BUT DON’T EXPECT ANYONE TO, YOU KNOW, APOLOGIZE OR ANYTHING: “Twenty years later, [Dan] Quayle’s words seem less controversial than prophetic.”

Ann Althouse pushes back, and she has a point. But watch a few episodes of 16 and Pregnant, and you might think that “it’s wrong” is a useful heuristic for people incapable of fully understanding what “it will be hard” actually means. At any rate, after twenty years of hearing SUV drivers described in terms more applicable to Himmler, the 1992 condemnations of moralistic language from political leaders ring particularly hollow.

Of course, contra the Quayle argument is Jim Bennett’s observation that people who breed without thinking of the consequences are turning out to be demographic heroes.

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: John Wolfe Sues Arkansas Dems For Delegates Won In Primary Against Obama.

AT AMAZON, a sale on Levis for men.

RON RADOSH: The New York Times Runs A Hit Job On Ann Romney.

Funny, when Bruce Springsteen was opining on the evils of the 1%, they weren’t talking about Jessica Springsteen’s equestrianism. Equestrianism that involves lawsuits over $850,000 horses.

DON’T GET COCKY, KID: “One sign that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is likely to win the election on June 5 is the sudden disappearance of national media attention to the race.”

DAVID BROOKS: Obama Campaign “Demeaned Itself” By Lying About Romney, Bain.

Plus this: “I don’t think, if you are a liberal Democrat, you want to be seen attacking business. People may not love business. They like it a lot better than government. And they don’t want to see an anti-business Democrat.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD:

I’ve been in Germany visiting Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Nuremberg and Frankfurt am Main, and from every outward sign, things look great. Cranes are at work building new buildings; late model cars swoop along the autobahns, the restaurants and the shops are full, and tourists swarm in and around the famous sights.

But when you talk to them, you hear a new note of worry in Germany. As a journalist told me yesterday, he worries whether the money in his pocket will be worth anything a year from now. Others worry about Germany’s increasingly negative image among recession-hit southern and eastern Europeans. Americans will understand this feeling well: you pay and pay to help others, only to have them turn on you in hatred and wrath, accusing you of horrible hidden motives and denouncing your selfishness.

Indeed.

MIKE MOLLENHOUR: Who Wears the Harness? Who Holds its Reins? “For those not raised in farm country, ‘harness’ is more than a verb implying a general, cooperative marshaling of talent. . . . Who do you think wears this harness, the one our president imagines using? Remember: this is his word.”

HAPPY 97TH BIRTHDAY to Herman Wouk.

WAS THE FACEBOOK IPO BROUGHT DOWN by a rogue trading algorithm?

HAPPY TENTH BLOGGIVERSARY to Power Line.

THIS WEEK in the future.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on Men’s Shavers.

SWATTING: Bogus Call Sends Police to Erick Erickson’s House.

He reports here. Really, if the goal is to keep people from writing about Brett Kimberlin, this doesn’t seem like the way to do it. It was smart of Erickson to call his local Sheriff ahead of time. I did the same thing.

UPDATE: Stacy McCain looks at where Brett Kimberlin gets his money.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Prof. Jacobson: Solidarity.

HASHTAG HILARITY CONTINUES: #DescribeObamaInThreeWords.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Christie Administration in NJ Concludes NYPD Surveillance Was Legal.

A LOT GOING ON FOR ELON MUSK: Tesla To Launch New Electric Sedan June 22.

Related: Building Tesla.

CHANGE: Center Of Gravity In Oil World Shifts to Americas.

From Canada to Colombia to Brazil, oil and gas production in the Western Hemisphere is booming, with the United States emerging less dependent on supplies from an unstable Middle East. Central to the new energy equation is the United States itself, which has ramped up production and is now churning out 1.7 million more barrels of oil and liquid fuel per day than in 2005.

“There are new players and drivers in the world,” said Ruben Etcheverry, chief executive of Gas and Oil of Neuquen, a state-owned energy firm that is positioning itself to develop oil and gas fields here in Patagonia. “There is a new geopolitical shift, and those countries that never provided oil and gas can now do so. For the United States, there is a glimmer of the possibility of self-sufficiency.”

Oil produced in Persian Gulf countries — notably Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq — will remain vital to the world’s energy picture. But what was once a seemingly unalterable truth — that American oil production would steadily fall while the United States remained heavily reliant on Middle Eastern supplies — is being turned on its head.

Good.

Related: New And Frozen Frontier Awaits Offshore Drilling. “Barring a successful last-minute legal challenge by environmental groups, Shell will begin drilling test wells off the coast of northern Alaska in July, opening a new frontier in domestic oil exploration and accelerating a global rush to tap the untold resources beneath the frozen ocean.”

WSJ: SPACE-CHASE BILLIONAIRES.

CERTAIN PERSONALITY GENES may correlate with longevity.

DR. MANHATTAN: Wall Street’s Obama Fury: Sometimes Even Spoiled Brats Have a Point.

ONLINE EDUCATION: Bigger Than Facebook? “Let’s put it this way: if you can build a $100 billion company by using the Internet to replace the college yearbook–imagine what you can do if you use the Internet to replace college.”

Plus this: “I just came across an argument that it’s immoral to offer unpaid internships, which actually prepare young people for a career. Yet somehow it’s considered perfectly normal to charge someone $100,000 or more for a degree from a college that has deliberately neglected to ensure that its service has any marketable value.” If only someone addressed this problem at more length.

RACISM AND SEXISM from the University of Wisconsin administration.

READER BOOK PLUG: Charles Heard writes: “Would you please consider plugging my novel, Joe Shrugged? It is a very modest reprise of Atlas Shrugged, written some years ago but still very topical. Many of your readers would enjoy it, I believe.”

A lot of Joes are shrugging these days, I think.

TEEN SEX AND DRUGS: 5 classic media freakouts. Congratulate Danielle Crittenden for her service to science in debunking one of these.