“I’M A HUGE BELIEVER IN STATES’ RIGHTS” — something to add to your list of things not to say if you want to win a beauty pageant.

“METALHEADS MAY SHED TEARS THIS DAY, but we raise our horns in remembrance.”

If they can hack your laptop, can they also hack your car’s ECM? The Auto Prophet says not … yet.

“I LOVE IT when you talk dirty to us, Althouse.”

An Arab-American wins Miss U.S.A.

The always-excellent Popehat blog explains why this clearly shows that the terrorists have won. As for all the crazies alleging a conspiracy, I’m trying to figure out how one might go about “fixing” a competition that’s completely subjective in the first place.

Still, intrepid journalist that I am, I have spent quite a bit of time reviewing the evidence. And I’ve come to the conclusion that Rima Fakih’s title is very well-deserved.

UNEXPECTEDLY! States’ Tax Collections Falter, Widening Budget Gaps. “April tax collections are falling short of forecasts and even dropping below last year’s depressed levels in a number of states, complicating budget troubles and prompting some governors to dip into rainy-day funds. . . . April is the biggest revenue month for many states because it is when they collect a large portion of income taxes. The month’s collections came up short of expectations in California by 26.4%, or $3.6 billion; in Pennsylvania by 11.8%, or $390.1 million; and in Kansas by 10.2%, or $65.3 million. More states will report in the next few weeks.”

THE IDEA THAT THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT MIGHT BE AN INCUBATOR OF FEMINISM makes Michelle Goldberg want to bash her head against a wall.

It’s not often that I recommend a book written by a politician because they usually aren’t, they’re ghosted. But former Sen. Fred Thompson’s “Teaching the pig to dance,” which hits the bookstores Tuesday, actually comes from his pen. It’s about his early life growing up rural in Tennessee, and it’s hilarious in the dry, self-deprecating way that is peculiarly Southern and instantly recognizable to anybody who grew up below the Mason-Dixon line.  The chapter “Rebel without a clue” is priceless, as is the discussion in the next chapter of the football coach surreptitiously called Stumpy.

ROBIN HOOD: Tea Partier? Plus, Shut up, pundits explain.

“CUT DEEPER. PULL HARDER.”

Public Option is alive and quite well at OPM,  the government’s personnel management agency.

Here’s today’s photo of the day. Snapped in August 2008 along the sound in Homer, Alaska. I shoot with an EOS Rebel XSi, Canon’s entry-level DSLR. I dream of someday owning a Mark III.

IN THE MAIL: Newt Gingrich’s latest book, To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine. I wonder what it’s about? . . . .

Greetings, Instanation. Since I’m new to the Instapundit guest blogging crew, I thought I’d take a moment to introduce myself. (And plug some my work, of course!)

I’m a senior editor for Reason magazine, where I write a weekly crime column and a couple of investigative features per year, generally on criminal justice issues. I’m also a media fellow with the Cato Institute and I publish the weblog TheAgitator.com. If you read this site regularly you might recognize my name from the Cory Maye case, my reporting on SWAT teams and police militarization, or my investigations into Mississippi’s forensic system, particularly the controversial medical examiner Steven Hayne and his sidekick, fraudulent bite mark specialist Michael West.

Like our esteemed host, I also dabble in amateur photography. I’ll post a photo or so a day of some of my favorites over the years. I currently live with my pup Daisy in Alexandria, Virginia, though I’ll be moving to Nashville, Tennessee in a couple of weeks.

Welcome to my fellow guest bloggers. And a big thank you to Glenn for inviting me to help fill in for him this week.

WITHOUT MURDER, it’s cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a juvenile to life in prison without parole, writes Justice Kennedy for a 6-3 Court. Dissenting, Justice Thomas criticizes the majority for imposing “an exacting constraint on democratic sentencing choices based on … such an untestable philosophical conclusion”: “that a 17-year-old who pulls the trigger on a firearm can demonstrate sufficient depravity and irredeemability to be denied reentry into society, but… a 17-year-old who rapes an 8- year-old and leaves her for dead does not.”

GLENN SAYS IT SHOULD BE “LIVELY ENOUGH” HERE with me and Megan, Michael, Ed, Radley, and Mark. And I hope the “enough” in “lively enough” is not like the “enough” in “You’re likable enough….”

I’M HEADING OFF TO A SECURE, UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, and I’ll have a bunch of guestbloggers filling in here: Not only my usual crew of Ann Althouse, Megan McArdle, and Michael Totten, but to lighten the load on them, quite a few others: Ed Driscoll, sometime InstaPundit correspondent Stewart Baker (whose new book on counterterrorism, Skating On Stilts, will be coming out soon), Radley Balko, and Mark Tapscott. Should be lively enough that when I get back, you’ll wish I’d stayed gone longer!

I’ve also left a few scheduled posts, but don’t be fooled — if you’re looking for me, I’ll be trying to stay offline as much as possible, so email response will be something between slow and nonexistent. Sorry, but I need a break.

IN JUST A FEW MINUTES, PJTV’S SCOTT OTT will be on the Brian Lehrer show.

IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS, lashing out at the press. More here. This seems uncharacteristically intemperate for Cayman, almost Venezuelan.

HUNTING FOR THE CONTROLLERS OF the Conficker worm. Sounds kind of like something out of Daniel Suarez’s Daemon.

MARKDOWNS ON Gerber knives and multi-tools.

POLICE: MORE MILITARIZED THAN THE MILITARY? Radley Balko has a letter from a military officer:

I am a US Army officer, currently serving in Afghanistan. My first thought on reading this story is this: Most American police SWAT teams probably have fewer restrictions on conducting forced entry raids than do US forces in Afghanistan.

For our troops over here to conduct any kind of forced entry, day or night, they have to meet one of two conditions: have a bad guy (or guys) inside actively shooting at them; or obtain permission from a 2-star general, who must be convinced by available intelligence (evidence) that the person or persons they’re after is present at the location, and that it’s too dangerous to try less coercive methods. The general can be pretty tough to convince, too. (I’m a staff liason, and one of my jobs is to present these briefings to obtain the required permission.)

Generally, our troops, including the special ops guys, use what we call “cordon and knock”: they set up a perimeter around the target location to keep people from moving in or out,and then announce their presence and give the target an opportunity to surrender. In the majority of cases, even if the perimeter is established at night, the call out or knock on the gate doesn’t happen until after the sun comes up.

Oh, and all of the bad guys we’re going after are closely tied to killing and maiming people.

What might be amazing to American cops is that the vast majority of our targets surrender when called out.

I don’t have a clear picture of the resources available to most police departments, but even so, I don’t see any reason why they can’t use similar methods.

Quite different from using door-busting tactics to serve warrants on nonviolent drug offenders. Of course, one difference is that we care about winning the hearts and minds of people in Afghanistan . . . .

PJTV: Livestreaming the Chicago Climate Conference. And if you like this kind of coverage, consider subscribing to PJTV.

M.A.D.: Mothers Against Debt.

THIS IS JUST WRONG.