THIS SHOULD BE EASY TO MAKE: The Conservative Case Against Crony Capitalism.

JOEL KOTKIN & MIKE SHIRES: The Best Small And Midsize Cities For Jobs 2014.

NOT LOOKING SO CRAZY NOW, IS IT? Panetta and Morell endorse the select committee investigation of Benghazi.

THEY LAUGHED AT FREEDOM FRIES, BUT CAN THEY LAUGH AT THIS? Americans topple French as biggest wine drinkers.

AT AMAZON, deals galore at the Memorial Day Sale.

Also, graduation deals on books, music, electronics, and more!

DISASTER PREP UPDATE: Experts predict a death toll in thousands if 7.5 magnitude quake strikes LA.

WAIT, I THOUGHT THE TEA PARTY WAS DEAD: Tea Party-Backed Ben Sasse Wins Nebraska Primary For US Senate.

Related: Tea Party’s Alex Mooney Wins West Virginia GOP House Primary.

MICHAEL BARONE ON THE LEFT’S NEWSROOM-DIVERSITY PROBLEM:

Actually, the national percentage of “non-white and/or Hispanic” is below 30 percent, not “nearly 40 percent,” but Arana’s basic thesis is correct. But his list of categories is impoverished. “Whites” are assumed to be a single, uniformly “privileged” group, but of course this is not the case. My guess, based on decades of newsroom exposure, is that these liberal media outlets, and media outlets generally, tend to have disproportionately high percentages of Jews and of men and women from elite colleges and universities. I suspect that if you took a census of where their personnel went to high school, you would find disproportionately high numbers from elite private schools and from certain elite public high schools (Stuyvesant in New York, New Trier in the Chicago suburbs, etc.). I would bet considerable amounts of money that you won’t find many, if any, people who grew up in West Virginia or eastern Kentucky, in low-income rural counties in the South or farm counties in the Midwest.

Arana stumbles but gets close to a legitimate point: Journalists should make an effort to understand the nation and the world, to learn to look at life from the perspectives of others with different experiences. Hiring editors (to the extent there are some today) might be wise to look for new personnel in unlikely places, people not only from the South Bronx but also from West Virginia.

But to be fair, looking down on other white people from less-elite backgrounds is one of the ways these folks make up for their shrinking salaries and influence.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Kindle Daily Deal.

Also, 100 Albums on MP3 for $5.

VIDEO: How a Small Plane Crash Looks When Passengers Are About to Survive Rather Than About to Die. If I were looking to buy a light plane, I’d look very seriously at a Cirrus.

LAWYERS RIP MASSACHUSSETS FOR “WIRETAP” ARREST FOR RECORDING POLICE. But here’s my favorite bit:

But Fall River Police Sgt. James Machado of the Massachusetts Police Association said cops want the same protection the two-party consent law offers private citizens, noting they aren’t allowed to electronically record prisoners in their holding cells.

“We just simply want to be treated and looked at in the same way as individual citizens,” Machado said. “The problem is sometimes we’re not sure if they are a snapshot of what went on or the entire picture.”

See, the thing is that police officers on duty aren’t just “individual citizens.” They are shielded by qualified immunity, and by bureaucratic power, in ways private citizens aren’t, and unlike private citizens they’re exerting the coercive power of the state. And they’re drawing a taxpayer-funded paycheck to do it. To suggest that they should have the same privacy rights as ordinary citizens is so ridiculous that only a police-union official could do it with a straight face.

Meanwhile, the story of her arrest suggests that my due process right to record the police should apply.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Orgasm Can Dull Pain.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Woman joins mile-high club with stranger as parents sit in cabin.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Think Swinging Will Save Your Marriage? Think Again.

THIS SEEMS CORRECT TO ME: No liability for linking to — and praising — allegedly defamatory article.

I wonder if I should update my Libel In The Blogosphere piece?

HISTORY: Found after 500 years, the wreck of Christopher Columbus’s flagship the Santa Maria.

IF YOU’RE FACING JAIL TIME, YOU’RE NOT REALLY A “MINOR” OFFENDER, EVEN IF YOU’RE A MINOR. Juvenile injustice: truants face courts, jailing without legal counsel to aid them. The juvenile justice system, nationally, is pretty much a disaster. I was on Tennessee’s Juvenile Justice Reform Commission back in the 1990s, but I think our biggest accomplishment was not making things worse. Which is nothing to sneeze at. . . .

A RESTAURANT DISCOUNT FOR well-behaved kids?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Last Acceptable Prejudice? Faculty Online Discussion Raises Concern About Bias Against Appalachians And Poor Whites. “Such comments are common at various campuses, and that faculty members who would carefully consider whether their comments might offend members of many groups do not feel the same need to be sensitive to those from poor, largely white, rural communities in Appalachia. People from Appalachia wrote of being asked at colleges and universities such things as when they started to wear shoes. . . . Terms like “hillbilly” or “redneck” demean, she said, yet they are used all the time in most parts of society, including academe. Kent places much of the blame on Hollywood, which makes films and television shows that play off the stereotypes. But she asks why professors — who know to question some Hollywood stereotypes — don’t do so here.”

Because political correctness is all about letting one group of white people feel superior to another group of white people. And these are that other group of white people.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 30 Ways to Survive Absolutely Any Disaster. I question, however, whether natural disasters are really becoming “more frequent, more intense, and less predictable.”

FROM JOAN HEMINWAY: Investor and Market Protection in the Crowdfunding Era: Disclosing to and for the “Crowd.”

ANOTHER SMALL BUSINESS SUCCESS STORY thanks to help from a big business. All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

PENELOPE TRUNK: What Does It Really Mean To Work Full-Time?

In that little sentence, Sandberg does something very big. Sandberg declares that you can have a full-time job and be a full-time mother.

This is convenient. Because now Sandberg is a full-time mom who spends some days away from the kids signing autographs. And running Facebook. And Beyonce is a full-time mom who spends some days away from her daughter on billion-dollar concert tours. So basically anyone who gave birth is a full-time mom regardless of how much of their time is spent on kids. Now we can all feel good about ourselves regardless of our choices.

But does this help anyone?

No. It’s a way to deny that we make big choices in our lives. Of course you cannot choose to be a full-time mom and have a big career. Full-time mom means your kids are your career. If you redefine full-time mom then you take away the ability for people who stay home with their kids to describe their work as full-time. You invite the ignorant and antiquated question: “Oh, you are with the kids all day? What do you do with all your time?”

It’s always a war of the careerist moms vs. the career moms.

A NICE REVIEW of the Insta-Wife’s Men On Strike.

PAUL MIRENGOFF: Liberalism And The NBA Locker Room. As somone who’s never had much interest in professional sports, it’s easy for me to say “let ’em all burn down.” But, well, let ’em all burn down.