ROGER SIMON remembers Dennis Hopper. “Unlike other Hollywood hot shots like Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, etc, who never once changed a single thought they ever had, whether on LSD or a glass of milk, Dennis Hopper was able to see that the very thing that allowed him to live the wild and crazy life he did was deeply obvious. Forget all the self-serving narcissistic left-wing baloney. It was good old fashioned American Freedom! Nowhere else could Dennis have been Dennis — and he knew it. He wanted that for everybody. . . . And to my Hollywood friends, let this be a reminder that traditionally an artist is not someone who goes with the crowd, especially when that crowd hasn’t revised an idea since the presidential campaign of George McGovern. Open your minds. What’s cool may not be so cool anymore. If Dennis can do it, so can you. He wasn’t afraid of losing his job.”

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I WAS HOPING THE FUTURE WOULD HAVE BETTER BATTERY LIFE: First 4G Android Phone Feels Like the Future.

Well, we were warned.

JAMES TARANTO: Barack Obama Explains His Job:

What exactly is the job of the president of the United States? Let’s ask the man who currently holds that position, Barack Obama:

My job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about: the spill.

Obama’s job description is fascinating. He has been depicted as a proponent of “activist government,” but this may be a bum rap. Now he tells us he thinks that if he somehow gets people to think about him and how much he’s thinking about what he thinks they think he should be thinking about, his job is done.

Which raises only two questions: First, if the requirements of his job are so modest, why is he still having trouble meeting them? Second, couldn’t all this cogitation be done at a cost of less than $3.5 trillion a year?

Ouch. Does this sound like “Message: I care?”

L.A. TIMES: Mickey Kaus vs. The Box.

THE HOT NEW TREND: “Personal secession.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD on Pentecostalism and the War On Terror.

AMATEUR ASTRONOMER spies on spy satellites.

MARKDOWNS ON lawn, patio and garden gear.

DE-TINGLED: Rush is right, says … Chris Matthews?

VIDEO: Don’t Touch Me.

OBAMA’S WAR: Can War Crimes Charges Be Far Away? Well, the basic rule is that any effective tactic used by the United States must be some sort of war crime.

More sophisticated analysis from Kenneth Anderson. At any rate, the currently popular way of insulating oneself from war-crimes charges is to simply gain a reputation for beheading critics. I don’t see that from the Obama Administration in the near future, but maybe they could send a pitchforked SEIU mob to the Special Rapporteur’s house . . . .

SPACE: Another Customer For Commercial Crew Transportation. “Bigelow Aerospace is developing inflatable modules, but needs vehicles to get them to space.”

JOHN DICKERSON: Bystander-In-Chief. “When asked directly about the Katrina comparison, Obama deferred to the judgment of history, sounding like his predecessor did when he was asked those kinds of questions.”

SOME OUTDOOR PROJECTS for Memorial Day weekend.

HMM: Sestak was ineligible for job Clinton offered.

KATIE GRANJU: Yes, I am still pregnant.

AT POWER LINE, a review of Gabriel Schoenfeld’s Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media and the Rule of Law. “Schoenfeld’s book does something that hasn’t been done before. It provides an unexpurgated account of the media’s disclosure of highly classified national security information, some of which — such as the James Risen/Eric Lichtblau New York Times story blowing the NSA al-Qaeda eavesdropping program, and the Risen/Lichtblau story blowing the SWIFT terrorist finance tracking program — has violated the espionage laws of the United States and done great damage to American national security. Unfortunately, such acts of espionage will land you a Pulitzer Prize rather than time in the clink.”

HMM: Denver Post Goes Silent on Senate Candidate Job Offer Scandal.

REP. ERIC CANTOR: The Unprecedented Intensity of the YouCut Movement.

TRANSPARENCY: Destroyed by Court Order: The Footage of a Landrieu Staffer Admitting the Senator’s Office Had No Problem With Their Phones.

HARRY REID: Comeback Kid?

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK: Italian priests’ secret mistresses ask pope to scrap celibacy rule.

THE WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY: Radley Balko has more on Maryland. “Graber is due in court next week. He faces up to five years in prison. State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly has also charged Graber with ‘Possession of an Interception Device.’ That ‘device’ would be Graber’s otherwise-perfectly-legal video camera. . . . Perhaps that officer was merely misinformed. But Maryland police spokesmen and prosecutors are giving the impression that the state’s wiretapping law is ambiguous about recording on-duty police officers. It really isn’t. They’ve just chosen to interpret it that way, logic and common sense be damned. . . . A cynic might conclude that law enforcement officials in Maryland are reacting to the McKenna embarrassment by threatening and cracking down on anyone who videotapes on-duty cops, and they’ll interpret the law in whatever way allows them to do so. At least until a court tells them otherwise.”

This is a disgrace. State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly should hear from Marylanders who care about freedom — and this seems to be me to be another argument for federal civil rights legislation guaranteeing the right to photograph police. With hefty damages, and a waiver of official immunity, for cases like Graber’s. . . .

IN THE MAIL: From Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror.