A MAJOR DISCOVERY: A Couple of TV Commercials That Don’t Demean Fathers.

SPEAKING OF INFLATION: A paper on food prices and political instability in North Africa and the Middle East. Spengler has been writing about this for some time.

SCIENTISTS PLAN asteroid-diversion test mission. “The 500kg impact craft, which will be called Hidalgo, will ram into the asteroid at a speed of around six miles a second. The orbitor, called Sancho, will scan the collision and monitor whether the asteroid changes direction at all.”

WELL, THAT’S DIFFERENT: A dating site for celibate singles.

INTERESTED IN NINETIES TRIVIA AND NOSTALGIA? Check out 90s411.com.

FASTER, PLEASE: Stanford researchers separate tumor-causing stem cells from therapeutic ones.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Gun Rights Win In Florida: State Law Will Soon End Local Firearms Restrictions.

Florida has decided to finally protect the 2nd Amendment at the state level and eliminate onerous restrictions that many municipalities and communities have enacted against gun rights.

Starting October 1st, any public official who passes or enforces gun regulations below the state level faces a $5,000 personal fine and could even be removed from office by the governor for enacting or enforcing local gun laws.

While Florida has had a law on its books since 1987 that makes it illegal to pass gun regulations beyond state statutes, there was no enforcement mechanism in place. As a result, towns and cities have created ordinances at will. In the process, many of them have criminalized otherwise completely law-abiding citizens who unintentionally ran afoul of arbitrary, localized gun rules.

But thanks to the law recently signed by Governor Rick Scott, that’s all about to change in the Sunshine State.

Well, good.

IT’S BEEN A HAPPY SUMMER FOR MATT DRUDGE. TODAY IS NO EXCEPTION:

THE POWER OF academic blogs.

HOWIE CARR: You’re Either On The Bus, Or Under It. “No wonder it’s being called the Magical Misery Tour. It’s a listening tour where Obama doesn’t listen to anybody except his own Kool-Aid drinkers.” Many points for incorporating the Beatles, Ken Kesey, and Tom Wolfe in one passage.

MILT WOLF: The Bad-Luck President:

Mr. President, you didn’t run into bad luck. You created it.

America is indeed blessed, but it’s not by some accident that previous generations were able to create the most prosperous nation in the history of humankind. Our founding principles of constitutionally limited government, individual liberty and free-market capitalism have unleashed the powerful American engine of prosperity. This engine is fueled by individual players’ investments of labor and capital, and both are supplied directly in proportion to their confidence of realizing reward. . . . The Japanese tsunami, the “Arab Spring” uprisings and Europe’s debt crises are not America’s “bad luck” – Obamanomics is.

The Obama presidency is a case study of what happens when you break faith with the principles that made America great. Mr. Obama has chased investment capital out of the market by implementing the Dodd-Frank financial-sector takeover. He has frozen new hiring by unleashing Obamacare’s enormous costs on employment.

He has trampled the rights of Americans as free consumers with the unconstitutional individual mandate to purchase government-sanctioned health insurance. He has made a mockery of free competition by granting Obamacare waivers to cronies and union friends. He has stymied the technology sector by unleashing his antitrust forces and the manufacturing sector by unleashing his labor-relations forces.

He has ushered in the first-ever downgrade of America’s credit rating by rejecting the Cut, Cap and Balance Act. And he has all but assured that those Americans with capital will stay on the sidelines by maligning them and launching class warfare upon them.

Plus, a Robert Heinlein quote you may recognize.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: It’s Going To Be A Long, Ugly Campaign. Exactly how ugly depends on how many Dems give up on Obama before next November.

PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK ME ABOUT WEBHOSTING, and when they do I always recommend HostingMatters. They hosted InstaPundit for many years, did a terrific job, and still host my backup GlennReynolds.com blog site. They email that they’re running some specials now — basically, $8 a month for unmetered usage –so if you’re looking for service check ’em out. I’ve been very happy with their services.

UPDATE: Reader T.J. Linzy emails:

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Yep, in my experience they’re swell.

THINGS FOR WHICH RAND SIMBERG makes no apologies.

TODAY ONLY: Milwaukee M12 12-Volt Cordless Drill and Fork Meter Combo Kit for $99.99.

RIGHTHAVEN LOSES AGAIN: “Righthaven, the Las Vegas copyright troll, won’t be collecting any damages from a man it once branded as a copyright infringer but instead must pay the man’s legal fees of $34,045.”

MY MONEY’S ON SANTORUM: Pawlenty’s Gone, So Who’ll Be The Next Republican To Fold?

KIDDIE PORN? Really? I think this is more about Martha Coakley abusing law-enforcement power by sucking up to celebrities. Also, I think that if every naked picture of a baby looks like porn to you, then you’re the one who’s thinking like a pedophile. . . .

JOE LIEBERMAN not sure if he’ll support Obama next year. Actually, to twist the knife in the Kos Kids’ wound, he should endorse him and specifically praise his willingness, as President, to intervene militarily all over the globe at the drop of a hat. . . .

MICHAEL BARONE: Harry S. Obama? “Pundits have lately been comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, suggesting he is a likely loser in 2012. But my American Enterprise Institute colleague Norman Ornstein, writing in the New Republic, compares Obama to Harry Truman, suggesting he might outperform the polls and win. . . . Truman won many votes from Democrats still upset about the Civil War. Few such votes are available to Obama or congressional Democrats in 2012. In addition, Truman’s victory was due to two ‘F factors’ — the farm vote and foreign policy — the first of which scarcely exists today and the second of which seems unlikely to benefit Obama in the same way.”

CHANGE: Group Sues NLRB For Boeing Documents.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Time To Get Rid Of Collective Bargaining.

There are two deep ironies in the current impasse. The first is that the strike lays bare one constant theme of union supporters etched on those picket signs—namely, that union members are the heart and soul of the middle class. That persistent and pretentious claim ignores all the nonunion workers at Verizon Wireless, as well as thousands of other small businessmen and women. The sad truth is that the CWA does not care about the middle class as such. It cares about its dues-paying members, whom this strike will ill serve.

The second irony hits a larger point: given today’s difficult job market, the current system of collective bargaining to impasse and strike is indefensible. The arrangement does nothing to improve overall productivity within the firm. And when the negotiations break down, strikes and lockouts impose tremendous dislocations on innocent third persons, such as customers and suppliers, for whom there is no compensation at all.

Obviously, those third parties need to sue!

DOUBLE-DIPPING on entitlement benefits.

PRESCIENT: PJTV Flashback — President Zobama: Under My Bus.