A HARBINGER? Life Under Capital Controls. Jim Bennett emails: “This article is interesting first as a comment on the strength of the economy of the more pro-capitalist part of North America, and second as a picture of life in Iceland under capital controls. People read the term but younger readers have no real feel for what it means in terms of day-to-day life. There have been no capital controls in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and none in Western Europe for some time before that. But even Britain had capital controls for quite some time after WW2.” Yes, and by a curious coincidence, the U.S. government has been making it steadily more difficult for Americans to move money offshore.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Home HIV Test about Putting Patients in Charge of Health. “According to the Washington Post, the FDA is currently considering approval of a new home HIV test, which could be purchased over the counter and administered within 20 minutes by performing a simple gum swab. . . . Beyond the AIDS struggle, giving people more control over their health is a necessary part of creating a sustainable health care system in this country. A dependency culture—waiting passively for the doctors to take care of it—both infantilizes people and raises costs. Naturally, there are limits to how much responsibility you can expect from people, but a health care system that unnecessarily restricts individual choice and costs so much that it will bankrupt the country is also a bad idea. More power in health care and more responsibility needs to go to individuals; they will sometimes make bad decisions, but doctors and public health ‘experts’ are also mistaken from time to time.”

Indeed they are.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signs open-carry gun bill into law. “Oklahoma is the 25th state with either ‘permissive open carry’ laws, which means no permit required, or ‘licensed open carry,’ which requires a permit. Oklahoma now joins Utah, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Hawaii and Massachusetts as a ‘licensed open carry’ state.”

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Earmarks Still Have Friends In High Places.

REMEMBERING DONALD “DUCK” DUNN.

AT AMAZON, the Springtime Cleaning & Organizing Sale.

Also, today only: NCIS, seasons 1-8, for $124.99.

JENNIFER RUBIN: 10 Things About Deb Fischer’s Win in Nebraska.

I WOULD HAVE BUILT A GIANT WOODEN BADGER, MYSELF: Greeks Apologize to Europe with Huge Horse.

MICHAEL BARONE: Rattled Obama Team Making Miscues. “As a supporter of same-sex marriage, I am glad Obama took the step that Dick Cheney took several years ago. . . . But Gallup reports that 26 percent of voters say they’re less likely to vote for him because of this issue, exactly twice the 13 percent who say they’re more likely to do so.”

WELL, AT LEAST THEY’RE CONSISTENT: Democrats On Track To Extend No-Budget Streak: “Senate Democrats are poised to continue their impressive streak of budgetary negligence on Wednesday by unanimously rejecting as many as five different budgets, including the one offered by President Obama. Republicans, meanwhile, are hoping that voters will pick up on the disturbing trend.”

SMALL BUSINESSES THRIVING thanks to Amazon customers.

Small may be the new big, but when you’re small, big entities can help. I wrote about this phenomenon years ago, and it’s still true.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Narcissism update: Obama now inserts himself into online bios of past presidents. Actually, this isn’t narcissism, exactly, but something worse. Given that Obama surely didn’t insert these changes himself, it suggests an attitude within his staff, not just a personal failing of Obama’s.

UPDATE: And the Rutherford B. Hayes meme is back!

More Hayes fun here. In retrospect, I think the Hayes blooper, and the response, was the beginning of Obama’s social-media collapse.

ANNALS OF THE ONE PERCENT: Obama Disclosures Reveal Account at JPMorgan.

President Barack Obama has a fat account at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and a mortgage on his Chicago home that he should probably refinance.

Obama’s financial disclosure forms, released today, show assets of at least $2.5 million, including a JPMorgan account worth at least $500,000. . . .

Obama’s disclosures also show he has a more than $500,000 mortgage on his Illinois home with a 5.625 percent interest rate he took out in 2005. That’s much higher than current rates, which can run below 4 percent. Ironically, Obama has pushed refinancing as a part of his Congressional “to-do list,” saying the average family would be able to save thousands of dollars a year.

That would certainly be true for Obama if he took his own advice.

No one’s ever accused Obama of being good at handling debt.

AD: A Few Of The 23 Million. “Today, in the Obama economy, twenty-three million Americans are out of work, underemployed, or have stopped looking for work. These are the stories behind the statistics. These are a few of the twenty-three million.”

IF ONLY STUDENTS GOT SCHUMPETER INSTEAD OF HOWARD ZINN: “The difficult truth that virtually no politician is prepared to acknowledge is that the road to job creation runs through job destruction.”

DEBT PROBLEMS: Boehner Questions Obama’s Courage. “The difference between knowing what’s right and doing what’s right is courage, and the president, I’m sorry to say, lost his.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Remember when Occupy Wall Street was sweeping the nation? “The media branded it the left’s answer to the Tea Party, the start of a grand national mobilization; depending on who you ask, half of America once supported the OWS protestors, double the amount who back the Tea Party. The Huffington Post even launched a separate page devoted entirely to coverage of OWS. How the mighty have fallen. . . . OWS has essentially fallen apart. It is not a significant presence on the streets; it is not a significant presence in Democratic Party politics; it is not a significant presence in the national conversation.”

OWS was never mighty. It was always a bubble full of media hot air, and it collapsed when its actual behavior damaged it to the point that even the media’s best effots couldn’t keep it inflated, at which point the press started pretending it had never existed. . . .

MY A DUE PROCESS RIGHT TO RECORD THE POLICE, coauthored with John Steakley, is still charting at #1 on SSRN. Thanks for the interest!

JAMES TARANTO: It’s Obama vs. The New York Times. “It’s not the first time the New York Times has been accused of bias, but it may be the funniest.”

Plus, why Frank Bruni is a bigot.

WILL MASSACHUSETTS DEMS dump Elizabeth Warren for Marisa DeFranco?

SWEETHEART DEAL? Senator wants answers on Google air fleet leasing at NASA field.

JOHN HINDERAKER: The High Cost Of Regulation.

Remember when President Obama said that his policies would cause the cost of electricity to skyrocket? Well, the cost has skyrocketed, but not only because of Obama. In February, Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute released a study of the cost of renewable energy mandates. In most states, regulatory authorities have required utilities to obtain a specified portion of their power from renewable sources–wind, solar, and so on. Those energy sources are nowhere near as efficient as coal and natural gas, which means they cost far more per kilowatt hour. But the utility has to buy that energy by law, and it passes the higher cost on to its ratepayers. Generally, the ratepayers–i.e., all of us–have no idea that they are paying extra to subsidize “green” fantasies.

There’s too much regulation, for too many lousy reasons. If regulation isn’t clearly for the common good, it’s just bossiness — a deprivation of freedom for no good reason — and should be remedied by tar, feathers, and such other means as get the message across.

EUROPE: Italy’s banks shaken as economic slump deepens. “As Greece erupts, Italy is moving into the eye of the storm. Its economy is contracting at speeds not seen since the depths of the slump in 2009 as draconian austerity bites, greatly increasing the risk of social revolt and a banking crisis.”

MORE OBAMA PRIMARY PROBLEMS? California Dems Planning to Vote For “Mickey Mouse” In June Primary. Well, he’s got the ears. Plus this:

In New Hampshire: Obama lost 20% of the primary vote; the #1 write in name was Ron Paul.

Tuesday nights election results in West Virginia has a convicted felon getting over 40% of the vote in the DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY and garnering at least a delegate. LMAO, indeed.

Over 20% of North Carolina DEMOCRATS selected “No Preference” as the Presidential nominee.

Ouch.