ANTHROPOLOGY: Trade Made Us Human.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

WIDENER LAW SCHOOL UPDATE: Orin Kerr writes: “I hope Widener Dean Linda Ammons will go on the record and explain her side of the story. Perhaps there is much more to the story, and if so, it may suggest that Connell’s affidavit is incomplete or misleading. But right now we have Connell’s view but not Ammons’, and I think the entire episode will leave a lot of people puzzled and wondering about what on earth is happening at Widener until the other side of the story is heard.” And we know that the committee that looked into the case thought there was nothing to it. There’s currently no evidence that this is anything other than a disgrace. And it seems to me that if there were such evidence, we’d have heard it by now. Wouldn’t we?

REALLY? JOE SCARBOROUGH? Who could possibly see that as a good idea?

CAN’T TELL TRUTH FROM FICTION: Eric Alterman’s Watergate allusion is corrected by Prof. Joseph Campbell. Well, Alterman probably thinks it was Sarah Palin, not Tina Fey, who said “I can see Russia from my house,” too. . . .

TSA COOKED THE BOOKS on private screening.

KEITH HENNESSEY: Looking At The Senate Spending Votes.

JOHN MERLINE — out at AOL, but in the Washington Times. He’s wrong about daylight savings time, though.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Penn State Faces Biggest Budget Cut (52%) in History of Higher Education.

DON SURBER: Obama silent as liberals make death threats.

KENNETH ANDERSON: France Recognizes Libyan Rebels? And a Comment on the Obama Administration’s Vacillations. “The irony, of course, is that our closest allies — France, Japan, or Britain particularly — find this alarming. It would be good if the US would say all those soothing multilateral nostrums — but this administration actually appears to believe them. Or rather, it does not believe them, but has found in them a formula for walking away from its historical role.” It has been fun to watch the consternation that has resulted — but I don’t think it’s good for the United States or for the civilized world.

WHAT AMERICA NEEDS: A new way to stigmatize fat kids. “When you emphasize that ‘obesity’ is a huge social problem, what you are saying, whether you want to or not, is that fat people are a huge social problem.” I think the real problem is that people just don’t want to look at fat people.

FOUND: John Doe No. 2? This would be amazing if it turned out to be true, but I wouldn’t get too excited yet.

PETER INGEMI: “Yes, E.D. Kain, Wisconsin is the Republican Waterloo… they are playing the role of Wellington.”

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus on the Democrats’ planned response: “Will Wisconsin voters feel comfortable turning a judicial election into, in effect, a referendum on a law Democrats don’t like? Will the other 3 Democratic-appointed Supreme Court judges play along with this slightly banana-republicy game?”

SOME PICTURES from that Japanese earthquake/tsunami.

And reader Kim Sommer writes: “Time to repost your links for disaster preparedness and resiliency. And you just did that last week. …watching the New Madrid fault with more suspicion…” Well, you can find most of my coverage of the subject here.

UPDATE: More from The Anchoress.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A roundup of video and other thoughts at The Belmont Club.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Inspector General: IRS Can’t Find 9% of its Guns and Other Investigative Equipment.

JAMES TARANTO ON POLICE SIDING WITH UNIONS:

“This is war,” Michael Moore declared last night on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show.” The porcine propagandist referred to the Wisconsin Senate’s 18-1 vote earlier in the evening in favor of legislation, supported by Gov. Scott Walker, that would strip politicians of the power to reward government employee unions for their political support by committing taxpayer money to their members’ extravagant pensions and other fringe benefits. . . . And yet it is just possible that Moore is on to something. One can imagine a situation in which attacks on the legislative process by government employee unions and Democrats escalate into something resembling civil war. We do not suggest that this is a likely outcome, merely a worst-case scenario–but one that is worth thinking about.

The key is the group of government employees on whom we depend to maintain the public order necessary for a republic to function: the police. Many cops are unionized, and although the Wisconsin bill exempts them from the ban on so-called collective bargaining, there are signs, as blogger and legal scholar William Jacobson notes, that some cops have been “taking sides in this political dispute”–and worse, that these guardians of public order are siding with those using lawless tactics to disrupt the legislative process.

Fire ’em and replace them with contract security. Meanwhile, the more troubling factor is that this lawlessness was aided and encouraged by President Barack Obama’s own Organizing For America.

UPDATE: Reader Mike Voncannon writes:

I’ve been a cop for over 35 years, 9 of them in Florida where we were represented by a union. My experience is that police unions do at least as much harm as good. The biggest problem I saw was the “Us vs. Them” mentality that it fosters pitting the line level officers against the ranking staff and city government.

That said, I can’t imagine an officer refusing a lawful order to do their job (in the Madison case clearing the protesters from the State House).

We’re taxpayers too and resent having to pay ever higher taxes as much as anyone. What angers us is the governmental waste we see every day. What is truly amazing is how pet wasteful projects are protected when “cuts” are announced. The latest example is funding for clean-up of meth labs nationwide has been lost and the cost (minimum $3000 per lab) put on local governments.

I don’t think anyone refused orders. They just, kind of, stood there and looked the other way.

But yeah, the usual approach to cuts is to cut muscle and spare fat.

THE RISE AND FALL OF NEOCONSERVATISM, at Cato Unbound.

GALLUP: Americans’ Concern About Economy Rises to 12-Month High.

MAN BITES DOG: More New York Pols Accused of Corruption. “The FBI and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York unsealed a 53 page Federal criminal indictment Thursday charging Assemblyman William Boyland, Jr. (D-55) and State Senator Carl Kruger (D-27) and six others with a variety of criminal offenses. The accused, some or all, are charged with wire and mail fraud, bribery and failure to provide honest services among other crimes.”

UH OH: Forget $100 oil. $100 uranium is a real problem.

THIS EXPLAINS A LOT: “Insisting on some Diogenic level of honesty from liberals is really just a way of ensuring that liberals will never win public support for anything.” Thanks to reader Kevin Weiss for the tip.

LIBEL NEWS: Hero sues New York Times for accusing him of complicity in terrorism. “A Texas man who helped the FBI defuse a plot to firebomb the 2008 Republican National Convention is suing the New York Times for libel for claiming he was part of the violent conspiracy. The man with the bull’s eye on his back is Brandon Darby, formerly a far-left community organizer.”

GET THE STORY STRAIGHT: For a Second Time, NPR Claims to Have ‘Rejected’ Phony Donation; Emails Appear to Say Otherwise.

SALE: New Weber Genesis grills.

Also, grilling accessories.