THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: New Acting Commerce Sec’y Has NO Commercial Experience.

UPDATE: From the comments: “Obama fires economic blanks, and now he’s hired one.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Seriously, where does Obama get off talking about the private sector? He’s never even been there. That’s like me talking about Turkmenistan. Heck, Obama’s spent more time in a madrassa than he has in the private sector.”

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Meet the Radical DOJ Lawyer Keeping Foreigners on Florida Voter Rolls.

CHANGE: Watch Sarah Jessica Parker Get Deleted from Obama Fundraising Emails in Real Time!

A NEW CAMPAIGN SCANDAL: Obama Secretly Sucks At Basketball.

HISTORY: How The Broom Became Flat. “Among the family of housekeeping implements, the broom—humble, deceptively simple in design, prone to leaning unobtrusively in corners—does not often enjoy the recognition it deserves.”

NOW AVAILABLE: 3D PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE CIVIL WAR.

SPACE HISTORY: Apollo Lunar Orbit Rescue Plans.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Why I Did Not Subscribe To The L.A. Times.

REALISTIC SWORDFIGHTING: A Neal Stephenson Kickstarter Project.

POLITICO: FAIL.

TEN WAYS A TAMPON can save your life.

OBAMA IS DOING FINE: President Barack Obama is rapidly losing support among African-American voters in North Carolina, a new poll out today from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows.

Meanwhile, reader Phillip Cagle writes: “How long before ‘The economy is doing just fine’ stickers start popping up on abandoned buildings, foreclosed properties, and businesses with Going Out of Business signs? Don’t you think that would be an interesting strategy for Romney supporters?”

This iconic photo from the early days of hope-and-change now seems prophetic.

Maybe I should photoshop in a “doing fine” banner. . . .

UPDATE: Dems to Obama: Voters don’t believe economy talk.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ask and ye shall receive, courtesy of reader George Moore.

MORE: A correction from reader Allan Pratt: “You, and the person who photoshopped the sign on your ‘Going out of Business’ photo, should quote Obama’s statement accurately. ‘The private sector is doing just fine’ is what he said, not ‘the economy is doing fine.’ Big difference. The latter version misses the real point.”

Actually, he said “the private sector is doing fine.”

STILL MORE: Another effort from reader Eric Klaus:

And another from George Moore:

And, finally, a particularly cynical one from a reader who gives no name:

VIDEO: The left’s Hindenburg Moment: “Crying Man” calls talk show; crashes and burns.

UPDATE: Wow, as soon as I linked to this it went “Private.” Sorry about that. Not sure why.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Should go back to being public again in a minute.

MORE: Working now.

NOW OUT: The Higher Education Bubble is now shipping.

ADVANCING NANOTECHNOLOGY with protein building blocks. “UCLA biochemists have designed specialized proteins that assemble themselves to form tiny molecular cages hundreds of times smaller than a single cell. The creation of these miniature structures may be the first step toward developing new methods of drug delivery or even designing artificial vaccines.”

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Biographies & Memoirs.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Researchers watch tiny living machines self-assemble. “Enabling bioengineers to design new molecular machines for nanotechnology applications is one of the possible outcomes of a study by University of Montreal researchers that was published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology today. The scientists have developed a new approach to visualize how proteins assemble, which may also significantly aid our understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which are caused by errors in assembly.”

TRANSPARENCY: Auto Retirees Finally Get Bailout Docs.

It’s a rare day in the nation’s capital when news comes that somebody has received 62,000 documents concerning one of the federal government’s most expensive and controversial programs of the past decade.

But that’s what happened today as the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association (DSRA) announced that it received the “first tranche” of documents from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) concerning the government’s conduct in the termination of the former auto parts company’s pension plan.

More at the link.

FASTER, PLEASE: Skin Cells Converted in Neural Stem Cells.

READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Ng To, Unethical Therapy from a Not-too-Distant Galaxy.

AIRBORNE EATING: “Flying table” lifts gourmet dining to new heights.

CHANGE: Cornyn Calls On Holder To Resign.

SOMEHOW I HAD MISSED THIS: Man stranded in desert builds motorcycle out of his broken car.

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Intellectual Laziness And The Supreme Court.