SHOCKER: Robert Mugabe’s bloody diamond deal with China.

A ONE-DAY ONLY digital camera markdown. Looks like a decent, though not absurdly great, deal.

INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE: License to Describe: Defeating Washington D.C.’s Tour Guide Licensing Scheme.

MARK TAPSCOTT WONDERS IF C.R.E.W. is endangering its nonprofit status. Under this administration, not as long as it attacks Republicans . . . .

A MURKOWSKI OOPS: That Queen of sound, sane, sensible, boring government by well-connected heiresses, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, employs staff who cannot spell her name.

UPDATE: More typo fun: 15 Best Things About Our Pubic Schools. Heh. Hey, typos happen, and it’s not really a surprise that four people missed this. You see what you expect to see unless you’re really careful. And sometimes even then.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Kahn writes:

As a former tech writer, I can say that the real reason typos like that happen is the fact that you only really see with definition in a tiny circle (the macula) in the center of your vision and outside that it’s peripheral vision. Out of place letters get missed because the reader jumped along and failed to scan that group of letters with the macular section of vision.

The best way to proofread documents for typos, which we used back in the typewriter days, is for one person to read aloud while the other follows the text as it is read. By listening to someone reading aloud it forces your eyes’ macular zones to scan the text slowly as the word are read out, so words aren’t skipped over and typos pop out easily.

Yeah, we used to do “readbacks” at the law review that worked exactly that way.

REMINDER: They Also Called Scott Brown A Non-Serious Extremist. “Brown was treated much as O’Donnell is being treated now, as a joke, unqualified, likely racist, homophobic, and a host of other epithets. The current view of Brown, which has taken hold over the past 9 months, has replaced the reality of what went on in January 2010.”

MICKEY KAUS: GLENN BECK TRYING TO PUT TOO MUCH GOD INTO THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT? I’m not sure there’s much to worry about here, but it seems pretty clear that small government is the big tent, and it’s a mistake to try to change that.

UPDATE: Reader Brett Rogers writes: “So long as the religious right don’t seek to use the state to force me to please their god, we’re good.” Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Robert Crawford emails: “Is it paranoid to notice that the day after Kaus announces he’s going to Newsweak, he tries to start a fight between Beck and Breitbart?” Modern media consumers are so untrusting. And I’m pretty sure the Newsweak wasn’t a typo.

NEW SHOCK POLL: PALADINO WITHIN SIX POINTS OF CUOMO.

A FUTURE OF liberty, or dependency? “We will soon reach a point at which most of the people have their standard of living subsidized by the earnings of a quarter, or maybe a fifth or fewer, of the rest. No nation can sustain the economic and cultural strength that has graced the United States while transferring so much wealth from so few to so many.”

MANAGEMENT: Inspector General: IRS Refuses to Stop Issuing $1 Billion in Erroneous Refund Checks.

WAPO: RACISM REARS ITS UGLY HEAD, in the Hawaii Democratic Primary. Guess which side “the machine” is backing. . . .

ROGER SIMON: ALL THE PRESIDENT’S CREEPS. “So Rahm, run for the hills. The time is ripe — Jesse Jackson Jr. has apparently self-immolated and you are as good as mayor. I don’t know what Axelrod will do. He can probably go back to his cheesy political public relations firm. That’s what he does anyway — and he could be paid better for it. Meanwhile, regarding Herr Professor Obama, there’s only one president in our lifetime I could see having behaved the same way. You all know it, but I’ll say it — Jimmy Carter.”

RON RADOSH: Mao’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the Power of History.

MATT WELCH: Most Americans Want a Third Political Party. Hope springs eternal. Truth is, you can have as many parties as you want, but the government will attract parasites to the extent that it is big and powerful.

UPDATE: Link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry.

I NEED TO QUIT GIVING THEM IDEAS: A week ago, I joked: “The new approach will be for them to just take your whole paycheck, and send you whatever’s left at the end of the month. . . .”

And already the British are running with it: UK Proposes All Paychecks Go to the State First. “The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.”

Maybe I should suggest that all overweening statists be hanged from lampposts, instead, just to see what follows. . . .

UPDATE: Charlie Martin emails predicting a lamppost shortage. One way or another, statism and shortages always go together . . . .

G.O.P. CONFRONTS SORE LOSER SYNDROME: “At bottom, they kind of resent that they work for the American people. They feel that they know better.”

PRESIDENT FREDO CORLEONE.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Why Won’t Our Brave Media And Government Officials Speak Up For Molly Norris? Because they’re cowards.

KENNETH ANDERSON: The Millennium Development Goals and the Obama Administration’s Continuity with John Bolton. “Ambassador Rice’s language is so close to what Ambassador Bolton said five years ago it seems unlikely to me it was by accident; it seems more like a diplomatic-legal signal that the US position is that it never did commit itself to what Ambassador Bolton’s critics said the US had committed itself to do. I’m not in the least unhappy that the administration has taken this position, of course; but it is this week’s instance of yet more continuity with the Bush administration’s then-wicked, wicked position.” When Bush did it it was wicked; when Obama does it, it’s “pragmatic.”

STACY MCCAIN: As If I Actually Needed an Excuse to Post This Picture of a Blonde in a Bikini.

IOWAHAWK: The Car, The Ditch, And The Slurpee.

ARE YOU BETTER OFF Than You Were Four Years Ago?

MARC THIESSEN: Rats! (A Tale of Government Intervention Gone Awry). “A few years ago, officials in Brooklyn, New York came up with a seemingly brilliant idea to deal with the rat-infestation problem in their borough: release opossums into the neighborhood to eat the rats. Once the rat population disappeared, officials surmised, the opossums would have nothing to eat and would disappear as well. Like most ham-handed government efforts at social engineering, this one backfired: the opossums showed no interest in the rats, taking instead to rummaging through trash for food. Meanwhile, they procreated like mad. Result: Brooklyn is now overrun with rats and opossums.” Wasn’t there a Simpsons episode along these lines? . . . .

We could always airdrop tylenol-stuffed mice.

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

ESTIMATING CONSCIOUSNESS bit by bit. “Information theorists measure the amount of information in a computer file or a cellphone call in bits, and Dr. Tononi argues that we could, in theory, measure consciousness in bits as well. When we are wide awake, our consciousness contains more bits than when we are asleep.”