RANDY BARNETT: Balkin “Flips.” “You want to know another claim that is unprecedented? The claim that Congress may require any person in the US to do anything it deems to be in the public interest or pay a fine or penalty to the IRS. I do not know who first came up with this theory, but whoever it was was pushing the envelope of federal power beyond anywhere it had ever gone. The Tax power has never been used to impose a mandate on the American people and the Supreme Court has never recognized such a power.”

DAN MITCHELL: Abortion, Third-Party Payer, and the Cost of Health Care.

TIM CAVANAUGH: Why Would 80 Police Officers Cost Oakland $100 Million?

AT AMAZON, up to 40% off kitchen stuff.

IT JUST GETS BETTER: Breaking: NAACP President Was In Attendance at Sherrod Speech!

UPDATE: Tom Maguire emails that it may have been the state NAACP President, not national NAACP President Ben Jealous. Well, stay tuned.

REASON TV: Steven Greenhut on Public Employee Paychecks, Perks, and Plunder.

RECOVERY SUMMER! Bailouts reach $3.7 Trillion.

HONDA PROMISES plug-ins and EVs by 2012.

DAILY CALLER: Liberal journalists suggest government shut down Fox News.

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would.

But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all.

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow. . . .

The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.

“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.

“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”

Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”

Stalinist by instinct, aren’t they?

UPDATE: I didn’t notice this at first, but does Zasloff think that Fox — a cable network — has a “broadcasting permit” that the FCC can “pull?” I understand that some folks on the left would like that to be the case, but it’s not.

ANOTHER UPDATE: According to this Washington Examiner piece, Sarah Spitz is not an NPR producer, but

producer* of the KCRW public radio program “Left, Right and Center,” which is heard on a number of NPR stations across the country.

Just to get that right.

BYRON YORK: At Washington Post, mum’s the word on JournoList.

Since the paper employs JournoList’s founder and proprietor, and since comments on JournoList led to Weigel’s leaving the paper, and since those events raise questions about whether other Post journalists took part in JournoList, and since there are likely more stories to come from the thousands of still-unpublished exchanges on JournoList, it is reasonable to ask what the Post’s management knows, and what it knew in the past, about Post journalists taking part in the list-serv.

It’s reasonable to ask — but the Post isn’t going to answer. . . . Finally, in light of the “call them racists” passage in Tuesday’s Daily Caller story on JournoList, I asked whether Post management believes that kind of organized behind-the-scenes conversation is appropriate for Post journalists to take part in.

The Post’s response was brief. “We do not discuss personnel matters,” Coratti responded. “The Post has standards for its employees and we expect all personnel to follow them.”

Given the potential legal ramifications of Journolist for the Post, it’s not surprising they’ve clammed up.

POLITICO: So much for that ‘conversation’ on race.

Meanwhile, a reader notes this pic of the White House press corps, and calls it “as diverse as an Osmond Family reunion.” But that’s unfair, since the Osmonds represent a religious minority that probably isn’t welcome in the White House press corps.

UPDATE: Did MSNBC Adjust Website in Response to Diversity Criticism?

OBAMA: Mr. Incredible? Well, he doesn’t have much credibility left as far as I’m concerned . . . .

CHANGE: The Atlantic: The Scariest Unemployment Graph I’ve Seen Yet. This is no surprise, as it’s the logical consequence of the administation’s job-killing policies. Destroy the incentive to create jobs, promote longer-lasting unemployment. Duh.

RODDY BOYD: Killing Jews For Fun and For Profit: The Continuing American Adventures of Arab Bank.

CORRUPTION WATCH: First Chris Dodd: Now his wife?

WELL, I’LL BE SAD: What if tenure dies?

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: JournoList: Is ‘call them racists’ a liberal media tactic?

“What the Daily Caller has unearthed proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that most media organizations are either complicit by participation in the treachery that is JournoList, or are guilty of sitting back and watching…,” writes conservative firebrand Andrew Breitbart.

Such criticisms are fair, says Professor Campbell at SUNY Buffalo.

“To some extent [some] media have been successful in [playing the race card],” he says. “You have people now talking about the tea party and others in terms of this race issue, and that in itself deflects from what the tea party people are really concerned about, which is out-of-control federal spending and excessive intrusion of government. To the extent that the press, even by suggesting that race is an issue, if it gets everybody talking about the tea party in those terms, they have been successful.”

At the same time, Campbell says, the race card may have been so overplayed that it no longer has much of an effect on how Americans think or act.

“I think a lot of people don’t take it very seriously anymore,” he says.

I basically assume it’s made-up now. And I’m seldom wrong.

A DEEPENING ROLE FOR U.S. Special Ops Forces In Pakistan.

CLASS WARFARE in America.

NEWS: Tucker Carlson: Journolist Members Targeted FOX News (Video). Reader C.J. Burch writes: “I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much in a day I was clean and sober as I have today.”

FRANK J. FLEMING: Andrew Breitbart Stole My Race Card!

AT THE WHITE HOUSE, Bunker Time?

POLITICO: Climate Bill On The Ropes.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD CASE: ACORN finances leave questions.

BREITBART INDUCES FRATRICIDE: Sherrod Blames NAACP For Firing.

Obama Administration Stands By Decision To Fire Sherrod.

NAACP Blames Fox And Breitbart For The NAACP’s Overreaction To Shirley Sherrod Video.

UPDATE: Perspective, from The Anchoress.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Racism, For Fun And Profit.

MORE: Dan Riehl: Video: Shirley Sherrod Is A Racist And A Marxist.

STILL MORE: Shirley Sherrod pays for the sins of the NAACP. “The NAACP can’t get out its own way on the story of Shirley Sherrod, the Department of Agriculture official who was sacked following comments she made to the ‘civil rights’ group about a white farmer. The Obama administration isn’t exactly covering itself in glory either. Meanwhile, most folks seem to be missing the basic point of the story, at least from the perspective of Andrew Breitbart, the man who drove it. . . . The portions of the tape of interest to Breitbart are those in which members of the NAACP laugh at and approve of Sherrod’s initial impulse to provide inferior service to a white farmer. These NAACP members have been caught on tape condoning racism by a government official and demonstrating their own racism. Meanwhile, the NAACP condemns the Tea Party for what appears to be phantom racism.”

MORE STILL: “Sherrod seems to be making the case that this administration and the NAACP have created an environment of hyper-racial … awareness, for the lack of a better word, antithetical to the post-racial promise upon which the admin ran – and it claimed a casualty as a result.” Ya think?

FINALLY: Reader Stephen Clark writes:

Sitting here catching up and into my second glass of wine, I’ll second C.J. Burch’s take on the l’affair Breitbart.

So, we’re to believe that the NAACP somehow forgot the story of history’s single example of a confessed African-American racist and her redemption in their rush to judgment?

Incongruous with my wine it may be, but, pass the popcorn.

Didn’t they have the whole tape all along? Did they fire her without even watching it?