THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD: A new era of strength competitions tests the limits of the human body.

When I last saw Shaw, he was back home in Colorado, recuperating from surgery. The injury had been worse than he feared. The tendon had all but exploded—“It looked like the end of a mop,” his surgeon, Peter J. Millett, told me—and the muscle had fully retracted inside his arm. To reattach it, they’d had to trim the tendon down, drill a hole through the radius bone, then pull it through and secure it with a titanium button. “He said my tendons were three times the size of normal,” Shaw said. “They had to use a hip retractor.” Still, if he was lucky, the repaired biceps would be even stronger than before and more sturdily attached. “I heard the sutures they used are like the strongest industrial space-age stuff they could find,” Shaw said. I thought of a line that Terry Todd had quoted at the Arnold, from “A Farewell to Arms”: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

Read the whole thing.

ALSO BANKRUPT, AND MORE OR LESS A SCAM: Obama Spokesman on Solyndra: ‘Widely Praised as Successful and Innovative.’

READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Patrick Larkin asks me to plug his e-book release of Red Phoenix, written with Larry Bond. Done! It’s $2.99 on Kindle.

SURVEILLANCE: Covert FBI Power to Obtain Phone Data Faces Rare Test. “Early last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a secret letter to a phone company demanding that it turn over customer records for an investigation. The phone company then did something almost unheard of: It fought the letter in court. The U.S. Department of Justice fired back with a serious accusation. It filed a civil complaint claiming that the company, by not handing over its files, was interfering ‘with the United States’ sovereign interests’ in national security.” They told me if I voted for . . . oh, hell, you know the rest.

FROM JERRY BEILINSON: Everything You Need To Know About Shell Oil And Arctic Offshore Drilling in Alaska. “After years of arguments over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the debate about Arctic oil exploration has moved offshore, into the waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. Now Federal regulators appear close to granting the final permits that one company, Royal Dutch Shell, needs to commence drilling north of Alaska. If the operation goes forward this summer, it could mark the birth of an offshore oil industry in the Arctic Ocean. However, environmentalists and many of the Inupiat villagers who live in the region oppose drilling, fearing oil spills and other risks to wildlife. Here’s everything you need to know about oil development in the Arctic Ocean.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): For The First Time, Canadians Are Now Richer Than Americans. “The average Canadian household is worth about $40,000 more than their American counterparts.”

STILL RAISING MONEY to make Occupy vs. The Tea Party.

WEINER PULLS OUT: “Despite recent talk of a possible political reemergence, former New York congressman Anthony Weiner insists he has no political comeback planned – at least for the moment.W einer, who resigned from Congress last summer following a drawn-out scandal over the discovery that he had been sending lewd pictures to women on the internet, has come under the spotlight anew, after a New York Post story last weekend alleged he was ‘seriously’ considering a mayoral bid in 2013.”

OLD FOLKS’ STOMACH BACTERIA ARE THE SECRET TO THEIR HEALTH, and the tend to get worse after eating institutional food for a while.

MORE PROMISING NEWS about aspirin and cancer.

#NARRATIVEFAIL: Oops!… Obama’s Top Bundler Jonathan Lavine Was In Charge of Bain During GST Steel Layoffs.

TERRY MOE: The End of Teachers’ Unions?

QUICK, REPUBLICANS SHOULD ADD AN AMENDMENT TO INCLUDE ACADEMIC TRANSCRIPTS AND SAT SCORES: Pathetic: House Dems propose bill requiring 10 years of tax returns for presidential candidates, egged on by media.

UPDATE: It was different when Kerry was running, of course.

SINGAPORE: Yale Gives Class in Hypocrisy. “The one-sided moral outrage of the Ivy Leagues–and in particular of my alma mater, Yale, where I received an MA in history–is a sight to behold. For decades, Yale and the other Ivies refused to host ROTC on campus because of the military’s discrimination against gays. That stance was only reversed last year after the lifting of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. Yet now Yale is opening its first-ever foreign campus in Singapore in cooperation with the National University of Singapore. This, in a country with an authoritarian political system that not only criminalizes homosexuality but even political protests and political speech.”

Yeah, but there’s money in going there.

CALIFORNIA PENSION FUND TAKES NOSEDIVE: “Worse, the fund’s actuary recommended a lower target, but the fund rejected it — not because the current number is accurate, but because using a more accurate rate of return would place too great a burden on struggling governments! Instead, they will close their eyes, clap their hands, and wait for Tinkerbelle to balance the books. Perhaps it’s time to occupy the state pensions.”

JAMES TARANTO ON THE POLITICS OF SINGLE MOTHERHOOD: “There is a political as well as an ideological aspect to the left’s disparagement of marriage and celebration of single motherhood. As pollster John Zogby notes in a Forbes.com column, the ‘marriage gap’ between Democrats and Republicans is ‘even more dramatic’ than the so-called gender gap. . . . If these numbers hold up in November, it will be good news for Republicans. But if the marriage gap persists, then it will be in the Democratic Party’s long-term interests to undermine the institution of marriage.”

AT AMAZON, deals in cellphones and accessories.

Also, today only: Clore Automotive Jump-N-Carry 1,700 Peak Amp Jump Starter, $99.99. A gadget like this is handy to have around.

TAXPROF: The Illegal Attempt by the IRS to Expand Tax Credits Under ObamaCare.

WELL, YOU CAN SEE WHY: Politico: Obama Jobs Panel Lays Low. “President Barack Obama’s Jobs Council hasn’t met publicly for six months, even as the issue of job creation dominates the 2012 election. . . . To cap it all off, several of the companies whose CEOs serve on the panel are involved to some extent in outsourcing — a fact that could undercut the ferocious attack Obama and his campaign are mounting on Romney over his alleged ties to the practice.”

A STUDENT LOAN “FIX” THAT ROBS THE ELDERLY?

POINTS AND FIGURES: Who Can You Trust? “It should be no surprise to anyone that bankers are deliberately making a market less transparent. In the stock industry, corporate bond industry, and munibond industry they have been doing that for eternity. They have institutionalized opaqueness, and codified it in regulations.”

Sometimes I wake up feeling good, but greed gets me down. Oh, wait, wrong song.

ANDREW MALCOLM: Memo to Dem press secretary: Probably best not to imply GOP billionaire is a pimp.

MICHAEL BARONE: Obama believes success is a gift from government.

The cynical might dismiss Obama’s preoccupation with higher tax rates as an instance of a candidate dwelling on one of his few proposals that tests well in the polls. Certainly, he doesn’t want to talk much about Obamacare or the stimulus package.

Cynics might note that he spurned supercommittee Republicans’ willingness last year to reduce tax deductions so as to actually increase revenue from high earners, without discouraging investment or encouraging tax avoidance as higher tax rates do.

But maybe Obama’s Captain-Ahab-like pursuit of higher tax rates just comes from a sense that no one earns success and that there’s no connection between effort and reward.

That kind of thinking also helps to explain the approach taken by Sen. Patty Murray in a speech at the Brookings Institution on Monday. She wants a tax rate increase on high earners so badly she said she’d prefer raising everyone’s taxes next year to maintaining current rates.

Well, as the recipient of so much undeserved success, you can see why he’d feel that way.

EXENE CERVENKA: “Can’t vote Obama. Too many Executive Orders.”