DAILY CALLER: Reid’s Phony Budget Numbers Go Unchallenged On Face The Nation.

HOUSE OF CARDS? Foreclosure crisis: Fed-up judges crack down disorder in the courts. “A Palm Beach Post review of cases in state and appellate courts found judges are routinely dismissing cases for questionable paperwork. Although in most cases the bank is allowed to refile the case with the appropriate documents, in a growing number of cases judges are awarding homeowners their homes free and clear after finding fraud upon the court. . . . Ongoing scrutiny by the FBI, the Florida attorney general, the Florida Bar, the media and defense attorneys has uncovered countless examples of forged signatures, post-dated documents, robo-signing and lost paperwork.”

ON SALE: A Cuisinart ice-cream maker. Is this better than an Ice Cream Ball?

UPDATE: On the Cuisinart machine, reader Marica Bernstein writes:

We have this and it’s freaking awesome. We are people who like low-tech food making/processing stuff, but are willing to set aside this preference.

I had a spectacular crop of melons last summer– mostly rare & heirloom, some of which had gone out of production just because they didn’t ship well. What to do with all these flavorful melons? Melon sherbet.

At the same time, we suffered a number of ice cream maker disasters. Recall that we live out in the county. The best way to fix this sort of problem– the need to make sherbet and the lack of a functional ice cream maker– is the internet, although we are trying to prepare for the lack thereof.

As I said, this thing is awesome. Turns out, you can freeze melon. So we had homegrown melon sherbet a few times this past winter. It was good.

John made a nice batch of coffee toffee ice cream in it last weekend. It’s not really ice cream. It’s iced custard. There are a lot of yolks involved. But the machine handles it well. For custard you have to pre-do some stuff which takes a couple of hours, but once it’s in the machine, you’re having a taste in 20-30 minutes.

Highly recommend this little appliance.

Thanks!

GEORGE WILL: In St. Louis, A Protest Sign Meets Government Arrogance.

GUN RIGHTS: Brannon Denning and I have a piece on what the McDonald v. Chicago case means. Download early and often! (Bumped).

TOM FRIEDMAN WAS UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei arrested in latest government crackdown. “Ai Weiwei, one of China’s most prominent artists and an outspoken critic of the communist regime, was taken from Beijing’s airport by security agents Sunday as he was about to board a flight to Hong Kong. Police later raided his studio.” Still envious of the Chinese leadership, Tom? Sadly, I think the answer is yes.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Scary-Ass Charts Of The Day. As I keep saying, a Carter re-run is looking more and more like a best-case scenario.

MANCESSION UPDATE: looking at the BLS numbers: “The unemployment rate among men 20 years and older dropped only because the male labor force dropped by 31,000. Those employed barely rose by 4,000. Contrast with stats for women 20 years and older below. The labor pool for women rose by 96,000. The number of employed women rose by 247,000 vs. 4,000 for men. Thus, improvement in Friday’s jobs numbers came entirely from women, at least according to the household survey.”

CHART: Silver Coin Sales Skyrocketing. It’s like people have lost faith in the dollar.

ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION: “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says congressional lawmakers all are discussing taking some action in response to the Koran burnings of a Tennessee pastor that led to killings at the U.N. facility in Afghanistan and sparked protests across the Middle East, Politico reports. . . . Sen. Lindsey Graham said Congress might need to explore the need to limit some forms of freedom of speech, in light of Tennessee pastor Terry Jones’ Quran burning, and how such actions result in enabling U.S. enemies.”

They told me if I voted Republican we’d see an establishment of religion, complete with penalties for heretics and blasphemers. And they were right!

UPDATE: Ann Althouse: “Zero attention is paid to freedom of speech or religious freedom. Neither Schieffer nor Reid gives a damn (or dares to say he gives a damn). Pathetic.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Steven Corcoran notes a double standard: “If only Terry Jones had submerged a Koran in a jar of urine, the entire world (or at least the Left) would have proclaimed this a great work of art. As for those who protested: bigots all.”

I don’t think it’s the urine that’s different here. And reader Cindy McNew writes:

U.S. flag burning: OK
Koran burning: Restricted.

I really despise the choice of language in saying it “enables” America’s enemies. … which, by the way, does he even realize he just called angry Muslims America’s enemies?

But it doesn’t enable them–it just gives them an excuse (what should be a laughably transparent one, instead of being taken seriously as a grievance) for what they want to do anyway.

Yes. This is a moment of clarity, on several grounds. And Lindsey Graham is unfit to hold office, too. Why don’t you and Harry resign, Lindsey? It’s the least you can do.

And reader Rob Crawford emails: “I wonder if it’s occurred to any of them that holding such hearings will cause a rash of Koran burnings. All the effort — by Democrats! — to protect the right to burn the US flag seems to have slipped from their minds. Almost as if it weren’t an issue of principle…”

MORE: Reader J.M. Hanes writes: “You know, if Harry Reid weren’t defending the Koran and attacking hookers, I’d have completely forgotten he’s the Majority Leader. You’d almost think that Mitch McConnell was already running the show, wouldn’t you?”

STILL MORE: Did they beclown themselves over nothing? Karzai’s brother: Beheadings had nothing to do with Koran burning. We’re led by cowards and fools. But at least by opening their mouths, they removed all doubt.

And reader Houston Foppiano emails: “Please correct the shoddy reporting in that Newsmax article. Terry Jones is not from Tennessee, he’s from Gainesville, Florida. For all the ‘hillybilly’ crap we’ve gotten from them over the years, make those damn Gators own this crackpot.” Heh.

MORE STILL: A reader emails:

You link to an erroneus Don Surber post about the beheadings in Afghanistan, titled “Karzai’s brother: Beheadings had nothing to do with Koran burning” (update to your 6:42 pm Sunday post).

Surber conflates the Mazar-i-Sharif beheadings with the riots in Kandahar. If you look carefully at the CNN story to which Surber links, Karzai’s brother was talking about a separate set of riots in Kandahar, where there were no beheadings (so far as I am aware).

Thus Surber’s point about the Koran-burning being merely a scapegoat for Petraeus et al. is somewhat undermined.

It’s hard to keep track of all the barbaric behavior emanating from that part of the world.

OF COURSE: Music Industry Will Force Licenses on Amazon Cloud Player — or Else.

INFLATION UPDATE: Many Restaurants Expecting To Raise Prices.

Grocery prices rose by more than 1 1/2 times the overall rate of inflation in 2010, according to government statistics, and economists predict that it will be even worse this year. For months consumers have grappled with higher prices at the supermarket, while restaurateurs pulled out every kitchen trick they could to absorb food inflation costs.

Well, the party is over. Experts say restaurant-goers can expect to see as much as an 8 percent increase in their checks.

And that may not be enough to keep the big chains alive, let alone the small independent eating places. Already suffering from flagging sales and low profit margins, record-high food prices – brought on by low supplies of corn, soybeans and wheat – could be the coup de gras for many restaurateurs.

Well, the supply of dollars has exploded, so the dollar’s worth less, so it takes more dollars to buy food. And there’s also the ethanol factor: “Because corn is also used for ethanol, demand has grown so great that feed costs for farmers and ranchers are being passed on in both the wholesale and retail markets.”

PROF. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Time for WaPo to disclose sources on bogus Lynch story. “It matters because, as months passed and American public opinion turned against the war in Iraq, the singular role of the Post in the mythical hero-warrior narrative about Lynch faded in favor of a false narrative that the Pentagon had made it all up. . . . The Post itself has been complicit in suggesting that machinations by the Pentagon were behind the bogus story. But it’s clear that the Post alone placed the ‘fighting to the death’ story into the public domain. And as I discuss in Getting It Wrong, the Pentagon wasn’t the source for the hero-warrior tale.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns in Sports and Outdoors.

MY SUNDAY WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMN: From “Just In Time” To “Just In Case” — Disaster Preparedness And Resilience. (Bumped).

TODAY’S ECONOMY: Why North Dakota May Be the Best State in the Country to Live In. Drill, baby, drill.

TECHNOLOGY: Authorities in Awe of Drug Runners’ Jungle-Built, Kevlar-Coated Supersubs.

And there was something else hastily abandoned in a narrow estuary: a 74-foot camouflaged submarine—nearly twice as long as a city bus—with twin propellers and a 5-foot conning tower, beached on its side at low tide. “It was incredible to find a submarine like that,” says rear admiral Carlos Albuja, who oversees Ecuadorean naval operations along the northwest coast. “I’m not sure who built it, but they knew what they were doing.”

So what are people building that we haven’t found? “The prospect of Colombian drug traffickers running their own private navy poses problems that won’t be solved with a few arrests.”

SIEGFRIED, THE TIGER, AND THE MURDERS IN AFGHANISTAN:

To those in the media who are suggesting, apparently in all seriousness, that Terry Jones caused the deaths of seven UN employees in Afghanistan by burning a copy of the Koran, I’ll just note that the only way that argument works is by means of a suppressed premise. The premise is that the killers had no moral agency–in other words, that they were, literally, animals.

Me, I’ll stick with “savages” and “barbarians.”

If there’s no moral agency, then I guess the folks who argued for a return to colonialism after 9/11 were right. If Muslims aren’t capable of self-control or moral responsibility, then they must be ruled with a firm hand by those who are. Is that “liberal?” No, but interestingly the consequences of taking the ideas of liberals seriously seldom are. Alternatively, some people are just using this as an excuse to blame people they like less than savages and barbarians.

WAS THERE A NATURAL NUCLEAR BLAST ON MARS?

According to Brandenburg, the natural explosion, the equivalent of 1 million one-megaton hydrogen bombs, occurred in the northern Mare Acidalium region of Mars where there is a heavy concentration of radioactivity.

This explosion filled the Martian atmosphere with radio-isotopes as well, which are seen in recent gamma ray spectrometry data taken by NASA, he said.

The radioactivity also explains why the planet looks red.

Brandenburg said gamma ray spectrometry taken over the past few years shows spiking radiation from Xenon 129 — an increase also seen on Earth after a nuclear reaction or a nuclear meltdown, including the one at Chernobyl in 1986 and the disaster in Japan earlier this month.

Natural criticality I can see — that’s happened on Earth in the distant past — but an explosion? Color me skeptical. And I don’t understand the radioactivity/redness connection, either.

HMM: Rasmussen poll shows no bump for Obama on national security.

IN THE MAIL: Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status.

SUSANNAH FLEETWOOD: Why Veena Malik’s smackdown of a mullah was a seminal moment for feminism.