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BOB OWENS: So You Want To Own a Gun (Part Three).

GARDEN AND GUN: A new generation of women who are redefining the Southern Belle. “Southern women like men and allow them to stay men. Southern women are not afraid to dance.” And who better to write for Garden and Gun than a writer named Glock?

MORE BEACH READING: So I didn’t finish it, but on my trip I also started Tony Daniel’s Guardian of Night. I’m about halfway through, and it’s quite good, with very interesting aliens who use a scent-based language.

MICKEY KAUS: “Maybe I’m missing something, but if Obama’s pal Dr. Eric Whitaker did offer Rev. Wright $150,000 to stay silent for the duration of the campaign, as charged by Ed Klein, how exactly is that different from John Edwards’ pal Fred Baron giving Rielle Hunter money to stay out of the limelight for the duration of the campaign?”

AND THE DOG LOOKS DELICIOUS! Ed Driscoll: Dog Whistle Alert!

CHANGE: “Voters now trust likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney more than President Obama on all five issues regularly surveyed by Rasmussen Reports, especially when it comes to money.”

UPDATE: From the comments: “The audacity of competence.” And, further down, “The preference cascade has started, my pretties.”

ANOTHER READER BOOK PLUG REQUEST: Sabrina Chase writes: “May I request a mention of my latest science fiction ebook The Long Way Home? It’s part of Sarah Hoyt’s Human Wave movement of positive SF — plus it features hidden planets, mysterious aliens, and hotshot pilots.”

Done!

THOMAS SOWELL: A Censored Race War. “Trying to keep the lid on is understandable. But a lot of pressure can build up under that lid.” Meanwhile, some background.

THOUGHTS ON CLASS WARFARE: James Ceaser: Obama, Romney, and Equality.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The California Mess Worsens. “Via Meadia has long thought of California as a failing state. A mix of tight regulatory and environmental restrictions that satisfy the aspirations of rich Californians with an influx of low skilled immigrants who desperately need a wide open economic environment even if that means lax regulations would be difficult to manage under the best of conditions. California’s powerful public unions with their culture of entitlement makes it all much harder; so too does the state’s messy governance with referendums and legislative deadlock combining to produce a truly dysfunctional system. It is all getting worse in a dismal cycle.”

Related: Mike Bloomberg Now Campaigning for Tax Hikes … in California. Because ruining the lives of New Yorkers isn’t enough, I guess.

WILL HHS REQUIRE EVERYONE TO BE INFORMED OF THIS? ObamaCare May Hurt Medicare Advantage Plans For Poor.

THE UNDISCIPLINED DISCIPLINE: “It’s shaping up to be a rough month for black-studies programs; a new turn of the wheel at UNC-Chapel Hill adds credence to Naomi Schaefer Riley’s assertion that it’s time to reassess their value and intent. Academic fraud perpetrated by the head of Carolina’s Department of African and Afro-American Studies, Julius Nyang’oro, has gotten so bad that North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation may be called in to investigate.”

INSECURITY: Pity The Poor President.

Related: Mr. President, stop the whining.

FASTER, PLEASE: Private Sector Edges Deeper Into Space.

It sounds like a routine event for NASA: At 4:55 a.m. on Saturday, a rocket is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and carry cargo — but no people — to the International Space Station.

But if all goes as planned, that morning will mark something transformative for the space industry: a victory for capitalism in what has been for decades a government-run enterprise. The capsule, built by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation — SpaceX, for short — would be the first commercial spacecraft to make it to the space station, and many observers view its launching as the starting gun in an entrepreneurial race to turn space travel into a profit-making business in which NASA is not necessarily the biggest customer.

Already, there are some hints of how the era of commercial space travel might unfold. Companies like Virgin Galactic, XCOR and Space Adventures are booking passengers on suborbital joy rides to space, promised for dates within the next few years, and hundreds of people are signing up. And already there are celebrity tie-ins: Among the people who have signed up for Virgin’s first flights are Ashton Kutcher, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks and Katy Perry.

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

A FAR CRY FROM THE PLAME AFFAIR: “So the Obama administration, desperate to revive its sagging re-election hopes, deliberately put the life of a British agent in jeopardy–not someone who commuted to a desk job in the CIA, but someone who had infiltrated al Qaeda. ‘Despicable,’ indeed. And damaging to American security, as al Qaeda in Yemen now knows it was infiltrated, and by whom; and knows that we know about its latest bomb technology. Heads should roll, but with the Obama administration investigating itself, don’t hold your breath. Who knows? Maybe someday Hollywood will make a movie.” Don’t hold your breath for that one, either.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Colleges funnel fees to stave off reforms.

DEREK THOMPSON: Why Unpaid Internships Are Immoral.

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I’LL TAKE LEG-TINGLES FOR $200: Chris Matthews Bombs on ‘Jeopardy!’ After Repeatedly Mocking Palin for How She’d Do. Palin-mockery is a symptom of intellectual insecurity. Usually, that insecurity is well-founded. . . .

#OCCUPYFAIL: Police raid Occupy camp on UC Berkeley land after protesters fail to meet deadlines to leave. “University of California police raided a four-week Occupy encampment at a college-owned farm used for agriculture research early Monday, arresting nine people after protesters ignored yet another weekend deadline to leave.”

When you mess up agricultural research — as these protesters did — you’re basically starving poor people. But the Occupy folks don’t care, because the whole Occupy thing is really just intra-elite new-class warfare, in which the Occupy crowd has quite thoroughly lost.

I HAVEN’T WORKED THERE IN OVER 20 YEARS, and the firm I worked for, Dewey Ballantine, hasn’t really existed since the merger. But I still somehow find stories of the Dewey LeBoeuf unraveling sad. I’m not alone, though, as I was talking to a law school dean and fellow Dewey Ballantine alumn last summer and she said she was sad too, and wondered why, exactly, that is . . . . I worked with Alan Wolff, Clark McFadden, and Tom Howell, all mentioned in the story. I wish them well, wherever they land. Nice guys, and I learned a lot from them.

CHANGE: Federal judge strikes down NLRB’s rule approving “ambush” union elections. “Big win, but it’ll probably take electing President Romney to make sure they don’t make it stick on the second try.”

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