THE HILL: House GOP women step forward on small business tax bill.

AT AMAZON, today’s top deals in electronics.

Also, 20% or more off on external hard drives.

And, today only: Sex And The City, complete box set for $85.49.

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey emails: “I don’t think I mentioned this to you before, but I always check out the links on the Amazon deals you post. Got a good deal on lens filters for my Canon EOS Rebel T2i today (which I have needed for a long time) and a couple of other inexpensive accessories. Keep us updated on those — and of course, it’s a great way to support what you do. Win-win!”

Thanks!

THE HILL: Secret Service Scandal Dominates Washington Conversation.

Here’s a question everyone should be pondering: If the federal government can’t keep the President’s bodyguards from drinking and whoring on duty, how likely is it to be able to run anything competently?

UH OH: The Death Spiral of Law Firms (and Law Schools). “This is what happens when an industry can’t see past the good times, then gets sacked by the bad.”

You’d think people would know about the seven fat years and seven lean years. . . .

SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT, one property right at a time.

VIDEO: ‘If I Wanted America to Fail.’ (Bumped).

ANDREW KLAVAN: Screw The Earth!

ROGER KIMBALL: Utopia, Limited.

SORRY, I DIDN’T HAVE TIME to put together one of those “things you might have missed” posts. So just keep scrolling!

MAIN STREET HAS NO CONFIDENCE IN THE MARKETS. “Main Street is ignoring the market’s rapid rise, no matter how much money the pros are making. Rather than investing in the much-hyped Obama recovery, small investors are giving it a big, fat thumbs down. . . . What’s happening with stock mutual funds says Main Street thinks that the economy stinks and that it ain’t getting better.”

UPDATE: A hedge-fund reader emails: “Professional financial market activity is also way down these days. The drop in volumes is damning. The Fed’s financial repression – forcing market yields below inflation – is one reason. The tsunami of administration diktats is another. And the Chinese-style theft of customer account capital by John Corzine and JP Morgan is the last nail in the coffin. The economics of investing make little sense, and even if you can thread the needle of profitability, you risk having your property seized by regime buddies. Why do anything with your money but stash it under the mattress, or try to get it offshore?”

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Now That’s Transparency: ‘Most Honest Law School’ Admits a Graduate Is Employed as a ‘Sheep Farmer.’ Plus depressing news on Michigan job placement generally.

WAR AGAINST PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: Cops Would Be Liable Arresting Citizens For Recording Under Approved Conn. Bill. “The Connecticut state senate approved a bill Thursday that would allow citizens to sue police officers who arrest them for recording in public, apparently the first of its kind in the nation. . . . According to the Hartford Courant, the bill was inspired by the 2009 incident in which a priest was arrested for video recording cops inside a store shaking down immigrants, which led to a Department of Justice investigation and the arrest of four officers.”

THOUGHTS ON JON CORZINE FROM READER KENT BUDGE:

Considering the almost total lack of interest by the media in John Corzine, I’m guessing there must have been a “Keep rockin'” memo sent out on the topic that I missed. Maybe it was circulated through the double secret son-of-Journolist.

Is there any doubt that if a Republican president had a close adviser (and bundler) that presided over the disappearance of $1.2 billion of other people’s money that there would be a media feeding frenzy? With extravagant coverage day after day. I guess the media is on a diet. And only Republicans are worthy of a feast.

It does seem to work that way.

JIM TREACHER: I don’t know if you guys have heard, but Obama eats dogs. “A day will come when I stop enjoying this. Today is not that day.”

Plus:

As for our moral, ethical, and intellectual superiors in the Democratic Party who don’t appreciate this one bit, here’s a question:

If you don’t want to talk about dogs, why did you bring up dogs?

Now: Add up the number of days you’ve yammered about Romney’s dog. Take that sum and add 1. Find a calendar, count out that number of days from today, and mark the date. That’s the day I’ll consider not hurting your feelings anymore by bringing up the fact that Obama eats dogs.

Or November 7, 2012. Whichever comes first.

Heh. Plenty of amusing photos and tweets at the link. Have you noticed that the Dems keep coming up with some sure-fire talking point, and then the people on the right take it, turn it around, and then just keep hammering it until the Dems beg for mercy? Or, anyway, start trying to change the subject.

WELL, GIVEN THE CURRENT OCCUPANT OF THE WHITE HOUSE, IT’S AN UNDERSTANDABLE MISTAKE: Tom Friedman thinks the President is some sort of “glorified alderman.”

Plus: “I have to clean my apartment. There is a lot of work to do, and I don’t feel like doing it. And this is why I hope that Michael Bloomberg will reconsider running for president as an independent candidate, if only to get the winner of this year’s presidential election to help me clean my apartment. Which I really hate doing, by the way.”

More on Friedman from Dan Mitchell.

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Twitter lynch mob: George Zimmerman is out on bail? Let’s kill him! I hope someone notifies law enforcement about these threats, which people seem comfortable making under their own names.

JOHN FUND: Daughter of Haitian Immigrants Is GOP Congressional Nominee in Utah.

If she makes it to Congress, expect her to shake up the Congressional Black Caucus à la Florida’s Allen West. “I would join the CBC and try to take that thing apart from the inside out,” she told the Deseret News in January.

She explained that the current CBC membership is steeped in “demagoguery.” “They sit there and ignite emotions and ignite racism when there isn’t,” she said. “They use their positions to instill fear. Hope and change is turned into fear and blame. Fear that everybody is going to lose everything and blaming Congress for everything instead of taking responsibility.”

Mia Love is all about responsibility and holding people accountable. Should she win in November, it won’t take her long to be noticed on Capitol Hill.

Here’s my interview of Mia Love from a few weeks ago. Her favorite economist is Bastiat.

And let me stress that forcing Orrin Hatch into a primary, and getting Mia Love nominated, is a big win for the Tea Party in Utah. In 2010 they got rid of Bob Bennett, but they had the element of surprise on their side. They accomplished these successes in the face of extremely powerful and well-funded opposition from the establishment.

CHARGED WITH EXTORTION for threatening to blog?

SALENA ZITO: Tepid toward Obama on jobs.

Knocked off message for a second week by messy Secret Service and GSA scandals, President Obama on Wednesday tried to salvage things with a jobs rally among handpicked supporters in this Northeast Ohio town.

Standing behind him onstage were unemployed workers, ages 33 to 60, who went back to school to learn trades that might help them land jobs.

He began and ended his speech with now-familiar populist rhetoric about fairness and fair shakes. Sandwiched in between were out-of-place lines about free markets, personal responsibility and government not solving all of our problems.

At times the words felt awkward, forced. Six tepid applause lines in a 24-minute speech reflected a candidate testing out a new message that fell flat.

Read the whole thing.

CHANGE: Within a Month, Which Refinery Will Be the Largest in the US?

JOHN HINDERAKER: Have Our News Organizations Gone Crazy?

I wrote here about MSNBC’s campaign to tie the Koch brothers to George Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin. That effort was, it is fair to say, insane, but it apparently inspired one or more liberals to take MSNBC’s theories a step farther. Someone wrote–I think it was on Facebook–that Koch Industries had paid for Zimmerman’s legal defense and/or put up his bail money. Other liberals happily repeated the claim, to the point where Snopes deemed it a rumor worth addressing.

The claim is not only false, but entirely baseless and, in fact, stupid. There is no connection whatsoever between Koch Industries or the Koch brothers and George Zimmerman. None. Further, while the Koch brothers have championed a number of libertarian causes, gun rights have not been among them. In the one instance where Koch Industries is known to have lobbied on a firearms issue, it was against a proposed liberalization of firearms laws in Florida. And the brothers have no history of participating in the defense of criminal defendants. Further, while this is not my area of expertise, I doubt whether it would even be legal for Koch Industries to pay for an unrelated person’s criminal defense. So the assertion that Koch Industries is paying for Zimmerman’s defense or contributing to his bail lacks the remotest shred of plausibility.

That doesn’t matter. The important thing is to give the base someone to hate, and the base isn’t picky about facts. And the base is pretty much their only audience anymore, anyway.

WHAT THE BO XILAI CASE can tell us about China.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): 1 in 2 new graduates are jobless or underemployed.