THE REAL SCIENCE GAP: “It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career.”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

I work for a very large high tech company. I presently manage a research team in the corporate lab. The problem is that there is no encouragement for American non-minority males to go into science and engineering because we will almost never hire them. Instead we are being forced to look for technical females and under-represented minorities. Since very few American females choose engineering, we end up hiring Chinese and Indian women. The universities that I work with tell me that they find it almost impossible to recruit American males to PhD programs. I believe within less than a generation we will be in deep trouble, technically, in this country, and we’ll be without the means and capability to maintain the highly sophisticated civilization that we’ve constructed.

Ouch.

MORE: Another reader emails:

Name MUST be withheld.

This diversity stuff has become a religion even more than climate change. I also work for a high tech company. We are being required by our HR professionals/social engineers, which I am one now in organization but not beliefs. I have a BS physical sciences, MS engineering degree; but recently moved into HR. One of our Senior VP’s recently told a Sr. Manager that we have too many Asians. We focus on goals for hiring “under represented minorities” with minimal qualifications vs. hiring the best. We are killing our future.

It’s a sad truth.

Sad, indeed.

SURE, WHY NOT? Blame Bill Clinton? How A Rush Of Sudden Attention May Have Made Team USA Lose Focus.

INTERESTING QUESTION: In the E-Mail and Twitter Era, Is ‘Actual Malice’ Easier To Prove?

ELIZABETH EDWARDS GOES PUBLIC: “The publicity blitz coincides with the paperback release of her book, Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities, which is expected to have a new chapter on the dramatic fallout from her husband’s infidelity.” I wonder if she’ll take responsibility for presenting the public with a lie, in the hopes of achieving political power?

THEY’RE DELICIOUS: A Dark ‘n’ Stormy. Originated at the Swizzle Inn if I recall correctly.

ARIA: Is this the Android you’ve been looking for? Great headline, but if I’m going to subject myself to the AT&T network, I think I’d spring for an iPhone.

RULES OF UNENGAGEMENT: “What do Gen. McChrystal and British Petroleum have in common? Aside from the fact that they’re both Democratic Party supporters.”

HANDS-ON REVIEW: the Motorola Droid X smartphone.

IS THE TEA PARTY a Christian movement? “What separates Jim Wallis from the Tea Partiers is not a difference of moral quality, or the presence and absence of compassion, but a different vision of the society that biblical love and justice require.” I certainly don’t much care what political preachers say, one way or another.

ED MORRISSEY: Right vs. Left On Obama’s Gulf Oil Spill Response.

BOO HOO: Adolf Hitler wrote a begging letter to a Mercedes dealership asking for a loan for a limousine until his royalties for Mein Kampf came through.

THE “OVERTON WINDOW” and how to apply it.

BIG GOVERNMENT, bad journalism. “Journalists can only make the thinnest pretense of objectivity when covering the super-State. Merely reporting honestly on its past and current activities would qualify a journalist for associate membership in the Ratf**ker Pack. . . . In the pressure cooker of an overwhelming, and collapsing, centralized government, the personal and political are fused into a single identity. Asking uncomfortable questions is an act of rebellion, and effective resistance to the will of the elite is a declaration of war. Media operatives, who eat and drink politics with every meal, are just a little further down the spiral of bitterness and desperation that awaits us all.”

Meanwhile, reader Sung Chun Kim writes:

Why is no one calling for the outing of the 400 JournoList members and an investigation of whether there were any other attempts to collude and to coordinate the media narrative? Is no else as disturbed by this as I am? We’re constantly told that the media are special, that they’re the Fourth Estate, and that their proper functioning is vital to the health of the Republic. Well, is no one else profoundly disturbed that no one is watching the watchers? Or that the watchers are actually colluding in a virtual smoke-filled back room to massage and frame the narrative?

Imagine if a conservative listserv were discovered, and that it included Rupert Murdoch and 400 conservative pundits and journalists. Imagine if it were disclosed that the participants actively discussed coordination in framing stories so as to benefit the Republican Party. Do you think there would be a ho hum “Oh, it was just a private list” response? Of course not, the liberals would be howling to the rafters about the existential threat to the Republic.

So why all the frivolity here? Even now, the Weigel story is breaking down into stupid distractions like whether Weigel actually wished death on Drudge, or whether people on a listserv have an expectation of privacy. Seriously, why is that even remotely important compared to the fact that 400 of this nation’s most prominent journalists and pundits were having discusions about killing or promoting stories based on whether they hurt the Democratic Party agenda? If there is any justice or sanity in this world, this should be bigger than ClimateGate. I want to see an archive of the JournoList postings and then compare them to any contemporaneous stories written by participants. Once that is done, we can tar and feather the bastards for betraying their profession and the people of this country.

That degree of accountability is unlikely.

THE ECONOMIST: Barack Obama has sacked his commander in Afghanistan. But the real worry is that the war is being lost.

KOPP THE CUSTARD MAN HAS JOHN HINDERAKER SOUNDING LIKE A NEO-MARXIST:

The Democrats’ “stimulus” bill was a joke. Much of the money never has been spent, and most of what was spent went to state and local governments to subsidize the salaries of public employees, the Democratic Party’s core constituency. Consequently, the public employee boom continued as the recession deepened.

If you are a government employee, you have little reason to favor tax cuts: taxes pay your salary. As confiscatory taxation and over-regulation strangle private enterprise, the government is presented with endless excuses to increase public employment as a supposed response to the crisis in the private sector. It is a vicious cycle, but one that inevitably comes to an end. The goose stops laying eggs, or, as Margaret Thatcher put it, eventually you run out of other people’s money.

In the meantime, the sharp conflict we are experiencing between government and the private sector is almost enough to make a neo-Marxist out of me. We have an oppressive ruling class–the government and its foot-soldiers, members of AFSCME–and an exploited, subservient working class, those who toil in the private sector for wages that currently average only around one-half of what our ruling class, government employees, are paid. The tick, in other words, is now faring much better than the dog.

Workers of the private sector, arise! You can no longer afford to keep your public sector masters in the lavish style to which they have become accustomed.

Read the whole thing.

SPECTATORS IN BODY ARMOR: “Her Majesty’s Constabulary seem to be sending the message that violence pays—at least for approved identity groups. That doesn’t seem a prudent strategy.”

SALMA HAYEK on the joy of eating bugs.

PLEASE SEND YOUR CONDOLENCES: Jeff Goldstein has lost his father. (Bumped).

ANOTHER cheap external hard drive.

JIM TREACHER: Why Does Al Gore Hate Oil Spills? It gets all over the sheets. He’s got a million of ’em. . . .

THE COMFY CHAIR might actually help in interrogations. Monty Python is never wrong. . . .

HEH: “ABC News just said the earth passed through the shadow of the sun this morning, proving once again journalists are not science majors.”

UPDATE: Reader Michael Harlow writes: “I bet if Sarah Palin said this, they would immediately know how foolish the statement was.” Well, then there’d be a message on Journolist telling them what to think.

MARKDOWNS ON outdoor power tools.

IF YOU MISSED IT LAST WEEK, check out the latest InstaVision. With bonus footage of me in a wetsuit.

PATTY MURRAY IN TROUBLE: “In 2008, President Barack Obama received 17% more votes than Senator John McCain, a landslide by political standards. Fast forward two years, and incumbent Democrat Patty Murray is facing fierce competition from Republican challenger Dino Rossi. According to a new poll released yesterday, Murray and Rossi are now tied 47%-47%. In 2004, Murray received 55% of the vote; in a often-considered blue state, 47% is starkly low.”