BRYAN PRESTON: Who Is Responsible For NBC’s Zimmerman Edit? We Have A Name. “I wrote earlier that there is no way that NBC’s Zimmerman was an accident or error, as the network claims. I base my position on nearly 20 years of editing video and audio. NBC’s Zimmerman edit was deliberate, done in a network editing studio at the specifications or orders of a producer who in turn answers up a chain of command that ends with the executive producer of the show that aired it.”

POLITICO: Here’s one line that President Barack Obama might want to rewind: “Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE calls opponent “whore” for supporting Israel. At least it wasn’t “Jewbag.”

UPDATE: “Don’t expect Media Matters to boycott the Senate candidate. Because the candidate is a Democrat. And an Israel-hater.” In other words, Media Matters’ core constituency.

TAXPROF: Taxmageddon: Massive Tax Increase Coming in 2013. Conveniently enough, after the election.

UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!

RAND SIMBERG’S SPACE PROPERTY RIGHTS PAPER has stirred up some interest. See, e.g., Popular Science: Free-Market Fans Encourage Rush for Off-Planet Real Estate.

Also: Wired: Loophole Could Allow Private Land Claims on Other Worlds.

Plus, more sensational coverage in The Daily Mail.

Meanwhile, here’s a piece I wrote for Popular Mechanics on lunar property rights.

And here’s a piece Rob Merges and I wrote on space property rights for the NYU Environmental Law Journal.

#OCCUPYFAIL: OccupySF’s failed theft of Catholic Archdiocese building: An insider’s view. “Pay special attention to the dancing girls, and the embarrassing infantile economic theories of the commune leader.”

UPDATE: Much more here.

GREEN CAR UPDATE: Does It Matter If Electric Car Maker Fisker Fails?

PENTAGON PUSHES CROWDSOURCED MANUFACTURING:

Designing and building things for the United States military is a notoriously slow-moving and costly endeavor. The time from idea to manufacturing for a new armored personnel carrier or a tank is typically 10 to 20 years. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants to change that, and drastically so. It seeks to cut the design-to-production cycle to two to four years. So how are they going to do it? Crowdsourcing and prize contests are crucial ingredients in the speed-up recipe. The crowdsourcing effort will rely on a software initiative, called Vehicleforge.mil, which will be a Web portal for gathering, sharing and testing ideas.

Darpa, a government-sponsored research program, has enlisted scientists from the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Vanderbilt University, University of Pennsylvania, and a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and General Electric. The work is getting under way in earnest now, with the first of three prize challenges scheduled for next year.

I remember when “prize challenges” were just a crazy idea championed by some way-out futurist types.

JIM TREACHER: What’s up with the anti-Sikh bigotry, Time Magazine? Everybody knows Time is a hotbed of racism.

UPDATE: Two Condescending Magazines In One!

ON THE SCENE at the Malawian President’s death. “As the police questioned me, I never let go of my phone. Instead, I just kept tweeting everything as it was happening to me. When it became clear to me that the situation had the potential to be serious, I tweeted that I had been detained.”

ROBERT WEISSBERG on academic crimethink.

READER MARK KALINA WRITES:

I’ve seen that you have, on occasion, put out a plug for a book that one of your readers has written. I’ve just published, via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, a science fiction novel called Hegemony. It’s a space opera with a somewhat hard-sci-fi edge and transhumanist themes.

Here’s the link. It’s only 99 cents!

HMM: Flavonoids Cut Parkinson’s Disease Risk In Men Only? “Berries, grapes, tea: get flavonoids to cut your risk of Parkinson’s disease. If these compounds really do protect against Parkinson’s they probably slow brain aging in general. But the weird result: The benefit was only seen in men. Why?”

VIRGINIA BEACH: F-18 Crashes Into Apartment Building.

INTERVIEW: Randy Barnett on the Supreme Court and ObamaCare.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: The big March jobs miss — and why the real unemployment rate sure ain’t 8.2%. Plus a killer graphic.

HOUSING: The Monster Lurking In The Shadow Inventory.

GREEN CAR NEWS: Fisker may change plans on Delaware production; details Karma troubles.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, THEY’D BE LOCKING UP WHISTLEBLOWERS FOR TALKING TO JOURNALISTS: And they were right! “John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer from 1999 to 2004, was indicted on Thursday for allegedly disclosing classified information to journalists.”

L.A. TIMES: Democrats give special interests a role at convention. “As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to squelch the role of special interests in financing the party conventions — so he barred corporations and lobbyists from contributing money to this year’s national convention in Charlotte, N.C. But even as Democrats tout the three-day event in September as a populist gathering, organizers have found ways to skirt the rules and give corporations and lobbyists a presence at the nominating convention. That suggests they can’t raise the $37 million for the political extravaganza without at least some help from moneyed interests.”

WOULDN’T BE THE FIRST TIME: Bryan Preston: Was The White House Press Question About Augusta National A Plant?

BRUCE THORNTON: Why Do Great Powers Decline?

#OBAMAFAIL: “The staffer for DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz who posted the controversial ‘Jewbag’ photo on her Facebook page in 2006 is no anonymous aide — but the daughter of Mark and Nancy Gilbert, two major Florida donors who have raised more than $500,000 for the Obama campaign.”

UPDATE: It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to say that if Republicans made a misstep like this we would never hear the end of it. It would be a “macaca” moment.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: College Tosses Baby, Hoards Bathwater.