IF YOU MISSED IT LAST NIGHT ON SIRIUS/XM SATELLITE RADIO, the latest PJM Political is online. James Lileks, Michael Barone, Byron York, and, er, me. Plus Stephen Green!

ALLAHPUNDIT: Obama’s getting a bad rap on the “superpower” comment. Yeah, I had something on this earlier, though as I mentioned then, it doesn’t get the writers off the hook.

UPDATE: “Hospice America?”

BYRON YORK: How Clinton Exploited Oklahoma City For Political Gain.

What Clinton and his supporters do not talk about is the way in which Clinton, aided by pollster/adviser Dick Morris, exploited the bombing to make a political comeback from what was the lowest point in Clinton’s presidency to that time. (The Lewinsky scandal was still three years in the future.) In the days after Oklahoma City, Clinton and Morris devised a plan to use the bombing to discredit and outmaneuver the new Republican majority in Congress. . . . It was a political strategy crafted while rescue and recovery efforts were still underway in Oklahoma City. And it worked better than Clinton or Morris could have predicted. In the months after the bombing, Clinton regained the upper hand over Republicans, eventually winning battles over issues far removed from the attack. The next year, 1996, he went on to re-election. None of that might have happened had Clinton, along with Morris, not found a way to wring as much political advantage as possible out of the deaths in Oklahoma City. And that is the story you’re not hearing in all the anniversary discussions.

Yes, there’s some good stuff in George Stephanopoulos’s memoir, All Too Human, on this, too. A lot of people had forgotten this, and the shameful incompetence that led to the Waco massacre that — unlike the blamed Limbaugh, etc. — actually inspired Timothy McVeigh, but by bringing it up again Clinton is reminding people, and undermining the elder-statesman role he was trying to carve out. Bad move. Either he’s losing his touch, or they’re getting desperate. Probably desperate: Rasmussen Presidential Approval Index: Obama Drops Nine Points in Three Days.

And for those wanting a refresher on this history, I recommend Dave Kopel and Paul Blackman’s No More Wacos: What’s Wrong With Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It. There’s also Dan Gifford’s documentary, Waco: The Rules of Engagement.

Related: Bill Clinton Returns To The Scene Of The Crime. “Clinton knows how false and dishonorable his charges are. But they worked for him, and he is helping Barack Obama set the stage for a similar political comeback in the event that some violent event might occur; or, perhaps, in the absence of any such event. So far, all of the violence associated with Tea Party or townhall events has been perpetrated by union thugs employed by the Democratic Party, but that hasn’t stopped the Democrats from claiming that it is the Republicans who are somehow violence-prone.” Actually, I think there have been some non-union thugs, too.

Lies and smears aimed at their fellow Americans, for short-term political gain. This is who they are, and this is what they do. It worked better, however, when there were fewer alternative channels of communication, and when their character was less well-known.

Meanwhile, Tam has some thoughts on homeland security:

We have guys with their jockeys full of Semtex buying airline tickets with cash, and the feds are busy getting spun up about bubbas in Mossy Oak angry about taxes. Way to keep your eye on the ball…

When Clinton was yammering about the danger of domestic terrorists, Osama bin Laden was planning 9/11, and Clinton wasn’t doing much. It would be unfortunate if the Obama Administration followed in his footsteps.

WASHINGTON POST: ‘Tea partiers’ more wacky mavericks than extremist threat.

I went to the “tea party” rally at the Washington Monument on Thursday to check out just how reactionary and potentially violent the movement truly was.

Answer: Not very. . . . I found that I agreed heartily with the tea partiers on what is perhaps their single biggest concern: that America’s swelling government debt seriously threatens our long-term prosperity.

Read the whole thing.

CATHY YOUNG on Russia and Poland.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Guns Or Butter?

I had some thoughts on that in Forbes a while back.

THINGS THAT DON’T SUCK: I ordered one of these cheap keychain LED lights a while back, and I’ve been surprised how handy it’s been. It’s surprisingly bright, and it’s always handy on my, er, keychain; last night it found Helen’s lost earring under the car. I just ordered several more for family members.

UPDATE: Dan Hanson writes with lots of flashlight talk:

Hi, Glenn. Dan here from the old HappyFunPundit. After reading your flashlight blog entry, I thought I’d share my findings from a recent flashlight obsession I went through, which landed me upon a couple of lights that, in my opinion, are the best out there.

For a keychain light, check out this one: http://goinggear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=14_19&products_id=255. It’s an ITP single AAA cell light (barely larger than the battery itself).

These lights use a microprocessor and a high-tech CREE LED. They have three brightness modes. On the lowest, 1.5 lumen setting, they’re perfect for reading a program at a concert, or looking for something you dropped at the theatre (i.e. bright enough to see without disturbing others), or reading something in front of you during a presentation or seminar in a darkened room. They have a little clip which you can reverse to slide the light onto a ball cap brim, making a poor man’s miner’s light for hands-free operation.

The microprocessor uses pulse-width modulation to control current to the bulb in low light modes (as opposed to adding resistors, which doesn’t help battery life). The result is an amazingly long battery life – They last 40 hours on a single AAA cell at that brightness, making them a good little survival light to have on you at all times.

At the highest power setting, this little thing will put out 80 lumens of light – as much as a large tactical flashlight. That also makes it an excellent survival/emergency light, as you can flag people down with it from a very long distance. The CREE LEDs are amazing. I’ve purchased a half dozen of these for various gifts for friends and family, and everyone absolutely loves them.

I use mine constantly. I originally thought I’d just use it for emergencies or for the occasional need to look in a dark space, but I find the thing is perfect for adding extra light when working behind my computer, or checking fan openings for dust, or reading the label on a product in a store. The extra light makes all the difference to my 46 year old eyes when reading small text.

For a larger flashlight for your camping/survival needs, the Fenix LD-20 is one of the best out there. It uses two standard AA batteries, and is the size of a MagLite, but it puts a MagLite to shame in all categories. It also uses a CREE LED, and can put out 17 lumens for 71 hours. It’s also got strobe modes, and a 200-lumen bright mode, which is just incredibly bright for a small flashlight. I got mine with an accessory kit containing a red wand attachment for road signalling and a white diffuser which turns it into an emergency candle. It can light up a room with 17 lumens for three days straight on two AA cells. With typical night-time only use, you’ll get more than a week’s worth of emergency light from it.

A light like this is a must for any survival/emergency kit, and I carry one in my car for road emergencies. There are lots of tactical flashlights out there, but I like ones that use standard batteries so it’s easy to carry spare or cannibalize batteries from other devices when necessary. I won’t need my remote controls when the power fails, but I can scavenge enough AAA and AA batteries from them to keep my in light for a month.

Both of these lights are fully waterproof. You can throw them in a pool for an hour and they’ll work fine. They’re not dive lights, however, and won’t do well under any kind of real pressure.

Cool.

WELL, SO DOES THE MARITAL KIND, IF YOU DO IT RIGHT: Kooky Ayatollah: Extramarital Sex Causes Earthquakes.

MORE SCANDAL? Gore takes cash for water campaign from chemical firm. “Al Gore, the self-styled squeakiest-clean and deepest-green politician in American history, has some explaining to do this weekend. His environmental organisation has taken money to raise awareness about the need for clean water from a controversial chemicals company involved in the aftermath of one of the world’s worst pollution disasters.”

UPDATE: Don Surber emails:

I hate defending Gore but if you want to clean up water you go to the guys with
the chemicals that clean up water. Dow took over Union Carbide 15-20 years after
Bhopal.

On my commute to work, I drive past the U.S. plant that was the model for Bhopal
and it still makes MIC. (Bayer owns it now.)

Dow’s a good guy. It provides jobs and damned good products and it tries to do so
safely.

From Don that’s sensible. But the problem is, demonization, not being sensible, is what Gore does. Except when there’s a buck in it. Then he can become sensible real quick.

THE ARABS’ APARTHEID:

As Jonathan Tobin points out, the official goal of the Middle East “peace process” is a “two-state solution”, in one of which Muslims live alongside Jews and have voting rights and representation in the legislature, while in the other there are no Jews at all and, as in “moderate” Jordan, to sell your house to a Jew is a crime punishable by death. There goes the neighborhood, right? When the western campus left holds its annual “Israeli Apartheid Week”, presumably it’s in philosophical support of the notion that you don’t need to run an “apartheid” system if you just get rid of everyone who’s not like you.

So, basically, American campuses are full of Apartheid supporters these days. How progressive.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: How Could We Be So Stupid? Let Us Count the Ways.

ELEANOR CLIFT: Why were complaints about Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) not made public for so long? Because of the culture of Capitol Hill. “It took just three weeks for upstate New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa to resign his seat in Congress after accusations surfaced that he had sexually harassed members of his staff. The long trail of unwanted and often abusive advances that preceded his resignation—and why his alleged behavior went unreported for so long—highlights how much Capitol Hill is a feudal society, with each member the lord of his or her own territory.”

This also explains the hauteur with which they greet complaints from constituents.

UPDATE: A whole slew of readers note that Clift was not making “institutional” excuses when the Republican congressional leadership was confronted with the Mark Foley affair. Good point.

WELL, THAT’S A COMFORT: Secret Gates memo warns that U.S. has no strategy for dealing with a nuclear Iran. “Of course they didn’t prepare alternatives. How could they possibly fathom that diplomacy might fail?”

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WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS: You said you’d respect us in the morning!

PLAN TO ASSASSINATE COPS IN NYC: Call the SPLC! Oh, wait, never mind, no Tea Partiers involved . . . .

ABUSE OF POWER? Wall Street suspects Goldman charges ‘not coincidental’ to financial reform effort.

DAN RIEHL charges Fox News with cowardice. Fox has hurt its brand by caving here, and a lot of people won’t forget.

But I’ll remind you that PJTV was covering the Tea Parties, and didn’t cave to anybody. PJTV isn’t really competition to Fox, but if Fox keeps screwing over its core audience, that could change . . . .

OH, CANADA: General orders investigation into himself. “The commander of Canadian troops in Afghanistan has ordered a special investigation — on himself. . . . Ménard said he was loading his C8 carbine at Kandahar Airfield on March 25, something he said he’s done thousands of times, when it went off. Nobody was injured and nothing was damaged, but the National Defence Act makes it an offence to accidentally discharge a weapon.” (Via an unhappy Michael Yon on Facebook.)

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “Maybe the generals should get one bullet they can carry around in their pocket.”

CYBERWAR: Right of self-defense extends to cyber attacks: “The U.S. must fire back against cyber attacks swiftly and strongly and should act to counter or disable a threat even when the identity of the attacker is unknown, the director of the National Security Agency told Congress.”

OMRI CEREN: Did the White House not get the memo? Given their history of vetting-ineptitude, that’s entirely possible. But why the hysterical reaction? It’s not like there’s anything wrong with being gay.

WHO NEEDS THE GOLD STANDARD when there’s the Whiskey Standard?

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: Wajeha Al Huwaider, a woman, driving in Saudi Arabia.

REX MURPHY: Save the Earth . . . or else! “Who knew that rage was green? . . . Like every self-appointed messiah before them, these militant environmentalists view with chill contempt those others who cannot see their truth, who won’t bow to their self-assigned imperatives. It’s not just that they won’t abide those who differ from them. They want them actively punished. They are a very tense and unmoored bunch, possessed — in the old sense — with a vision that brooks no dissent. Gene and Polly have done us the wonderful favour of offering a glimpse of the future, were the future theirs to ordain.”

THE BELMONT CLUB: Out Of The Box. “Any idea that threatens to invert the positions of the elite and the peasantry is by definition subversive.”