WHAT’S WRONG WITH RICK SANTORUM? Jennifer Rubin is happy to tell us.

But here’s my question: Back in 2008, the social-cons were all-in for Romney, to the point where Hugh Hewitt’s take became a running tagline (“You know who this is good for? Mitt Romney!”) that’s still used by by bloggers from time to time. Now, not so much. So what changed about Romney since 2008 to make him un-conservative?

UPDATE: Reader Allen Covert writes: “When he stopped running against McCain. Standing next to McCain will make almost anybody look conservative.”

DEMOCRATS PLAY DEFENSE in U.S. Senate Races. “Despite a lower jobless rate and a recent uptick in President Obama’s approval ratings, Democrats are poised in November to lose their Senate majority and hand over control of Congress entirely to the Republican Party.”

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Sporting Goods.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Ten Commandments For Our New Century. “Owing in our new millennium shall be less stressful than saving. The man with a little money in the bank is more worried that he thereby will be taxed more, earn no interest, or have his small sum expropriated, than the borrower is worried that he will have to pay back the full amount of quite a lot that he borrowed for his mortgage, credit card, or student loan. The saver is suspect of doing something bad to the borrower; savers are always active-voice beneficiaries, debtors passive-voice victims. An American without debt or a federal program to relieve it, is not really an American.”

HISTORY: Project Mercury workers gather 50 years after John Glenn’s orbital trip, visit old launch pad.

Glenn and Scott Carpenter, the only other survivor of NASA’s original Mercury 7 astronauts, spent nearly an hour being photographed with the retirees, posing in front of a black curtain with a model of a Mercury-Atlas rocket. Glenn is 90; Carpenter is 86.

Earlier in the afternoon, the Mercury brigade traveled by bus to Launch Complex 14. That’s the pad from which Glenn rocketed away on Feb. 20, 1962.

Some retirees were in wheelchairs, while others used walkers or canes. Most walked, some more surely than others. But they all beamed with pride as they took pictures of the abandoned pad and of each other, and went into the blockhouse to see the old Mercury photos on display and to reminisce.

Sad that so many of these people have grown old without seeing lunar colonies and Mars missions. That would have been hard to believe back then, when progress was so swift.

SWING STATE UPDATE: “President Obama’s national approval numbers have risen steadily with the brightening economy, but he may be vulnerable in the swing states that will be critical in determining the outcome of the 2012 election.” Not sure either the improvement or the brightening are all that significant, but read the whole thing.

YA THINK? Insurance Industry Could Take Hit From Birth-Control Mandate.

HMM: Friday Night Doc Dump: Did WH economic advisers raise red flags on Solyndra as early as March 2010?

MISCONCEPTION: With his mandate that all employers, including religiously affiliated institutions such as Catholic hospitals and charities, provide workers with health insurance that covers contraceptives, President Obama handed Republicans a terrific opportunity to talk about the growing intrusiveness of government.

THIS KEEPS HAPPENING: Teacher, 39, jailed for 10 years after having sex with 15-year-old student in her car.

A teacher has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for having sex with one of her former students, who was just 15 at the time.

Amanda Watkins’ mother asked for leniency, saying: ‘My daughter is not a bad person, but she is a sick person.’

Watkins, 39, was a teacher at Sheffield Junior High School in Alabama when she was found having sex with the teenager in the back seat of her car in December 2009.

She admitted to police that the pair were engaging in sexual activity, according to the Times Register, and was fired the next month.

You know, some people might think this suggests a problem with public schools.

IS THE GOVERNMENT scaring Web businesses out of the United States? “With the JotForm situation unfolding, where the U.S. government shut down an entire website with no notice or explanation, people are beginning to recognize that the U.S is not safe for internet startups. Lots of folks have been passing around [a] rather reasonable list of activities for U.S.-based websites.”

DEATH THREATS? I blame the President’s violent, eliminationist rhetoric.

Threats of the sort described by Charles Koch go with the territory if you are a conservative. We have gotten threats, harassing phone calls, etc., over the years–although none lately, as far as I know–and anyone active in politics on the conservative side has had the same experience. With the bizarre campaign of hate that the Left has orchestrated against the Koch brothers over the last year or two, one can hardly imagine the vitriol they must get from liberals.

Of course, that is of little concern to liberal reporters. The civility campaign of 2011 is so…2011. Thus, the Associated Press picked up the story yesterday, but the only thing the AP reporter added was a note of skepticism.

As usual, the “have you no decency?” crowd has none.

BRITAIN: Boy, 7, branded a racist for asking schoolmate: ‘Are you brown because you come from Africa?’

The mother of a seven-year-old boy was told to sign a school form admitting he was racist after he asked another pupil about the colour of his skin.

Elliott Dearlove had asked a five-year-old boy in the playground whether he was ‘brown because he was from Africa’.

His mother, Hayley White, 29, said she received a phone call last month to say her son had been at the centre of a ‘racist incident’.

She was then summoned to a meeting with Elliott, his teacher and the deputy head of Griffin Primary School in Hull.

Britain is overdue for a revolution against such. But then, so are we.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I thought we were supposed to celebrate diversity.” No, that’s for the powers-that-be. We’re supposed to just live in fear of arbitrary and unpredictable punishment, and stay appropriately docile.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: A hint as to the EU’s future:

Mr Lipponen said during his lecture in the London School of Economics that the EU must not develop into a military superpower, but should become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests.

Heh. I’d forgotten that one.

PROF. JACOBSON: All of Your Children are Belong to Us.

IS THE REPUBLICAN FIELD WEAK? Maybe, but Obama is trailing Ron Paul in Iowa. “The president defeats only Newt Gingrich, 51 percent to 37 percent.” So, you know, the strength of the Democratic field is probably overstated. . . .

MIKE RAPPAPORT ON ANDREW BREITBART, LIBERTARIANS, AND CONSERVATIVES: “Alas, I think there is quite a bit to say for what Breitbart is claiming. Certainly, libertarians — even those who are hostile to conservatives — must recognize that Obama and the progressives are the great threat now. And I think, as compared to 2008, libertarians tend to get this. . . . Libertarians are in a tricky situation. Being neither liberal nor conservative, they must navigate in a world in which they are a small minority. For those in the academy, there is a strong temptation to emphasize the distinction with conservatives, so that they can ‘pass’ for non-conservatives. Back in the day, which I was less conservative than I am now, I was invited to a wedding of a guy I knew in law school. His bride admitted to me at the wedding itself, that I would not have been invited, had I been a conservative. A libertarian could pass, but not a conservative.”

A BREATH TEST FOR CANCER enters clinical trials.

NICE WORK: Georgia Tech develops braille-like texting app.

AT AMAZON, Deals & Bargains in Home Improvement.

Plus up to 50% off on power and hand tools.

U.S. TAX CODE IS more progressive than France, Germany, Belgium, or the UK.

LIVING IN “the foreskin of America.” We’re not circumcised?

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Despite Safety Worries, Work on Deadly Flu to Be Released. “The full details of recent experiments that made a deadly flu virus more contagious will be published, probably within a few months, despite recommendations by the United States that some information be kept secret for fear that terrorists could use it to start epidemics.”

UPDATE: InstaPundit readers are invited to discuss this issue here.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Incestuous Twin Brothers Wonder If They Should Reveal Their Secret Relationship.

AT AMAZON, the President’s Day clothing sale.