ED DRISCOLL: No Matter How Cynical You Get, it is Impossible to Keep Up. Is that the hope, or the change?

FORCING A VOTE: Mitch McConnell’s promise kept on ObamaCare.

“ANOTHER DAY, another Media Matters smear.” It’s who they are. It’s what they do.

OBAMACARE: “GET IN THEIR FACE!” Harry Reid Confronted By Angry Voter In Gourmet Market. “The stony — now red — faced Sen. Reid, appearing both annoyed and mortified at being the focus of this unexpected public scolding in the midst of what was to be a quiet moment spent Saturday shopping, tried not to be noticed — hard to do when one is waiting in a check-out line with someone just a few feet away loudly gesticulating and pointing.” I guess he got the Ben Nelson treatment.

HMM: Sen. Jim Webb Not Exactly Raking In The Campaign Cash.

CHANGE: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy confession: ‘I no longer feel left wing.’

LAKE MEAD TUNNEL PROJECT having problems.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on toys & games.

ALSO, RELEVANCE: The Atlantic: Rachel Maddow and NBC Struggle With Satire.

VIA CLARICE FELDMAN: The Story Of The Egyptian Revolution. “The social media tools had given people something that they had lacked previously, an independent means of communication and propaganda. . . . People saw a regime that was scared of the internet and they rightfully calculated that this was their golden opportunity.”

TALKING CARS with the Car Lust guys.

HEH: Barack Obama: He Was Against The Individual Mandate Before He Was For It.

ASHAMED OF lagging behind Albania. “The whole lumbering apparatus of the Egyptian state conspired to make itself appear humorless and thuggish and to convince its people that they were being held as serfs by fools. Again, the sense of insult ran very deep, and Mubarak’s bullies were too dense to understand their own mistake.” There are a few lessons here that may apply closer to home, as well.

UPDATE: Reader Bill Rudersdorf emails: “I checked to confirm, and yes, the wastrel King Farouk, the fellow Nasser overthrew in 1952, was part… Albanian. Ah, the delicious irony!” Compared to what came after, Farouk is looking good. As I noted earlier, his heir, King Fuad II, is still alive and no doubt following events with interest.

DID THE TEA PARTIERS SCARE THE DEMOCRATS AWAY FROM ST. LOUIS?

AMY ALKON: Squirt Gun Control? Why Not Just Outlaw Childhood? They’re working on it . . . .

Get a copy of The Dangerous Book For Boys before it’s banned!

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh emails:

I wonder whether the suggestion that squirt guns are being “outlawed” — even if somewhat hyperbolic — is quite apt. As I read the proposed statute, it simply means that children can’t buy the toy guns themselves, but need to have parents (or other adults) to buy them for them. (Do minors even buy a lot of toy guns themselves? I would think most toy gun users don’t do much of their own toy-buying.) I’m not sure the law is a good idea, but it seems pretty different from “outlawing.” And I think many readers’ first impression would be that there really is a ban on squirt guns, and not just a requirement that they be channeled through parents.

Well, when I was a kid I bought plenty of squirt guns and other toy guns myself, and I resent the effort to marginalize — or, to use the gun-controllers’ term, “denormalize” — toy guns. And, in fact, the sale of squirt guns to minors is outlawed under the bill.

MORE: James Taranto emails: “If squirt guns are outlawed, only outlaw squirts will have guns!”

Plus, he adds: “Squirt guns don’t squirt squirts, squirts squirt squirts!” Heh.

AT AMAZON, a bunch of new releases on Blu-Ray.

FROM REASON TV, it’s the Nanny Of The Month.

WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Nearly 11 Percent of US Houses Empty.

UPDATE: This post says the correct number is 2.7%, but looking at the discussion in the comments I’m not sure that’s right, and the more I read the less sure I became about what the numbers actually mean.

ROGER KIMBALL: Liberty vs. Benevolence.

TREATING BOWEL DISEASE WITH genetically engineered probiotics.

REPEAL: Health care repeal measure will be offered as an amendment to first Senate bill. “A Republican measure to repeal the new health care law will be included as an amendment to the first bill the Senate plans to take up this year, a spokesman for Minority Leader Mitch McConnell confirmed Tuesday. The Democrat-controlled Senate plans to take up an authorization measure to fund the Federal Aviation Administration using an open process, which allows any member to offer amendments regardless of whether the proposal is related to the topic of the bill.”

JOAN HEMINWAY: Federal Interventions in Private Enterprise in the United States: Their Genesis in and Effects on Corporate Finance Instruments and Transactions. (Bumped up).

NANOSTEEL: Strong as steel, light as aluminum.

UPDATE: Several readers suggest the name “Rearden Metal.”

ONE GURKHA VS. 40 THUGS: He had them outnumbered.

UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails: “How foolish of the thugs.”

It’s okay to bring a knife to a gunfight — if you’re a Gurkha.

GENE WEINGARTEN: The Shocking Truth About The Chevy Volt.