EATING MEAT helped early humans reproduce. “If early humans had been vegans we might all still be living in caves, Swedish researchers suggested in an article Thursday. When a mother eats meat, her breast-fed child’s brain grows faster and she is able to wean the child at an earlier age, allowing her to have more children faster, the article explains. That provided a distinct competitive advantage for early humans when limited resources and a small population made it difficult for them to thrive.”

Thanks, meat!

CRUISING IN COMFORT: Google adds hybrid Lexus RX450h to autonomous fleet.

FROM ALAN WASSER, A Rebuttal To Jim Dunstan On Space Property Rights.

MANAGEMENT: “The Department of Energy’s top safety officer in Washington, D.C., has issued a special alert on contaminated respirators in the wake of problems at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant.”

IS THE WASHINGTON POST running a sweatshop? “They said that they felt as if they were out there alone in digital land, under high pressure to get Web hits, with no training, little guidance or mentoring and sparse editing. Guidelines for aggregating stories are almost nonexistent, they said. And they believe that, even if they do a good job, there is no path forward. Will they one day graduate to a beat, covering a crime scene, a city council or a school board? They didn’t know. So some left; others are thinking of quitting.”

WAR AGAINST WOMEN IN WISCONSIN: Who’s pushing the female candidate aside in the Scott Walker recall primary? “It seems like the lady is supposed to cede her ground and let the man take over. Talk about a war on women!” Kinda like with Hillary when the Democratic Party powers decided they’d rather have a young man with a Harvard degree.

Plus, from the comments: “She has a duty to retreat.”

MICKEY KAUS: Obama’s Fatal Pivot? “Why Not Tax Reform in 2009? Did Obama blow it by shifting to the health care bill in 2009 instead of focusing on the economy? Barney Frank recently suggested as much, and Michael Hirsh amplifies the charge.”

“WE KNEW WE COULDN’T REALLY SING.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns on garage storage.

Also, bike racks.

And, today only: 54% off Life / Planet Earth on Blu-Ray.

MARK STEYN:

Britain’s Daily Mail, demonstrating a greater interest in the story than the court eunuchs of the Obamamedia, provides some pictures of the hotel accommodations these guys were enjoying while they “scouted security for the President’s visit”.

We have a dependency culture from top to toe. Forty-five million Americans are on food stamps. The “public servants” manning the government that hands out the food stamps are themselves on Vegas hot-tub stamps, beach-resort stamps, Colombian hooker stamps, third-of-a-century retirement stamps…

A few more years of this, and it won’t be necessary to go to Cartagena: it’ll be Latin America at home, too.

And that’ll suit some people just fine.

TURNED OFF FROM POLITICS? That’s Exactly What The Politicians Want.

BYRON YORK: MSNBC host condemns Romney to Hell.

Bashir’s sermon wasn’t the only Mormon-related message coming from Democrats and their allies in the press. That same day, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said Romney’s family “came from a polygamy commune in Mexico.” “I am not alleging by any stretch that Romney is a polygamist and approves of [the] polygamy lifestyle,” Schweitzer told the Daily Beast, “but his father was born into [a] polygamy commune in Mexico.”

It is true that Romney’s more distant Mormon ancestors did move to Mexico to escape a U.S. crackdown on polygamy, but it is also true that Romney himself (married 43 years) does not practice polygamy, his father did not practice polygamy, and his grandfather did not practice polygamy. Romney’s great-grandfather Miles Romney was the last polygamist in the line. And, just to point out one of the more unique features of this election, President Obama also has polygamy in his background.

In any event, the general election campaign is only a few days old, and voices on the Democratic side have already made hard-edged statements about Mormonism. Does anyone expect that to change as the campaign goes on?

Nope. Hate and bigotry is all they’ve got left.

UPDATE: A reader writes:

You say that “Hate and bigotry is all they’ve got left”

The problem for them as a strategy is that they are preaching to the choir.

They already have the base; the people who hate, the racists , the religious bigots, are already solidly on Obama’s side.

I have rarely seen such a divide where virtually all the racism and religious bigotry is found on the Left. The Right is made up of people you find at a typical Tea Party rally: well behaved, middle-American, working people who go to church and only want to live their lives in peace and raise their families.

Team Obama will lose, and they lose badly, both in the manner and the magnitude of their loss.

Let’s hope. You get more of what you reward, and America doesn’t need more racism and bigotry.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Andrew Piederer writes:

There is an aspect to this story that hasn’t been covered and has implications for future attempts to use Romney’s Mormonism as an attack vector.

I’m not sure what Martin Bashir was trying to accomplish by citing ‘Mormon’ scripture, but he succeeded in making himself look foolish by getting the citation wrong in the second instance (There is no Nephi 2:34–the verse he is looking for is 2 Nephi 9:34), and completely misunderstanding the context of both citations, which don’t refer to lying as an unforgivable sin worthy of ‘hell-fire’ , but a particularly egregious form of apostasy (becoming anti-Christ).

We see Democrats quoting scripture on a regular basis, and I’ve never quite understood why they do it. It clearly has no authority with the irreligious (mostly Democrat) and for those who are religious, the awkward and–let’s be charitable–‘unconventional’ ways in which scripture is uses, marks them as ignorant and self-serving. Obama’s claims to Christian faith have suffered specifically from his use of scripture, which bear no resemblance to standard exegesis.

The bottom line is, ‘successful’ attacks on Romney’s Mormonism require being actually conversant with Mormon doctrines. Failing that, it’s better to stick with the Seamus the dog stories…

Not that those have worked out so well.

BOB OWENS: Daily Beast Columnist Politely Calls for George Zimmerman’s Lynching.

TROUBLE: Struggling Obama super-PAC asks Clinton for help.

PUBLIC ORDER IN THE OBAMA AGE: Residents of State Street Condo Told To Leave Chicago During NATO Summit. “Residents of a Chicago condo whose building will be in the eye of the NATO storm are being warned that they should move out for the weekend … or risk being trapped inside by rioters.”

BILL QUICK: Why The Obama Democrats Can’t Talk About Their Successes – They Don’t Have Any.

TODD ZYWICKI: Upholding the Rule of Law, in Season and out of Season.

JIM TREACHER: “The Obama campaign’s timing is as impeccable as ever.”

THE WAGES OF MEDIA- AND ADMINISTRATION-SPONSORED RACE-HATRED: Suspect: I Beat Up White Man Because I Am Mad About Trayvon Martin Case.

When will Obama, and NBC, be held to account for their racial hatemongering?

STILL MORE ON OBAMACARE, from Einer Elhauge.

BAD CALL: John McCain, the 2008 Election, and Civil Unrest.

What we do know is this: First, that people in the McCain campaign thought they had evidence of election tampering that cost McCain the election. Second, that McCain thought it best for the country to do nothing about it, in part because of fears of mob violence.

America is coasting along a slippery surface, and small concessions to the mob can resonate in ways we can’t predict. In seven months, we have a chance to reverse the mistakes of 2008, even if only to stand up to the mob this time. . . .

If you are sitting on the couch on Election Day watching it on TV, if you are at work instead of not using available leave, if you aren’t inside the polls on Election Day to prevent the mess of 2008 from repeating, you aren’t doing enough. If not 2012, when?

When, indeed?

SO IN RESPONSE TO THE REPORT THAT JON CORZINE IS STILL BUNDLING CONTRIBUTIONS FOR OBAMA, reader Fred Butzen emails: “A few days ago, you wondered why Jon Corzine was not in prison. Well, now we know.”

Here’s Roger Kimball on that.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “About that missing MF Global money, has anyone thought to check Corzine’s ‘bundle’?”

ORRIN HATCH FORCED INTO A PRIMARY, and Mia Love wins the nomination without one. A pretty good day for the Utah Tea Party.

FASTER, PLEASE: US Small-Scale Nuclear Reactor Industry Gains Traction In Missouri.