ANDREW STUTTAFORD: “I seem to remember something about how the European Union was supposed to act as a bulwark against extremism. Oh well.”

SO I DID SOME FIX-IT STUFF AROUND THE HOUSE — classes are over, exams written, nothing to grade yet, this is as free as I ever feel! — and I got out my Bosch drill/screwdriver. It’s been quite a while since I used it and I had forgotten how much I like it. It made me want to find more things to drill and screw. Er, you know what I mean. Too bad they don’t make it anymore.

UPDATE: Reader Scott Littler writes:

The 12V Bosch Impact Driver is Great, Too!

My Aunt & her Woman and I put up 1400 ft^2 of paneling in my barn in Ohio AND numerous other projects involving the driving of drywall screws using a couple of these little Bosh 12V impact drivers. Nice thing about impact drivers is that they don’t impart much torque back into your hand/wrist, like a normal drill/driver would. A great addition to my arsenal…not exactly an AR, but…

Somehow gratifying.

LAST NIGHT IT WAS A SUGGESTION FROM ALEX POURNELLE. But now it’s reality: Twitchy tech guru offers Twitter back-up service.

THIS MUST BE MORE OF THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WE’VE BEEN HEARING ABOUT: Gutsy call: Obama ducks question on Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, feigns concern about human rights.

BLOOMBERG: Obama Fails to Stem Middle-Class Slide He Blamed on Bush. “He kept pushing this change, change, change, and he hasn’t done anything.”

AT AMAZON, Today’s Deals in Movies & TV.

NAVY SEALS SLAM OBAMA for taking political credit for bin Laden killing, using them as “ammunition.” “Serving and former US Navy SEALs have slammed President Barack Obama for taking the credit for killing Osama bin Laden and accused him of using Special Forces operators as ‘ammunition’ for his re-election campaign.”

SPIN: Elizabeth Warren camp: It’s kind of sexist for Scott Brown to ask if she’s lying about being Native American. Yeah, that makes sense.

IT’S ALL ABOUT DAN SAVAGE, over at Breitbart.com.

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? Jim Treacher, that’s who! “It’s just more proof that we don’t need these guys anymore. They’re not our gatekeepers. They’ve proven it over and over: ACORN. Rielle Hunter. Van Jones. Anthony Weiner. They keep trying and failing to cover up stories that don’t suit their agenda. They keep pretending they control the flow of information. They’re determined to prove their own obsolescence. And they’ve got the ratings and circulation numbers to prove it.”

SUSANNAH BRESLIN: Why You’re Doing Social Media Wrong.

SEND ‘EM A ROCKET: Minnesota: The Nanny State Squelches Fireworks Rights.

This has been an ongoing theme at InstaPundit, where I’ve been referencing Henry Reed’s Journey for over a decade.

LOVE THE POSTERS: Breitbart is Here: Protests at White House Correspondents Dinner. I wish someone would stick ’em up all over DC, especially around various media headquarters. . . .

MIKE RIGGS: Why Is The Center For American Progress Enabling Obama’s Drug War Lies?

Hey, enabling Obama’s lies is their job description. You expect them to make an exception here?

GOVERNMENT PRICE CONTROLS ARE GOOD, except when they’re in higher education. Welcome to the Command Economy, dudes. These price limits are to benefit the less fortunate. Only a selfish fatcat would complain. . . .

A SPEECH to the New York Federal Reserve.

CHANGE: Limbaugh Goes On Offense Against Media Matters.

JOSS WHEDON UPDATE: With The Avengers, Joss Whedon Masters The Marvel Universe.

WELL, THIS IS NEWS, EVEN IF IT’S NOT EXACTLY A SURPRISE: Ex-CIA counterterror chief says Pelosi lied about waterboarding.

Here’s why it’s not a surprise. Plus, note that in 2009 House Democrats blocked a probe into whether Pelosi had lied. I’m pretty sure that’s because they knew the answer.

WHAT PHILIP K. DICK THOUGHT when he first saw Blade Runner.

AT AMAZON, up to 50% off on power and hand tools.

JON LOVITZ: “He’s President, Not King!”

NICK GILLESPIE COMMENTS ON MY NEW YORK POST OPED ON STUDENT LOANS:

My one objection to Reynold’s op-ed – and it’s an objection to a lot of college talk – is the need to constantly bash supposedly non-utilitarian majors such as English, gender studies, and the like. You know, “the humanities,” as in, oh what a waste of time. As a proud English major (surrounded by a bunch of them at Reason, by the way), I’ll save a full-throated defense of my major for another post. Let me just suggest that majoring in literary and cultural studies wasn’t just interesting in and of itself, it helped equip me with a series of analytic and expressive tools that have helped me support myself since I was 18. And as my older son gets ready to start college in the fall, I’m hoping he picks a course of study that is first and foremost interesting to him.

He’s right, of course. You can learn a lot — even substantive stuff that’s useful — in any course, potentially. I was mocking “gender studies” classes, but even those can potentially be valuable. I took a Law And Sexuality course in law school and it was actually very substantive, and was one of three courses that let me give a detailed off-the-top-of-my-head black letter law answer to a question my judge asked when I was clerking after law school. (The other two classes, underscoring this point, were Law, Science & Technology and International Human Rights Law). It’s also true that there’s a massive shortage of people with the traditional liberal arts skills of reading, writing, and thinking analytically.

But the problem with the humanities isn’t an inherent one — you could even teach a stimulating and intellectually rich course on the Occupy Movement — but has to do with execution, and here’s where the comparison with STEM comes in. Very few people complete a math or engineering major without learning a lot of math and engineering, but it’s entirely possible to major in the humanities and never learn to read, write, or reason with any rigor. The problem isn’t inherent to the subject matter, it’s a symptom of professorial self-indulgence and laziness, together with the lack of external scrutiny, a problem that is much, much worse in humanities than in STEM.

As the higher education bubble bursts, we’ll see a lot more of that scrutiny, and I expect things will improve — though not without a lot of squawking from those whose rice bowls get dinged along the way.

RETURNING U.S. SOLDIERS need to unlearn combat-driving habits.

OH, GOOD GRIEF: This is What Happens When You Have A Population That Has Never Seen or Interacted with a Firearm.