CHANGE: Report: General Petraeus Being Seriously Considered For CIA Director. Well, it’ll be hard to fill Leon Panetta’s shoes . . .

POLITICO: Obama faces brave new Web world. “In 2008, the Obama team maintained remarkable discipline over the free-floating new media by making Obama’s own website the central social network for supporters, executing hostile takeovers of ‘unofficial’ Obama social media pages and taking full advantage of the one-way medium of email. In 2012, however, the Obama campaign and his Republican rivals will have to grapple with the reality that the entire new media world has shifted again.”

MALIBU NIGHTS: Can Victor Davis Hanson Save California? “I’d vote for Victor if he ran.”

DEATH THREATS AGAINST REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN LEE TERRY lead to extra security.

INFLATION: Chinese Central Bank Raises Key Interest Rates.

WAR AGAINST SCIENCE: Anti-Fracking Enviros Attempt to Silence NY State’s Top Staff Geologist.

Chris Mooney was unavailable for comment.

CHEAP SUITS.

GOP PREPARES ANOTHER SHORT-TERM CONTINUING RESOLUTION as budget talks break down.

THE TRUTH ABOUT MONEY AND POLITICS: “How many people would guess this breakdown of donors and recipients? It is certainly not popular knowledge among my own peer group.”

EL BARADEI: If Israel Attacks Gaza, It’s War. “That’s not an idle statement. It’s part of the platform he’s using to run for president of Egypt.” Remember when we trusted him to tell the truth about Iranian nukes? No, me neither.

PETER WEHNER: America’s Civic Test. “Perhaps we find ourselves in a new political moment, in which reforms and cuts that were once unthinkable can now be advocated without danger of self-immolation. On the other hand, it may be that what Ryan will propose goes beyond what the public is willing to accept. What is reasonable to conclude, I think, is that if the public continues to resist reforms to entitlements—either because of ignorance, demagoguery, or selfishness—we will experience, sooner than we think, the kind of ‘domestic convulsion’ the founders warned about (and which Europeans are now experiencing). Demography and mathematics make that inevitable.”

LAW SCHOOL GRADUATE ON WELFARE sues over work requirements.

STACY MCCAIN: “I’ll say this: The greatest difficulty in criticizing Obama’s policy on Libya is in figuring out exactly what the policy is.”

IN A HOLE, LINDSEY GRAHAM KEEPS DIGGING.

ROGER KIMBALL: Terry Jones, Koran Burning, And Preemptive Capitulation.

CHANGE SAME YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: The Capitulation Is Complete.

REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN PETER KING hate mail and bloody pig’s foot. “A frozen pig’s foot and a note laced with anti-Semitic rants were sent to Rep. Peter King’s Capitol Hill office, a congressional source familiar with the situation confirmed to CNN Monday.”

SO IN MY RATHER LIMITED SPARE TIME, I’ve been reading C.J. Burch’s Foolish Gods, in the 99-cent Kindle edition. It’s like Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories, if the protagonists were a pair of hot lesbians.

THE NANNY STATE BITES BACK: No fried food: Health Dept. workers cringe at new rules restricting foods, fragrances, decorations.

NED MCWHERTER HAS DIED. I knew him from when I was in college, and interned for the state Senate — he was Speaker Of The House then, but learned my name and background and recognized me years later, demonstrating a politician’s mental rolodex of the sort I’ll never have — and I served on a committee to revise the Tennessee Constitution with him under Gov. Phil Bredesen. Ned Ray was an old-fashioned politician in the best sense of the term. No Bob Forehead he.

And he tried to save Al Gore, in 2000. If Gore had listened to Ned Ray, he would probably have carried Tennessee, and Florida would barely be a footnote. But they kept Ned Ray waiting until he gave up and went home, and they lost Tennessee, Al’s home state, in a fit of incompetence.

WISCONSIN DEMOCRAT COULD FACE RECALL: A petition against Wisconsin Democratic state senator is on the verge of triggering a recall against him amid fallout of the passage of the state’s controversial union law. Seems to me, all the “fleebaggers” should face recall petitions.

TYLER COWEN ON “healthy living vouchers.”

STEVEN HAYWARD: “If you think public employee unions are reckless and out of control, just wait till the AARP takes to the streets against entitlement reform.” Well, do what the Obama Administration did, and buy ’em off. I mean, it’s not like they’ve got their members’ interests at heart.

SO IN RESPONSE TO SOME OF MY DISASTER-PREP WRITING, I got a package of HTI Hydropacks in the mail. They’re supposed to be like a Capri Sun for disaster relief. You drop the pack into dirty water — basically, anything short of raw sewage or industrial waste — and after twelve hours it’s full of something clean and gatorade-like. I’ve got one floating in a pot of water now; I’ll report on how it works out.

JAPAN’S EARTHQUAKE and U.S. factory shutdowns.