I DON’T BLAME THEM: Hong Kongers resist pressure to identify with ‘motherland.’

SOBBINGLY THANKFUL WOMAN an Obama plant? Say it ain’t so!

HISTORY speeds up.

PROMISE, BROKEN: Obamacare: Seven New Taxes on Citizens Earning Less than $250,000.

RANDY BARNETT: Roberts decision didn’t open floodgates for ‘compulsion through taxation.’ “Memo to Mitt Romney: Obamacare is a tax because the Supreme Court rewrote the law to make it one. The Supreme Court did not uphold Obamacare’s individual insurance mandate as a tax. This is a difficult legal distinction to explain, but one that matters nonetheless.”

FALSE CHARITY: John Stossel Panhandles To Prove ‘You Really Shouldn’t Give To These Street People.’

CATCHING YOU UP ON the Higgs Boson.

SMOKY MOUNTAINS: Park Service has ‘all hands on deck’ situation to rescue stranded visitors after storm. “Multiple trees are down in the park, cars have been crushed and authorities believe people are trapped, but they do not know how many or the extent of injuries, said Don Stallions, chief of the Townsend Volunteer Fire Department.”

UPDATE: More here.

Plus, a lesson of my own. I was driving back from a day-trip to Atlanta this evening, and I had ignored my usual practice of refilling my gas tank when it got half-empty. I hit Chattanooga and the power was out when I stopped for gas. It was out at the next several exits and I wondered whether I’d find a working gas station before I ran out. I did, but I was down to 40 miles of range when I did. And it’s a good thing I stopped there because the next several exits were blacked out. A largely painless lesson in the value of sticking to good habits.

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BILL KRISTOL: Dukakis, Kerry, . . . Romney? “Adopting a prevent defense when it’s only the second quarter and you’re not even ahead is dubious enough as a strategy. But his campaign’s monomaniacal belief that it’s about the economy and only the economy, and that they need to keep telling us stupid voters that it’s only about the economy, has gone from being an annoying tick to a dangerous self-delusion.” Focusing on the economy is important. But a single-note strategy is predictable, and has a single point of failure: Obama just has to make people feel good about the economy for a few months. And with the media’s help, if that’s all he has to do, he may be able to do it. Try striking from an unexpected direction sometime.

UPDATE: Mark Levin goes after David ‘the red’ Axelrod, tells Romney it’s time he pounded back.

HEALTH ADVICE: Kill Your Desk Chair And Start Standing.

Ann Althouse favors this model, the Jesper 7000 Basic Sit/Stand Desk.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: New jobs report looms over Obama campaign bus trip. I’m seeing a lot of stories like this in the press all of a sudden — I’m almost wondering if it’s a setup for reports that the numbers were, unexpectedly, not as bad as feared. . . .

A NATION IN DECLINE? I DON’T THINK SO! The USA Is Number One (in Cheese Production)!

Plus: “According to the International Energy Agency, the United States’ economic slowdown and natural gas boom have combined to make it the world’s largest reducer of carbon emissions since 2006, cutting 7.7 percent. Who needs the Kyoto Protocol when we’ve got fracking?” Amen, brother.

PRESIDENT THINSKIN: President Obama Advised Patrons to Turn Off Fox News in Ohio Pub.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: ‘Great Day For The First Amendment’: Walker Wins Appeal Vs. Kimberlin Peace Order.

I’m wondering when Kimberlin — like other abusers of the litigation process before him — might come under an injunction forbidding him from filing legal papers without prior court approval. This happened to famous pro-se litigant Anthony R. Martin-Trigona, and his behavior, I believe, wasn’t as troubling as Kimberlin’s.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What Really Happens If You Get Bitten By A Radioactive Spider?

CHANGE: Apple Drops Virus Immunity Claim for Macs.

TOM BLUMER: Unforced Errors Are Sinking Obama. “This time, the president’s flubs and his campaign’s crassness matter.”

A TEACHER’S STUNNING whiteboard art.

A US teacher created these astonishing artworks on a classroom whiteboard – during his 25-minute lunch break.

Gregory Euclide started the project to show his pupils, in the Minnesota River Valley, what could be achieved in a short period of time.

He used Japanese Sumi ink, whiteboard erasers, paper towels, spray bottles, brushes and other objects he found lying around the classroom.

He said: “In our culture, there is a strong emphasis on reproduction and the original seems less important.

“My students were shocked when I would erase the original, because they saw it firsthand, and they were disturbed that it was destroyed.

“People who do not see the original have no problem only looking at it on a screen or as a print, but once you see the original it is hard to let it go or believe that it could be destroyed.”

Mr Euclide said his unusual habit of drawing on whiteboards started as a way to release stress.

Pretty cool stuff.

UPDATE: More pictures, link courtesy of reader Thomas Hoyt.

TAR. FEATHERS: Innocent Woman Spends 53 Days In Jail. “At any time during those 53 days, the various entities in Atlanta’s and Fulton County’s justice systems could have saved her from the cracks she had fallen through. . . . Even with things that ‘didn’t add up,’ police and prosecutors moved forward with a case against Culpepper. The case continued even though Boyd told police and the Fulton District Attorney’s Office several times Culpepper was not the woman who attacked him.”

District Attorney Paul Howard should be firing the — unnamed in this story, unfortunately — people who dropped the ball. Have you noticed how when there’s official wrongdoing the wrongdoers are often unnamed in the press coverage? And someone should be talking to officer Jaidon Codrington, who arrested the wrong person to begin with.

UPDATE: Reader Thad McArthur writes: “Can anybody name the State Department official who issued Mohammed Atta’s visa?”

CAR ELECTRONICS: Study Shows Electronic Driver Aids Mostly Help, Occasionally Hurt.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR US LATELY: Farhad Manjoo: The iPhone Is Boring. It’s Time For Apple To Show Us Something New.

WELL, THERE WOULD BE A CERTAIN LOSS OF FUNDING-PRODUCING DRAMA: Should people stop calling Higgs boson the ‘God particle’?

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HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ABA’s Class of 2011 Employment Outcomes Data Show How Rough It Is Out There. The answer: Pretty damn rough.

I sent a copy of my The Higher Education Bubble to all the law deans. It may not be telling them anything they don’t already know, at this point. But that said, you may want to send a copy to the members of your state university, or alma mater’s, Board of Trustees.