ROBERT HEINLEIN NEEDS YOUR VOTE.

A REPORT ON TODAY’S ANTI-SPYING MARCH IN WASHINGTON: Libertarians And Progressives Team Up Against NSA Surveillance.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Spray-On Clothing Could Deliver a Suit in a Can.

RICK MORAN: Cruz Wows the Crowd at Iowa Dinner.

DEATH PANEL UPDATE: Stopping Overtreatment Sounds Easy, Until It’s Your Heart Attack.

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HISTORY: What Happened To All of Obama’s Technology Czars?

As usual, “screw up, move up” is standard bureaucratic operating procedure.

Let’s start with the “federal chief information officer.” In 2009, Obama named then 34-year-old “whiz kid” Vivek Kundra to the post overseeing $80 billion in government IT spending. At 21, Kundra was convicted of misdemeanor theft. He stole a handful of men’s shirts from a J.C. Penney’s department store and ran from police in a failed attempt to evade arrest. Whitewashing the petty thief’s crimes, Obama instead effused about his technology czar’s “depth of experience in the technology arena.”

Just as he was preparing to take the federal job, an FBI search warrant was issued at Kundra’s workplace. He was serving as the chief technology officer of the District of Columbia. Two of Kundra’s underlings, Yusuf Acar and Sushil Bansal, were charged in an alleged scheme of bribery, kickbacks, ghost employees and forged timesheets. Kundra went on leave for five days and was then reinstated after the feds informed him that he was neither a subject nor a target of the investigation. . . .

A mere 29 months after taking the White House job, Kundra left for a cushy fellowship at Harvard University. In January 2012, he snagged an executive position at Salesforce.com, which touted his “demonstrated track record of driving innovation.”

In 2011, Obama appointed former Microsoft executive and FCC managing director Steven VanRoekel to succeed Kundra. At the time, he promised “to make sure that the pace of innovation in the private sector can be applied to the model that is government.” Mission not accomplished.

Next up: Obama’s “U.S. chief technology officer.” In May 2009, the president appointed Aneesh Chopra “to promote technological innovation to help the country meet its goals such as job creation, reducing health care costs and protecting the homeland. Together with Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, their jobs are to make the government more effective, efficient and transparent.”

Chopra’s biggest accomplishment? A humiliating cameo in December 2009 on “The Daily Show” with liberal comedian Jon Stewart, who mocked the administration’s pie-in-the-sky Open Government Initiative. Chopra resigned three years later, ran unsuccessfully for Virginia lieutenant governor and now works as a “senior fellow” at the far-left Center for American Progress, which is run by former Clinton administration hit man turned Obama helpmate John Podesta.

More comedy at the link.

I STILL PREFER INCANDESCENTS: LED Lighting Creeps Toward Tipping Point. I’ve got a couple of LED bulbs; they’re okay.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Woman Who Donated Her Kidney Ends Up Marrying the Guy Who Got It.

IF YOU READ ONLY ONE 4,000 WORD DISCUSSION OF INCOME INEQUALITY THIS WEEKEND, make it this one, with James Pethokoukis and Scott Winship.

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IF I WERE IN CHARGE OF DRUG POLICY, ANTIBIOTICS WOULD BE MORE CLOSELY REGULATED THAN VICODIN: Report: Feeding antibiotics to livestock is bad for humans, but Congress won’t stop it. Narcotic abuse mostly just hurts the abuser; antibiotic abuse can sicken thousands or millions if it breeds a resistant strain.

WALTER HUDSON: The Twisted Morality of “Death Panels:” Breaking down Slate’s rationalization for letting government pick who lives and who dies. I’m just amused at how quickly after the implementation of ObamaCare the whole “death panel” thing was transformed from a paranoid fantasy of that yokel, Sarah Palin, to an obviously good idea that all thinking people support.

PATRICK RICHARDSON: After years of looking, a decent shave.

SO I BOUGHT A MORTAR AND PESTLE for my kitchen, and I’m surprised how cool it is. Aside from feeling like an apothecary from a Dickens novel, the difference between crushing fennel with the back of a spoon and crushing it in this baby is like the difference between planting seeds with a sharp stick and driving a big honking John Deere. Wow.

SCIENCE: Detecting And Deflecting A Killer Asteroid.

A BUNCH OF FRENCH RECIPES, collected by Mary Chastain.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 170.

TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: ObamaCare: More policy cancellations in 3 states than enrollees in all 50.

DESPITE 2009’S PITCHFORK KABUKI, the Blue Model needs Wall Street to Survive.

The cycle of dependence on Wall Street usually follows a pattern. Public employee union leaders demand generous benefits as the price of their political support; politicians promise things like higher future pay and early retirement. Wary of public backlash, however, these officials don’t advocate cutting services or raising taxes to cover the shiny new pay packages they have established. The discrepancy between benefits promised and funds available becomes unbridgeable. Desperate to keep from falling too far behind, pension funds turn to the risky side of Wall Street, which gets rich off the panic. All too often, the Wall Street solution to blue model imperatives leaves taxpayers and pensioners stranded.

Fingers have been pointed at both sides. A piece in Rolling Stone last month argued that slimy “Gordon Gekko wanna-be[s]” have basically been stealing money in the dead of night from honest, hard-working pensioners. A piece from AEI this week shot back that pension funds are forced to approach Wall Street hat in hand by the self-serving politicians who make unaffordable promises in the first place.

Yes, those responsible for public pensions dug themselves into this hole, but the more interesting story concerns the confluence of interests between blue politicians, union leaders, and Wall Street. It’s unsurprising that few Democrats are willing to acknowledge this; the alliance doesn’t inspire confidence in the blue model’s sustainability or in the political base that supports it.

Nope. And a strain of Tea Party populism in the GOP would attack this coalition, and the corruption it has brought.

UPDATE: Related: Valerie Jarrett: Often Whispered About, But Never Challenged. “Jarrett, an old Chicago friend of both Barack and Michelle Obama, appears to exercise such extraordinary influence she is sometimes quietly referred to as ‘Rasputin’ on Capitol Hill, a reference to the mystical monk who held sway over Russia’s Czar Nicholas as he increasingly lost touch with reality during World War I.”

A TRANSIDEOLOGICAL COALITION WILL BE MARCHING IN WASHINGTON TODAY, and meanwhile there’s new legislation to rein in the NSA and the National Journal thinks it may pass.

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REPORT: China reverting to a police state.

BETHANY STOTTS: As IRS Scandal Heats Up, Media Look The Other Way.