THE HILL: Tea Party opponents complicate GOP vote on new stopgap bill. “Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a Tea Party favorite, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the 176-member-strong House Republican Study Committee (RSC), both said they would oppose the Republican bill to keep the government operating for three weeks.”

ANOTHER LAME EFFORT to score political points off the Japanese earthquake.

Related items here.

WHERE HAVE I HEARD THIS BEFORE? Niall Ferguson: The Best Case Scenario Is A Rerun Of The 1970s, With Obama In The Role Of Jimmy Carter. Nice to see that people are figuring out that a Carter rerun is now the best-case scenario, though. Too bad it’s now obviously true. . . .

NEW YORK TIMES: Mormon Politicians From Utah Feel Tea Party Heat. “What amplifies the Tea Party’s role is that Utah, more than perhaps any other state, is dominated by the Republican Party. No Democrat has won statewide office here since a two-term attorney general in the 1990s. That means Tea Party activists do not need to think much, or talk much, about the Democrats, who can largely be dismissed as irrelevant; they can thus concentrate fully on remaking the Republican Party from within, by shaping it and handpicking candidates. . . . Some longtime political observers here see in the Tea Party’s rise an echo of the historic realignment in the mid-1970s when Mr. Hatch first rose to power and Republicans consolidated their grip.” The story’s Mormon angle, however, seems a bit forced.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

In 2008, when Romney ran, the Department of Justice listed, as its number one gangster, a fringe, defrocked “Fundamentalist Mormon” polygamist. Big Love, the HBO show about the same topic was highly promoted. Although ordinary Mormons have nothing to do with polygamy, the criminal prosecution of the “Prophet” and Big Love’s popularity kept the notion of Mormons as crazy in the media. The NYT will run more articles on Mormons and Tea Parties and Mormons and polygamy and the DOJ may pursue another fearful polygamist all in an effort to harm Romney, which it will.

Whatever one thinks of Romney, the use of these tactics to sully his religion are foul and would not be tolerated for a Democrat. Prejudice seems to be on the rise in the country.

Well, only so long as it’s politically useful.

ADVICE: HOW TO GET READY FOR SMALLER GOVERNMENT. “Do it now. If you’re on the fence about taking advantage of a government subsidy, don’t wait.”

ACCORDING TO GMAIL, I went 8 hours — from about noon Eastern to just a few minutes ago — without getting any email to my InstaPundit account. That seems highly unlikely. So if you sent me something particularly important, you might want to resend.

OF MEN AND MICROBES: Understanding the human ecosystem. “The average human body is made up of trillions of cells. The average human body also houses about 10 times that number of bacterial cells. Scientists have been curious about our bacterial cohabitants since 1683, when Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, using a microscope he had built himself, examined his own dental plaque only to discover “little living animacules, very prettily a-moving.” But it has been only within the past few decades that scientists have begun to understand just how many varieties of bacteria live in or on our bodies. And now they increasingly suspect that many diseases are caused not by individual bacteria, but by the delicate interplay between multiple bacterial species and the human host.”

LETTING SLIP the Coasean bribes of war.

READER RICHARD AUBREY OFFERS A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:

So, suppose between the earthquake(s), the tsunami(s), the vulcanism, and possible large-scale radioactive contamination, the decision is made for all Japanese to leave the Islands. All.

Do we charge them to come here or pay them to come here? Front of the line in immigration? Hypo, of course, but perhaps cause some thinking in one direction or another about why one chooses either answer.

Interesting.

AT AMAZON, instant video.

I REMEMBER WHEN a five-year-bloggiversary was something unusual. But it’s still quite an accomplishment to keep it up for five years!

DEAD MEN RISEN: The Snipers’ Story. “On one occasion they killed eight Taliban in two hours, ‘I wasn’t comfortable with it at first,’ said Osmond, ‘you start wondering is it really necessary?’ But the reaction of the locals soon persuaded him. ‘We had people coming up to us afterwards, not scared to talk to us. They felt they were being protected.'”

PAUL RYAN: What Is Driving Our Debt.

MICHAEL WALSH: Washington’s Silly “Military Diversity” Worries.

DAVID FREDDOSO: Obama’s Transparency Myth.

NICK GILLESPIE: 3 Essential Facts About the Current Moment: We’re Out of Money, The Public Sector is Overpaid, & We Can’t Tax Our Way Out of This.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on office supplies and electronics.

MICKEY KAUS: Nick Kristof Bashes America’s Teachers.

NEW YORK TIMES: Green Development? Not in My (Liberal) Backyard. “Park Slope, Brooklyn. Cape Cod, Mass. Berkeley, Calif. Three famously progressive places, right? The yin to the Tea Party yang. But just try putting a bike lane or some wind turbines in their lines of sight. And the karma can get very different.” Just like with Ted Kennedy and the Cape Wind project.

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER: Fiddling While Libya Burns.

ANOTHER E-BOOK SALES STORY for a self-published author.

THE BIGGEST LOSERS FROM THE JAPAN EARTHQUAKE — LIBYAN REBELS? Reader John Galvin writes: “Have you noticed how the Libyan revolt has fallen off the news coverage since Japan’s troubles?” Well, maybe not the biggest losers, but good point.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Coffee May Reduce Stroke Risk.

THE PROBLEM WITH U.S. PASSENGER RAIL: “The fantasy for passenger rail advocates is Europe. But in reality the fantasy does not even exist. In much more densely populated Europe with large government subsidies for passenger rail and other mass transit cars still account for most miles traveled. . . . Many passenger rail advocates are uninterested in trade-offs between different ways to spend taxpayer dollars. The cognitive deficiencies that lead them to their way of looking at things are probably not tractable without decades more of advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology. But there’s another approach that might work with a subset of them: passenger rail’s role as an energy saver is far from clear.”

JAPAN’S EARTHQUAKE and the “broken windows” fallacy.