PROF. JACOBSON: Turkey Can’t Handle The Truth. “Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on the wrong course.”

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Huntsman’s Good Economic Plan: Better than anything so far from the GOP Presidential field.

The heart of the plan lowers all tax rates on individuals and businesses. Mr. Huntsman would create three personal income tax rates—8%, 14% and 23%—and pay for this in a “revenue-neutral” way by eliminating “all deductions and credits.” This tracks with the proposals of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and others for a flatter, more efficient tax system.

That means economically inefficient tax carve outs for mortgage interest, municipal bonds, child credits and green energy subsidies would at last be closed. The double tax on capital gains and dividends would be expunged as would the Alternative Minimum Tax. The corporate tax rate falls to 25% from 35%, and American businesses would be taxed on a territorial system to encourage firms to return capital parked in overseas operations.

Mr. Huntsman would repeal two of President Obama’s most economically debilitating creations, ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. Mr. Huntsman has it right when he says, “Dodd-Frank perpetuates ‘too big to fail’ by codifying a regime that incentivizes firms to become too big to fail.” He’d also repeal a Bush-era regulatory mistake, the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting rules, which have added millions of dollars of costs to businesses with little positive effect.

Mr. Huntsman says he’d also bring to heel the hyper-regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration and the National Labor Relations Board, all of which are suppressing job-creation.

Not bad.

EXPLAINING SCIENCE to Paul Krugman. With help from Richard Feynman.

UPDATE: Reader Frank Stephenson emails: “Shouldn’t someone explain economics to him first?” Heh.

NICK GILLESPIE: Obama’s Jobs Program: If the Choice is Between “Go Big or Go Home,” Start Packing Now. Key bit: “All we’ve got—and all we’ve had for way too long—is uncertainty. Market uncertainty is beyond politicians’ control. But political certainty? That’s their job.”

UPDATE: Unexpectedly! “The Obama administration now says U.S. unemployment could persist at its current stubbornly high level around 9% well into 2012. . . . Administration officials said they downgraded their projections for economic growth and employment largely because of recent unexpected weakness in the U.S. economy, particularly ongoing turmoil in the housing market and slackening demand for exports.”

As Nick Gillespie notes above, despite their handwaving in the general direction of the Japanese earthquake, etc., the big problem is regime uncertainty brought about by their endless hare-brained schemes to transfer money from the productive sectors to their cronies. That’s caused employers to hunker down, quite reasonably, in fear of what might come next.

In other words, when they say “unexpected” they really mean “we didn’t expect that we’d be able to screw up the economy so badly.”

VIDEO: So why are those tar sands evil, exactly? Because of Buusshh! And Halliburton!

UPDATE: Ric Locke: Keystone XL Pipeline Has Nothing To Do With Greenhouse Emissions:

If the pipeline is not built, another will be, from the tar sands deposits to the Canadian West Coast, completely outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Government (much to the frustration of the IRS and the other TLAs). It will be cheaper than Keystone-XL; not only will it be shorter, it will be cheaper per linear measure because it will be built under Canadian regulations, which focus on (gasp! choke!) pipeline safety, rather than maximizing saliva generation when kissing environmentalist ass. The oil will be pumped to Vancouver, where it will be loaded on tankers and taken (mostly) to China, where it will be burned to provide power to industry.

The oil will be produced, whether Keystone-XL is built or not.

The oil will be burned, whether Keystone-XL is built or not.

The carbon will enter the atmosphere, whether Keystone-XL is built or not.

So in this particular case, both “anthropogenic global warming” and environmental degradation at the production zone are irrelevant.

The actual impact of environmentalism seems to involve moving jobs offshore and increasing U.S. vulnerability to hostile nations, rather than actually helping the environment.

WHEN GRIZZLY BEARS ATTACK, the Federal Government’s Got Their Back.

A North Idaho man killed a grizzly bear that was threatening his family. Now he could face jail time if the Obama administration has its way.

Rachel Hill looked out her bedroom window on the evening of Mother’s Day and saw three grizzly bears attacking the children’s 4H club pigs’ pen. The Hill children had been outside practicing basketball a half hour earlier, so seeing the bears concerned her and her husband, Jeremy Hill. After calling for his kids and hearing no response, Jeremy grabbed his daughter’s rifle. After once more calling for the kids, fearing they were in danger, he shot at the closest grizzly bear, which was about 120 feet away.

The other two grizzlies fled while the wounded bear began to run off in the same direction, but then turned and came towards the house. Hill shot the bear a final time due to the danger a severely wounded grizzly bear posed to his family and others. Hill called two officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. They came out, investigated, and unsuccessfully tried to capture the other two grizzly bears by placing bear traps on the property.

Regardless of the danger to Hill’s family, grizzly bears are listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, thus the federal government is prosecuting him. If convicted, Hill could face up to one year in prison and a $50,000 fine.

As I note in my piece on Second Amendment penumbras, the constitutionalization of self-defense in Heller should make this sort of thing unconstitutional.

ARE THE CHINESE sabotaging Islam? “I mean, the Beijing regime is quite concerned about radical Muslim separatists in the West. Why not subvert the doctrine, and make a profit at the same time?”

AN EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Yet Another (Failed) Obama ‘Jobs Plan.’

JOE LIEBERMAN: Obama’s concern with offending Muslims hurts war effort.

BILL QUICK IS ASKING FOR DONATIONS. I donated; if you like his blog, you should think about it too.

TOO DUMB FOR TV: Al Sharpton Didn’t Know MSNBC Rules Regarding Campaign Endorsements. Resist we much!

IS BARACK OBAMA DUMB? If he thinks he’s going to win reelection by calling all opposition racist, yes.

Related: “Keep it up champ, because it’s worked so well for you so far.”

TEA PARTY DEBT COMMISSION UPDATE: David Kirkham of the Utah Tea Party emails: “We are about to start the Tea Party Debt Commission meeting. Standing room only. There must be 200 people crammed in here. I am one of 12 national members on the commission (to mirror the 12 congressional members). Our kick off meeting is in Salt Lake City tonight. The people are suggesting solutions to our nation’s debt problem. This is exciting.”

To coin a phrase, this is what democracy looks like.

UPDATE: A followup email: “The line to speak is out the door. There is a lot of passion in this room. The politicians don’t see us rallying in the streets because we are rallying in meetings and on campaign staffs. Our greatest hope is they underestimate our resolve to get our government spending under control.” Indeed. Another photo below.

MORE: Reader Ed Brenegar writes: “Shouldn’t C-SPAN be broadcasting the Tea Party Debt Commission? Makes sense to me.”

And reader Tom Brosz emails: “The second photo immediately reminded me of Norman Rockwell’s ‘Freedom of Speech’ painting, part of his ‘Four Freedoms’ series.”

DO TELL: Job Insecurity Remains High.

LOYALTY: Harvey Mansfield reviews Eric Felten’s Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Mystery & Thrillers.

THE ATLANTIC: Americans Should Be Able To Sell Stuff Without A Permit.

SayUncle comments: “It’s sad that this is actually an article at the Atlantic.” It’s sad that America has come to this.

CONNECTICUT JUSTICE OFFICIAL: If I don’t like the law, I’ll just tell police to ignore it. “Here’s the problem: If you have a permit, it’s perfectly legal to walk into a McDonalds in Connecticut while plainly carrying a firearm. As Gideon notes, the problem is that too many cops in Connecticut simply don’t know the law. Lawlor’s solution isn’t to educate them, but to come up with creative (and baseless) applications of other laws that allow cops to continue to violate the rights of Connecticut citizens who exercise their right to carry. Gideon’s analogy to the camera issue is spot-on. Because exercising this particular right tends to upset police officers, and because police officers aren’t aware of the law, the state officials in charge of law enforcement have chosen to simply not give a damn about protecting this particular right.”

Sue ’em. Repeatedly. And hound them politically.

THEY’RE SO CUTE AT THAT STAGE: A Cyborg’s First Steps.

PROGRESSIVE THINK TANK BACKS lowering corporate tax rates.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Sell Scrap Metal For Cold, Hard Cash.

Hey, it’s one of the few growth sectors in this economy. . . .

JOURNALISTIC GUN CLUELESSNESS of the day.

AT AMAZON, Top Deals In Electronics.

UPDATE: Link fixed. Sorry!

EVIDENCE: Video Shows Controversial Forensic Specialist Michael West Fabricating Bite Marks. Back when I was in college, a prominent Tennessee defense lawyer told me that he always got an outside opinion on forensic or crime-lab evidence, and that it came back completely different about half the time. He said that way too many even on the defense side treated scientific evidence as some sort of objective gospel when it was really anything but.

DISCRIMINATON: U. of North Carolina to Investigate Christian Singing Group’s Dismissal of Gay Student. Just tell ’em you dismissed him because you suspected Tea Party sympathies, and everything will be fine . . .