AUSTIN BAY: Al Qaeda Doesn’t Rock and Roll. “Al Qaeda doesn’t rock and roll. A burka is not sexy. On the twitter-connected Arab street, these may be Al Qaeda’s fatal social flaws.” Let’s hope. Some of the protests in Iraq, at least, have actually been pro-alcohol protests. You gotta love that.

TALKING ABOUT TANKLESS WATER HEATERS. One of the upsides to a tanked water heater, though, is that it gives you a built-in emergency water supply if things go south — 75 gallons worth in my case.

SUDDENLY NOTICING REALITY AT THE NEW YORK TIMES: State Workers and N.Y.’s Fiscal Crisis.

At a time when public school students are being forced into ever more crowded classrooms, and poor families will lose state medical benefits, New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees’ pensions than it did just a decade ago. That huge increase is largely because of Albany’s outsized generosity to the state’s powerful employees’ unions in the early years of the last decade, made worse when the recession pushed down pension fund earnings, forcing the state to make up the difference.

Although taxpayers are on the hook for the recession’s costs, most state employees pay only 3 percent of their salaries to their pensions, half the level of most state employees elsewhere. Their health insurance payments are about half those in the private sector. . . . To point out these alarming facts is not to be anti- union, or anti-worker.

Do tell. If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.

WELL, “TIMES SELECT” WORKED SO WELL: New York Times going to online pay model. On the other hand, anything that puts Krugman back behind a paywall can’t be all bad.

ANN ALTHOUSE OBJECTS TO TEA PARTY CAPITOL CLEANUP EFFORTS: “The reason the estimate is so high is that this is extremely valuable old marble that needs to be cleaned according to the protocols of historical restoration. Don’t come in here with buckets of water and scrub brushes or whatever you think will make you look good on camera. Don’t you realize you could cause more damage?”

But, from the comments: “If you can tape posters on the walls, sleep there overnight and bang a bongo drum nonstop, why can’t you mop the floors and scrub the toilets? Seems to me there are no rules.” It’s funny that cleaning is now transgressive.

COMPARISON TEST: Bagless Upright Vacuum Cleaners.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: What women, and men, can learn from Pick-Up Artists. (Via the Insta-Wife). Interesting discussion in the comments.

IN THE MAIL: From John Barnes, Daybreak Zero.

BILL WHITTLE: The End Of The Beginning: Why Public-Sector Labor Unions Are Doomed.

PROSECUTORIAL OVERREACH in the Loughner prosecution?

THAT DRILLING-BAN THING not going so well.

MY SUNDAY WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMN: Here Comes The “Lower Education Bubble.”

UPDATE: They’re having some sort of site issues at the Examiner and the link quit working. This new one should work.

AT AMAZON, a roundup of shoot-and-share videocameras, including some wearable models. Ubiquitous video is a must-have for any Tea Party protest or other political event.

REASON TV: Harry Reid is Nanny Of The Month.

CONTINUING WISCONSIN COVERAGE from Ann Althouse and Meade. Just keep scrolling.

OOPS: Bloomberg’s Bubble Bursts: Voters Finally Realize That There’s No There There. I’m no fan of Bloomberg’s — he’s a vapid nannyist. But I think New York voters elected him (as Chicago voters did with Rahm Emanuel) not because of his virtues, but because the alternative was someone from the usual gang of hacks.

UPDATE: A Wall Street reader emails:

Taxpaying New Yorkers would much rather have an administratively competent mayor with dilettante nanny proclivities than a member of the insane clown posse of local clubhouse goons. Recall the snow removal debacle was not caused by Bloomberg’s inaction, but by a sanitation union conspiracy to frame the mayor.

I disagree strongly with Mayor Mike on things like the second amendment…but it’s a great trade for New Yorkers to let him have a bully pulpit for his nonsense, in return for his excellent management of the city apparatus.

Well, I think part of the argument in the piece is that his management has fallen down. It’s still well above insane-clown-posse levels, though. . . .

TODAY ONLY: Another treadmill on sale. This one folds.

PAUL JOHNSON: Why America Will Stay On Top. “‘Of course I worry about America,’ he says. ‘The whole world depends on America ultimately, particularly Britain. And also, I love America—a marvelous country. But in a sense I don’t worry about America because I think America has such huge strengths—particularly its freedom of thought and expression—that it’s going to survive as a top nation for the foreseeable future. And therefore take care of the world.'”

FREE SPEECH UPDATE: French Court Finds in Favor of Journal Editor Sued for Libel Over Book Review. I had somehow neglected to blog this before.

SUSANNAH BRESLIN: How to sell your fiction online: A love story. “I’m a journalist. That means I work in a dying industry. I’m also a fiction writer. That means I work in two dying industries.”

ROBBING THE TAXPAYER to give to themselves.

A REQUIEM FOR multiculturalism.

And don’t miss these thoughts from Andrew Klavan.

ENDING FACULTY UNIONS in Ohio.

GEORGE WILL IS not so hot on Huckabee, Gingrich. I would vote for a syphilitic camel over Barack Obama in 2012, so therefore I would even vote for Huckabee or Gingrich. But I might try to talk the camel into running one more time.

PROFESSOR JACOBSON: Obama Bitterly Clings To Bitter Clinger Stereotype.