SALENA ZITO: GOP Can’t Ignore Wisconsin Recall Battle. “Unions and the left are far outspending pro-business interests and the right on recall ads. Democrats are wise to see more at stake than a single state Senate majority and a new political map that could unseat two freshmen Republican congressmen. They know this is the first battle of 2012 — their version of 2010’s surprise election of Scott Brown, R-Mass., who won a blue-state U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Democrat Ted Kennedy. . . . Massachusetts Democrats got ambushed. Will Republicans let that happen to them in Wisconsin? . . . If Republicans don’t engage with real cash in Wisconsin, they could lose the state Senate in advance of redistricting this summer, embolden unions and scare hell out of Republicans in statehouses everywhere.”

They don’t call it the Stupid Party for nothing.

UPDATE: Reader Allen S. Thorpe writes:

I don’t think it’s just the GOP that can’t ignore the Recall fight. It’s also the Tea Party. They provided the big push that put the GOP in office. Now the Dems, especially the unions are coming to get back what they think is theirs. Each side has to get 25% of the votes in the last election for each office they go after. That means practically the whole senate will be faced with recall drives. For Walker, it’ll take 25% of the entire vote in the last election. It’ll take someone like Michael Barone to figure out how to how to handicap that. This is too important to leave up to the GOP alone.

Indeed.

RON RADOSH ON EFFORTS TO EXPLOIT THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE IN CONTEMPORARY POLITICS: The problem is, entitled government employees — with benefits, pay, and working conditions that are better than the average American’s — don’t really seem much like exploited sweatshop workers from a century ago. “Does Raynor and film producer Levin really believe that a teacher today, with high union benefits not enjoyed by private sector workers, who works 9 to 3 with time off, and with three months off in summers, is anywhere near the same boat as those who worked twelve hour days in a New York City sweatshop in 1911? Do bus and train engineers earning salaries sometimes amounting to close to $100,000 a year or more, really think that despite a high cost of living, their conditions are akin to those of the Triangle workers?”

They may think that — it’s amazing the fantasies a full-blown entitlement mentality can indulge — but I doubt most voters will agree.

GEORGE WILL: The Insanity Of The College Application Process.

GERMANY TAKES A HUGE STEP BACKWARD.

TAXPROF: If You Acted Like Congress And The IRS, You’d Go To Jail.

SIX SURPRISING WAYS high oil prices affect you, besides, you know, the obvious.

PHIL BOWERMASTER: Yes, They ARE Watching You.

ABE GREENWALD: The Return of Anarchism. “All forms of government have failed Europeans at one time or another, and the ongoing financial crisis indicates that systemic failure is not beyond the bounds of possibility now. Thus the newfound attractiveness of anarchism, which at least promises its adherents that they will play a role in bringing about that failure rather than simply being passive victims of it.”

But if you’re protesting against government budget cuts, can you really call yourself an anarchist?

UPDATE: Reader Rob Crawford writes: “The modern anarchists are just the far-left’s muscle. Look at when and where they show up, who they march with and for, and how carefully the press ignores them and their acts.”

In a real anarchy, of course, as Clayton Cramer has pointed out, they’d have short careers.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Chuck Simmins emails: “Abe Greenwald is incorrect. Europeans have yet to try a form of representative democracy like the US has. Parliamentary democracy lacks one key check and balance, a separation between the legislative and executive branches. That’s why it fails so often.”

MORE: Reader Matthew Akins writes:

I’m sure this hasn’t escaped your attention, but in point of fact, there is no such thing as a leftist anarchist. We are using words here to describe groups of people in ways that those words were never intended to be used. It’s like a person carrying a yellow flag, but it’s called green. Everyone says, “hey, I see you have the green flag with you,” whenever you go about town with a yellow flag. Such is leftist anarchy. It isn’t anarchy at all, but actually extreme statism. Perhaps the closest it ever comes to anarchy is that leftist anarchists intend on overthrowing the old order. Maybe during the brief period of time before they establish their new ultra statist order, a type of anarchy would exist. But that is not their goal. Their goal is the new order of extreme statism. Yet they call themselves “anarchists” and everyone keeps obliging them, even though their philosophy is anything but anarchy.

Yes. But what to do? Besides, you know, putting their heads on pikes in front of your business to discourage their fellows, which would be unrefined — but, I suspect, highly common in an actual anarchy.

MORE STILL: Billy Beck emails to say that I’m on the same page as H.L. Mencken:

He elaborated on the point you made about “*actual* anarchy” —

“To the average American or Englishman the very name of anarchy causes a shudder, because it invariably conjures up a picture of a land terrorized by low-browed assassins with matted beards, carrying bombs in one hand and mugs of beer in the other. But as a matter of fact, there is no reason whatever to believe that, if all laws were abolished tomorrow, such swine would survive the day. They are incompetents under our present paternalism and they would be incompetents under Dionysian anarchy. The only difference between the two states is that the former, by its laws, protects men of this sort, whereas the latter would work their speedy annihilation.”

(H.L. Mencken: “Friedrich Nietzsche”, 1913; Transaction Publishers edition, 1993, pp. 196-197)

That sounds about right, and it’s as cogent an argument in favor of anarchy as I can imagine.

A SALE ON flashlights, headlamps, and lanterns.

POLIWOOD: Sultry, Dirty But Wholesome: Poliwood Remembers the Last Movie Star, the Great Elizabeth Taylor.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D SEE WAR AFTER WAR WITH NO EXIT STRATEGY. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! ABC: How Long Will U.S. Forces be Involved in Libya? White House Says Nobody Knows. We’ll stay for 100 years, if that’s what it takes!

EATING ON A BUDGET without rice and beans.

PROF. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Still Waiting For A Correction From Bill Keller.

Whether the Times is impartial open to serious debate. What interests Media Myth Alert is Keller’s claim that the Times strives for promptness in correcting errors — even to the point of seeming a bit absurd in doing so.

Keller wrote that “when we get it wrong, we correct ourselves as quickly and forthrightly as possible. Connoisseurs of penitence find The Times a bottomless source of amusement. (An actual correction: ‘An article in The Times Magazine last Sunday about Ivana Trump and her spending habits misstated the number of bras she buys. It is two dozen black, two dozen beige and two dozen white, not two thousand of each.’)”

But the policy of publishing a prompt and forthright correction certainly hasn’t been followed in the matter of a correction the Times flubbed two months ago — a lapse that I brought to the attention of the newspaper and its public editor, or ombudsman. . . . Surely, if the Times deigns it important to set the record straight about Ivana Trump’s bras, it ought to fix its flawed correction about the Army-McCarthy hearings.

Get in line, buddy. The error in my case was trivial, but the correction came nearly a decade later, though I wrote them at the time.

BRUCE MCQUAIN: The U.S. Has The Most Energy Resources In The World, And The Most Incoherent Energy Policy.

KHAN: Use Video To “Flip” Education.

MARKDOWNS ON iPod and iPhone home speaker systems.

PJTV IN IOWA: Herman Cain: Conservative Principles, American Exceptionalism & Getting all the Facts.

WHAT WOULD SENATOR OBAMA HAVE SAID? Robert Gates Admits Libya Is Neither A Threat, Nor A Vital National Interest.

WHY DO RUSSIANS smile so little? “The paradox is: the Russians smile less because they are more open to others. The Russian seriousness is a habit not to conceal people’s feelings and emotions. Historically, the Russians are mostly in a bad mood, but they are not hiding it.”

SIX TIPS FOR cooking on a budget.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Emperor Seth And Kinetic Islam. “Future historians, looking back on this era, will marvel at its capacity for linguistic evasion.”

WHY OBAMA DIDN’T GET a “Libya bounce.”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED REPUBLICAN, AMERICAN WORKERS WOULD LOSE THE RIGHT TO STRIKE: And They Were Right! “The U.S. isn’t allowing flight attendants at financially strapped American Airlines to walk the picket lines any time soon, and that could change the tone of labor negotiations across the industry, some experts said Friday.”

JOE LIEBERMAN: Maybe we should go into Syria, too. Plus this: “Where exactly is the White House on Syria? Barack Obama seemed anxious to push an American ally out of power in Egypt for far less, and started a war with Libya for not much more. The reticence to confront Syria, where the US and the West have a good argument on national security, comes from the Obama administration’s feckless policy regarding Assad over the last two years, reports the New York Times.”

Related: Why have we moved 2 aircraft carriers to the strait of Hormuz?

UPDATE: Syria Should Be U.S. Target.

IN THE MAIL: When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management.