NO SENATE RUN AGAINST LINDSEY GRAHAM for Bruce Carroll of the Gay Patriot blog.

CYPRUS: Gold Price Jumps — Unexpectedly! — as Cyprus Tries to Halt Capital Flight.

FLASHBACK: When Democrats Swore They Would Never Back Gay Marriage.

THE MAN WORKS HARD: Do you know how hard it is to bankrupt America?

NEVER SELL ON LOW: Fan sells Jim Carrey autographed picture on eBay to fund firearm for safety.  They should have waited ’til the price went up again!

AMAZON, SMALL BUSINESS, and disaster recovery.

SHE’S TRYING TO KEEP UP HER HOPES OF A PRESIDENTIAL RUN: Janet Napolitano: Immigrants will change Arizona from red to blue.  But this might hurt her with the vast techie vote: Homeland Security’s Napolitano: Email creates legal problems, as well as being a time suck.

SO MUST WE ALL RESIST: Royal charter: The press must resist this assault on liberty.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on bestsellers in Video Games.

I ALWAYS SAID POPULATION SHRINKAGE WOULD BE THE REAL PROBLEM: Going solo: the shrinking face of the family.

OVEREXPOSED: Hollywood has kissed goodbye to the steamy sex scene.

SEQUESTRATION HARDBALL:   It has only just begun.  Andrew Stiles at NRO reports on the FAA’s theatrics that smack of intentional, but avoidable, travel disruption. 

Customs and Border Patrol has begun the same tactic.

National parks may be next.

FASTER, PLEASE: Genetic screening for cancer ‘within five years’.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on bestselling cast-iron cookware.

“IDAHO TEACHER INVESTIGATED FOR SAYING ‘VAGINA’ DURING BIOLOGY LESSON.”

BREAKING BAD: “An ex-priest in Connecticut is expected to plead guilty in a crystal meth case,” CBS New York reports. “He allegedly made more than $300,000 in drugs sales out of his apartment in Waterbury last year.”

THIS ISN’T GOING TO END WELL: L.A. restaurant Red Medicine uses Twitter to shame no-shows.

Yes, it’s wrong to make a reservation and then blow it off without calling to cancel. It’s far worse for a business to publicly insult its customers. And note this quote from the restaurant’s managing partner:

The assholes who decide to no-show, or cancel 20 minutes before their reservation (because one of their friends made a reservation somewhere else) ruin restaurants (as a whole) for the people who make a reservation and do their best to honor it. Either restaurants are forced to overbook and make the guests (that actually showed up) wait, or they do what we do, turn away guests for some prime-time slots because they’re booked, and then have empty tables.

Are they only assholes when don’t show up, or is he implying that he considers all of his potential customers to be assholes? I know what I’d think after reading the above. And does he still consider them to be assholes if there are extenuating circumstances?

Such as a relative dying:

I’m not on Twitter and therefore didn’t see the post so it has no effect on me but yes, I am that [Name Withheld]. I wanted to take my fiancée and friends out to Red Medicine because I had been before with a friend and loved it. I set a reservation that day at 6:00 P.M. for a 7:30 P.M. reservation (so clearly they weren’t busy). Unfortunately, about 20 minutes after making the reservation, I got a call from my mom saying my uncle had passed away and it was the last thing on my mind to call and cancel our reservation.

They did have my cell phone # and never called to see where we were. If they had called my cell I would have told them my situation which I hope they would have understood.

Not sure why they would try and publicly embarrass me in this difficult time for me and my family. I would not like to be published by name but don’t mind you letting them know I won’t be back at their establishment anytime soon.

RELATED: Earlier in the month on my blog, I collated quotes from “You got served! The hostage drama of dining out in New York City,” from Kyle Smith of the New York Post, and the embittered, intensely angry responses his article generated from Big Apple waiters.

(Cross-posted at Ed Driscoll.com, where you’re welcome to comment on your own dining horror stories.)

ASHLEY JUDD NOT RUNNING FOR SENATE: And so, as she flies the blue lady of the skies into the sunset, we say aloha, Five O’Clock Ashley and return to our duties. Let me me remind you that the Weblog is open 24 hours a day for your dancing and dining pleasure.

HE WHO CONTROLS THE PAST CONTROLS THE FUTURE. He who controls the present controls the past.

HOW THE TAXMAN CLEARED THE DANCE FLOOR: “Thanks to a 1944 ‘cabaret tax,’ millions of Americans said goodbye to Swing Music. A lot fewer said hello to bebop,” Eric Felten writes in the Wall Street Journal.

And thanks to United States V. Paramount Pictures, Inc, a 1948 Supreme Court ruling, Hollywood studios were forced to divest themselves of ownership of their own movie theaters, ultimately leading to the breakup of the studio system, and Hollywood’s golden era.

In his perceptive 2011 review of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Bruce Bawer wrote that Allen is a New York leftist surprisingly at odds with the contemporary society his ideology helped shape:

While Allen likes to think of himself as a standard-issue Manhattan liberal, the sensibility of his films (whether he realizes it or not) is largely conservative.  Over and over he makes it clear that he despises pretty much everything that came out of the 1960s, and one after another of his films is an exercise in cultural nostalgia for the pre-Sixties world.   His pictures’ musical scores testify to his obsession with the Great American Songbook.  (Recall, for example, the sequence in Hannah and Her Sisters in which Dianne Wiest takes him to see a punk rock band that he hates, joking that “after they sing, they’re gonna take hostages” – after which, in order to give her a taste of “something nice,” he takes her to the Carlyle to hear Bobby Short perform Cole Porter.)  Just as The Purple Rose of Cairo and Radio Days are love letters to the 1930s and 40s – and both very charming ones, at that – Midnight in Paris is a love letter to the 1920s.

But then, the Woodman isn’t the only “Progressive” who’s paradoxically feeling nostalgic for a bygone era.

MIAMI MAYOR ON BASEBALL STADIUM: “The Residents Of Miami Were Raped.”

Huh; I guess Mitch McConnell needn’t worry about reelection in Kentucky, now that Ashley Judd has been elected as a Florida mayor.

A BLOOMIN’ IDIOT:  There he goes again.  On the 10th anniversary of the NYC’s restaurant/bar smoking ban, Mayor/Supreme Nanny Michael Bloomberg nonchalantly tells the press “We interfere with free enterprise all the time.”    The “we” to which he refers is, of course, the royal “we,” which allows him to dictate to his constituents what they can eat, drink and otherwise consume whenever he believes they lack the self control and intelligence to decide for themselves.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “I have never imagined being with a bald man for the rest of my life.”

NOTHING BUT CRONIES ALL THE WAY DOWN: As Matt Drudge notes in his paraphrase of this Bloomberg article, “Warren Buffett to Pay $0 to Be Among Goldman Sach’s Top Shareholders…”

Goldman Sachs — why does that name ring a bell?

“CONGRESS DECIDED… TO EXPRESS MORAL DISAPPROVAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY.” Justice Kagan quotes from the legislative history of DOMA at today’s oral argument in United States v. Windsor. And Paul Clement reels out a fine response.