JAMES TARANTO: Diversi-Tea Training: The AP discovers dissent isn’t racist after all.

“Oreos,” “Uncle Toms,” “spook at the door”: it turns out people are “lobbing” racial slurs! When Johnson speaks of the assumption that “the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks,” does anyone doubt the accuracy of his perception?

It is Democrats, not Republicans, who hold this race-based assumption. And it doesn’t actually go both ways. No white American today suffers the indignity of being labeled a “traitor” to his race; the supposedly liberal assumption is that blacks, and only blacks, are expected to think a certain way because of the color of their skin.

Read the whole thing.

A MICKEY KAUS PRESS RELEASE: What’s Barbara Boxer Scared Of?

HMM: Qatari Diplomat In Custody After Possible Shoe Bomb Attempt. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Worse than a shoe bomb — he was smoking in the bathroom.

JOANNE JACOBS: DUKE BLUE DEVILS CAN’T HAVE SEX:

The Duke Blue Devils had better remain chaste. As national champions, they are unable to have consensual sex with other students under Duke’s new “sexual misconduct” policy, warns the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). A person seen as “powerful” — such as a varsity athlete — may “create an unintentional atmosphere of coercion,” the policy states. For the “powerful,” it’s not just that “no” means no and silence means no. “Yes” means no too.

In addition, sex with someone who’s been drinking — not like that ever happens — is considered a form of rape because the policy considers any level of intoxication makes a student unable to consent to sex.

Duke just descends deeper into self-parody. Why would anyone send a kid to college there? From the comments here: “Duke is $53,000 per year. That’s a lot of money to pay to be treated like a prole on 1984.”

JEFF FLAKE attacks J.D. Hayworth’s earmark history.

POWER LINE: Don’t walk away from your mortgage.

KNOXVILLE’S SECRET WEAPON.

G.O.P. LAWMAKER ripped by Tea Party activist. Don’t take ’em for granted.

MORE, AHEM, “TEA PARTY VIOLENCE:” Union Protester Attacks Tea Partier at Fort Lauderdale Townhall Meeting. And another reason to have a camera.

IF LUKE SKYWALKER used Google.

INSTAVISION: I talk with Byron York of the Washington Examiner, about Tea Parties, the RNC’s travails, and what happens between now and November. Plus, what you can do.

UPDATE: If it wouldn’t play before, it should work now — I posted before it went live on the site. Sorry.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MCCAIN, the President would be ordering the killing of American citizens. And they were right! “The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.”

Related: Does A Spanish Jail Cell Await Obama?

SOME HOUSING GOOD NEWS? Rental prices stabilize. That suggests a bottom. Meanwhile, sellers remain unrealistic. Looking around my neighborhood, the (few) houses that have sold in the past year have sold at 10-15% less than they were bought for in 2005-06. Yet many people are on the market with their houses priced at a 10-15% premium above their 2005-2006 values. Those houses aren’t selling. You’d think people would be quicker to catch on, but either (1) they’re being protected from reality by some sort of corporate relocation subsidy; or (2) they’re idiots; or (3) they just can’t afford to sell for less because they’d be underwater and they have no equity or money to bring to the table. Judging from Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey’s callers, that situation is a lot more common than I would have thought. It’s always been our philosophy to buy less house than we can comfortably afford, but many people clearly feel otherwise.

CONSUMER CREDIT PLUNGES, unexpectedly.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Nolan says it should have been expected: “The available credit declined and the cost to borrowers increased following Congress’ intervention in consumer revolving credit industry… it’s no surprise that the total revolving credit balance plunged.”

MOE LANE SAYS I SHOULD have more respect for the RNC.

Hey, at least I’m not trying to abolish it, like Mark Tapscott.

HENRY WAXMAN is confused and afraid.

REPORT: Tea Party Express in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

JOHN STOSSEL: What’s libertarianism?

MATT WELCH: We Are Out Of Money, California Edition. “There are concrete ways out of this politician-created mess, but it’s going to take a category of public servant whose first response to fiscal crisis is *not* ‘Let’s close the parks!'”

AND THEY HOPED PASSING OBAMACARE WOULD HELP? Americans Very Unhappy With Congress: “A new Gallup Poll finds a record-low 28% of U.S. voters say most members of Congress deserve to be re-elected. The previous low was 29% in October 1992.”

But wait, there’s more: “The same poll finds 49% of voters, a near-record low, saying their own member of Congress deserves to be re-elected. This marks only the second time since Gallup began asking this question in 1992 that the figure has dipped below 50%, and the first on the doorstep of a midterm election.”

UPDATE: Some related thoughts here.

CAN WE MAKE A conscious machine? I predict we’ll start with Fembots.

BOB OWENS: Shame on WikiLeaks: Framing Lawful Engagement as Anti-American Propaganda. “The video plainly shows U.S. forces identifying and killing armed Mahdi Army soldiers, following rules of engagement.”

UPDATE: Related item here. “If anything the video demonstrates the extremes to which the pilots went to follow the rules of engagement. (Go to 7:40 and watch until about 8:50.)”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from Blackfive.

And this from a blogger at Firedoglake:

I want to first start by saying that Wikileaks has really misled the public on the details of this video. They made it sound like it was an unprovoked massacre of unarmed civilians, and so it angers me when I wasted my time watching this video to see nothing like that.

Yep, Firedoglake.

THE JOYS OF STICK BLENDERS. I got one of these as a wedding present, and it’s amazingly useful. It’s not up for heavy-duty blending, but for lots of things it’s quicker and easier than a regular blender, and easier to clean up, too.

REASON TV: 21: Is It Time To Lower The Drinking Age? I’d say definitely. 18 just makes more sense.

SHIKHA DALMIA: Obama Can’t Handle Immigration Reform: The leading proposal will curtail liberties without making life better for immigrants.