CLARICE FELDMAN: Obama and the “Teutonic Shift” in the Middle East.

CREATOR OF CHINA’S FIREWALL pelted with eggs and shoes.

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE unresponsive to stimulus. Are things really this bad? Well, the boarded-up stores I see suggest that they might be.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Yes, it is that bad.”

SPANISH ELECTIONS: Spain’s Socialists Trounced Amid Economic Turmoil. “Spain’s ruling Socialists suffered a crushing defeat to conservatives in local and regional elections Sunday, yielding power even in traditional strongholds against a backdrop of staggering unemployment and unprecedented sit-ins by Spaniards furious with what they see as politicians who don’t care about their plight.”

POWER SHORTAGE: Test-Driving the Nissan Leaf. “Since I needed all the juice I could get to make it to Burlingame I decided to forgo the pre-heating and let the Leaf charge to the very last second. Fortunately this morning was a hair warmer than the day previous being a brisk 40 degrees. Unfortunately the temperatures and humidity conspired to fog the windscreen. Without sufficient power to make it to work and use the defogger, I chose to defog the old-fashioned way: windows open.”

GOOD NEWS: Indiana Attorney General seeks reconsideration of Fourth Amendment ruling. I’m not sure how or why the Indiana Supreme Court came up with this ruling — that there is no right to resist unlawful entry by police officers — but I’m happy to see more responsible parties in Indiana pushing back.

OBAMA’S UNFORTUNATE TIMING on national security. “At this point the Democrats are beginning to look like the guy who always manages to buy stock the day before the market tanks. When the nation was highly concerned over national security, they couldn’t score any points on the field in that area and the GOP was left to run wild. Now, as soon as Obama scores a major PR hit in the War on Terror, Americans are happy about it, but almost immediately go back to wondering when they will get a job and if the national economy is going to collapse beneath the weight of the debt.”

FEDERAL FIRE SALE: “The federal government wants to sell some old buildings and vacant land. This is not a bad idea, so far as it goes. What it is not, though, is a plan for reducing the federal deficit — though in some quarters it has been embraced as such. That is ridiculous.”

AT AMAZON, a Kitchen outlet sale.

TIME FOR A DREAM CANDIDATE? “Mitch Daniels’ announcement that he’s not running for president means Republicans may turn up the pressure on dream candidates like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan and Chris Christie.”

It’s fine for Republicans to plan on testing their candidates in the primaries — that’s what primaries are for — but a GOP win in 2012 takes more than a candidate. It takes organization on the ground, and money. If the Tea Party movement pulls out all the stops, it can get a Republican elected — and, quite possibly, can force even a wishy-washy Republican to show some semblance of a spine once in office. I’m all for getting the best candidate, of course, but I do think that waiting for a “savior” is a mistake. Dream candidates aren’t just found, they’re made. And the work on that should be going on now.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Mitchell writes: “I’m not sure about other conservative libertarians, but so far 3 of my dreams have come true… No Huck, no Trump and no Daniels… So far, so good.”

CLAIRE BERLINSKI: Facebook Birthday Etiquette.

HEH: Warner Brothers Forced To Fight For Fair Use.

MARC CENEDELLA: I, Obama: The President and the personal pronoun.

TEENY-TINY DRONE fires teeny-tiny missile.

RON RADOSH: Obama’s Speech To AIPAC: An Assessment. “So the question is, as I conclude, whether or not the President means it, whether or not he will backpedal in the other direction, and whether he will seek to mend matters with Prime Minister Netanyahu, rather than push him in directions Israel does not want to go. We now have evidence that in a few short days, the pressure moved the President away from the contentious trap he set before meeting PM Netanyahu.”

AT AMAZON, the home audio and video outlet sale.

ABOUT TIME: Germany Gets Serious About Squeezing Iran.

OH, JOY: Advice: Get Ready For Social Security, Medicare Meltdowns.

SYRIA UPDATE: Exclusive Video: Syrian Soldiers Buck Regime to Film Violence.

IS THE CHINESE CAR MARKET showing signs of slowing?

THIS WEEK in the future.

SIMBERG VS. ZUBRIN: The Great PJ Media Space Debate.

IN THE MAIL: From Adam Mitzner, A Conflict of Interest.

PIXAR FILMS AND NON-HUMAN INTELLIGENCES:

Writing for Discover’s “Science Not Fiction” blog Kyle Munkittrick reviews films made by Pixar and finds a hidden message in Pixar films about the need to respect and accept non-human intelligences. I see this message as more likely to do us a disservice than to make our future brighter. . . . Personhood isn’t possible without intelligence. But intelligence is only a necessary – and not a suffcient – condition for personhood. Brave humans (contra Pixar) will not make other forms of intelligence into moral agents who are motivated to respect us.

Movies are poor sources of moral guidance. Just look at the people who make them.

NICK GILLESPIE ON OBAMA’S WAR POWERS FLIPFLOP: “How’s the military action – kinetic, wasn’t it? – in Libya working out? It seems to have dropped out of the news lately.”

Plus, Beldar has some legal questions.