MORE ON THAT ATF GUNRUNNING SCANDAL: ‘Fast & Furious’ gets hotter for Holder. “Don’t look now, but the real action in Washington this week isn’t the partisan wrangling over the debt ceiling but something — literally — even more incendiary: Operation Fast and Furious, which seems about to explode right in the face of Attorney General Eric Holder — and maybe other administration officials, too. . . . The ATF’s acting director, Kenneth Melson, has been singing like a canary to congressional investigators as he pushes back against administration pressure for him to resign and take the fall for something that, at the very least, had to include the US Attorney’s Office, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and possibly the Homeland Security Department. In a letter to Holder released yesterday, Rep. Daryl Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley accused the Justice Department of blocking their investigation into the burgeoning scandal (which has resulted in the deaths of at least two American agents and countless Mexican civilians), muzzling the ATF and involving other federal agencies, including the FBI and the DEA, in funding the crackpot scheme.”

As they say, worse than Iran/Contra. Plus this: “So if the identities of the Mexican criminals were known to the feds, what was the point of Project Gunrunner — and why is Holder so desperately trying to stonewall by withholding hundreds of documents from Congress? Law-abiding gun owners and dealers think they already know. With the Obama administration wedded to the fiction that 90 percent of the guns Mexican cartels use originate here — they don’t — many suspect that ‘Fast and Furious’ was a backdoor attempt to smear domestic gun aficionados as part of its stealth efforts on gun control by executive fiat.”

I’M ONE OF ‘EM: Dozens of law professors: PROTECT IP Act is unconstitutional.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: University Of Virginia’s Gun Ban Questioned: “The University of Virginia lacks the legal authority to apply its ban on guns on campus to those who have concealed carry permits, according to an opinion released by Ken Cuccinelli, attorney general of Virginia.”

NOW OBAMA WANTS A BIGGER DEAL ON DEBT.

Here’s the deal: The spending cuts need to be up-front, not in the never-to-arrive “out years.” If they’re not put in place before 2012, they won’t happen.

But as for tax increases, I strongly recommend that the Republicans — now that they’re showing “flexibility” on the subject — include my excise taxes on entertainment-industry products, and my 50% surtax on post-government employment income for government officials. In the name of fairness!

UPDATE: Republicans Have No Plan B. Well, they’d have one if they read InstaPundit! Or listened, anyway.

IT’S LIKE IT’S JUST ONE BIG REVOLVING-DOOR MONEY MACHINE OR SOMETHING: EPA Funds Green Groups That Sue The Agency To Expand. “Often the suits involve things the EPA wants to do anyway. By inviting a lawsuit and then signing a consent decree, the agency gets legal cover from political heat. Holmstead called this kind of litigation ‘sweetheart suits.'”

WHITE HOUSE FAIL: Critics Unimpressed By Twitter “Gimmick.” “President Obama’s social media gabfest, which swamped the Twitterverse with thousands of responses yesterday, was touted as a rare chance for any citizen to put questions to the Leader of the Free World — but turned out to be just another high-tech, tightly controlled campaign stunt, experts said yesterday. . . . Even Obama supporters, such as Jeremy Funk, spokesman for the Democratic-leaning labor group Americans United for Change, admitted the chat allowed Obama to skirt tough questions from seasoned political reporters.”

It’s the “tightly-controlled” bit that is the real problem — these people can’t do spontaneity, and it makes you wonder what they’re afraid of. And Obama’s inability to fit within Twitter’s character limit merely lived up to stereotypes.

UPDATE: Did Obama Lie About White House Salaries In Twitter Town Hall?

WELL, SO DOES CUBA: Venezuela Needs De-Cubanization.

CHANGE: “No Drama Obama” Now Losing His Cool: White House shows early signs of re-election panic.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Of credentials and cargo cults.

JAMES TARANTO: Ruthless People: Libs to Ginsburg: Drop dead. “Some legal observers would like to be rid of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Associated Press reported over the weekend. These aren’t conservatives who find her too activist but liberals who find her too old and worry that if she doesn’t get out soon, a Republican president will get to replace her.”

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: I don’t like Nancy Grace. In fact, let’s be honest, I find her utterly loathsome.

BLUE ON BLUE: Richard Dawkins Gets into a Comments War with Feminists. “Richard Dawkins made an unexpected appearance in the comments section of biologist PZ Myers’ post at Scienceblogs.com last week. Myers was commenting on Rebecca Watson’s recent experience being propositioned in a hotel elevator by a male attendee of a conference at which Watson had just spoken in Dublin. Dawkins got himself into hot water by commenting in the form of a sarcastic letter to a Muslim woman, pointing out how trivial Watson’s experience in the elevator was compared to the abuses Muslim women deal with on a daily basis.”

But don’t worry, Richard: Vox Day’s got your back! I’m sure that’ll be a comfort. . . .

UPDATE: “When I read this, I mistakenly thought it said Richard Simmons. Actually, that would have been much more interesting.” Heh.

MORE: “All in all, it’s rather ironic that the atheist Watson ended up a devotee of feminism, the most intolerant religion of them all.”

INSIDER TRADING? Did Markets Know Obama Was Going to Tap Oil Reserve? “Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was supposed to lower oil prices but instead has only raised questions about market manipulation. . . . For the record, officials at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority would neither confirm nor deny any such probes. But Gartman apparently is not alone in his suspicions.”

TAXPROF: Court: Taxpayer Can’t Force IRS to Audit Him — ‘There Is No Right to Pay Taxes.’

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION WOULD BE BROUGHT TO AN END, AND — oh, who am I kidding. Nobody told me that. And yet: Illegal Immigration From Mexico At Lowest Level In Nearly 60 Years. Heck, with what Obama’s been doing for the employment situation, soon Americans will be sneaking into Mexico in search of work . . . .

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Your comment on the NYTimes article on decreasing Mexican immigration made coffee shoot out of my nose. I’m an american working in Mexico, and I’m here mostly because the deepwater drilling ban killed any chance of me getting a job back home last year.

I thought if I voted for John McCain an incompetent federal response to a disaster would cause economic dislocation, and they were right!

Heh. He’s got a blog post, too.

And hey, maybe my prediction was more on-target than I knew. . . .

ERIC CANTOR: GOP Willing To Talk “Loopholes” In Budget Talks.

But are they smart enough to adopt my revenue proposals? Doubtful.

UPDATE: And don’t forget my proposed 50% surtax on post-government incomes of administration officials. Who could be against that?

BARACK MCSAME OBAMA? Charge: Interrogation at sea skirts Obama pledge. “The Obama administration, which refuses to send terrorism suspects to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, on Wednesday defended its decision to interrogate a detainee for two months aboard a U.S. Navy ship, outside the reach of American law.”

STACY MCCAIN IS deploring racism.

FROM REUTERS? WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS? Reuters Fabricates GOP Compromise on Tax Hikes.

THE UNITED NATIONS STAYS TRUE TO TYPE: “After UN Watch today exposed his publication of an anti-Semitic cartoon, the UN Human Rights Council’s Richard Falk first denied publishing the cartoon—and then deleted it.”

HDTVs for $499 or less.

A REPORT FROM PORTUGAL, where things aren’t looking so good.

MEET THE Tea-Party Democrats. But note: “The big shift was among independents, who swung for Republicans by a 19-point margin.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: NALP Reports ‘Astonishing’ Drop in Law Grad Starting Salaries.

THE SPREAD OF MILITARY DRONE TECHNOLOGY: “This does not constitute an arms race, at least not in usual ‘competitive driver’ sense of the term. Countries are acquiring drones not because other countries are acquiring them, but because they are concluding that irrespective of how other countries behave, drones are a cheaper, more efficient, more useful alternative to manned aircraft. There is an independent incentive to acquire drones that is independent of any competitive strategic pressures; countries would do this in any case.”