PATRICK WINN at the Atlantic says Bangkok looks, smells, and sounds like war.

HOT TIPS ON UN WASTE, FRAUD AND ABUSE: Claudia Rossett does the legwork for any journalists looking for reports of UN malfeasance, linking to the scores of previously secret UN internal audit reports just posted by the US Mission to the UN.

THE PRESS IS FREE to write that Obama signed a free speech law and then refused to take any questions from the press.

THAT ARIZONA BOYCOTT REALLY GETS RESULTS:  Utah’s governor cancels plans for a special session intended to weaken his state’s restrictions on hiring illegal workers:

Amid the fallout from Arizona’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration, Gov. Gary Herbert has scrapped plans to call a special session to water down a bill requiring businesses to verify the legal residency of employees.

Legislators balked at making the change and some wanted to go in a different direction, adding tough new penalties for not checking a worker’s legal status and even suggesting Utah should adopt Arizona’s law requiring residents to prove they are in the country legally — an unsettling prospect for business leaders.

The boycott might seem like a miscalculation on the left, unless the whole point is to lose — noisily. 

And how likely is that?  Why, it would make millions of immigration reform advocates look like rubes …

MARKDOWNS ON SOFTWARE FOR KIDS. It’s interesting to see that Rosetta Stone’s language software comes in Homeschool Editions. Makes sense, but it was news to me.

WISCONSIN NIGHTMARE. A sign at a farm equipment business on U.S. 12 near Sauk City:

TONY BADRAN on the shape of things to come with Iran.

BIG BROTHER GOES GLOBAL?  The Indian government reportedly “plans to do both an audit as well as security checks of all Chinese made telecoms gear installed on the existing networks of all service providers before allowing any fresh imports from that country.”  Meanwhile, privacy advocates in the United States are spending their time and treasure trying to stall new cybersecurity measures in this country.  Talk about misplaced priorities.  As I said in Skating on Stilts,

It’s remarkable when you think about it. Right now, this minute, agents of an authoritarian government are covertly turning on cameras and microphones in homes and offices all across America, spying on the unsuspecting and the innocent. They’re recording our every thought, our every keystroke, as we prepare private documents or visit websites.

And they’re able to do that today thanks to the hard work of privacy advocates.

More context here.  (And apologies to casual readers.  I should have warned you earlier that my posts won’t be exactly libertarian.  I like to think I speak for the Jacksonian wing of Instapunditarianism.)

AFTER SWEDISH CARTOONIST LARS VILKS was attacked in a theater last week for showing ten seconds of a provocative film offensive to Muslims, his house was set ablaze over the weekend.

SON OF ALAR: At Big Government, Robert James Bidinotto meets “The New Pesticide Scare Campaign,” finds it much the same as the old pesticide scare campaign:

The alar scare was just the opening salvo in the environmentalist barrage against man-made chemicals. Today’s atrazine scare — as Yogi Berra might put it — is “deja vu all over again.” And Yogi might also ask those of us burdened by this unending regulatory onslaught: “How do ya like them apples?”

Never let a crisis go to waste — even if you have to manufacture it in the first place.

“VERY BAD NEWS FOR CONSTITUTIONAL FEDERALISM,” says Ilya Somin. And though “the statute involved here is somewhat peculiar,” the Chief Justice’s joining the majority is not a good sign, says Eugene Volokh. But, “the case has little or no import for the constitutional challenges to the individual health insurance mandate,” says Randy Barnett.

MIDDLE EAST democracy advocates are fed up with Obama. If he didn’t see that coming, he certainly should have.

CONSPIRACY THEORY OF THE WEEK! Did Elena Kagan Bear Trig Palin? It all makes sense now . . . .

THE HEALTHCARE DEBATE and managed scarcity.

FROM PJTV: THE BOOK OF ZO: A CONSERVATIVE MANIFESTO.

THIS WEEKEND IN MIAMI: The Cuba Nostalgia Fair.

REQUIRED READING: My colleague Rick Richman at Commentary agrees with me that Paul Berman’s terrific new book The Flight of the Intellectuals should be considered required reading, and he adds two more to the list: Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England by Anthony Julius and The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism by Pascal Bruckner.

TERRORISTS KILL MUSLIMS AGAINST TERRORISM: Two Sunni Arab imams in Iraq were savagely murdered today after preaching against Al Qaeda in their mosques.

MAOIST REBELS destroy a bus in India with a roadside bomb and kill dozens, including civilians and police officers. It’s hard to believe communist insurgency is back so many years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but at least it doesn’t have much of a cheering section this time.