USEFUL ADVICE: “I think that any cop that plans on still doing the job in five or ten years should get used to the idea that his or her every action, from roll call to end of shift, is being recorded.”

Bottom line: “Do your job like your grandmother was watching.”

PETER WEHNER: Our Petulant and Inept President. “The president and his team entered these negotiations believing he could strike a grand bargain that would allow him to present himself as a born-again budget cutter, as fiscally responsible, as a Man of the Center. And in the process, he kept instructing us, he would emerge as the only adult in the room. At this juncture, it looks like Obama is the most adolescent, even childish, figure in the negotiations – a petulant man who also happens to be an inept negotiator. This isn’t what the president and his supporters expected. But of course, that could be said for his entire presidency.”

IMPORTANT MEDICAL NEWS: Turns out, urine does not ease the pain from jellyfish stings — regardless of what your “Friends” told you.

BEYOND THE ATF: Was The FBI Complicit In the Fast-And-Furious Gun Smuggling Scandal?

AT AMAZON, IT’S the software download store.

WENDI DENG MURDOCH IS NAMED “Yalie Of The Week” by the Yale Alumni Magazine for her pie-intercepting heroics.

As you’ll see if you scroll all the way to the bottom of the list, I was the very first Yalie Of The Week, so it’s obviously an important honor . . . .

ARTHUR BROOKS: The Debt Ceiling And The Pursuit Of Happiness. “We need tectonic changes, not minor fiddling. . . . History shows that big moral struggles can be won, but only when they are seen as decade-long fights and not just as a way to prevail in the next election.”

PRESIDENT MY-WAY-OR-THE-HIGHWAY: President Obama Says “No” To A Bipartisan Debt Plan. “It appears the three key Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle reached a tentative agreement yesterday and the President blew it up.”

IN A DIVORCE, who gets the dog?

FOR SALE: John Moses Browning’s mansion.

GENERAL MOTORS LEADS in fuel-cell patent rankings. Honda is #2. I drove a GM fuel-cell car a few years ago for Popular Mechanics. My impressions are here.

Plus this: “The car advertises itself as petroleum-free, which is true. But—and here’s my problem with hydrogen cars—it’s not really fossil fuel free. Most hydrogen is made by ‘steam reformation’ of natural gas, which is still a fossil fuel. You can also make it out of water, via electrolysis, but unless you’ve got a non-fossil source of electricity the hydrogen is really just functioning as an energy-storage medium, rather than a source of energy. Of course, build lots of nice, clean nuclear plants, or orbiting solar power plants, or whatever, and that problem goes away.”

WHERE TO DRIVE DRUNK in Detroit.

ARE WE BROKE YET? Two simple graphs, updated daily, that show exactly how screwed the federal government’s finances really are.

IS THE ROLE OF ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGES IN SOCIAL SECURITY DISABILITY CASES “not constitutionally permissible?”

RADLEY BALKO: Photos From Cory Maye’s Homecoming.

TERROR FROM THE LEFT? Americans For Tax Reform Evacuated After Bomb Threat. You know, that happened to D.C. Tea Party organizers, too.

TIME FOR ANOTHER THRILLING INSTA-POLL: So, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry aren’t included in the Ames straw poll, but you can vote on the complete field, plus them, right here. And discuss alternatives in the comments.

UPDATE: Various readers ask if my omission of others such as Gary Johnson, Rudy Giuliani, or Jeb Bush was intentional. Not really, I was just going by the list in the linked article. But I’ll follow up with another poll with more names.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Embed removed to speed page loads. Vote here, or view the results.

JIMMIE BISE: My Crazy Idea: The Great Tipjar Rattling Of 2011.

THE TENNESSEE LAW REVIEW’S LATEST ISSUE is on constitutional conventions and constitutional amendments. I wrote the foreword, Sandy Levinson wrote the afterword, and an all-star cast including Randy Barnett, Brannon Denning, Richard Epstein, Tim Lynch, Rob Natelson, and too many other luminaries to mention contributed the stuff in between. Issues are in the mail now, and it’ll be on Lexis and Westlaw soon. Alas, there’s no free Web version.

TYLER COWEN: Means-Testing Medicare Is A Marginal Tax Increase.

STRENGTHENING FAMILY BONDS by letting your teenagers have sex at home. Given my gloriously misspent youth, I’m not going to adopt Kruiser’s line here. But I will note that this is probably one reason for so many 20-somethings never moving out. In the old days, living under your parents’ roof put a crimp in your sex life, which was a major incentive to move out and live like an adult. Now, not so much . . . . I don’t know if Amy Schalet discusses that aspect or not.

ON SALE, TODAY ONLY: A wireless security camera setup.

YA THINK? Obama Stokes Debt Crisis.

THE ANGLOSPHERE, before the lights went out. And our run of bad luck, since.