TEA PARTY UPDATE: Poll stunner: Sen. Bennett on brink of defeat.

The poll found that more than two-thirds (68 percent) of the delegates identify themselves as supporters of the tea-party movement. That doesn’t necessarily mean they carry signs at rallies, Coker said, but they support the philosophy.

“What is uniting everyone right now is fiscal conservatism, and I’m not even sure I like the term conservative. It’s just responsibility. Just quit spending all the money,” said David Kirkham, a co-founder of Utah’s tea party movement. “There are a lot of people who are angry. Are we responsible? I’m just glad we can be part of it.”

Yes, that’s the big tent.

JAMES TARANTO:

The Politics of ‘Anything Goes’

* “Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us–the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of ‘anything goes.’ Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America–there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America–there’s the United States of America.”–state senator Barack Obama, Democratic National Convention, July 27, 2004

* “In the video message to his supporters, [President] Obama said his administration’s success depends on the outcome of this fall’s elections and warned that if Republicans regain control of Congress, they could ‘undo all that we have accomplished.’ ‘This year, the stakes are higher than ever,’ he said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by Democratic officials. ‘It will be up to each of you to make sure that young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again. . . .’ “–Washington Post, April 26, 2010

Ouch.

THE WAR AGAINST SCIENCE: ‘Anarchists’ try to bomb Swiss IBM nano facility (but fail).

Somebody tell Chris Mooney!

SHOCKER: Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘Enemies List’ a Fantasy.

Related thoughts from Matt Welch. It’s not that the SPLC is a bunch of partisan political tools employing guilt by association and wild overreaches. I criticized Morris Dees on that to his face, on PBS Newshour back in 1995. It’s that they’ve become such an obvious, unsubtle, transparent bunch of tools.

COMEDY CENTRAL: Cowards!

IMMIGRATION: Poll Finds Half the Democrats Are Racist, Nazi, Apartheid Supporters .

SO WITH OBAMA VISITING QUINCY, and hoping for national media attention, I have to wonder — will there be infiltrators to provide him with a “courageous” moment of confronting Tea Partiers? If they can arrange it, probably.

GREAT MOMENTS IN JOURNALISM.

KEEPING UP THE PRESSURE: Andrew Breitbart; No More Beer Summits: Tea Party ‘N-Word’ Incident Didn’t Happen, And the Congressional Black Caucus Owes America an Apology.

Plus, Letter to the Congressional Black Caucus from Tea Party Federation: Please Provide Evidence of Cannon N-Word Incident. I agree. I think it was a lie, and I think the Tea Partiers deserve an apology. This got me flak from the likes of the Socialist Workers Party and DailyKos, but so be it. Miserable flacks flying cover don’t change the truth — they tried to provoke a racial incident, and when they failed they lied about it.

SHANNON LOVE: The Divisive Left.

COFFEE PARTY denies internal power struggle.

AGAINST OBAMA BEFORE HE WAS FOR HIM.

ROGER KIMBALL: Haters On The March: “Heavens! The extremists are in the streets again. As I write, racially motivated opponents of Arizona’s new law that is intended to curb illegal immigration are festooning the state Capitol with swastikas — swastikas! — made of refried beans and are planning legal action to block the law from taking effect. The world’s most buffoonsh political figure, the ‘Rev.’ Al Sharpton, has called for a boycott and is said (though this cannot be confirmed at press time) to be calling on Tawana Brawley to speak at an anti-anti-imigration rally. Naturally, The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, and kindred media outlets are set to repudiate these new outbreaks of hate and racist incitements to violence, narrow-mindedness, bigotry, etc., etc. Look for it tomorrow on the Daily KOS and other web sites dedicated to rooting out irrational prejudice and exposing the sore losers who don’t understand that elections have consequences and who won’t give a new law a chance but who divisively call for the repeal of the will of the people.”

I KEEP SEEING NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET COMMERCIALS, and I have to say, Freddie Krueger wouldn’t last five minutes in my dreams. Er, make that five minutes without falling asleep. Last night I dreamed about blogging and Facebook, with the high point being that Parijata Mackey made the cover of H+ Magazine. Welcome to La Brea, Freddie . . . . .

STEPHEN GREEN: Hair of the Dog: From Wall Street To The Wide-Open Border, A Whole Lotta Policy Fail. Plus, Bob Schieffer on porn. Who knew Schieffer was so buff?

WELL, THEY’D HAVE TO BE: Antarctic Research Bases Are Seriously Self-Sustaining.

LAME-ASS CALIFORNIA COPS raid home of Gizmodo blogger.

UPDATE: Some readers think I’m being unfair here, but I’m not. Let me explain this in terms of gang-vs.-gang politics, which is really the operative paradigm.

First, in the absence of an unusually solicitous California statute, there’d be no claim by Apple (the most powerful gang here) against Gizmodo — their employee lost the iPhone in a bar, and that would be their tough luck. But there’s also another unusually solicitous California statute that immunizes journalists. But even in the absence of the statutes, the cops would never have raided, say, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, because if they had, the Mercury News would have run a 16-part series on police corruption and ineptitude. They’re not similarly afraid of bloggers, because bloggers don’t have as powerful a gang, or so they think.

But it’s all gangland politics, no more and no less.

UPDATE: Reader Robert O’Rourke writes:

What about the judge who signed the warrant? Isn’t he the one with the law degree? The one who passed the California bar exam?

The one who is supposed to be the firewall between citizens and lame ass cops?

Back in the Framing era, judges were liable when they issued an improper search warrant. But, thanks to the — judge-created! — doctrine of judicial immunity, no longer. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Stephen Commiskey writes:

So what’s your opinion on Gizmodo outing the engineer? I can’t be the only one of your readers who thinks the cops and Gizmodo are both less than laudable. You read Slashdot, and the comment thread there is full of this.

Actually, either there or on Instapundit, I’d like to hear your brief opinion as a law prof: at common law in the US (as opposed to the Cali law at issue here), would the prototype be considered stolen goods given what happened? As a corollary, to ask a (potentially trivial,
forgive the non-lawyer) question raised by a lot of Slashdotters, is my phone finders-keepers at common law the moment I get drunk at a bar and accidentally leave it behind? Even if it’s logged into my Facebook account, so that there’s no question to whom it belongs?

At common law, there’d be an action to recover the property in replevin, and perhaps an action for trespass to chattels or conversion. But there would be no crime, and no cops crashing in and seizing computers.

MORE: Reader Scott Benger writes:

I am not a lawyer, but it seems pertinent to me to include in this discussion Apple’s treatment of its customers whose i-phones are stolen. Apple encourages the theft of i-phones by refusing to discontinue itunes service to those phones reported as stolen. The stolen phone can be enrolled in itunes service by the thief even though the owner provides a police report of the theft. My sympathies for the Apple company in the loss of their prototype run very very thin.

Good point.

FORGET THE DEPLORABLE JEWISH JOKE: Tom Maguire looked at the rest of Gen. Jones’ speech and writes: National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones Scares Me.

UPDATE: New York Magazine defends the joke. Carrying water. Note the update where Gen. Jones apologizes, undercutting their pathetic, politically-driven defense. I mean, would they have covered for Trent Lott this way? Not a chance. Hacks.

THE HOTTEST KITCHEN GADGET: An iPhone App?

VIDEO: An Obamaville in Queens. Reader Kevin Greene writes: “Hundreds of people have set up a tent city on a street outside a company in Queens hoping just to get an application for the job. Not the actual job, mind you. They’re camping out just to get in line to get one of the 100 applications the company will hand out.” So how’s that stimulus working out?

LONGING FOR THE RETURN OF “SILENT CAL?” Good luck with that.

REFRIED BEANS OF HATE.

DENIM TUXEDOS? We really are reliving the Carter era . . . .

PENNSYLVANIA’S TEA PARTY: Brewing For Years.

For the past several weeks the tea party movement has been widely maligned as radical and dangerous. For example, former President Bill Clinton, in a speech and a New York Times op-ed, has cautioned that supporting tea parties could unleash violent militias. The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report claiming they are “shot through with rich veins of radical ideas, conspiracy theories, and racism.”

None of this fits with what I’ve seen. The tea parties I’ve spoken at in western Pennsylvania resemble church picnics—although their growing potency may be a signal of things to come on the national scene.

Read the whole thing.

MEN, WOMEN, and separate checks.