RUTHERFORDGATE: Historian Responds to President Obama’s Hayes Slur. “Wait, so Hayes didn’t even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? ‘No, no,’ Card confirmed.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): The recession may be contributing to poor job outcomes for the younger generation in part because it is changing their capacity for risk.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 1937 advice on how wives should undress in front of their husbands.

THE NSA IS BUILDING the world’s biggest spy center.

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

Good thing we elected a Democrat so that this sort of thing could go forward unhindered . . . .

SHOULD ECONOMISTS listen to what people say?

Lots of interesting discussion in the comments, including this: “I’m a stay-at-home mom with three small kids. My husband’s income is quite good, but not amazing (especially since we live in an expensive state and have three children.) My MTR is about 45%. Between that and day care I would have to make about $70,000 a year before I would take home $1. Not worth it. So I’m home with the kids. BTW, I’ve had this conversation with many many SAHMs around here and almost all of them are home because of this. Now it turns out I like being home and probably wouldn’t go back anyway now, but that’s not true of many people I’ve talked to. Ironically, with the rise of assortative mating, its often the highly educated, accomplished women who marry men with high enough incomes to put them in this predicament, so we’re probably selecting for the drop out of some of our most productive workers.”

THE RISIBLE ROWAN WILLIAMS will step down as Archbishop of Canterbury in December. Will his successor be any better?

FISKER: Worse than Solyndra? Stay tuned.

SO I’VE BEEN READING ABOUT RUMORS OF A MITT ROMNEY/RON PAUL ALLIANCE, and I was thinking of doing a post saying that while Ron Paul is probably a non-starter, Rand Paul looks a lot better: He’s a Senator, not a Representative, he doesn’t have the crazy-uncle demeanor, he doesn’t have Ron Paul’s isolationist views, etc. But before I could write that post, I saw this from Bill Quick. More here.

DATING ADVICE FOR WOMEN from John Hawkins.

THIS AMERICAN LIFE retracts “fabricated” story about Apple/Foxconn worker abuse. “A new episode explaining how the show was duped will air Friday at 8 p.m. According to Schmitz, Daisey admits on the show that he never talked to poisoned workers.”

AT AMAZON, outlet deals in Kitchen & Dining.

PROF. JACOBSON: Carbonite’s Howard Stern Hypocrisy: “Stern is notorious for his demeaning antics towards women, including highly sexualized episodes on his show for decades. Yet none of that seems to bother Carbonite.”

DO LIBERALS OPPOSE AFFORDABLE HOUSING? “So it appears that while liberals push for more federal housing subsidies, they fight against more housing, and hence less affordable housing, at the local level. Now you might suspect that the hope is that one off-sets the other. I wouldn’t be surprised to believe the citizens of, say, San Francisco want the rest of us to subsidize their lifestyle and also believe more federal subsidies can take care of affordable housing needs. But the unfortunate truth is that the two, increased federal subsidies and local supply restrictions, end up driving up housing prices, contributing to housing bubbles and ultimately do little to provide affordable housing. The reason is that increased demand, which is what most federal housing subsidies do, simply drives up price in the presence of inelastic supply. If liberals truly cared about the poor and needy, they’d deregulate their local housing market and actually allow for the provision of affordable housing.”

Yeah, but who wants poor people in Marin?

SCIENCE: Being a man is much more dangerous than eating bacon, it would seem.. Plus this: “What is really striking is that the eat-meat-die-young panic keeps rearing its ugly head so regularly, based on study after study with equally feeble risk ratios and numerous confounding factors. This suggests that the constant desire to scare those of a carnivorous bent has little to do with the evidence – which is shakier than a cow with BSE – and more to do with the prejudices of those who want us all to live a less red-blooded lifestyle.”

Yep.

SO IF YOU SEE HIPSTER GUYS WITH GOATEES GETTING CROCKED, YOU’LL KNOW THAT LEFTY SEX-STRIKE THING IS WORKING: Science: Sex-Starved Fruit Flies Driven To Drink.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Hard Hits and Bounties in Football and Politics. “I remember an occasion during the Reagan administration when a relatively minor breach of Senate tradition (not even a written rule) would have allowed the Democrats to defeat the nomination of Daniel Manion, whom they bitterly opposed, for a federal appellate judgeship. A junior Democratic member tried to go against the tradition, but was immediately restrained by his more senior colleagues, for whom the prerogatives of the institution were more important than prevailing in the battle. It is difficult to imagine such a thing happening today.”

YEAH, THAT’S GOING TO SELL: Santorum Promises Broad War on Porn. Doesn’t he realize that will just strengthen the lefty sex-strike?

Plus, from the comments: “War on Poverty led to more welfare, and more poverty. War on Drugs led to more drugs and more drug-related violence. What the hell do they think the war on porn would do?”

MICHAEL YON: Major RED FLAG: Military Cover-up in Afghanistan.

HOW TO GET STARTED WITH 3D Printing and Modeling At Home.

SAY, DO YOU THINK THERE’S A CONNECTION between Obama’s Rutherford B. Hayes problem and his drunkenly-cavorting-speechwriter problem? I’m just sayin’ . . .

LESS SLEEP RAISES APPETITE: If you aren’t getting enough sleep you may be eating too much as a result. “Have you gradually put on too much weight? Do you sleep enough? Try changing your lifestyle so that you can get more sleep.”

BUT OF COURSE: Unions Send Doctor Bills to Taxpayers: Steven Greenhut.

FISKER KARMA UPDATE: “The Fisker Karma is the automotive embodiment of both Marilyn Monroe and Rodney Dangerfield. Marilyn because it’s damn sexy, with lots of wonderful curves in all the right places, and Mr. Dangerfield because, well, it gets no respect, no respect at all. There are good reasons for both of these personifications.”

MATT WELCH: Tim Noah Self-Parody: Joe Biden Is A “Non-Embarrassment?”

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Citizens United and the Scope of Professor Teachout’s Anti-Corruption Principle.