COMPARISON: Tax Liabilities for Sample Families Under Bush & Obama Tax Law.

KEITH HENNESSEY: Proud to underfund employee pensions?

NOBODY CAN PASS THE PURITY TEST: Kentucky libertarians: Rand Paul might not be libertarian enough.

UNEXPECTEDLY: “The economic rebound last quarter turned out to be slower than first thought, one of the reasons unemployment is likely to stay high this year.”

A THUG TOO FAR, PART 5: “When Nina Easton found a mob of union thugs demonstrating at her neighbor’s Chevy Chase house last week, she used her professional skills to ascertain what all the fuss was about. She filed an illuminating report. The mainstream media have avoided the story.”

THE PRESIDENT SAYS you’ve got enough money. “During a conference at which I just spoke, the owner of several companies showed me a pair of cufflinks he’d just had custom-made, engraved with the words ‘Who Is John Galt?’ If the president isn’t familiar with Ayn Rand’s Galt, he might want to read up. This business owner said the cuff-links were the last item other than absolute necessities that he would buy until Obama was an ex-president. He said he was sending out a letter to the restaurants and shops he patronized, his dry cleaners, the service companies that tended his lawns at his homes – over 200 different business owners – letting them know that President Obama had determined he was making too much money and was too rich for reason. Therefore, he was going to cut sales and production at his companies by half, himself work but one day a week, cut business spending to the bone and personally buy nothing – other than vacations out of the country – until the president exits.”

GROSS, INDEED: Alarming Gross Debt Sparks Fiscal Commission Debate. “Members of President Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission argued on Wednesday that the government’s mountain of debt is higher than it appears and already threatens to hamper economic growth. But on a day when Republicans and Democrats bent over backwards to be polite to one another, Democrats themselves appeared divided between fiscal conservatives and liberals.”

COAST GUARD: “Top Kill” worked.

MARKDOWNS ON kitchen and dining goods.

PROSECUTING EMPLOYERS: “The former owner of a popular West Knoxville Chinese restaurant who has since admitted to staffing the business with illegal immigrants is now a federal fugitive. Peter Ko, 51, was set to be sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty to a conspiracy – along with his sister Tao C. Lui – to recruit, house and employ illegal immigrants at the Mandarin House restaurant on Gleason Drive.”

AT KROGER, datamining customer behavior.

PETER INGEMI: A Tea Party Candidate Before Tea Parties Were Cool.

USA TODAY: Poll: Majority give Obama, feds failing grade on oil spill response.

THOUGHTS ON AMERICA’S absurdly high drinking age.

LIBERALISM AND OVERREACH: “Liberalism was to be a new covenant in which the priests of Progress led the people into the promised land of a full blown European-style welfare state. But in the intervening century, two of the key building blocks of liberalism—namely the concept of Progress and the popular appeal of government—have become problematic, the first for liberals themselves and the second for much of the populace.”

GOOD QUESTION: “If deficits didn’t matter as many like Economist James Galbraith argue today, why should citizens even pay taxes? It would make everyone happier if they didn’t.”

GROUND ZERO IMAM: “I don’t believe in religious dialogue.”

SESTAK: It Depends On What The Meaning Of “Job Offer” Is.

BITTER CLINGERS turn out to have their uses!

KARL ROVE: Yes, the Gulf Spill Is Obama’s Katrina: Where was the White House plan, and why has it been so slow to make decisions? On the other hand, Jonah Goldberg comments: “The notion that B.P. isn’t motivated to cap this thing as quickly as possible and so therefore Obama needs to lean on BP harder is nothing short of crazy talk. Obama could have been on vacation for the last month and I’d bet the tempo of the BP operation wouldn’t have been one minute slower.” True, but Ken Salazar’s “boot on their neck” comments kinda made the White House own this issue. One of many reasons why he would have been better off keeping his mouth shut.

UPDATE: Tunku Varadarajan says it’s not Obama’s oil spill, but by propagating a message that government can solve all ills, he made it easy to blame him. “Once you set out, as a president or a party, to propagate a message that the government has (or is) the panacea for all ills, then failure to deal with an ill leads to your being hoist with your own panacea-petard.”

FASTER, PLEASE! Glaxo Open Sources Malaria Drug Search Data.

AN OPEN LETTER from the VodkaPundit. States don’t have rights. Citizens have rights under the Constitution — rights that include the right to a federal system of government in which states retain important attributes of sovereignty.

WHAT DO WE DO about Venezuela?

YOUR IPOD MAY HAVE driven a Chinese worker to suicide. “During his 28 days of investigation, Liu Zhi Yi was shocked to discover how the factory workers live in a sort of indentured servitude. They work all day long, stopping only to quickly eat or to sleep. They repeat the same routine again and again except on public holidays. Liu surmised that for many workers, the only escape from this cycle was to end their life. . . . Most of the workers had nothing to say about the popular Apple products they assemble. Most can’t afford to own an Apple product.”

UPDATE: “Tom Friedman Was Not Available For Comment.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: FoxConn suicide rate lower than Chinese average? Ouch. That undercuts the story, but doesn’t make Tom Friedman look any better. . . .

POLLS: Obama’s slide continues.

I suspect that explains why Elena Kagan’s numbers are going south, too. The less voters think of Obama, the less favorably they’re likely to view his nominee.