WEDGIE! In the New York Post, Michael Walsh writes:

Let’s stipulate that the CIA’s discovery a fortnight ago of yet another underwear-bomber plot, this one originating with al Qaeda in Yemen and aimed at an American airliner, was a splendid feat of intel tradecraft.

Stipulate, too, that it gets us one step closer to nailing Ibrihim al-Asiri, the terrorist behind the earlier Christmas Day underwear-bomber plot in Detroit in 2009, as well as the bombs hidden inside laser printers stashed aboard cargo planes in 2010.

And let’s agree that foiling the operation by means of a double agent inside al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s operational structure potentially saved many lives.

But here’s a rude question: Why do we even know about this?

Because we need as many distractions as possible if undecided voters are going to forget the recession almost as much as Obama has.

More from Max Boot at Commentary.

UPDATE: “Mark Levin: We were fed propaganda, there was no CIA double agent!”

GERMANY’S FAILING ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECTS:

The energy-saving light bulb ends up as hazardous waste, too much insulation promotes mold and household drains are emitting a putrid odor because everyone is saving water. Many of Germany’s efforts to protect the environment are a chronic failure, but that’s unlikely to change.

It’s not easy living in the wake of the Eco-Anchluss.

WIRED MAGAZINE: U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam.

Emperor Hirohito and Douglas MacArthur could not be reached for comment.

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IS IN DOUBLE DIGITS: Ed Morrissey in the Fiscal Times. 

UPDATE: Walter Russell Mead: “The War on the Young: Young Adult Joblessness at 13.6%.”

YOU NEVER WANT TO FORGET A CRISIS YOU LET GO TO WASTE: Obama: “Sometimes I Forget” The Magnitude Of The Recession.

Video at link. And soon to be appearing in a Romney ad near you.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI IN CITY JOURNAL: WHAT NEW YORK OWES JAMES Q. WILSON:

…we met with George Kelling, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who, with James Q. Wilson, had written an article called “Broken Windows” in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. I had worked closely with Wilson in 1981, when he was cochair of the Task Force on Violent Crime and I was the associate attorney general. In New York, during the 1980s and 1990s, local government seemed to have conceded defeat. The city would actually put up stickers of plants and venetian blinds in the windows of abandoned buildings to disguise the decay. But Wilson had a revelation about crime: focus on the small crimes, such as littering, and keep neighborhoods clean and free of signs of disorder, such as broken windows in a building. The big idea was this: if the neighborhood looks as if someone is watching and maintaining order, it is far more likely that order will prevail. A neighborhood that is clean and well-ordered sends a signal to criminals and citizens alike. Instead of putting up stickers to hide the decay, Wilson’s theory says that you should remove the decay—and that this will save the neighborhood.

Wilson’s idea was a revelation and a reversal of the conventional wisdom up to that point. The dominant liberal theories told us that if we provided more social services to the poor, perhaps crime would get better. But Wilson suggested that instead we turn our attention to providing a better and cleaner place to live, raising the expectations of the community by improving the quality of life—and that then crime would decline.

Read the whole thing, which helps to explain why New York in the Giuliani era wasn’t a repeat of the Taxi Driver/Death Wish/Taking of Pelham One Two Three-era 1970s — surprisingly, much to the chagrin of some of its more…enlightened residents.

Well, yes, but at least they HAVE a budget.  I remember when we had budgets!

Of course, I think there are already bans on groping women while riding a bike.  One doesn’t know whether to be shocked, or to admire the rogue bicyclist for his dexterity.

As a frequent pedestrian, I should think the risk of getting killed if hit should be enough deterrent.  If it isn’t, then big-nanny law enforcement won’t do it.  You can see what’s next on this, right?  Walking helmets.  And bans on eating, reading, window shopping listening to music or talking on the phone while walking. Minding our own safety is too much for the likes of us.  We must let nanny mind for us.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, LIMITED GOVERNMENT, AND POLITICAL LIBERTY: Paul Rahe at Ricochet:

I believe that, when Barack Obama stated in 2008 that he wanted to “fundamentally change” the United States and when he called his administration The New Foundation, he meant precisely what he said. He meant to reverse what Locke and the American Founders had achieved. He intended to establish in this country a political regime unlimited in its scope and power. That is the meaning of the Hosanna-Tabor Case pursued by Attorney General Erich Holder, and it is the meaning of the individual mandate. It has rightly been said that Obamacare changes the relationship between the citizen and the government radically. The HHS Mandate has made that fact manifest, and I have made it clear in earlier posts, linked below, that I hope that its issuance serves as a warning to the American Catholic Church.

I say this because that Church has contributed mightily to placing in the hands of Barack Obama the power he is now wielding against the Catholic Church in the United States. For decades now the American Church has been allied with the Left in domestic affairs – pressing with vigor for ever-more extensive and ever-more expensive social programs. For decades the American Church has been pushing for one form or another of universal healthcare, demanding as its first priority that the federal government enact a health care policy that “ensures access to quality, affordable, life giving health care for all.” In the process, the American bishops asserted on 27 January 2010 that “health care is a basic human right” and claimed that “there are nearly 50 million Americans who do not have access to health care.”

Leave aside the fact that the numbers the bishops provided on this occasion were grotesquely inflated. Their propensity to descend into demagogy is by no means the worst of it. The real problem lies with their theoretical claim concerning the extent of “basic human rights” conceived of as legitimate claims on the political community and with the larger implications of such claims.

I would submit that one cannot make good on such claims without concentrating tyrannical power in the hands of the government. I would submit that the social teaching of the Catholic Church, as it has been applied in the United States by the American Catholic Bishops, is inconsistent with the principles of limited government and that in rejecting the principles of limited government the American Catholic Church has rejected the foundations of religious liberty. The bishops have been hoist with their own petard. They contributed mightily to fashioning the weapon now being wielded against them.

Read the whole thing.

CAN YOU SAY WET BLANKET ON EMPLOYMENT? 1 in 3 OCCUPATIONS NOW REQUIRE A LICENSE:  Surprising occupations that need licenses include funeral attendants, makeup artists, auctioneers, interior designers,  travel agents, shampooers, and florists.  No wonder unemployment is so high!

I mentioned this new Institute for Justice report earlier this week when it came out, but didn’t have a link to the full text.  So here it is.  Also, here’s the excellent video below:

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DEPARTMENT OF UNFORTUNATE HEADLINES: “With Dicks in, all 6 WA congressional Democrats favor repeal of gay-marriage ban:”

Yes, that was the original headline, reporting that Norm Dicks had now joined his liberal Democratic congressmates in supporting gay marriage.

Screen capture of original Seattle Times headline here.

RELATED: A close runner-up in this contest.

COAL CONSPICUOUSLY MISSING: As Sean Hackbarth of FreeEnterprise.com tweets, “On Tues. WV expressed their anger at Obama admin’s war on coal. This infographic won’t help.”

RELATED: New Stanford Poll Finds Waning Concern About Man-Made Global Warming.

FAUXCAHONTAS WARREN’S TRAIL OF TEARS LED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: “This makes two universities that touted her as a Cherokee, despite the fact that her ancestors were on the round-up side of the Trail of Tears. Not the Cherokee People side.”

OBAMA LOSES TO INMATE:  Apparently President Obama is sufficiently unpopular in West Virginia that federal inmate Keith Judd beat him in 10 counties in the Democratic primary on Tuesday.  In fact, Judd did so well that the final tally in WVA was Obama: 59%; Judd: 41%.  According to the AP report, “Attracting at least 15 percent of the vote would normally qualify a candidate for at least one delegate to the Democratic National Convention, but Judd didn’t designate a delegation chair or complete other steps required of a presidential contender.”

And apparently West Virginia is a closed primary. So the anti-Obama sentiment is emanating from Democrats, not crossover Republicans.

Why isn’t this getting more play? This is an important  sign of the depth of opposition to President Obama’s policies.

WASHINGTON POST HIT PIECE ON ROMNEY… EMBELLISHED? “One of the ‘witnesses’ used in the Washington Post hit piece seems to have thrown a wrench in the narrative.”

Meanwhile, at Commentary, Alana Goodman looks at the two standards of MSM conduct when it comes to media bias when covering politicians’ Wonder Years. Shocking that the Post and members of the JournoList would cover a GOP candidate differently from their preferred choice, I know.

Plus this:

Since our media is terrible and juvenile and therefore, to a great extent, so is our politics, I guess we have to play ball and note the instances of bullying, some petty and some a bit less so, in O’s book. Luckily he grew up, matured, and learned a valuable lesson: When you want to push someone around, get one of your political cronies to do it for you so that you can stay “above the fray” and “post-partisan.” Take a memo, Mitt.

Much more from John Nolte at Big Journalism: “Media Downplays Obama’s Past, Tries to Define Romney with Teen Prank.”

STOP BEING STUPID: There is no “kindler, gentler” Taliban.

AN UNLIKELY STREETFIGHTER: Famous hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, who died yesterday, spent his youth fighting fascists in Britain and for Israel’s independence.

In 1947, the fascists again began menacing London, this time under the tutelage of Jeffrey Hamm, head of an organization of thugs calling themselves the “Association of British Ex-Servicemen.” For Sassoon, this was not a fate to be accepted lying down.

As a response to Hamm’s provocations, a gathering of young Jews known as the 43 Group—named for the number of people in the room at their founding—announced that the fight back had begun. Among them was the slender, if wiry, Sassoon. As Hamm’s followers gathered on street corners bellowing that “not enough Jews were burned at Belsen,” Sassoon and his comrades, armed with knives, coshes, and knuckledusters, set about breaking up fascist meetings. In another interview, Sassoon remembered turning up for work one morning with a black eye. “I just tripped on a hairpin,” he explained to the worried customer who had just settled into a barber’s chair for a haircut.

THE NEW HOLOCAUST DENIERS: Bob  Zubrin writes:

Recently, in conjunction with publication of my new book, Merchants of Despair, which exposes the crimes of the global Malthusian movement, I was interviewed on the radio by a liberal talk show host. When I brought up the issue of race- or caste-targeted forced sterilization programs instituted in Peru, India, and many other Third World countries with USAID and World Bank funds, the host chose to deal with the matter by pooh-poohing the existence of these atrocities.

I was shocked. These programs are not secret, and their horrors have received some, if less-than-deserved, coverage in the mainstream media. Indeed, the members of the Fujimori government were brought to trial and convicted of genocide for their enforcement of such policies. Yet here was this liberal gentleman, supposedly an anti-racist and feminist, a self-proclaimed defender of the poor and the helpless, shrugging off massive violations of human rights and extraordinary crimes directed against women, infants, and people of color. In amazement I blurted out, “This is a holocaust, and you should not be denying it!”

Then it hit me. I was dealing with a holocaust denier.

Indeed, the entire environmentalist movement consists of holocaust deniers, who continue to refuse to look at or admit the existence of the carnage they have created and continue to perpetuate worldwide.

So let’s look at the record.

Read the whole thing.

TOTAL CUPCAKE CAPITULATION: Gov. Deval Patrick, Massachusetts Department of Public Health to lift school bake sale ban.

Out in California though, the Nanny State rolls on: “L.A. Readies Plastic Bag Ban,” even as “Reusable Bags Blamed for Norovirus Outbreak.”

As my former colleague Rich Miniter wrote back in 2008 at PJM, “In the 1950s, the most puritanical place in America was somewhere in Kansas. Today it is Los Angeles.”

No word yet if L.A.’s plastic bag ban will apply to this key local industry, though.

DOJ SUING SHERIFF JOE:  Seems Eric Holder’s idea of “justice” took another step forward today, with a civil rights lawsuit filed against outspoken Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  Talking Points Memo Ryan Reilly reports:

DOJ’s suit, filed in the District of Arizona, accuses jail officials of referring to Latinos as “wetbacks,” “Mexican bitches,” and “stupid Mexicans.” The suit says Arpaio “voiced his biased opinion of Latinos and Latino culture” in a book he coauthored in 2008.”

Arpaio singles out Mexicans and Latinos as different from all other immigrant groups in America,” the complaint says. “For example, Arpaio states that Latinos maintain ‘language [,] customs [and] beliefs separate from the mainstream,’ and are trying to “reconquest” American soil through migration to the United States.”

So let me get this straight. It’s a violation of federal civil rights law now to use derogatory slang or express your opinion about things?  Hmmmm….. First Amendment anyone?  Oh, that’s right: progressives think “hate speech” is outside the ambit of the First Amendment.  The present Administration’s culture of intimidation continues…..

SHOULD TIME HAVE FEATURED A MOTHER BREASTFEEDING HER THREE-YEAR OLD SON ON ITS COVER? As with other recent questionable cover efforts from both Time and Newsweek, when you’re in the legacy media and selling horse and buggy-speed news in the world of blogs and Twitter, you have to do what you have to do in order to have those same blogs and Twitter users talking about you — even if what you intend as shock ends up as ridicule instead.

Although it’s yet another reminder that Henry Luce and the middlebrow era both left the Time/Life building long ago.

OBAMA HATES GUNS (AGAIN):  This is getting old, but here we go again.  Fox news reports that President Obama is threatening to veto the DOJ appropriations bill that would halt a Obama-initiated ruler requiring gun dealers in the four U.S.-Mexico border states that border Mexico to report sales of multiple semi-automatic rifles to the ATF.  According to the Fox report:

Several House Republicans have charged that the Obama administration had an anti-gun agenda when it carried out Fast and Furious, and are particularly wary of Attorney General Eric Holder, who once expressed the need to “brainwash” the American people into disliking firearm ownership.

They cite emails CBS News acquired in December, in which lead Fast and Furious Agent Bill Newell and ATF Field Operations Assistant Director Mark Chait discussed how to use the scandal’s aftermath to promote the long-gun reporting requirement for multiple sales.

Amazing how the Obama administration and progressives in Congress can take an embarrassing scandal (Fast & Furious) and try to use it to further their own anti-gun agenda, Second Amendment be damned.  (That pesky Constitution keeps getting in the way– well, let’s hope, anyway.)

NYT EDITOR REGRETS DONATING TO OBAMA REELECTION CAMPAIGN.

PETS AS BOMBS:  According to this ABC Report, Al Qaeda bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri’s life mission seems to be discovering ways to hide a bomb from existing security measures, including not merely underwear bombs, but bombs in printer cartridges, hard drives, cameras, human bodies and yes, fluffy sweet pets.  “While al-Asiri and al Qaeda’s latest plot was foiled by a double agent working for U.S. and allied intelligence agencies, authorities tell ABC News there are several other plots aimed at US airlines that are at the least in the planning stages if not further along.”