TIM PAWLENTY: Time For Obama To Make Sacrifices. “Americans have sacrificed enough; it’s time for government to sacrifice for a change. When Washington Democrats talk about balancing the budget, they speak gravely about painful choices and sacrifice — but what they mean is tax increases. In other words, we sacrifice so they can spend.”

WILLIE BROWN GOES AFTER “out of control” civil servants in California. “Willie Brown has been fairly consistent: an extremely likeable political pragmatist with no particular attachment to principle or ideology. Which makes his new campaign worth listening to: It shows that facts on the ground are no longer possible to ignore.”

MEANWHILE, back in Afghanistan.

And remember, there’s lots of war-on-terror news at Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg. Drop by, and hit the tipjar if you’re so inclined.

OH, WELL: Higgs boson discovery rumours false, say Tevatron scientists.

TUNKU VARADARAJAN: The Tea Party Isn’t Racist: It’s The NAACP That’s The Throwback. “The NAACP, this vestigial bone on the American body politic, has thrust itself into the headlines by voting, at its annual meeting Tuesday, to censure as ‘racist’ the Tea Party movement. This controversial public rebuke—delivered a day after the first lady, Michelle Obama, addressed the NAACP’s conference—has opened up a raw, new racial front in the run-up to the November elections. In effect, the self-congratulatory, post-racial Obama camp is reaching for the crudest weapon in the Democratic arsenal: the racial blunderbuss. . . . The NAACP senses—knows—that the electoral momentum is building inexorably against President Obama. And they hope to slow it by playing the race card.” They’re desperate. But the weapon isn’t what it used to be, thanks to greeting-card overuse and the like.

Plus this: “If black Americans are suffering due to our current economic woes, Obama’s own policies are hardly helping them. The NAACP can’t bitch about ‘the Man’ anymore because the Man is Obama. And so instead it turns its racially monolithic vituperation on the Tea Party, which has never been in power, and has had no impact on the economic condition of black Americans—except to advocate policies (smaller government, lower taxes, radically reduced deficits, etc.) that would likely improve the standard of living of all Americans (blacks included). In fact, the Tea Party is a greater friend of black Americans, one might say, than the administration, and is much more representative of America than the NAACP.”

UPDATE: “The NAACP is now a political arm of the White House”

LARRY ARNHART: “Libertarians need Charles Darwin. They need him because a Darwinian science of human evolution supports classical liberalism.”

LEE SMITH: Why Israel’s enemies will always be the darlings of Western intellectuals.

STUPID VOTERS: Bill Press melts down over Obama poll numbers.

AL GORE IS MERELY pining for the fjords.

SHOCKER: BAD STATISTICS.

It would seem that the best time to launch a bad statistic about domestic violence is during massively attended sporting events. A gullible public seems to think that high levels of testosterone on a playing field plus alcohol just naturally translates into an astronomical escalation of male fans beating up on their wives and girlfriends.

In the latest example of myth-making on the connection between sports and domestic violence, England’s Association of Chief Police Officers stated in May that during the World Cup “cases of domestic abuse increase by nearly 30% on England match days.” The figure came from a study sponsored by the British Home Office, so it seemed credible. The shocking figure sparked a big publicity campaign, with a lurid poster featuring a cowering woman covered in bruises and the imprint of a man’s shoe.

But on their weekly show, Law in Action, two BBC legal commentators concluded that the “World Cup Abuse Nightmare” was “a stunt based on misleading figures.” The thirty percent claim came from cherrypicked data and was riddled with flaws, essentially ignoring match days when there was little or no uptick in abuse. An actually trustworthy study done by the London Metropolitan Police Authority contradicted the thirty percent “finding,” but by then the media had a story that was too good to check for veracity.

We’ve been scammed before on this subject. Anyone remember the big 1993 Super Bowl Sunday hoax? The media all jumped on a bad statistic and ran with it then too.

It’s like they’re more interested in the narrative than the truth.

C.J. BURCH IS all over the Kindle store.

CBS: Poll: Americans Say Bad Economy Will Linger. “A majority of Americans have a negative impression of the economy and expect the effects of the recession to linger for years, according to a new CBS News poll. Most also say President Obama has spent too little time on the economy, which Americans cite as the country’s most important problem by a wide margin.”

A PJM EXCLUSIVE: Congressman Asks Inspector General to Launch Investigation of New Black Panther Case.

POLITICO: Tea party to NAACP: ‘Grow up’.

They told me if I voted for John McCain, the NAACP would be praising Klansmen and attacking black tea partiers on racial grounds. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? Nobody would have been crazy enough to predict that.

Then again, nobody would have predicted that the NAACP would call the term “black hole” racist, either. How the mighty have fallen.

UPDATE: Big Government is all over the story. Just keep scrolling.

BOMB THREAT AIMED AT anti-illegal immigration rally.

EPATER LE BOURGEOIS: “I would trade a successful career for a family of my own.” A statement more shocking than coming out of the closet, these days . . . .

YOU DON’T SAY: Big Runaway Toyota Surprise: Drivers, Not Electronics, at Fault. “The results suggest that some drivers who said their Toyota and Lexus vehicles surged out of control were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to jam on the brakes…”

In the words of P.J. O’Rourke: “Yes, the dumb buggers stepped on the gas instead of the brake.”

Just like with the identical claims about the Audi 5000, which O’Rourke was writing about. So who does Toyota sue to get its reputation back?

UPDATE: Tom Maguire notes that we’re all supposed to have moved on to hating BP now anyway. Good point.

WAIT, WASN’T THERE A SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE SKIT ABOUT THIS? New White House talking point: Al Qaeda is racist.

LOSE AT HOME, MOVE THE STRUGGLE ABROAD: Calling In The World Court Against The Gun Trade. If the World Court disagrees with the U.S. Constitution, it can go hang.

FAWNING OVER A Stalinist “Rock Star.”

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Justice Department Continues to Act in Non-Race-Neutral Fashion. “Yet more proof that the DOJ doesn’t want whites and Asians, when they are the discriminated-against minority, to be protected under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”

FROM READER BRUCE WEBSTER, a one-page disaster preparedness checklist.

L.E.D. LIGHTING: I’ve had an LED spotlight in my basement hallway for over a year now, sent by reader Shane Sullivan. It’s a Lighting Science SOL R30, it uses 13 watts, and it’s supposed to be the equivalent of a 50 watt halogen light. It seems equivalent in brightness, though a tad whiter, than the 65-watt incandescent indoor spots on either side of it. The light looks good, and it’s outlasted more than one CFL bulb that was supposed to last 8 years. I don’t know what it costs, but I suspect it’s kinda pricey, but I can see replacing other bulbs with one of these.

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST TREEHOUSE.

EAT, DRINK, LEARN: Summer Culinary Camp for grownups.