STEPHEN GREEN: THE WEEK IN BLOGS:

ROBERT FARAGO: ATF Death Watch 53: The Truth Makes Me Nervous. “ATF green lighted gun sales to FBI informants (and known cartel associates) by complicit U.S. gun dealers, and then told ATF agents on the ground NOT to interdict the weapon as they flowed to Mexican drug cartels (the Sinaloas specifically) to suit the CIA and U.S. foreign policy. Gunwalker armed U.S. and Mexico’s favored cartel members with U.S. guns. The ends explain the means. At the very least, this theory (backed-up by sources I can’t disclose) should trigger a press investigation into U.S. policy towards Mexico’s narco-terrorists and their supporters (e.g. the U.S. and Mexican governments). Nope. The mainstream media continues to paint the ATF operation as a simple screw-up. Oops! We did it again.”

AN IDEA SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK! An Obama Primary Challenge From . . . Jimmy Carter?

MARK STEYN: Lessons For Us From London In Flames. “Big Government debauches not only a nation’s finances but its human capital, too. . . . While the British Treasury is busy writing checks to Amsterdam prostitutes, one-fifth of children are raised in homes in which no adult works – in which the weekday ritual of rising, dressing and leaving for gainful employment is entirely unknown. One-tenth of the adult population has done not a day’s work since Tony Blair took office on May 1, 1997.”

Plus this: “In Britain, everything is policed except crime.”

HOPE AND CHANGE — NO, LITERALLY, HOPE AND CHANGE: Federal Judge Throws Out Obama Drilling Rules. “U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled in favor of a petroleum industry group, the Western Energy Alliance, in its lawsuit against the federal government, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The ruling reinstates Bush-era expedited oil and gas drilling under provisions called categorical exclusions on federal lands nationwide, Freudenthal said.”

UPDATE: She’s an Obama appointee.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Mystery & Thrillers.

A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR RAISED A FIST TO DEATH: “She was Jewish, but to live she needed a Christian name. She could not be Natalie Leya Weinstein, not in wartime Warsaw. Her father wrote her new name on a piece of paper. . . . He fixed a metal crucifix to a necklace and hung it on their daughter. On the paper, he scrawled another fiction: ‘I am a war widow, and I have no way of taking care of her. I beg of you good people, please take care of her. In the name of Jesus Christ, he will take care of you for this.'”

IOWA: Here’s the full text of Rick Perry’s announcement speech.

And here’s Tony Katz’s interview with Newt Gingrich.

HOBBITS AND MORE: The Middle-Earth Guide to Campaign 2012.

CHARLOTTE ALLEN ON The Mess At Widener Law School.

PJTV: Countdown to Ames: Iowa Republican’s Craig Robinson Predicts Straw Poll Results.

WHAT IF TIM BERNERS-LEE had patented the Web?

VIDEO: “Switzerland Is Crime Free, And It’s All Because Of Guns!”

A TEN-SECOND QUARTER MILE in an electric Chevy Camaro.

IN THE MAIL: From Austin Bay, Ataturk: Lessons in Leadership from the Greatest General of the Ottoman Empire. I blurbed it — it’s good. But then, you probably figured that, since it’s by Austin Bay.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Assad’s Survival Plan.

PJTV: Frank Luntz on why the Straw Poll matters.

A BLEG FROM READER CINDY FRANCIES: “Isnt it about time to recommend a good wireless printer for college students? I need to buy one, STAT for our son. I remember your posts from previous years, can’t seem to locate by searching archive.” They’d be out of date anyway, though both my HP and Brother printers are still working fine. Readers: Any recommendations on current products?

REUTERS: “A spree of bad news — market gyrations, fears of a double-dip recession, stubborn unemployment and fallout from a debt deal — has shaken confidence in President Barack Obama’s leadership and could cloud his chances for winning re-election.”

That’s going to be the new spin: Obama’s the victim of “bad luck.” There’s a sense in which it’s true, of course. . . .

Plus, this quote: “I think Americans would like to re-elect the first African American president, but ultimately the presidential election is a referendum on performance.” Yeah, that’s going to be his biggest problem.

UPDATE: Reader David Horwich writes: “It seems clear that he can’t run on his own record, so his latest tactic seems to be that he’s going to take a page out of, I think, Truman’s book and run against Congress. That’ll work: he ceded every policy decision to them, so I guess it’ll be easy to blame them!”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ FOR YA? “Both the turmoil in the financial markets and a procession of dismal new poll results point toward the same unmistakable conclusion: All of the leading figures and institutions in Washington are facing a collapse in public confidence probably unmatched since late in Jimmy Carter’s presidency.”

SMARTPHONES, UBIQUITOUS SURVEILLANCE, AND Open Source Sensing.

TODAY ONLY: Big markdowns on folding treadmills.

ATF GUN-SMUGGLING UPDATE: Gunwalker: U.S. Attorney Won’t Grant Victim Status to Murdered Agent’s Family. “The family of the most prominent U.S. murder victim of Operation Fast and Furious is being victimized again — this time by the very DOJ officials that could one day face felony charges connected to the gun smuggling operation: In a surprise move in a controversial case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona is opposing a routine motion by the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry to qualify as crime victims in the eyes of the court.”

A SEPTEMBER 11TH photo package from the AP.

SCIENCE: Dark matter may be an illusion caused by the quantum vacuum. If I read this correctly, it makes the prospects for artificial gravity somewhat more plausible.