WHAT THEY DO INSTEAD OF PROSECUTING VOTER INTIMIDATION: “Did you know the Justice Department threatened several universities with legal action because they took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks?”

LOS ANGELES TIMES: L.A. pensions may consume a third of city’s general fund by 2015. Which is only five years from now. Bottom line: “We can no longer sustain the pension and healthcare plan that presently exists.”

GREG GUTFELD: Keeping WikiLeaks’ Secrets! “In the end, the only identities important enough to protect, in Wikileaks’ opinion, are their own. As for lives truly at risk – our troops – no biggie.”

MICKEY KAUS ON fears of a lame-duck Congress. “Democratic legislators and their aides are trying to have it both ways–pumping up the possibility of an ambitious ‘lame duck’ session when they’re in base-pleasing mode, then calling it a fantasy when their opponents take them seriously. Suggested defensive sound bite: ‘We were only pandering!'”

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: How Damaging Is DOJ’s Failure to Enforce Voting Law?

TAX PLANNING FOR WOODY HARRELSON: You Can’t Buy Medical Marijuana With Pre-Tax Dollars From Your HSA.

But wait, no sooner did I digest that than I saw this: Don’t Bogart That Deduction: IRS Says Marijuana Is a Medical Expense. Fortunately for me, the issue is an academic one.

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION offers a rather sympathetic account of Michael Bellesiles’ career.

OOPS: California Dreamin’ Turned Nightmare As Public Salaries Revealed?

CHANGE BUT NOT MUCH HOPE in the latest Carville poll.

AUSTIN BAY AND OMAR FADHIL ON IRAQ IN the Wall Street Journal. “Don’t worry about the gridlock in parliament. Democratic habits are taking hold.”

Plus, Austin Bay on the Iran war option. “It’s not quite the guns of August, 1914, but it ain’t beanbag, either.”

OIL SPILL? WHAT OIL SPILL? “The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.” It’s like it was never there at all!

ARE THESE ACTUALLY the most ridiculous shoes ever, or just really, really ridiculous?

UPDATE: Reader Mark Behnke writes: “Forget the shoes Glenn, focus on the legs! Wowzers.”

PROF. JACOBSON: Shirley Sherrod May Prefer The Life Left Unexamined. I wouldn’t put too much faith in the CounterPunch reports without additional confirmation, though. Sometimes they break important news, but I don’t regard them as especially reliable.

A BINGO CARD for the upcoming Kagan debate.

MAKE JIM TREACHER the next Editor of Newsweek. It’s got to be better than what they’ve been doing lately.

BIG JOURNALISM: Who Watches The Watchdogs.

AT POWER LINE, covering the really important stuff. Or is that uncovering? [The “really important stuff” is still covered by that costume. — ed. Good point!]

“SHOW ME:” Missouri Anti-ObamaCare Initiative Passes By Over 70%.

More here: “Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama’s administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.”

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey: Missouri Pops The ObamaCare Media Bubble. “Bear in mind that over 315,000 Democrats turned out to cast ballots in the primary that nominated Robin Carnahan, while over 577,000 Republicans hit the polls. That is about a 65/35 split — which means that a significant amount of Democrats either supported the ballot measure repudiating ObamaCare, or didn’t bother to cast a vote to defend the program. Actually, Prop C got more votes than the combined voting in both Senate primaries — which tells us something even more about the passion in the electorate.”

MEGAN MCARDLE IS GETTING A MORTGAGE, and observes:

Actually going through the mortgage process is a reminder of one of the reasons that things went so badly wrong during the housing bubble; we are inundated with paper. There are disclosures about the Mortgage Disclosure Improvement Act telling us we have seven days to review any change in our APR; disclosures about the Home Valuation Code of Conduct, even a disclosure solemnly informing us that the bank intends to check credit scores and may not loan us money if there’s a bad payment history of too much debt.

I’m pretty good with paperwork, and I understand all the terms being used (not to mention the laws being referenced), and I find it impossible to keep track of it all mentally–especially when you add in the tax returns, the W-2s, the bank statments and sworn certifications that all the money being used was legitimately earned or received as gifts. In fairness, we’re going through our credit union, which is apparently especially bureaucratic, but still–it’s very easy to develop a sort of attentional blindness and keep signing things. I requires heroic effort to read every document.

This illustrates, I think, the limits of transparency.

Want to limit a bubble? Make originators responsible for covering defaults, or at least a percentage thereof. Yes, this will also have other consequences.

RICH LOWRY: Chris Christie & Mitch Daniels: The Adults Are Back. “Govs. Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels are forging a limited-government Republicanism that connects with people and solves problems. They are models of how to take inchoate dissatisfaction with the status quo, launder it through political talent, and apply it in a practical way to governance.”

JUICEBOX MAFIOSO?

Having a little trouble following the post, but I like the turn of phrase.

FAKE AUSTERITY: Obama Makes Ridiculously Tiny Cut To Public Worker Salaries.

DOCTOR ZERO: A Wealth Of Options.

OOPS: Zandi Claims Stimulus Didn’t Do Squat. “I don’t think it’s what he meant to claim, but that’s the way it works out. . . . Here we are 18 months later, having spent $150K for every job created and seeing a negative impact on GDP. Not to mention amazingly high unemployment. I think we can be forgiven our criticisms.”

THE WHOLE “WHY AREN’T TODAY’S CONSERVATIVES LIKE WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY” KERFUFFLE doesn’t interest me very much, but here’s one observation: Buckley was charming because he had to be. He got a lot of attention because it was a time when liberalism was at its zenith, and so was its control of the media. Liberals were secure enough to let guys like Buckley on, but only guys like Buckley, whose I’m-a-member-of-the-club aristocratic credentials made him seem safe. And only so long as he was sufficiently nonthreatening.

Times are different now, and the Buckley approach, exquisitely adapted to the 1950s and 1960s, wouldn’t work today. Miss it if you want, but it’s like missing Elvis. And a Buckley impersonator wouldn’t be Buckley any more than an Elvis impersonator is Elvis . . . .

UPDATE: Reader Stephanie Lynch emails: “This is similar to the question I ponder every Sunday night: ‘Why aren’t today’s men like Don Draper?”’