OCTOBER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE: A conference on Business Law And The New Economy. I’ll be speaking there. Lots more info at the link.

BOOBQUAKE: Facebook Group to Prove Breasts Don’t Cause Earthquakes. “A one-woman mission to prove breasts don’t cause earthquakes has swollen into a shirt-straining global movement. Prepare yourself for Monday, the inaugural ‘Boobquake.'” Did the earth move for you?

IN THE MAIL: Stuart Buck’s new book, Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation.

PJTV: AlfonZo Rachel at the Dallas Tea Party.

PREPPING FOR A nuclear nightmare in Baghdad.

TOM MAGUIRE: Obama backing a weapon too crazy for Bush.

ANGER, TECHNOLOGY shake up political landscape.

FOR OBAMA, a lesson from LBJ.

IN THE LATEST HARVARD LAW REVIEW, a piece on the FTC’s blogger regulations:

Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revised their Endorsement and Testimonial Guides (Guides) to cover “consumer- generated media” such as blogs and other internet media forms. In the interest of providing consumers with full disclosure, the Guides re- quire bloggers to disclose any “material connection[s]” they have with producers of any products that they “endorse” on their blogs. A “material connection” includes not only monetary compensation, but also any free good received by the blogger — even if that good was provided unsolicited, with no conditions attached, for the purpose of al- lowing the blogger to review the product. Yet a constitutional analysis of unpaid blogger endorsements shows that such endorsements are not commercial speech — which receives reduced constitutional protection — but rather noncommercial speech entitled to full First Amendment protection. Not only do the Guides burden bloggers’ pro- tected speech, they also create an unfair double standard by exempting legacy media4 from the Guides’ disclosure requirements. Therefore, the Guides should be ruled unconstitutional as applied to bloggers. . . . Consumers should be wary of government policies that favor one form of media over another. Government discrimination among media forms based on “editorial independence” is unprecedented.

Sounds persuasive to me!

EDGING BACK to nuclear power.

MOTHER’S DAY MARKDOWNS on kitchen and dining stuff.

L.A. TIMES: California Public Employee Pensions Under Pressure. “State and local leaders see the growing cost as a threat to California’s fiscal well-being. Efforts to reduce benefits are setting up a collision course with public employee unions.”

ARIZONA’S IMMIGRATION BILL: I think that Krauthammer is right that it’s a response to the federal government’s failures, and I also agree with people who say it’s likely trumped by the Supremacy Clause — Congress has plenary authority over immigration, and though it’s not entirely settled — is there a “dormant immigration clause?” — that’s the way to bet. But it occurs to me in light of Krauthammer’s comments that there’s another clause in the Constitution that may be relevant: Article IV Section 4:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Were I representing Arizona, I’d argue that the federal government is in default on its “protection against invasion” responsibility, and that this empowers the state to resort to self-help. Not sure how that would play out, but it would make an interesting law review article. And a fun oral argument.

UPDATE: I respond to Ann Althouse’s comments in this post.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Obama Should Return Wall Street Contributions:

President Obama took his case for vastly increasing federal power over financial institutions to Wall Street yesterday, but he forgot something while packing for the trip. He should have taken with him all those bags of dirty money he received on the campaign trail in 2008 from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms whose greedy ways he claims led the nation’s economy into the Great Recession. Since Obama received nearly a million dollars in contributions from Goldman Sachs executives in 2007 and 2008, maybe all those bags of filthy Wall Street lucre wouldn’t fit on Air Force One. More likely, the dirty money stayed in the White House because Obama and his fellow Democrats want to keep having it both ways on Wall Street.

Read the whole thing.

AFRICA’S FOREVER WARS:

What we are seeing is the decline of the classic African liberation movement and the proliferation of something else — something wilder, messier, more violent, and harder to wrap our heads around. If you’d like to call this war, fine. But what is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic is actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry. My job as the New York Times’ East Africa bureau chief is to cover news and feature stories in 12 countries. But most of my time is spent immersed in these un-wars.

I’ve witnessed up close — often way too close — how combat has morphed from soldier vs. soldier (now a rarity in Africa) to soldier vs. civilian. Most of today’s African fighters are not rebels with a cause; they’re predators. That’s why we see stunning atrocities like eastern Congo’s rape epidemic, where armed groups in recent years have sexually assaulted hundreds of thousands of women, often so sadistically that the victims are left incontinent for life. What is the military or political objective of ramming an assault rifle inside a woman and pulling the trigger? Terror has become an end, not just a means.

Though presented as a departure, this is in fact the norm — the way people act in the absence of civilizational restraints. It’s the state of nature. During the cold war, there was some structure left over from colonialism — and, more significantly, pressure from sponsor powers to avoid too much bad PR. That’s all gone now.

MICKEY KAUS: “I like Larry Summers, but does he really think GM repaying $6.7 of the over $50 billion the taxpayers have sunk into it means there is a significant chance for ‘a return of most of the taxpayers’ investment in these companies’? The $6.7 billion ‘payback’ seems like an obvious PR move designed to disguise GM’s ongoing trouble, even as the Obama administration moves to sell its stake for a gigantic loss.”

HMM: Google Street View Logs Wi-Fi Networks, Mac Addresses.

USING OXYTOCIN to make people trust the government.

HOMELAND SECURITY: Federal air marshal charged with raping woman at SeaTac hotel.

MARK FRAUENFELDER: BRING BACK BLIMPS! “The New York Times asked me and three other people the following question: ‘The Icelandic volcano that disrupted global air travel last week raised a concern: should we be thinking of alternative ways to move masses of people and goods?’ My answer: bring back blimps (and dirigibles).”

JAMES TARANTO: “MediaMutters’ suggestion that black voters are ‘just puppets’ is racist and repugnant.”

LEONARD NIMOY hangs up his Spock ears.

WHEN THE PRIVATE SECTOR FAILS, THE SOLUTION IS MORE GOVERNMENT. WHEN THE GOVERNMENT FAILS, THE SOLUTION IS MORE GOVERNMENT: SEC and Pornography: Workers Spent Hours on Porn Sites Instead of Stopping Fraud.

Related: Obama Treasury official who worked on subprime markets is writing consumer financial protection legislation? “An Obama Treasury department official behind the consumer protection language in the proposed financial reform legislation is a former head of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), the advocacy wing of a non-profit community development lender funded by none other than John Paulson — the billionaire who worked with Goldman Sachs to package bad mortgages into securities and offer them on the market.”

HOW TO save CNN.

OOPS: Despite his denial, Obama talked to Blago about Senate seat.