DANIEL HANNAN defends the Tea Parties. Not that they need much defending now that even Russ Feingold claims he’s a Tea Partier!

PICKING UP A “SCOTT BROWN FEELING” at Sean Bielat’s headquarters. And a race that shouldn’t be close, but is, in Arizona.

MANUFACTURING’S BRIEF REBOUND: “The brief spring for manufacturing could be over.”

COMMERCIAL SPACE UPDATE: Private spaceship makes 1st solo glide flight. “Virgin Galactic’s space tourism rocket SpaceShipTwo achieved its first solo glide flight Sunday, marking another step in the company’s eventual plans to fly paying passengers.”

MARKDOWNS ON Knives And Tools.

ABC NEWS: Year After Obama Won Nobel, World Looks for Signs of Peace. Well, and jobs.

MICHAEL BARONE PICKS UP ON OBAMA’S HYPOCRISY ABOUT FOREIGN MONEY: “The Obama campaign was happy to encourage mass illegal donations from foreign nationals. Now it’s making baseless charges that its opposition is doing the same thing. Hope and change!”

Here’s more on Obama’s dubious donations.

THROWING THE BOOK AT OBAMA: Literally. “Today’s book-throwing incident came as Mr Obama tried to rally voters in Phildelphia.” Well, it’s better than a shoe, I guess. But boy, it took Bush a lot longer to get to the stage where people were throwing things at him. And I don’t think Bush ever had to deal with naked protesters: “The rally was clearly an eventful one – other images showed a naked man being led away in handcuffs by police. It is not clear if the man was involved in the book-throwing incident – or why he was not wearing any clothes.”

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has the video.

ANOTHER UPDATE: C.J. Burch writes: “No one would ever do this with a Kindle a Nook an Ipad or an e-reader.” Technology!

MICKEY KAUS: Pelosi’s Wrong About Gingrich And Food Stamps. “Gingrich was charging that the Democrats, and the Obama administration specifically, are too comfortable with a society in which citizens rely on government handouts. He could have extended that to include Tea Partyish fears that the whole economy will come to be dependent on government subsidies, or government industrial policy, or (in the worst case scenario) political favoritism.” Worst case, but not least-likely case . . . .

BELMONT CLUB: The Giant Brain.

BACKYARD TESTING body armor.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: A McCarthyite Attack From The Stanford Daily. If after reading his piece and the linked editorial you agree with Hanson’s characterization (or, heck, if you don’t), you can write the Stanford Daily about it here.

IN CANADA, talk of a “war on bedbugs.”

HOW RADICAL ISLAM SEDUCED THE ACADEMICS. “A few months ago, I sat in a magnificent Victorian lecture hall at University College London. It was once one of finest centres of intellectual inquiry in Europe, thanks to the efforts of its founder, the sternly anti-clerical philosopher Jeremy Bentham. It did not take me long to realise that fear of clerical fascism had led Bentham’s trembling successors to abandon intellectual inquiry and basic intellectual standards along with it.”

Bending over for tyrants is a major aspect of today’s academic culture, even as the benders-over proclaim their own courage and independence, and demonstrate those by attacking those whom they need not fear, while fearing those whom they do not criticize.

COMING SOON: A commercially available stinkbug repellent. No word on what something that can repel stinkbugs smells like, though . . . .

EVIDENCE OF LIQUID WATER in a Martian megacanyon.

AT AMAZON, a home appliance outlet sale.

HACKING THE POWER GRID FOR FUN AND PROFIT: “The decades-old technology used to manage the power grid is vulnerable to manipulation or sabotage, according to a study revealed this week. Attackers could manipulate power-grid data by breaking into substations and intercepting communications between substations, grid operators, and electricity suppliers. This data is used by grid operators to set prices for electricity and to balance supply and demand, the researchers say. Grid hackers could make millions of dollars at the expense of electricity consumers by influencing electricity markets. They could also make the grid unstable, causing blackouts.”

THE WORLD’S MOST FUEL-EFFICIENT CAR: 285 MPG, not a hybrid. There are some tradeoffs, though . . . .

HISTORY ON THE BLACK DEATH AND THE BUBONIC PLAGUE. “If left untreated, a bubonic plague infection can kill a person in as little as two days, either by causing lymph nodes to burst and flood the bloodstream, or by attacking lung tissue to cause pneumonia. Most often, the disease is spreads by fleas that are carried around by rodents. In either case, the bacteria’s genetic signatures can be found in bones long after a victim dies.”

UPDATE: Reader Debbie Eberts writes: “Glenn, I’m a huge proponent of vaccinations. If there’s a vaccine for it, I want it. There actually is a plague vaccine, but it’s nearly impossible to get it in the US right now. But, the people of Knoxville can be plague vaccine guinea pigs! On the one hand, it’s great that a new vaccine is available. On the other hand, we may need the plague vaccine again? Yikes!” Yeah, I heard a radio spot for the vaccine trial not long ago.