SINS OF passion.

HAS OBAMA DONE IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE YET? Neo-Neocon says “yes.” I’d say it depends.

DAN RIEHL: “It’s morning in the American blogosphere, my friends.”

WHATEVER HAPPENED to crazy? “Lasch’s insight about the connection between culpability and competence, and the way in which ‘therapeutic morality’ undermines self-sufficiency by negating personal responsibility, is essential to understanding the impact of a culture that fosters narcissistic personality traits. . . . Attempting to comfort people by flattering their sense of blamelessness — ‘It’s not your fault’ — therapeutic morality ultimately undermines the vital sense of agency, in effect telling people that they are neither culpable nor competent. It promotes the notion of innocent victimhood, the blameless self, and encourages people to avoid responsibility for their failures by wallowing in self-pitying rationalizations.”

SHOCKER: Sex: The Ultimate Mood Enhancer.

ICELAND’S VOTERS EXPECTED TO REJECT DEBT DEAL. “The referendum is being closely watched abroad, where the worry is that people in other financially flailing countries might be emboldened to rise up and refuse to honor financial obligations stemming from the failures of their banks.”

UPDATE: More here. “Ninety-three percent voted against the so-called Icesave bill, according to preliminary results on national broadcaster RUV.”

Related: Mark Steyn: “What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to.” Not directly on point, but . . .

And reader C.J. Burch writes: “Our government is begging for this sort of reaction here, isn’t it?” Well, we haven’t reached Iceland’s situation yet. But if we do, I suspect that Americans will be less well-behaved than Icelanders, even though the Icelanders are being pretty rowdy by Icelandic standards. However, governmental deficits are ultimately limited by what taxpayers will put up with — and at the limits, that’s usually somewhat less than government deficit-runners think they will put up with.

MORE: Report: Only 1.5% voted “yes.” “With 83,478 votes counted following Saturday’s referendum in Iceland, 78,092 are votes to reject December’s Icesave law and 1,284 (1.5 percent) have voted to keep the law in force. 2,830 empty ballots were cast in protest.” Thanks to Andrew Morriss for the link.

SCIENCE: ‘Dream Team’ Agrees Huge Asteroid Killed Dinosaurs.

SECRETS OF sex at Oxford.

DAVID WARREN ON THE PUBLIC SECTOR:

The government is approaching this as timidly as possible, for it is up against monopoly unions that can really ruin a politician’s day.

Yet when we speak of “entitlements,” or more precisely, against them, the first thing we face is public sector entitlements — in Canada as in every other western or quasi-western country. The troubles the Greeks are now experiencing with their civil service, which is in a position to bring the country to a halt, is a warning for the road ahead.

And forget Greece, look at California. There one may see in clear North American daylight what a vast unspeakable public bankruptcy looks like. It was not an inevitable thing. Gentle reader need only compare, candidly, California with Texas — which is flourishing, and whose voters know why. Economic decline is a choice, not a fate, and it has everything to do with big, intrusive government.

REPORT: Tampa Tea Party Celebrates Its One-Year Anniversary.

DOES THIS HAVE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE INCANDESCENT BULB BAN? Darkness encourages selfishness.

AN MSNBC QUESTION: “Whose show gets canceled first: Matthews’s, Dylan Ratigan’s (again) or Keith Olbermann’s?”

GEORGE WILL: How the Constitution, Filtered by The Court, Affects Guns.

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER: Other states fixing pension mess, but not California.

Related: Video: Jerry Brown On Pensions.

BACK UP YOUR FILES: A 640GB external hard drive for under 85 bucks.

UPDATE: Reader Brett Deal writes: “Thank you for the heads up on the hard drive sale at Amazon. Such shopping links are much appreciated.” Yeah, it looked like a good enough deal that I ordered one myself. You can never have too many of these, at least if you’re me. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Kenneth Mitchell writes:

Glenn, the very BEST electronics/”guy toys” store in the world is
Fry’s Electronics. You noted “BACK UP YOUR FILES: A 640GB external
hard drive for under 85 bucks.”

Today’s sale; an IOmega 1TB portable drive for $79. At that price –
I think I’ll have to!

Good grief. I wrote a column back in 2004 on the first 1TB external drive. It cost a thousand bucks. I never shop at Fry’s, though. Maybe I’ll check it out.

IS TALK OF “CYBERWAR” JUST Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet?

KRUGMAN THE PUNDIT vs. Krugman the economist.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: QUID PRO QUO. In e-mails, lobbyists perceive ties between campaign cash, earmarks.

In summer 2007, for example, senior executives at a small McLean defense firm tried to figure out which of them would buy a ticket to a wine-tasting fundraiser for Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a member of the Appropriations subcommittee on defense. At the time, the company sought help from Moran’s office in securing contracts through special earmarks added to the defense bill.

In an e-mail exchange, one senior officer said he didn’t understand why he had to attend the fundraiser when he didn’t even drink wine.

“You don’t have to drink,” Innovative Concepts’ chief technology officer, Andrew Feldstein, shot back in an e-mail. “You just have to pay.”

“LOL,” responded the other officer.

Yeah, real funny. “Moran raked in $91,900 in campaign checks to his personal campaign and leadership PAC that day. He secured an $800,000 earmark for Innovative Concepts in the 2008 defense appropriations bill.”

THE PRETTIEST WAY to learn about satellites.

JONAH GOLDBERG ON David Brooks and the Tea Parties. “It was Obama who wanted a ‘new declaration of independence.’ The Tea Partiers like the old one just as it is, thank you very much. And that spells all the difference in the world.”

AND THIS WASN’T EVEN A KEEPER: The kind of fish we throw back as too small around these parts.

UNSURPRISINGLY, LITTLE SUPPORT FOR REPEALING MORTGAGE INTEREST DEDUCTION.

But see this explanation of Obama’s itemized deduction proposal.

CHANGE: Federal Pay Surpasses Private Sector.

MAX BOOT:

Retired General Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff and a prominent Obama backer in the 2008 campaign, has weighed in with a New York Times op-ed against ending the current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. I can’t say I find his arguments terribly persuasive.

I can’t think of when I’ve ever found McPeak’s arguments especially persuasive. Certainly not this time.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE on fiduciary duties for brokers.