bear little or no resemblance to the real thing. In this case, I’m pretty confident that come 2010, I will still prefer my classic Kawasaki Concours.

A BUNCH OF new releases on Kindle.

TILTING AT WINDMILLS: “On eight separate occasions, President Barack Obama has referred to the ‘green economy’ policies enacted by Spain as being the model for what he envisioned for America…But today’s leaked document reveals that even the socialist Spanish government now acknowledges the ruinous effects of green economic policy.”

My fiance notes that the Bay State is trying to shift money from hospitals that make money to those that don’t.  Eureka! Profits are the problem with the market.  Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?

“ARIZONA’S UTILITIES WOULD BE HAPPY TO TAKE THOSE ELECTRONS OFF YOUR HANDS:” The Los Angeles City Council “voted to boycott the state of Arizona over its new immigration-enforcement law, and now the Arizona Corporation Commission has responded.  Gary Pierce, one of the commissioners chosen in state-wide elections to the utility regulation panel, notes that Los Angeles gets about 25% of its power from Arizona producers.  If the City of Angels really wants a boycott, Pierce offers his services to help.”

YESTERDAY I posted a link to an article by Claire Berlinski about the Soviet archives, an article Ron Radosh takes issue with. Berlinski and Radosh are both terrific authors, and I hate getting caught in the middle of a dispute between them, but I’ll let readers interested in this topic read both and decide for themselves.

UPDATE: Claire Berlinski responds to Ron Radosh here.

WAR DRIVING:  Now that cars are just platforms and Ford is starting an apps store, how long before we see auto-malware?  Not long, say researchers from the University of Washington, who managed to breach automobile networks using keyless entry systems.  They were able to disengage or engage brakes (sometimes one wheel at a time), overriding the driver entirely.  And in a move that may make this the first scientific paper to be turned into a major motion picture, they launched a “Self-Destruct” mode:

“a 60-second count-down is displayed on the DriverInformation Center (the dash), accompanied by clicks at an increasing rate and horn honks in the last few seconds. In our demo, this sequence culminated with killing the engine and activating the door lock relay (preventing the occupant from using the electronic door unlock button).”

Looks like skating is for pikers; soon we’ll all be driving on stilts.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS’ new book Hitch-22: A Memoir wasn’t supposed to be released until June, but my copy from Amazon.com arrived today. He sent me an uncorrected advance reader copy a few weeks ago, and it’s terrific.

MAX BOOT on the ongoing Korean war.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Left, right, and wrong.

From the Dangers of the New Media Department: Seems that Rep. Mark Souder is resigning because of a dalliance with a woman-not-his-wife. And woman-not-his-wife is all over the Internet, as The Examiner’s Charlie Spiering points out.

TODAY’S THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH for New Threats to Freedom, featuring Richard Epstein, Christopher Hitchens, David Mamet, Anne Applebaum, and many other luminaries, plus, less luminously, me. My chapter is on complacency.

THE HEALTH INSURERS’ FAUSTIAN BARGAIN  I’d say it’s more like our Faustian bargain; we bought a pig in a poke, and now that pig is looking pretty sickly.

CYBERWAR:  Richard Clarke and Rob Knake have written a good book on the practical realities of cyberwar.  I cover this topic, and Richard Clarke himself, in Skating on Stilts, including this quick sketch:

Clarke was a flamboyant bureaucratic warrior camouflaged by the dress and haircut of a high school math teacher. A career official with a knack for building empires — and making enemies — he had risen to take charge of both cybersecurity and terrorism policy in President Clinton’s National Security Council. He later became famous briefly for his scathing denunciation of the Bush White House’s response to terrorism warnings.  But in 2000 he was better known as the man who had sponsored the failed Clinton Administration plan to build a monitoring network.

So Clarke’s got years of government background on the issue.  His book aims to do for cyberwar what Herman Kahn and William Kaufmann did for nuclear war — engage in some clear-eyed thinking about the very unpleasant surprises that new forms of war may hold for America’s leadership.  By and large, he succeeds (though he’s occasionally a bit naive about the way international initiatives to limit cyberwar will likely play out).

Men’s pants on sale.

OR AT LEAST MORE EXPENSIVE:  New York plans a camera system “which it hopes will eventually be more sophisticated and effective than the closed-circuit TV (CCTV) system used by police in London.”

MARRY SOMEONE YOUR OWN AGE and live longer.

GOING TO JAIL for dangerous art. And it was political too. Lewis Greenberg was trying to say something about the Holocaust with his pointy front-yard sculpture. But think of the poor children who might be impaled. And the adults who think it’s really ugly.

TWO HEARTS BEAT AS ONE  Matt Yglesias explores the difficulties of Korean unification.