21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My fiancée suffered a debilitating stroke. How long before I can leave her?

HAPPY EASTER TO ALL, and thanks once again to Glenn for letting me onto this big, well-lit stage. And thanks to all the co-guestbloggers for filling this stage with endless action. And now, it’s time once again to shrink back into the murky shadows of the Althouse blog.

EASTER THOUGHTS from Roger Kimball.

ADIEU:   Alas, Glenn  has returned from vacation, so we guestbloggers will be saying adieu. Thanks to all the great InstaP fans who keep us on our toes and welcome us with open arms each time we visit!  You guys are the best.

For those who may be interested in learning more about me and my books, check out my Amazon page or friend me on Facebook.

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGITY-JIG: Yes, I’m back. Thanks to my incomparable set of guestbloggers for making my absence bearable — or, heck, my return disappointing — to many. As always, they do a great job!

AND THEY SAY I WRITE FAST:Anesthetist claims ‘tardy surgeons’ enabled him to write novel. Of course, the question is, does his novel put people to sleep?

ANDREW MALCOLM: How Big Is This Easter Bunny Fellow, Anyway?

DRUDGTAPOSITION ALERT: As fellow Insta-guest-contributor Ann Althouse has noted, Matt Drudge “does commentary. You just have to figure out what he’s trying to say with his juxtapositions — Drudgtapositions.”

Like this one last night, juxtaposing our first president in a painting behind our 44th, and a link to a write-up on his infrastructure-obsessed Friday speech in Miami:

Ouch — that’s just brutal.

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AMERICA AT AN “END STAGE METASTASIS”?:  So says David Stockman, former budget director under Reagan, in this provocative NY Times op-ed.  Stockman asserts:

Instead of moderation, what’s at hand is a Great Deformation, arising from a rogue central bank that has abetted the Wall Street casino, crucified savers on a cross of zero interest rates and fueled a global commodity bubble that erodes Main Street living standards through rising food and energy prices — a form of inflation that the Fed fecklessly disregards in calculating inflation.

These policies have brought America to an end-stage metastasis. The way out would be so radical it can’t happen. It would necessitate a sweeping divorce of the state and the market economy. It would require a renunciation of crony capitalism and its first cousin: Keynesian economics in all its forms. The state would need to get out of the business of imperial hubris, economic uplift and social insurance and shift its focus to managing and financing an effective, affordable, means-tested safety net.

Anyone wanna chip in and split the cost of buying an island somewhere and starting our own country?

ROBERT REDFORD AND “THE BLOODY COMPANY HOLLYWOOD KEEPS” is the subject of Michelle Malkin’s latest syndicated column:

Bleeding-heart liberal Robert Redford is already the subject of early Oscar buzz. His much-hyped new film glamorizing the lives of Weather Underground domestic terrorists, “The Company You Keep,” will be released in the U.S. next week. But peace-loving moviegoers should save their money and take a stand.

Hollywood’s romanticizing of murderous radicals is an affront to decency. Redford and Company’s rose-colored hagiography of bloodstained killers defiles the memory of all those victimized by leftwing militants on American soil.

Tinseltown cheerleaders can’t stop gushing about Redford’s paean to gun-toting progressives, of course. Variety called the flick an “unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism.” The entertainment daily effused: “There is something undeniably compelling, perhaps even romantic, about America’s ’60s radicals and the compromises they did or didn’t make.” One of the film executives promoting the Weather Underground movie slavered: “This is an edge-of-your-seat thriller about real Americans who stood for their beliefs, thinking they were patriots and defending their country’s ideals against their government.”

Shades of Oliver Stone defending another group that attacked the Pentagon, the 9/11 hijackers, in October of 2001. (Incidentally, September 11th, 2001 was the date the New York Times published their own infamous encomium to Bill Ayers, in a case of morbid synchronicity.)

EARLIER: Two Redfords In One, I wrote at Ed Driscoll.com this past week, as Redford lionizes Ayers, and concurrently distances himself from his legendary 1976 role as Bob Woodward.

ARE FUTURE WARS CYBER-WARS?:  Maybe.  Who needs bombs when you can bring a country to its knees by hacking into computers that control  its banking, military and sensitive infrastructure?  Read this WSJ interview with this retired military expert on Chinese cyber strategy.  

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Health and Human Services Secretary Doesn’t Understand What Insurance Is: Kathleen Sebelius thinks insurance isn’t really insurance unless it covers routine expenses. This is exactly backwards. Yes, it is, but it’s not surprising to hear this from an advocate of the Dependency Agenda.

THE EVIL POTENTIAL OF GOOGLE:   The behemoth Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil.”  But what would happen if such a powerful search engine subtly and imperceptibly manipulated the results of searches for information about political candidates, in an attempt to influence public perception?  Psychologist Robert Epstein’s research on this possibility isn’t making Google happy.  And given that Google was the 3d largest donor to the 2012 Obama campaign, I think we’d be well advised to take seriously the temptation to mix internet search engines with politics

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College Grads May Be Stuck In Low-Skill Jobs.

The recession left millions of college-educated Americans working in coffee shops and retail stores. Now, new research suggests their job prospects may not improve much when the economy rebounds.

Underemployment—skilled workers doing jobs that don’t require their level of education—has been one of the hallmarks of the slow recovery. By some measures, nearly half of employed college graduates are in jobs that don’t traditionally require a college degree.

Economists have generally assumed the problem was temporary: As the economy improved, companies would need more highly educated employees. But in a paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a team of Canadian economists argues that the U.S. faces a longer-term problem.

They found that unlike the 1990s, when companies needed hundreds of thousands of skilled workers to develop, build and install high-tech systems—everything from corporate intranets to manufacturing robots—demand for such skills has fallen in recent years, even as young people continued to flock to programs that taught them.

Remember this when cheerleaders say things like “At a time when the American worker’s wages are stagnant, and he is beset from competition from all sides, shouldn’t we be extolling education as one of the few ways one can invest in oneself — and not labeling it a dangerous boondoggle?” If you’re borrowing six figures for something that won’t get you a job that can cover the debt, it’s a dangerous boondoggle.

ARE WE UNDERESTIMATING the risk of human extinction?

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: 35 Atlanta teachers, principals and administrators were indicted on Friday by a grand jury, the New York Times reports. They “‘conspired to either cheat, conceal cheating or retaliate against whistle-blowers in an effort to bolster C.R.C.T. scores for the benefit of financial rewards associated with high test scores,” the indictment said, referring to the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.”

BECAUSE IT’S ALL THEY’VE EVER KNOWN: Why Do The Young Vote For Dependency? The family is communist — from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs — and it takes a while to realize that the rest of the world doesn’t work that way, because only parents are willing to make that sort of sacrifice, and then only for their own kids.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Proposed bill could spell changes for public education. “The bill would give school districts the option to create their own agendas, goals and measurements of success, bucking the current one-size-fits-all approach mandated by the state government, Isaac said. . . . The current education code, which is approximately 1,100 pages long, would be replaced with 50 pages of framework that school districts could tailor to fit their individual needs, Isaac said. For instance, the bill would give school districts the control to allocate financial resources as they see fit and focus on individual programs and areas as needed. The bill would place more power in the hands of parents in several ways. Parents would have the option to send their children to any public school in the district, which could initiate change in underperforming schools. Conversely, top-performing schools would be able to set admission standards and application policies. Isaac said free advisers would be available to help families choose the best school for their student based on individual needs.”

SCIENCE: Bacteria in the Intestines May Help Tip the Bathroom Scale, Studies Show. “The bacterial makeup of the intestines may help determine whether people gain weight or lose it, according to two new studies, one in humans and one in mice. The research also suggests that a popular weight-loss operation, gastric bypass, which shrinks the stomach and rearranges the intestines, seems to work in part by shifting the balance of bacteria in the digestive tract. People who have the surgery generally lose 65 percent to 75 percent of their excess weight, but scientists have not fully understood why. Now, the researchers are saying that bacterial changes may account for 20 percent of the weight loss.”

WATCH GAS PRICES NECESSARILY SKYROCKET: Why, it’s almost as if higher energy prices have always been a stated goal of the Obama administration…

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…and the legendarily “objective” and “neutral” MSM are themselves onboard with the prospect.

Nahh, can’t be.

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BANNING BIKINI BARISTAS, BIG DOGS, AND ENERGY DRINKS! (Reason’s Nanny of the Month for March.)

GOOGLE CELEBRATES EASTER IN THEIR OWN SPECIAL WAY: “While two billion Christians around the world celebrate Easter Sunday on this 31st day of March, Google is using its famous ‘Doodle’ search logo art to mark the birth of left-wing labor leader Cesar Chavez,” Twitchy.com notes, adding that “Google’s Easter insult sparks Twitter backlash, mockery,” as well it should.

The timing is oddly appropriate; as Dennis Prager has written, “You cannot understand the Left if you do not understand that leftism is a religion,” and one with its own sources of mythology. Back in 2006 at Tech Central Station, Lee Harris described French Marxist Georges Sorel (1847-1922), and the concept of the Sorelian Myth:

Sorel, for whom religion was important, drew a comparison between the Christian and the socialist revolutionary. The Christian’s life is transformed because he accepts the myth that Christ will one day return and usher in the end of time; the revolutionary socialist’s life is transformed because he accepts the myth that one day socialism will triumph, and justice for all will prevail. What mattered for Sorel, in both cases, is not the scientific truth or falsity of the myth believed in, but what believing in the myth does to the lives of those who have accepted it, and who refuse to be daunted by the repeated failure of their apocalyptic expectations. How many times have Christians in the last two thousand years been convinced that the Second Coming was at hand, only to be bitterly disappointed — yet none of these disappointments was ever enough to keep them from holding on to their great myth. So, too, Sorel argued, the myth of socialism will continue to have power, despite the various failures of socialist experiments, so long as there are revolutionaries who are unwilling to relinquish their great myth. That is why he rejected scientific socialism — if it was merely science, it lacked the power of a religion to change individual’s lives. Thus for Sorel there was “an…analogy between religion and the revolutionary Socialism which aims at the apprenticeship, preparation, and even the reconstruction of the individual — a gigantic task.”

I wonder if anyone at Google has read Miriam Pawel’s The Union of Their Dreams, or read Caitlin Flanagan’s 4500-word review of it in the Atlantic in 2011: “The Madness of Cesar Chavez: A new biography of the icon shows that saints should be judged guilty until proved innocent.” Read the whole thing.

(Cross-posted at Ed Driscoll.com, if you’d like to comment on Google’s latest in-your-face politically correct homepage.)

TEXAS D.A., WIFE SLAIN, WFAA-TV, the Dallas-area ABC affiliate reports:

Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia were found shot dead inside their Forney home on Saturday night, a chilling crime that put law enforcement agencies across Texas on high alert and shook prosecutors, defense attorneys and others in legal circles around North Texas.

Late Saturday night, sources said a .223-caliber assault rifle, similar to an AR15, was used in the murders, with approximately 14 rounds being fired.

* * * * * *

Investigators now believe the double murder of the D.A. and his wife is likely related to the Mark Hasse murder investigation.

Almost two months ago, Hasse, McLelland’s top deputy, was gunned down in broad daylight just a few steps from the county courthouse. He was murdered on January 31 as he walked to the courthouse from a parking lot.

A task force of multiple local, state and federal agencies have investigated dozens of leads, but have so far been unable to develop any suspects in the Hasse murder.

McLelland vowed to hunt down Hasse’s killer, and was confident that person would be brought to justice.

“He knows and I know there will be a reckoning,” the D.A. said at Hasse’s memorial service. “Too many people are focusing on that. That’s not going to be a problem.”

Kaufman County Sheriff’s Lt. Justin Lewis said he couldn’t discuss the investigation in detail, including how the couple died and whether authorities believe their deaths are linked to Hasse’s fatal shooting on January 31.

The front door of the McLellands’ 3,000 square foot residence was found kicked in, sources added. Kaufman County deputies, the FBI, Texas Rangers, the Texas Department of Public Safety and Forney police are all involved in the investigation.

“Investigators are expected to hold a news conference Sunday morning.  More information is expected to be released at that time,” NBC News.com adds.