LOSERS: So I was briefly in Washington yesterday, and I walked by SEIU headquarters just minutes after hearing that the Wisconsin Supreme Court had upheld Gov. Scott Walker’s bill reining in public employee unions. (And, most painful to the unions, abolishing automatic withholding of dues from employee paychecks, which is what this was really all about.)

So to be clear: They lost in the legislature. They lost in a judicial special election, where union organization should have been decisive. And they lost in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. And in the meantime, they made themselves look like thugs — and, worse, not very scary ones, really, just kind of nasty and pathetic ones — even going so far as to disrupt an award ceremony for Special Olympics kids. So: Losers. If they can’t win in Wisconsin, where can they win?

UPDATE: Wisconsin’s Incredible Shrinking Protests.

Plus, a reader sends this “updated” version of the photo above:

And various other readers wonder if MSNBC will be scolding the SEIU for “abuse” of the flag imagery. . .

MEGAN MCARDLE: Student Loan Settlements, Revisited.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON is taking this whole “mockery” thing to heart.

THIS IS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR WHEN YOU VOTED FOR “CHANGE:” Global Order Fractures As American Power Declines.

THE CONGRESSIONAL REPORT ON THAT ATF gunrunning scandal is out. Call me suspicious, but when I hear that ATF folks were “giddy” over the news that these guns were showing up at Mexican crime scenes, I can’t help but feel that the whole thing was designed to shore up efforts at gun control in the United States based on claims that it was necessary to prevent guns flowing to Mexico. Based on evidence to date, a better way to keep guns from flowing to Mexico would be to defund the ATF.

Also, if administration people were lying to Congress about this program, should we expect to see False Statements Act prosecutions? If not, why not?

MEN USING WEINER, ETC., TO BASH OTHER MEN: “Remember it’s okay to say one sex is superior to the other as long as you’re saying women are better.” That does seem to be the rule, but as I noted before, these affairs don’t make women look all that good either, really: Schwarzenegger’s paramour was married, and deceived her husband into thinking he fathered someone else’s child, Weiner’s various female fans knew he was married and didn’t care, Rielle Hunter knew John Edwards was married to a woman with cancer, etc., etc. That seems to get left out of these discussions.

Can we call the men who engage in this sort of sucking-up to women “Uncle Tims”?

Plus, from the comments: “I’d like to see the stats on which sex voted in larger proportion for those presumed f***-nuts.”

RIGHTHAVEN’S CASE COLLAPSES: “Judge Hunt did not just dismiss Righthaven’s suit; he gave them two weeks to respond as to why they should not be sanctioned by the court and held liable for the legal fees of Democratic Underground. My hope is that once this is settled, there will be a massive dogpile of all the people that were intimidated into settling out of court with Righthaven, and the net effect will be both immediate bankruptcy for Righthaven, and perhaps the destruction of Stephens Media as well.”

DAVID MAMET ON OBAMA: “The question is, can he run on his record in 2012, and the answer is no, because it’s abysmal. He took a trillion dollars and where it went, nobody knows. He dismantled healthcare, he weakened America around the world, he sold out the State of Israel. All he’s got to run on is being a Democrat and indicting the other fellow.”

Here and elsewhere, Mamet’s not pulling punches.

SHOWDOWN, YOU BET: Boehner demands that Obama provide legal basis for Libya mission.

DON’T BLAME OBAMA FOR UNEMPLOYMENT, blame those dastardly ATM machines.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE? What Higher Education Bubble? Interesting responses in the comments.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Big Corn eats the GOP. “How is it that the party loudly proclaiming how the government shouldn’t ‘pick winners and losers’ could only manage to get 34 senators to oppose one of the most egregious examples of federal industrial policy? On Tuesday, the Senate rejected an amendment sponsored by Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to end the $6 billion in tax subsidies plus the import tariffs that have given rise to Big Ethanol. The measure got just 40 votes, six of them from Democrats.”

CHANGE: Newsweek Cuts Back Number Of Issues: Will Anyone Notice?

DISGUSTING LITTLE BOXES: “As for ‘gaming’ the system, were we supposed to lament the fact that a black applicant 100 years ago might try to pass for white? I think our condemnation then and now should be more concentrated on the racially discriminatory system itself rather than on those who tried or try to game it.”

OTHER BIG NEWS FROM WISCONSIN: Concealed Carry Bill Passes. “Wisconsin would become the 49th state to legalize carrying hidden guns.”

CHINA BLOCKS WEB SEARCHES about migrant protests. “China is blocking searches on Google and microblogs for the name of a Chinese city where protests have erupted against local authorities. The move is part of an effort to suppress information on the rioting. Google searches in Chinese for Zengcheng, a city in the country’s Guangdong province, result in the browser’s connection to the server being reset, with no search results offered.”

FREE THE BULBS: Let There Be 100-Watt Incandescent Light. “Suddenly we are all Joe Banks, innocently enjoying our incandescent light bulbs, only to have Uncle Sam rob us of their superior light in an act of arbitrary deprivation.”

It’s still not too late to stock up!

UBIQUITOUS VIDEO: markdowns on Flip video cameras and accessories.

CONAN O’BRIEN’S commencement address.

SOLAR FORECAST LOOKING CHILLY: “The American Astronomical Society meeting in Los Cruces, NM has just made a major announcement on the state of the sun. Sunspots may be on the way out and an extended solar minimum may be on the horizon.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Young Americans, Forget Your Student Loans And Move To GonzoTown. What’s interesting is to see the same higher-education bubble critique coming from a different political slant. The notion of student loans as debt-slavery has really taken off.

WELCOME TO THE Zombie Economy.

FRUSTRATION: “This intense eagerness to get Sarah Palin for whatever it is she might have done on line unfolded concurrently with all the attention that had to be paid to Anthony Weiner for his on-line antics. What we can’t see is the agony the poor journalists must have endured as Weiner’s wienerisms hurt the Democratic Party just when they stood ready to damage the Republican Party with Sarah’s misdeeds. And then — oh, how awful! — they got nothing from Sarah. Nothing but hard work and — urrrgghhh! — good government and — damn! — family values.”

INSTAVISION: Magical Realism: The Fantasy World of Barack Obama, Anthony Weiner & Lesbian Bloggers. I talk with Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online and the American Enterprise Institute.

UPDATE: Now also available in handy embeddable YouTube format.

(Bumped).