DAVE RAMSEY WOULD BE PROUD: Wiping Out $90,000 in Student Loans in 7 Months.

Plus, debt-free is the new sexy:

He says he learned other lessons, too.

“The flask thing, it’s kind of demeaning,” he says. “The funny thing is that girls weren’t really sketched out by it…They did laugh, and I could still get their phone number. It taught me a lot — you don’t have to be this flashy dude, buying drinks.”

Discipline can be charismatic.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): New Normal: Majority Of Unemployed Attended College. “For the first time in history, the number of jobless workers age 25 and up who have attended some college now exceeds the ranks of those who settled for a high school diploma or less. . . . That’s a swing of more than 2 million since the start of 1992, early in another jobless recovery, when 4.1 million who hadn’t gone to college were jobless vs. 2.3 million jobless who had gone.”

MOSES WINE INVESTIGATIONS: The Mystery Of The Kenyan Birth.

FORGET PEAK OIL: IT’S TIME TO WORRY ABOUT PEAK LABOR. A reader emails: “And this is what I see daily in the mining biz, too. It applies across the spectrum from laborers to professionals. Everything from drillers, drivers (heavy machinery), electricians, builders, maintenance, geologists, engineers, etc, etc, etc. The entire resource sector is screaming for people.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: Why Joe Manchin Flees From Barack Obama.

UPDATE: Related: Manchin’s Pro-Obama Vote on NLRB Regulation Challenged by Raese.

DISGRACEFUL JOURNALISM: Tom Maguire: The WaPo On The Zimmerman Evidence – Are They Kidding? “What the WaPo fails to report is that the Sanford PD had a witness who was thirty feet from the action and was crystal clear that the white or Hispanic guy in red was on bottom, getting beaten by a black guy, and screaming for help (p. 38).”

WAR ON PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: Justice Dept. Defends Public’s Constitutional ‘Right to Record’ Cops.

As police departments around the country are increasingly caught up in tussles with members of the public who record their activities, the U.S. Justice Department has come out with a strong statement supporting the First Amendment right of individuals to record police officers in the public discharge of their duties.

In a surprising letter (.pdf) sent on Monday to attorneys for the Baltimore Police Department, the Justice Department also strongly asserted that officers who seize and destroy such recordings without a warrant or without due process are in strict violation of the individual’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The letter was sent to the police department as it prepares for meetings to discuss a settlement over a civil lawsuit brought by a citizen who sued the department after his camera was seized by police.

I suppose this is a good time to mention A Due Process Right To Record The Police again . . . .

SHOCKER: Obama Ahead of Romney in Political Contributions From Ivy League. Except: “One unit of one university — Harvard Business School — has employees who give more to Romney than Obama ($14,000 to $11,400).”

NOBODY TELL ELIZABETH WARREN: “Diversity” Training Makes Things Worse.

EUROPE: EU Making Emergency Plans For Greek Exit.

HMM: Is Obama Going To Lose The Arkansas Democratic Primary?

IBD/TIPP POLL: Women, Independents Leaving Obama.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Cheaper Student Loans–A Bad Idea Whose Time Has Come.

BYRON YORK: For Dems, Bush is to blame — forever and ever.

AT AMAZON, up to 80% off on clearance watches.

BEN STEIN: Obama’s Not So Smart, Really. What was your first clue, Ben?

ROGER SIMON: Fauxcahontas and Faux Kenyan? Liberals and False IDs.

Now I’m no “birther,” not even close. But this stuff is creepier than actually being born in a foreign country. This is in the realm of serious weirdness.

It’s going to be fascinating to see how the mainstream media plays this, because, as Stanley points out, much of this would be uncovered by a simple Google search. Stanley wonders why they never asked these questions, but I assume he was being rhetorical.

But in case they want a question to ask , here’s a simple one for POTUS at the next White House press conference: Assuming you never read the false information in your agent’s press kit, why did she think you were born in Kenya in the first place?

We can go from there.

Indeed.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Geopolitics of Greece’s Exit From The Euro.

If Europe cuts Greece loose, Russia may fill the void there as well. There are close cultural ties between these Orthodox countries, and both are like to join in a feeling of bitterness and exclusion vis-à-vis the West.

Americans often don’t “get” the Russia-Greek connection. In Ottoman times, Orthodox Russia was the protector of Orthodox Christians in the great Islamic empire and frequently used its diplomatic clout to defend the rights of its co-religionists. Greece looked to Russia as a reliable ally during much of the troubled period after modern Greece gained independence from the Turks.

The feeling is reciprocal. Russia received the gospel from Greek Christians. The Russian tsars married into the Byzantine royal house; the word tsar (or czar) is the Russian form of Caesar, indicating the strong Russian sense that Orthodox Moscow, after the fall of Constantinople, was the “Third Rome.” Much of modern Russian identity and sense of a unique place in the world is wrapped up in its civilizational connection with Byzantine culture and religion.

Read the whole thing.

I THINK IT’S A HUMAN-RIGHTS VIOLATION: Regardless Of What The Propaganda Says, This Is Not How A Free Society Treats People. But remember: Chuck Schumer, et al., aren’t trying to build a free society, or even to maintain one.

More here: “It is the foolish and counter-productive tax policies of the left that are chasing Eduardo Saverin to another country, just as they are chasing companies away in increasing numbers. It is even more foolish to punish those people for leaving — what we should do is stop punishing them with high taxes so that they stay. We need to compete against the likes of Singapore. Singapore doesn’t make enemies of its most dynamic entrepreneurs and instead adopts pro-growth policies rationally aimed at improving everyone’s living standards. Naturally, when other countries adopt rational tax regimes, those countries with irrational ones (likes us) are put at a terrible disadvantage, but it’s our own fault. In particular it’s the fault of those who now propose the ‘Eduardo Law.'”

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals in TV & Video.

PAUL BEDARD: Obama’s bin Laden leaks angered military.

OKAY, I’M PRETTY MUCH OVER THE ELIZABETH WARREN STORY, but I’d be remiss not to mention this music video.

SOME CALL HIM . . . TIM!

RON RADOSH: The Evidence in the Trayvon Martin Case is Released, and George Zimmerman is Vindicated. Well, there was clearly a fight, and Trayvon Martin had drugs in his system. “The main point is that for all those who jumped to the conclusion that Zimmerman had attacked Martin because he was black, and that it was a racially motivated crime, have some apologizing to do.”

More here.

The report neglects to mention that in the 911 tape, George Zimmerman reported to the police dispatcher that Martin seemed suspicious to him because it seemed Martin was “on drugs or something.”

Like the injuries to Zimmerman, the prosecutor’s affidavit does not mention that Zimmerman’s suspicion about Martin was confirmed by the autopsy. As I noted a few weeks back, it just asserts that Zimmerman “profiled” Martin. A disgrace.

It’s just like the old days — a bunch of Democratic politicians and their media lackeys lynching a black man.

UPDATE: Further thoughts from Prof. Jacobson.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire on drugs. Er, well, on whether Trayvon was actually high at the time.

JIM TREACHER: You won’t see this news on CNN, for at least two reasons:

1. It’s very embarrassing to CNN.

2. You don’t watch CNN.

Good points!