HOPEY-CHANGEY: Walter Russell Mead: “In God We Trust” Is Out; “What, Me Worry?” Is In.

AMY SULLIVAN AND ANN ALTHOUSE: Obama’s Female Trouble.

CHUCK SIMMINS: Are Khaddafy’s Missiles Actually Missing?

TODAY ONLY: A Hitachi gas-powered leaf blower for $99.99.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: More solar companies led by Democratic donors received federal loan guarantees. “A Daily Caller investigation has found that in addition to the failed company Solyndra, at least four other solar panel manufacturing companies receiving in excess of $500 million in loan guarantees from the Obama administration employ executives or board members who have donated large sums of money to Democratic campaigns. And as questions swirl around possible connections between political donations and these preferential financing arrangements, the Obama White House suddenly began deflecting The Daily Caller’s questions on Wednesday to the Democratic National Committee.”

Related: $737 million in green-tech loan to company connected to Pelosi family?

WHITE HOUSE POLICY FAIL: Poster Children for New Health Care Model Won’t Participate in Model Program.

A CIVIL RIGHTS VICTORY: Court Overturns Oregon Universities’ Ban on Firearms. “The Oregon Court of Appeals on Wednesday overturned a 20-year-old state regulation barring the possession of firearms on public colleges’ campuses, ruling that Oregon’s Board of Higher Education was not authorized by the state legislature to enact such a rule.”

SHOCKER: Gun crime continues to decrease, despite increase in gun sales.

Despite increases in gun sales, gun crimes continued to decrease in the United States for the fourth straight year in 2010, according to the FBI.

The FBI recently released its Crime in The United States statistics for 2010. Overall, murders in the U.S. have decreased steadily since 2006, dropping from 15,087 to 12,996. Firearms murders — which made up 67 percent of all murders in the U.S. in 2010 — have followed this trend, decreasing by 14 percent.

At the same time that firearms murders were dropping, gun sales were surging. In 2009, FBI background checks for guns increased by 30 percent over the previous year, while firearms sales in large retail outlets increased by almost 40 percent. The number of applications for concealed carry permits jumped across the country as well.

Wow, you could write a book about this phenomenon, if you could just come up with a title or something.

HERMAN CAIN: Black Voters Have Been “Brainwashed.”

CITIZEN ANGER AT Tucson town hall over Fast and Furious gun-smuggling scandal.

Related: Obama evades ‘Fast and Furious’ questions from Latino media.

Plus: More “Fast & Furious” Revelations:

This just might be the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for to break the festering “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal wide open: the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently ordered one of its own agents to purchase firearms with taxpayer money, and sell them directly to a Mexican drug cartel.

Let that sink in: After months of pretending that “Fast and Furious” was a botched surveillance operation of illegal gun-running spearheaded by the ATF and the US attorney’s office in Phoenix, it turns out that the government itself was selling guns to the bad guys. . . .

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go — and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

Of course, there’s a third explanation — that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.

Time for a special prosecutor, who’s both fast and furious.

Yes, a special prosecutor is clearly warranted here.

NITA GHEI: Eurozone Debt Debacle: Government spending spree could bring down European Union.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Obama-style Democracy: Bureaucrats know best.

 

Most Americans complain that government is unresponsive to their wishes. But not everyone feels that way. In the space of two days, two prominent Democrats have called for less responsive government that ignores public input.

One of them, former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, penned a piece this week in the New Republic arguing, as the title says, “Why we need less democracy.” Orszag wrote that “the country’s political polarization was growing worse — harming Washington’s ability to do the basic, necessary work of governing.” His solution? “[W]e need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.” . . .

Perhaps know-it-all bureaucrats can be forgiven for harboring such contempt for the voting public. But elected officials cannot. That’s why similar comments by Gov. Bev Perdue, D-N.C., are far more troubling. “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover,” Perdue told a Rotary Club gathering in suburban Raleigh this week. “I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.”

Perdue’s office at first claimed her comments were made in jest. The subsequent release of the audio conclusively demonstrates otherwise.

The federal government’s legitimacy is based upon the consent of the governed. This nation’s Founding Fathers would have had it no other way. Given Perdue’s apparent disdain for the American constitutional system, she might be more comfortable in the private sector, where hierarchical management is the rule. And the voters in her state should remind her next November who’s the boss.

Actually, I think she should resign now. This was much worse than anything Trent Lott said.

CHICKS WITH GUNS: 15 Million American Women Pack Heat.

Based on polling research and gun-sale statistics, an estimated 15 million to 20 million women in the United States own their own firearms. Dozens of those heat-packing women are documented in “Chicks with Guns,” a new book by photographer Lindsay McCrum that is sure to challenge almost anyone’s assumptions about gun ownership.

Well, almost anyone’s . . . .

DON SURBER: Anarchy In The NYT: “So when people outside Arabia protest, they oppose democracy, but in Arabia, they protest for democracy. I am not really sure how that works or why someone would conclude that 80 people demonstrating on Wall Street marks a universal cry in America to rip our constitution in half. But I do know that as 2012 approaches, Democrats know they are in for an old-fashioned thumping by Republicans and suddenly have developed a distaste for elections.”

NO. “You’re not coming in without a warrant.”

OAK RIDGE: One-day-a-week jobs (for retirees) at Y-12. “Retiring workers at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant will now have the option of working one day a week under a new program called PReP (Post Retirement Program). . . . B&W, the government’s managing contractor at Y-12, said the idea is to allow employees to transition into the retirement while they share their decades of experience with a new generation of workers. The program will help ensure that the Oak Ridge plant retains the critical skills necessary for the national security missions, the contractor said.” This seems like a good idea for all sorts of settings.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Seton Hall University To Offer Steep Tuition Discounts. “Starting next year, Seton Hall University will try to ease that follow-up blow for early applicants with strong academic credentials, giving them two-thirds off the regular sticker price for tuition, a discount of some $21,000. For New Jersey residents, who comprise about 70 percent of Seton Hall’s undergraduates, that would make the cost equivalent to that of Rutgers University, the state’s flagship public institution; for those from out of state, the private school would be much cheaper than the public one.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): CNN Poll: Trust In Government Hits All-Time Low.

CAIN VS. UNABLE: Herman Cain within 5 points of Barack Obama.

ROGER SIMON: Nasrallah’s Happy Jewish New Year.

SOLARGATE II? Obama Gives $737 Million Dollar Loan To Solar Company Connected To Nancy Pelosi’s Brother In Law. Funny how we don’t hear Nancy talking about a Washington “culture of corruption” any more. . . .

A DEVICE FOR WHEN the world is falling apart and your smartphone won’t help.

WHAT PEOPLE WILL DO FOR A HERSHEY BAR.

SHOCKINGLY, NOT A TEA PARTIER: Man arrested in ‘step-by-step’ plot to blow up Capitol, Pentagon. “The FBI arrested and charged a man Wednesday for allegedly plotting to blow up the Capitol and the Pentagon. The 26-year-old Massachusetts man, Rezwan Ferdaus, was arrested as part of an FBI sting operation in which he was made to believe he was working with members of al Qaeda, who were actually undercover agents.”

AT TEDX OXFORD, career advice for people aged 16-25.