DICK CHENEY: Obama Has Figured Out That We Were Right:

President Obama has “learned from experience” that some of the Bush administration’s decisions on terrorism issues were necessary, according to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

In his first interview since undergoing major heart surgery last July, Cheney said he thinks Obama has been forced to rethink some of his national security positions now that he sits in the Oval Office.

“I think he’s learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he’s learned from experience. And part of that experience was the Democrats having a terrible showing last election.”

Cheney also asserted that Obama has learned that the prison at Guantanamo Bay simply cannot be closed, despite the promises he made while campaigning for the White House.

“I think he’s learned that he’s not going to be able to close Guantanamo,” Cheney said. “That it’s — if you didn’t have it, you’d have to create one like that. You’ve got to have some place to put terrorists who are combatants who are bound and determined to try to kill Americans.”

They told me if I voted for John McCain, we’d wind up with a President following Cheney-approved policies in the War On Terror. And they were right!

100 REASONS NOT TO GO TO GRADUATE SCHOOL, NO. 43: Attitudes About Graduate School Are Changing.

Mostly, I’d say don’t go heavy into debt.

JUST A THOUGHT: So if the Republicans are demanding concessions in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, here’s something to add: A rule suspending Congressional salary increases so long as the national debt is above the current ceiling. (Or even decreasing salaries by 3% a year while it’s above the ceiling). This will be politically difficult to oppose, and it might even concentrate members’ minds on cutting spending.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO SEND A DUMB LEGAL THREAT, don’t send it to Cory Doctorow.

FRANK MUNGER: HOW GOOD IS GOOD ENOUGH, when it comes to securing nuclear materials?

LEFT BEHIND: Dick Lugar: Hey, let’s bring back the Assault Weapons Ban. He’s the man of the year. If the year is 1993.

TRANSPARENCY: Executive order: Gov. Haslam throws out income disclosure rules. “Under the order signed after Haslam took office on Saturday, the disclosure rules applying to himself and senior administration officials will be the same as those for members of the General Assembly. Those only requires them to list sources of income, but not how much they make.” No, I don’t know what this is about, but it looks bad.

UPDATE: Reader Frank Meyer writes:

I agree that it looks bad, however equity in disclosure is not an unreasonable standard. An appropriate retort by the governor or the governor’s defenders would be: “If the legislature determines that greater disclosure is warranted, let it pass legislation to require such disclosure for its own members and for other civil officers of the state, and I will sign it. What I won’t do is be held to a higher standard than the legislature sets for itself.”

On the other hand perhaps , like the state legislators, he’s just turning out the lights to keep the public in the dark about the pecuniary interests that influence his deliberations and actions. If voters are incensed about this, they should look for candidates who will commit to the level of disclosure they deem needful. In the end, people get the quality of government they deserve, especially in a polity which delivers the choice of civil magistrates into their hands.

Well, yes.

STEPHEN GREEN: Can Apple Survive The Second Going Of Steve Jobs?

LAST WEEK’S BEST STATEMENT OF CONCERN: “We’ve had some incidents where TSA authorities think that congresspeople should be treated like everybody else.” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) was naturally incensed.

THIS ESSAY ON PORNOGRAPHY by Natasha Vargas-Cooper in The Atlantic takes a rather dim view of men, going on and on and on about “the unlovely aspects of male sexuality that porn legitimizes.” Are there any “unlovely aspects” to female sexuality? And, if so, what social institutions legitimize them?

AT AMAZON, markdowns on flashlights.

NICHELLE NICHOLS and Martin Luther King.

MORE LEGAL AMUSEMENT FROM ARTHUR WOLK.

A REMINDER: The JournoList membership.

MY FATHER, THE GRIFTER:

In many ways, I am my father’s son. once, in my 60s, I told my father, in his 90s, that I was not much like him. “How so?” he asked. I said, “I never gamble.” He laughed, a dismissive laugh, and said, “You? A freelance writer for 40 years?”

Heh.

JOSEPH BOTTUM: Where Are The Adults In Debt Ceiling Talks?

DICK CHENEY: Obama Will Be A One-Term President. Well, we’ll know in less than two years.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Why does Ross Douthat use marriage (bad marriage) as an analogy for the way media deals with Sarah Palin? “If Sarah Palin were a liberal, using the marriage analogy to talk about a female politician would have been recognized as too sexist.”

CHANGE: Is The Iron Fist Control Of China’s Central Government Coming Unhinged?

COURTS CONCERNED: Police Officers Committing Perjury in Testimony About Consent Searches?

MICKEY KAUS: “Republicans are in a position to be mean to Democrats, and there’s suddenly a campaign against meanness. What a happy coincidence! But, like many seemingly clever, intuitive MSM/Dem strategies—’Let’s nominate a Vietnam war hero to run against President Bush!’—this one may prove to be a dud, or worse.”

UPDATE: Reader Jerry Davis emails: “Everything old is new again. ‘Mean-spirited’ was the catch phrase during the Clinton impeachment. Everybody who mentioned witness tampering or perjury was immediately dubbed ‘mean-spirited.'”

RETIREMENT FINANCIAL ADVICE FROM a 107-year-old man who’s been retired since 1969.

CALIFORNIA AT RISK FOR A “cataclysmic superstorm.” “It sounds like the plot of an apocalyptic action movie, but scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey warned federal and state emergency officials that California’s geological history shows such ‘superstorms’ have happened in the past, and should be added to the long list of natural disasters to worry about in the Golden State.” Actually, it sounds kind of like John Barnes’ Mother of Storms.

SHERLOCK HOLMES ON THE ARIZONA SHOOTINGS: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” In this case, though, I think it was done more deliberately than insensibly.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: The Only Woman In The French Foreign Legion.