MELTDOWN? “Barney Frank brought in Bill Clinton — not Barack Obama — to stump for him. Say, why does Barney Frank feel the need to bring anyone in this close to the election?”

I dunno. Ask his opponent.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: “I am not indulging in a figure of speech: I think it’s a pretty useful heuristic: If you’re not willing to have somebody hauled off at gunpoint over the project, then it’s probably not a legitimate concern of the state. This is the sort of talk that gives the (always well informed, excruciatingly sober, generally sensible) folks at The Economist the howling fantods, inasmuch as they seem to operate under a kind of distributed version of the divine right of kings — always asking whether the rulers rule wisely, seldom asking whether they have the right to rule at all, and never asking whether and how much we actually need them. That’s why The Economist is the in-house newsletter of The Establishment. That and those great classifieds.”

DRILLING FOR BLACK GOLD IN GREENLAND: “For Americans used to hearing about huge fossil fuel deposits in Venezuela, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Russia and other locations that are politically unstable or intermittently antagonistic toward the West, this could come as welcome news. Greenland is a lightly inhabited arctic wilderness administered for now by the unthreatening Scandinavian country of Denmark. The territory is counting on oil and mineral development to fund a gradual move toward independence, and the discovery is being cheered in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital.”

UPDATE: Reader Chris Jonkman writes: “Hmmm, that kind of reminds me of another place with oil that is friendly to the West…Alaska, anyone?” Yeah, but drilling there would doom the planet.

WHERE THE BOYS AREN’T:

The gender gap among college undergraduates is nothing new. But at the College of Charleston, the gap is looking like more of a chasm.

With a gender ratio of about two to one – approximately 34 percent of students are male and 66 percent are female – the college is an outlier. But that ratio is not too far out of the ordinary for Charleston, say officials, who aren’t fretting too much over the gap.

“I think we would like to see more male presence, but on the flip side of that, we are very strong academically,” said Donald C. Burkard, associate vice president for admissions and enrollment planning at Charleston. “Percentages don’t always tell the story.”

It’s only a diversity problem if the gap goes the other way. Duh. Here are some thoughts on the subject I had a while back.

MASHUP VIDEO: Chris Christie’s Greatest Hits.

Under the Insta-Daughter’s theory of Presidential opposites, he’s looking pretty good for 2012. . . .

WELL, THIS IS CHEERFUL: It Is Not A Matter Of If With Hyperinflation, But When. I hope he’s wrong.

SCIENCE: Study: Men Don’t Notice Women’s Shoes Or Handbags. Of course not — those are for impressing other women.

SOME PRAISE for French Cooking In Ten Minutes, a book that I’ve praised here before — though I should note that most of the recipes begin with instructions to melt a large lump of butter. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

SISSY WILLIS: Message To Peggy Noonan: Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

THE ART OF SUPERCOMPUTING: “Once upon a time, the new computers were visually interesting mostly by their colors, such as candy apple red or bright orange, but nowadays — witness the recent Jaguar (above) and Kraken (insert, right) schemes — that’s just not enough.”

VIRGINIA POSTREL: There’s No Free Locavore Lunch: “Patronizing local farmers who produce in small batches tends to cost more. You may find some peak-season bargains at the farmers’ market, but there’s no such thing as a free locavore lunch. Getting fruits and vegetables only from local farms necessarily limits variety—few crops are available everywhere all the time—and it doesn’t come cheap. . . . The real problem with his prescriptions isn’t economic elitism but produce xenophobia. The locavore ideal is a world without trade, not only beyond national borders but even from the next state: no Florida oranges in Colorado or California grapes in New Mexico, no Vidalia onions in New York or summer spinach in Georgia. Fully realized, that ideal would eliminate one of the great culinary advances of the past half century.”

SUSANNAH BRESLIN: Having Relationship Problems? Try Talking Less. “Have sex. Play Frisbee. Cook a meal. You might find that turning your relationship into a safe haven from relationship discussions will lessen your need to have relationship discussions at all.”

SCIENCE: Men prefer curvy women for hookups, pretty faces for long-term. “I would say that a male strategy of searching for cues to immediate fertility in a potential short-term mate, and cues to the long-term reproductive value in a long-term mate, would have been favored by natural selection.”

A CURIOUS INCIDENT at a Chinese restaurant: “In my country, you would never see a man with his children like that.”

BREITBART TO BILL MAHER: You know you’re not a libertarian anymore, right? “Incidentally, the best part here isn’t the Breitbart/Maher exchange, it’s Maher insisting that the reason ObamaCare is polling so badly is because — no joke — the Democrats haven’t talked about it enough yet.”

NUCLEAR ACCIDENT? Break out the emergency bras!

THE LATEST Carnival of Nuclear Energy is up!

IN THE MAIL: Good Kids, Tough Choices: How Parents Can Help Their Children Do the Right Thing.

IF YOU MISSED IT LAST WEEK, CHECK OUT THIS DOCUMENTARY: The Tea Party: Brewing Up A Movement. From the folks at the Knoxville News-Sentinel, it’s an excellent job.

ERIC SCHEIE ON M.A.D.D.: Anti-Drinking Activists Drunk With Power. “Now, I do not defend drunk driving. But the direction in which this hysteria is going — making driving after a glass of wine with dinner a felony — is simply an outrage. This isn’t a crackdown on drunk driving; it is neo-prohibitionism. The M.A.D.D. speakers were also calling for a return to the 55 mph speed limit, because drunk drivers are said to be much more dangerous at high speeds.”

M.A.D.D. has been all about the benjamins for years. They’re just another example of a non-profit gone wrong. They should disband, now that their work is basically done. But they won’t, because that would shut down the gravy train.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

I read your post on M.A.D.D. (as well as the link to CV) and thought I would share a recent experience involving my teenage son. Typical stuff — he went to a party, neighbor complains of noise (at 8:30 p.m.) and “thinks there may be underage drinking.” My son had been there about 30 minutes, and called me to pick him up because he was bored at the party. When I had arrived, there were already four policeman who prevented me from entering the home to pick up my son (literally putting his hand on my chest to stop me form proceeding). When I asked why, I was told that it was for safety reasons (ha!). I asked if anyone were under arrest, or whether there was a physical danger to my son or any other kid. I was told to get off the property or risk a charge of intereference with police. Parents now started arriving but the police barred anyone fom entering or leaving. This went on for about a half hour. By that time there were ELEVEN patrol cars and 25 police officers on the scene. I saw the report on their computer screen, and they estimated that 20 teenagers were in the house, meaning more police than teenagers. I called my son, who said the kids were getting scared by the police lights, confused about what the fuss was all about, police all around the house, and securing the house so no one could leave. After they secured the perimeter, they entered the house (no idea what cause they had to go in) and brought the kids out one at a time, physically separating children from their parents (police had formed wall around each kid as they esorted them to thebreathlyzer). I yelled at my son to be cooperative and the police threatened me with arrest “for talking to a suspect.” Funny, 5 minutes earlier they asked for the kid’s names so they could get him and release him to me to take him home.

Turns out that one kid blew a .02 (probably had a glass of wine with his parents). The police officer who took the breathalyzer screamed “GOTCHA! BINGO!” The other 19 (including my son) were charged with Underage Possession of Alcohol because they were in the house with a kid who blew a .02. Ridiculous. What is really infuriating is that had there been some dumb kid who chugged a fifth of Jack, they would have been the house suffering from alcohol poisoning for over an hour while the police were singularly focused on nailing as many kids as they could. Safety was not anywhere near the top consideration.

I asked a local prosecutor afterwards if this were normal practice, and she said it was. The prosecutor also told me that is why so many parents end up bitterly fighting these charges — they are just enraged that the police show up with enough firepower to defend the Green Zone because it is possible some 16 year old had a beer, and then act as if they are breaking up the Capone gang. The courthouse crowd knows this so they usually make a deal where the kid goes to an Alcohol Awareness class and the charge gets expunged, to avoid letting the police actions see the light of day. Truth is, if my son gets one class and the charges are expunged, we’ll probably do it too just to make this go away.

Mind you, my son is in deep stuff for going to a party without parents, but that is our problem as parents. Ironically, we had items stolen from our carport and car about three weeks earlier, and it took two weeks for the police to show up, and then they clearly told us that they would do little or nothing. What this showed me is that the priority of police is alcohol regulation, likely under intense political pressure.

The point of this story is that the M.A.D.D. crowd is out of control, and unfortunately they usually have the support of the local police and government. THey keep getting money, so the cycle perpetuates itself. It may be just a citation but it is an example of nanny statism with screwed up priororities.

So push back. And don’t credit them with any special moral authority, since they have none.

STEVE CHAPMAN: The Failure Of Obama’s Stimulus.

HATCH, UTAH: David Kirkham writes: “Last night the people of Hatch, Utah (population 127) invited me to speak at their Tea Party. I think we just won the smallest town in the US to hold a Tea Party. Hatch is a 4 hour drive from Provo, Utah through the beautiful Utah back country. We had dinner at the Tea Party leader’s house (yes, Hatch, Utah has a Tea Party) and later 10 people showed up for the Tea Party. There I spoke with tough, hard-working Americans with a real, deep-seated concern on the direction of our country. The recession has hit them especially hard. Everyone stayed and we spoke for hours afterwards. The tide is turning all across America. People are standing up everywhere. It was a great night.”

RECESSION-ERA ADVICE ON how to save on food. Hey, wait — I thought the recession was long over!

JOY MCCANN: Cabernet Tastes On A Merlot Budget.

ED DRISCOLL: Colbert’s Appearance is Perfect Bookend for 111th Congress. “I’m not at all sure that Colbert’s appearance was deliberately planned to take the heat off Coates’ testimony today — the Palace Guard Media would have ignored it on TV tonight and buried it in a one-inch column on page D-27 of the paper tomorrow no matter what was said. Which is why, like President Obama endorsement of the Ground Zero Mosque last month, this was another unforced error of huge proportions.”