MICHAEL TOTTEN interviews Paul Berman about his new book The Flight of the Intellectuals. “Something terrible has happened to the intellectual class during the interim period. The killers’ would-be victims have been excoriated in the press, and even, in some cases, blamed for their predicament. Berman won’t stand for it.” Remember, like Michael Yon, Michael Totten is supported by reader donations, so if you like his work, hit the tipjar!

BYRON YORK: No winners in boycott of Ariz. immigration law.

A HORDE OF ANGRY LIBERTARIANS! I think it’s just what this country needs!

ARTIST FRANK FRAZETTA has died.

GEOENGINEERING: Bill Gates Funds Seawater-Spraying Cloud Machines.

ED DRISCOLL: Is Newsweek “Horrendously Homophobic?”

PROF. BAINBRIDGE: Why Did The Ratings Agencies Fail During The Subprime Crisis?

THE KNOXVILLE TEA PARTY FOLKS are protesting Al Gore’s honorary degree at the University of Tennessee.

MARC THIESSEN: Did A Captured Taliban Leader Know About The Times Square Plot?

DEBT: “Germany and France are among top- rated euro-area states that may compromise their AAA grades by standing behind the debts of weaker members with their 750 billion-euro ($955 billion) stabilization fund. The package is ‘making debt profiles deteriorate, potentially damaging the ratings of core sovereigns,’ said Stefan Kolek, a strategist at UniCredit SpA in Munich. ‘It’s a kind of Ponzi game at the highest level.'”

CAR TALK, Star Trek edition.

A STRONG PICK FOR A WEAK PRESIDENT: My take on the Kagan nomination, in the New York Post.

ANN ALTHOUSE AND EMILY BAZELON ON ELENA KAGAN: Althouse thinks it’s naive to think that Kagan’s social skills will make her influential on the Court.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Let’s Not Get Too Excited About Kagan. Conservatives and libertarians may get excited, but if the judge-pickers in the Obama White House thought she really had any conservative or libertarian sympathies, they would have picked someone else. So — who are the rubes, this time? I have my suspicions. . . . .

And Bernstein’s Calabresi analogy is good, but in Kagan’s favor, unlike Calabresi she never compared Bush to Mussolini. So she’s got that going for her, anyway.

On the other hand, folks on the left are comparing her to Harriet Miers.

FANNIE MAE: NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY?

It seems like it was just five days ago that you had to pony up another $10.6 billion for the government-owned mortgage guarantor Freddie Mac, after the former GSE reported an $8 billion loss.

I hope you got your money’s worth, because today Freddie’s moronic fraternal twin Fannie Mae is hitting you up for another $8.4 billion, having managed to lose more than $11.5 billion in the first quarter — plus a $1.5 billion dividend it paid to the Department of the Treasury for assistance, bringing its total lose in the quarter to $13.1 billion.

The bad news is that that’s the good news. Fannie lost nearly twice as much — $23.2 billion — in the first quarter of 2009. All told, the failed mortgage underwriter lost a whopping $72 billion last year. The worse news is that there is no conceivable end to these losses.

Read the whole thing.

GREEK BAILOUTS: What Are They Good For?

ROGER SIMON: Nostalgia for Bernie Madoff: British Isles have lobotomy. “I’m beginning to have nostalgia for Bernie Madoff. At least he knew he was operating a Ponzi scheme. The clowns in charge of the UK have been running one for years and seem to be totally clueless about it.”

JACOB SULLUM: What Would Joe Lieberman’s Terrorist Expatriation Act Accomplish? As I mentioned the other day, I think this is a terrible idea.

SHOCKER: Trillion-dollar euro rescue won’t solve low growth.

ERICK ERICKSON: The Great Disentangling Has Begun: What Bob Bennett’s Defeat Means and Does Not. “It’s not about a purge. It’s about an insurrection.”

ILYA SOMIN: Kagan, the Harvard Ban on Military Recruiters, and Anti-Military Bias.

MARKDOWNS ON CANON camera / printer combinations.

PJTV: Helen interviews Cuban bloggers, and tries a cigar.

Also, check out Babalublog.com. (Bumped).

WHAT’S NEXT? A CHINESE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT?

In front of a roomful of government officials, businessman Zhou Jusheng took the mic and made a simple demand: finish paving and landscaping the industrial park that houses his drill-bit factory.

His request at a public hearing was modest by Western standards. But in China, where the communist government muscularly guards its political monopoly and where people mostly defer to authority, Zhou’s assertiveness points to a telling change.

“You could say that I was just wasting my breath,” he said later at his factory. “But as a citizen, I should speak out.”

The people of Wenling, a prosperous city of 1.7 million, have an opportunity few Chinese citizens do: to take part in hearings on local government budget plans and suggest ways to spend the money.

As society grows richer and individuals pay more taxes, authoritarian China is slowly being forced to make space for people to participate in government affairs.

“Ordinary people have the right to ask, how are you spending my money? Are you spending it on me? What are you doing with it?” said Li Fan, who runs a private think tank in Beijing that promotes political reform and is advising Wenling officials.

Obviously, they must be racists or something.

DAVE HARDY is unimpressed with Elena Kagan.