BOINGBOING: Jon Stewart on Obama’s broken civil liberties promises. Cory Doctorow is disappointed: “Like I said before: I didn’t expect the guy to walk on water, but I’d love it if he wouldn’t wallow in shit.” Some of us are less surprised — when did a Chicago Machine Democrat ever actually work for civil liberties and transparency?

THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS looks into the Justice Department / Black Panther connection.

WELL, DANG: President Obama Is Not Impressed With Your High School Diploma. Neither is Wal-Mart. I took an extra year of Latin!

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Turkey and Brazil Have a Lot of Learning To Do. “Their joint intervention on the Iranian nuclear program gives an impression of naive over-eagerness.”

RESEARCH: Younger Profs Teach Better in Introductory Courses, Older Profs Teach Better in Advanced Courses.

MICHAEL BARONE: Voters in big states prefer skinflint candidates.

PROPOSALS FOR INCREASING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT. With reference to Stuart Buck’s new book, Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation.

DAN RIEHL ON THE REAL FALLOUT FROM OBAMA’S SPEECH: “Given that the reviews are so overwhelmingly bad, it occurred to me – it’s what we aren’t hearing that’s most significant. You can call Obama incompetent and no one is accusing you of racism, any more. Now, that’s change!!”

UPDATE: A crisis of competence.

The President spoke of “political courage and candor” last night, yet both were missing from his speech. The President asserted: “Time and again, the path forward has been blocked … by oil industry lobbyists.” But the reality is that BP lobbyists have been pushing for the President’s energy agenda from the beginning. The President claimed: “Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America.” But the reality is that China will account for nearly 45% of oil demand growth in the next five years, receives 70% of its energy from coal already, and is projected to nearly triple coal capacity by 2030.

In his 1979 “malaise” speech, President Carter told the American people: “I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. … The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence.” Carter was wrong. America was not suffering from a crisis of confidence. As the election of President Ronald Reagan would show the next year, it was the Carter administration that was suffering … from a crisis of leadership. Today, our country is in crisis again. The Obama administration’s constant blame shifting, politicization, and lack of organization demonstrate a crisis of competence. To restore America’s faith, the White House should drop irrelevant policy priorities, refrain from making the economic damage worse, end unnecessary bureaucratic delays, and restructure the response and recovery efforts. As MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann said following the address: “It was a great speech if you’ve been on another planet for the last 57 days.”

Ouch.

“WHERE’S MY GUN?”

RADAR DETECTORS: In response to my bleg the other day, most readers endorsed either the Valentine One or the Passport 9500ix. Both are quite pricey. However, there’s a one-day sale on the Cobra XRS 9960G that makes it a lot cheaper. Should I go with that one?

UPDATE: Even with the price difference, the Valentine One still seems to be the favorite among readers. Kinda pricey, though. Other say just drive with traffic. Well, that’s what I do, but last summer I got nailed in an old-fashioned speed trap — five lanes, Interstate signs, but a 35 mph speed limit — down in Palm Beach County and a radar detector would have helped there. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Less Pricey: The Valentine One is a hundred bucks less direct from the manufacturer. That’s odd.

HOW MINIMUM-WAGE INCREASES KILL JOB CREATION.

SCRATCHING THE SURFACE, I SUSPECT: 8 House members investigated over fundraisers held near financial reform vote.

KENNETH ANDERSON on Jack Goldsmith on Cyber War. With reference to Richard Clarke’s new book, which I reviewed for the Wall Street Journal here. Link-rich enough for you?

Heck while we’re at it, here’s a link to Stewart Baker’s new book on counterterrorism, too.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Housing Starts Fall to Five-Month Low. “Housing starts fell more than expected in May to their lowest level in five months, a government report showed on Wednesday, as a popular homebuyer tax credit that had buoyed construction activity over the past two months expired. The Commerce Department said housing starts dropped 10 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 593,000 units, the lowest level since December. The percentage decline was the biggest in 14 months.” Also, April’s numbers were revised down.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “The problem with snatching sales from the future is that eventually the future arrives.” Indeed.

OUCH: Poll: Louisianans think Bush did better on Katrina than Obama’s doing on the oil spill. “Devastating. Especially since it comes from left-leaning pollster PPP. . . . The big winner? Bobby Jindal, whose 63 percent approval (65 percent on handling the spill) is the highest for any senator or governor in PPP’s polling this year.”

LEE SMITH: Obama’s Middle East policy may soon shift away from moderates in favor of extremists. Well, on the upside, there seem to be more of those to negotiate with . . . .

CHRIS CHRISTIE: The Day of Reckoning Is Here.

UPDATE: Andrew from Panzramic writes:

Am I crazy, or is an overweight man with a thick New Jersey accent the most effective communicator of commonsense conservative principles in America today?

Chris Christie has bull rushed his way to the front of the 2012 pack of presidential contenders. I think we’ve got a great crop of potentials, but I can easily imagine the majority of moderates (even some moderate liberals) in the northeast section of the country listening to Mr. Christie and nodding their heads in agreement. If you look at the subject video, everyone in the room is hanging on his every word. People of every race are in the crowd and he’s just laying it down for them.

More on that here.

JAMES JOYNER: Obama Oil Spill Speech Reax: Epic Fail. “My general sense of the matter is that there was really very little Obama could have said at this point that would have satisfied anyone. We’re already 57 days into this mess and he’s been talking about it non-stop. Absent some surprise announcement that he’s been working with James Carville and come up with an instant solution, he wasn’t going to give us anything new of significance. Even with those very low expectations, though, this was a shockingly underwhelming speech. The few sound bytes I heard on NPR this morning were exceedingly week, even by George W. Bush standards. Moreover, even those on the president’s side were disappointed if not outright angry.”

JAMES OBERG: How risky is it to rely on Russian spaceflight?

The central lesson of the worldwide partnership that built the International Space Station has become clear. We have learned that multiple independent technologies for major space capabilities provide amazing robustness in the face of the unavoidable surprises. Whether for oxygen, or spacewalking, or crew access, redundancy can be crucial.

But now that lesson is being defied. The space station’s expedition crew members — including Russia’s Fyodor Yurchikhin and NASA’s Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker, who are heading for the orbital outpost on Tuesday — will no longer be traveling back and forth on the soon-to-be-retired space shuttles. Single-string, critical-path capabilities are suddenly supposed to be “good enough.”

Well, it takes a while to repair the damage from decades of lousy policy.