PRESIDENT OBAMA ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE.

Plus, a flashback: Senator Obama on Armenian Genocide.

JOHN FUND: Wisconsin and the Voter Fraud Agenda.

WELL, IT IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Japanese Government and Industry Aim for Mind-Controlled Robots and Electronics in 10 Years.

THE ATLANTIC: Goldman’s ‘Victim’ in SEC Case Was a Yield Chaser. “The German bank on the losing end of the Goldman Sachs derivatives deals that have attracted the ire of the Securities and Exchange Commission was so absorbed in the pursuit of high-yield returns from financial instruments linked to the U.S. housing market that it preferred to lose one of its top executives rather than change course. This single-minded pursuit of yield provides an important context for the SEC’s case against Goldman. In hindsight, it can appear that Goldman must have been committing some kind of fraud in order to sell subprime CDOs that performed so badly. But at the time, the buyers of these instruments were actively seeking exposure to subprime risk.”

AN EXTREME MAKEOVER, for King Tut.

BELDAR WARNS THAT STAMPING “TAX CHEAT” OVER TIM GEITHNER’S SIGNATURE might get you prosecuted. And, yes, it might. I think such a prosecution would be unjust, but the world is full of unjust prosecutions. However, it occurs to me that, so far, I don’t think I’ve seen a single bill with Tim Geithner’s signature. And while I haven’t checked every bill that has passed through my hands, I’ve stopped to look on a number of occasions. Are any of those out yet? And, if not, is it possible that this stamp, and the publicity it’s gotten, accounts, at least in part, for the delay?

UPDATE: Reader Juan Paxety writes: “I’ve checked every bill that has passed through my hands since March, 2009 – not a single Geithner. My stamp sits unused.” But another reader emails that his business just started getting bundles of Geithner-signed bills, so stay tuned.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Mark Wilson writes:

Are you familiar with “Where’s George”? People stamp a tracking number on a dollar bill and register it on a website. As the bill circulates, other people record when and where they received the bill. It’s kind of interesting to watch the movement of the bill. This has been going on for at least a decade. How is that different from stamping “tax cheat” on a bill?

One makes fun of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the other does not. And prosecutors have a lot of discretion. As I say, I’d regard a prosecution here as unjust — unjust enough to warrant calling out the prosecutors by name — but that’s no guarantee they wouldn’t do it, though it’s true that there’d be considerable blowback.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “Funny. You see enough unjust prosecutions, you don’t fear them any more. They can’t prosecute three hundred million people.”

AUGMENTED REALITY: I feel, therefore I am.

READING BRAIN WAVES to predict suicide risk.

CAR LUST: 1970s Super Coupes. My friend Doug Weinstein had the first-gen Scirocco, which was a great car. Another friend had the Opal Manta, which he liked but which I always found underwhelming.

FREE SPEECH HERO: Jon Stewart on South Park Death Threats.

More praise for Stewart here.

MAXED OUT: HOW MUCH CAN A HUMAN LIFT:

In the heaviest dead lift recorded, British weightlifter Andy Bolton lifted 457.5 kilograms from the floor to his thigh.

Strongmen like Bolton are perhaps five or six times stronger than the average man, who will often struggle to lift 45 kilograms over his head, says Dan Wathen, an athletics trainer at Youngstown State University, Ohio. The record for an overhead lift is 263.5 kilograms.

So what is the maximum weight a human could ever lift? Todd Schroeder at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles thinks we are already close to the maximum. “If you look over time at the records for maximal lifts, they have crept up but are starting to plateau,” he says. “Today’s weightlifters, including those that use steroids, are near the limit of human potential.”

Nanotechnology will fix that . . . .

A TAX REVOLT grows in New Jersey. “Median tax bills in six Garden State counties are among the 10 highest in all of America. As a share of income, levies in Passaic and Essex lead the nation — with Bergen, Union, Hunterdon and Hudson not far behind. School boards — and teachers unions that refused concessions — must have been dreaming if they thought voters would rubber-stamp tax hikes yet again. No, this time taxpayers were paying . . . attention.”

ED MORRISSEY: “The importation of toys with lead paint from China two years ago prompted Congress to pass the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), requiring extensive independent testing of all products sold — or resold — for children. The new regulations threatened to put small manufacturers and thrift shops out of business, thanks to the onerous burden of test costs. But what about the big manufacturer that actually put 2 million contaminated products on shelves? Mattel gets a waiver from testing requirements — again.”

Safety rules, like taxes, are for the little people.

THE ENTHUSIASM IS . . . ELECTRIC! Leaf pre-orders in Japan already exceed half of Nissan’s annual sales target.

IN OAK RIDGE, gearing up to dismantle some big bombs.

IN THE MAIL: The Return of the Great Depression.

SEC INSPECTOR GENERAL will probe Goldman suit timing.

BRIAN DOHERTY on the latest militia scare. “What the likes of Clinton, Klein, and Maddow realize, to their great chagrin, is that that power is faltering in the age of the Internet, with the cable news networks aiming for smaller targeted ideological audiences. This makes them so angry they feel it necessary to conflate or link their ideological enemies with mass murderers. . . . An America where, as Churchill writes, ‘the libertarian memory of the American revolution was transformed from a mainstream creed to a badge of extremism’ and in which ‘unquestioning loyalty and obedience to the nation state’ has become standard may be more conducive to domestic peace and order—at least in a tautological sense. But that transformation also enables a destructive set of policies, both overseas and domestically, that are more damaging to the property and liberty of Americans than any militia member or Tea Partier, however angry or irrational, will ever be.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “Yesterday I think I understood why California is in deep trouble. Let me walk you through another day out here.” Plus, a Mickey Kaus endorsement!

IN A REBUKE TO STANFORD’S EDUCATION SCHOOL, Stanford charter elementary to close.

Much more here.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: The Pernicious Corporate Governance Provisions Of The Dodd Bill.

VIDEO: “Remember November.”

ANN ALTHOUSE ON ARIZONA’S NEW IMMIGRATION BILL: “What is irresponsible and unfair about what Arizona did?”

Some thoughts on the legality here.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse disagrees with me on the Guaranty Clause issue, saying that it would probably be considered a “political question.” That’s certainly the standard take on Guaranty Clause issues, but here I’m not so sure. First, the primary case authority for the notion that Guaranty Clause issues are political questions is Luther v. Borden, which has been expanded considerably beyond its actual holding. (There’s dicta in New York v. U.S. suggesting that it’s been over-read in that regard). In addition, the “protect from invasion” language in Article IV Sec. 4 relates to language in Article I Sec. 10, which provides:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Arizona is not — yet, anyway — engaging in war, but it’s clear from this language that it’s constitutionally empowered to do so when invaded, even if the federal government does nothing (and perhaps even in the face of federal objection). Arizona’s legislation is passed in response to armed people coming across the border and killing Arizonans, which sounds rather like an invasion. If that’s the case, then lesser responses to invasion are, arguably, permissible as well in the face of federal inaction. What the courts will do with this is, of course, uncertain (and likely not tied very closely to the actual text of the Constitution!) but it’s certainly not a frivolous argument. (Bumped).

SHE SHOT SOME FOLKS IN PLOVER, just to hear them say “ouch!”

FROM THE CRITERION COLLECTION, a bunch of new DVD releases.