PROF. JACOBSON: What’s the left’s problem with homosexuality?

BACK TO THE FUTURE: A Texas town enrolls the paddle to teach unruly students a lesson.

A Texas town just outside Fort Hood has decided to bring back an old-fashioned weapon to instill a little more discipline in the increasingly unruly student body: the paddle.

With just weeks remaining in the academic year, has the return of corporal punishment brought law and order to the classrooms, cafeterias and hallways in Temple schools?

“The discipline problem is much better than it’s been in years,” school board president Steve Wright, who runs a construction business, told the Washington Post.

Everything old is new again.

DAVID REMNICK: HOW BARACK OBAMA invented himself.

THE JOYS OF slow-cooker spaghetti. Putting the uncooked pasta into the slow-cooker? Is that heresy, or genius?

UPDATE: Reader Mont McNeil emails: “My wife makes a terrific lasagna in the slow cooker, just layering all the ingredients including the uncooked flat noodles. Genius often looks like heresy at first…”

TONY BLANKLEY: “The Tea Party is a Blessing for the Republican Party.” Well, that depends on what the Republican Party does . . . .

FORCING A CHILD TO LIVE WITHOUT BACON? That sounds like abuse to me. . . . .

Repeat after me: Bacon is a right! Or maybe, No bacon, no peace!

CLOSE SHAVE: Top Gear Summits Icelandic Volcano Hours Before Eruption.

OBAMAVILLE UPDATE: Camden Tent City Residents Get A Reprieve. “Homeless people who built a community of campground tents just a few blocks from downtown Camden got a reprieve Thursday, allowing them to remain, at least for now, at the self-governing settlement in one of the nation’s poorest cities.”

JOHN MERLINE: Health Care Reform’s “Bounce” Lands With A Thud.

Plus, a “we told you so” from Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell.

THE SUITS AT FOX MAY HAVE WIMPED OUT, but PJTV was covering the tea parties all over. See the coverage at the link. (Bumped).

JAMES TARANTO:

Yesterday we examined the latest evidence and concluded that there is still no corroboration for three black congressmen’s claims that tea-party protesters yelled racial slurs on March 20, the eve of ObamaCare’s enactment. Today we’d like to step back and ponder the meaning of this alleged event.

Why are racial slurs such a taboo? . . . Free speech notwithstanding, there are circumstances in which legal redress is available to people who have been hurt by racial slurs. The most obvious cases are those in which slurs are wielded by an authority figure like a boss or a policeman, who is legally obliged not to discriminate in the exercise of his authority.

That is the opposite of what happened, or didn’t happen, on Capitol Hill. There, three powerful men allege that anonymous members of a crowd yelled racial slurs at them. The Associated Press’s Jesse Washington reports that the lawmakers claimed to have heard the slurs as they were walking toward the Capitol. Some time later a widely circulated video, which depicted an angry crowd but on which no racial slurs could be heard, was “captured by the black lawmakers’ cameras” as they walked away from the Capitol, Washington reports.

If the congressmen had felt threatened by the supposed slurs, they could have taken the underground railroad that connects the Capitol to congressional office buildings. Instead, they went back into the crowd, armed with video cameras.

It seems fair to surmise that they were hoping to gather evidence, and this would be an entirely reasonable thing for them to do under the circumstances as they described them. But it illustrates a salient point: If racial slurs are weapons, in a political context such as this they are weapons only of self-destruction.

Read the whole thing.

HEH: “I did not have sexual relations with that man, Timothy McVeigh.”

ANOTHER fake Tea Party fail.

“IT’S AN ODD THING to get attacked by the White House for a blog post.”

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

TEA PARTIERS GET VALUABLE LESSON from David Axelrod.

A CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY OUT WEST: Arizona legalizes carrying concealed gun without a permit.

JIM GERAGHTY: New Jersey Not Looking That Blue Any More.

CAPITULATION TO GRADE INFLATION at LSU.

A MOBILE TOUCHSCREEN that’s projectable on any flat surface.

TRIFECTA: The Party’s Over For Tea Party Caricatures – And Crashers.

FEAR OF HECKLING: MSNBC space reporter: No NASA workers allowed at Obama’s speech yesterday.

INDEED: Epic fail: “Crash the tea party” effort crashes.

APTERA UNVEILS its 200 mpg prototype.

DAN MITCHELL: The Joy of Tax Serfdom.