MORE ON THAT HARVARD LAW SCHOOL RACIAL FRACAS: Academia, Harvard Law School, and freedom of speech. “In law school, one of the first tasks a student learns is to summarize the facts of the case. If I were a professor at Harvard Law and Minow was my student, I’d give her an ‘F’ for that response.” Although Neo is a Harvard alumnus, I think things may have changed since she attended. . . .

ED MORRISSEY: Why does the Wall Street regulation overhaul give FTC authority over the Internet? “Neither the FTC nor the Internet had anything to do with the Wall Street meltdown in 2008. If this financial-regulation bill is so desperately needed, why did House Democrats lard it up with this power grab at the FTC? . . . The Internet economy has been one of the bright spots throughout a dismal period of recent history. Do we need to attack the one area that shows growth and promise?” Actually, if you notice, that’s pretty much what they do — find the areas that are somehow flourishing due to lack fo government attention, and move aggressively to screw them up, too.

MICHAEL S. MALONE: The Apple Empire Strikes Back.

HOW PERSONAL GENOMICS could change health care.

HARRISON FORD: The anti-InstaPundit?

TIDYING UP SPACE JUNK with laser “tractor beams.” Technically, more like pressor beams in this application.

IN THE MAIL: From David Pierce, Don’t Let Me Go: What My Daughter Taught Me About the Journey Every Parent Must Make.

MICKEY KAUS: Democrats Are Manipulating the Marchers:

Participants in Saturday’s pro-amnesty marches are being used by the Democratic party elite, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mickey Kaus charged today.

“There is not going to be an amnesty this year, or next year. The majority of the American people don’t want it, for good reason. They want to secure the borders first,” he said. “Amnesty before we secure the borders would only encourage yet another wave of illegals and hurt the wages of unskilled Americans (and legal immigrants).”

“But every time Democratic politicians in D.C. need to rev up the Latino vote, they dangle the false promise of an amnesty bill. At some point. Latino voters are going to realize they’re being used.”

Kaus is the only Democratic Senate candidate on the ballot to oppose amnesty proposals, even when they are packaged with enforcement measures and billed as “comprehensive reform.” The incumbent, Barbara Boxer, supports “comprehensive reform” that includes a “path to citizenship” for illegals–i.e., amnesty.

More at the link.

FROM ZOMBIE: South Park is the least of Islam’s problems: The Mohammed Image Archive displays every Mohammed portrait ever created.

Related: Free Speech 1, CAIR 0.

HOW TO INSTALL a car iPod dock.

SHOCKER: POLL: Most think increased gov’t spending hurts economy.

IOWAHAWK: Citizen Gore.

TODAY, OBSERVING Victims of Communism Day.

KAREN ROWAN: Could Extraterrestrials Really Invade Earth, and How? I don’t find this story particularly thoughtful. Aliens wouldn’t have to send an army. A quarter-pound of lethal nanobots would do for a planet — and paranoid aliens would send them just out of fear that a hostile intelligence might evolve some day.

A good fictional treatment is in Greg Bear’s The Forge Of God, For the more technically-inclined, there’s Ernst Fasan’s Relations With Extraterrestrial Intelligences, or some chapters in McDougal, Lasswell, and Vlasic’s Law and Public Order In Space. Kind of old, but still good. A more recent popular treatment that’s worth your time is Ben Bova and Byron Preiss’s Are We Alone in the Cosmos? The Search for Alien Contact in the New Millenium.

DOING WHAT CONGRESS DIDN’T: Cincinnati Tea Partiers to hold “Read The Bill” Marathon:

Cincinnati Tea Party spokesman Justin Binik-Thomas did the math and figured out that reading all 2200 pages would mean spending 1 minute on each half page of arduous legalize, and that would be without taking any type of break at all — no restroom brakes, no meal breaks and no sleeping. So members will share the joy of reading the document in 15 minute increments so as not to fall asleep in the process. In the picture to the right, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor lends some visual aid regarding the size of the bill.

The groups will gather at the Crowne Plaza in Blue Ash beginning on May 14th at 6:00 p.m., and spend the next 72 hours reading the government healthcare takeover bill that was signed into law on March 23.

Making Congress look bad — though nothing anyone does in this regard can hold a candle to what Congress does to itself . . . .

DROPPED BALLS: BP Is Criticized Over Oil Spill, but U.S. Missed Chances to Act. “The delay meant that the Homeland Security Department waited until late this week to formally request a more robust response from the Department of Defense, with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledging even as late as Thursday afternoon that she did not know if the Defense Department even had equipment that might be helpful.” Heckuva job, Janet. She was probably too busy cataloging deadly blue-haired threats to the Republic.

What’s really news here is that the usually very-friendly New York Times is leveling this kind of criticism out of the gate.

UPDATE: Interestingly, the story linked above has now been completely rewritten, with the critical language deepsixed. However, you can see the language here.

PEGGY NOONAN: The Big Alienation: Uncontrolled borders and Washington’s lack of self-control. “Arizona is moving forward because the government in Washington has completely abdicated its responsibility. For 10 years—at least—through two administrations, Washington deliberately did nothing to ease the crisis on the borders because politicians calculated that an air of mounting crisis would spur mounting support for what Washington thought was appropriate reform—i.e., reform that would help the Democratic and Republican parties.”

PETER SUDERMAN: Obama’s Pledge Not To Raise Taxes: A Firm Commitment to Possibly Raising Taxes.

You might think that when an elected official makes a promise to avoid a certain policy (like tax hikes), then that policy would no longer be considered. In theory, that’s the whole point of promising not to do something—to definitively take that option off the table. But apparently a promise not to raise taxes on a particular group of people actually means…well, not much of anything at all.

Not that it matters considering that Obama has already broken his campaign tax pledges. That is, unless you take the administration’s more nuanced view of taxation, which, as Jacob Sullum describes it, comes down to the simple idea that “when the president does it, it’s not a tax.”

More like Nixon all the time.

THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER is pushing an Obama cheating scandal story. Bah. When was the last time they got one of these things right? . . . .

ADVICE TO CONOR FRIEDERSDORF on victory conditions.

RICK UNGAR: When Good Networks Go Bad: The Demise Of MSNBC. The tipping point, of course, was when I left my MSNBC gig. Sorry guys, but it was just time to move on . . . .

LOOKING AT SECULAR SEX ABUSE. What, you mean that stuff happens outside of churches? Who knew?

MICKEY KAUS: “It’s getting highly annoying to hear Obama and Senate Democrats pretend that to have effective border control we have to take a package deal that includes amnesty. They’re worse than the cable company when it comes to package deals.”

CHRIS DODD TALKS TRANSPARENCY, DWELLS IN SECRECY.

GAYS UNDER THE BUS on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. “Tiretracks all across your back — I can see you’ve had your fun!”