HMM: “Federal authorities are closing in on the man they say is a person of interest in the Times Square car bomb attempt this weekend, who is described as a naturalized American citizen who hails from Pakistan and just returned after spending five months there. There is growing evidence the bomber did not act alone and had ties to radical elements overseas, with one senior official telling ABC News there are several individuals believed to be connected with the bombing and that at least one of them is a Pakistani-American.” Stay tuned.

MORE ON OHIO: Tea Partiers vs. the Republican establishment.

GREECE’S PROBLEM: Tax cheating, or Byzantine and confiscatory taxes? Chicken, egg. You get less tax cheating when the system is simple, rates are low, and enforcement is considered fair. You get more when things are the reverse. Related thoughts here.

THIS WEEK in the future.

JIM DEMINT: Leading The Charge for GOP Insurgents.

CREATING CLOUDS with lasers.

GROAN: Let’s Paws To Appreciate Our Pets.

PJTV: Bill Whittle: A Tale Of Two Americas.

A REVOLUTION IN PENNSYLVANIA. The bitter clingers are doing on-the-ground politics, of the sort I described here.

DAN MITCHELL: Six Reasons Why The Capital Gains Tax Should Be Abolished.

IF BY CHANGING YOU MEAN VANISHING: The Changing Nature of Privacy On Facebook.

PATRICK POOLE: Willful Blindness: Army Unprepared for Another Jihadist Attack.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: The Trouble With Proxy Wars.

MORE ON DRONES: “The most striking take-away for me from the hearing was just how much the position of the professional international law community, as ably represented by Professor O’Connell, starts from fundamentally different premises than that of the US government, of any administration, at any time.”

TIM CAVANAUGH: Greek Bailout Already Making Situation Worse.

IN THE MAIL: From Richard Florida, The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity.

REP. GENE TAYLOR (D-MS): Oil Spill Not So Bad, Looks Like Chocolate Milk. Well that’s good to hear, because I was starting to worry.

ANN ALTHOUSE TO MARTHA MINOW: “Keep teaching, professor! A lot of us are prepped and eager for Lesson 2!” I think this is all just a clever ploy to get people talking about how much better Harvard Law was when Elena Kagan was Dean . . . . More on Minow here.

On the other hand, there’s this from the comments: “Harvard is a broken brand. Most of the people responsible for the housing mess, the Iraq war, Enron, the S&L crisis and all sorts of other poor policy have been created by the highly ‘regarded’ Harvard Education.”

MARK TAPSCOTT: Did Obama administration tell GM to lie about its TARP repayment?

JOHN HINDERAKER: Was the Federal Response to the Deepwater Horizon Disaster Adequate?

It appears clear from this record that the Obama administration 1) underestimated what was obviously a major incident with potential for environmental catastrophe, and assumed a best-case scenario–the opposite of what Ken Salazar now claims; 2) relied for too long on British Petroleum to contain the spill, without taking decisive action to protect American interests in the Gulf Coast; 3) had no real plan in place for how a major spill in the Gulf could be contained; and 4) to this day, remains obsessed with asserting that financial responsibility lies with BP, without any apparent understanding of how inadequate such liability will prove to those whose livelihoods have been devastated.

It will take months and years for all of the relevant facts to become known, but I suspect that before too long, the Obama administration will default to its strongest defense: that while its response may have been ill-prepared, short-sighted and slow, it didn’t matter, because even an adequate, timely response could not have prevented the destruction that it appears will result from the Deepwater Horizon incident. That may turn out to be true. Whether this defense will satisfy voters remains to be seen.

Stay tuned.

YOU DON’T WANT TO BE illegal in Mexico.

IF YOU MISSED IT THIS WEEKEND ON SIRIUS-XM SATELLITE RADIO, the latest PJM Political is now online. Featuring Stephen Green, James Lileks, Brian Anderson, and more.

STEWART BAKER: Times Square Bombing Attempt: Where Were The Cameras?

AT AMAZON, free two-day shipping on select camera and photo gear. Nothing in it for people like me who have Amazon Prime, alas.

THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS WEEKEND:

How GM and the Treasury Dept. lied about loan paybacks.

My Washington Examiner column on the Tea Party Movement’s Unglamorous But Effective Future.

Walter Russell Mead on Greece.

Thoughts on extraterrestrial invasion.

Cincinnati Tea Partiers will do what Congress didn’t, and actually read the bill — aloud.

Peggy Noonan on the Big Alienation.

White House facing Obama’s Katrina? Plus, criticism for Obama from Bill Maher and the NYT — are these the end times?

Ed Morrissey asks, Why does the Wall Street regulation overhaul give FTC authority over the Internet?

Democratic Senate candidate Mickey Kaus on how immigration marchers are being manipulated — by the Democrats.