SEPARATED AT BIRTH: America’s “First Gay President” and Tinky-Winky the Teletubby.

If I were a GOP operative, I’d distribute thousands of those Newsweek issues to black barbershops in key precincts. . . .

JEFF ROSEN: Why can’t these conservative judges be more . . . liberal? Plus, beware of that dastardly Randy Barnett!

UPDATE: Pay No Attention To The Constitution Behind The Curtain!

Also: The Folly of Judicial Restraint in an Age of Judicial Supremacy.

PROF. JACOBSON: Please do not photograph Obama’s wreck at the side of the road.

PAUL MIRENGOFF: John Edwards and the “reality-based” community. “No one is going to deny that Mr. Edwards lied and lied and lied and lied.” All I can say is, Keep rockin’!

JENNIFER RUBIN: Not-So-Subtle Obama-Rooting In The Media.

Related: WashPost Ombudsman Upholds Romney Hair ‘Scoop’ As Paper Shamelessly Admits Pro-Obama Story Timing.

It’s pathetic, and embarrassing. And yet they still pretend they belong to some sort of learned profession with special privileges and responsibilities, when really they’re just PR flacks without the honesty.

UPDATE: My response to Stacy McCain is the lack of counterexamples. I had a girlfriend from college who quit journalism for PR because, as she said, “it’s more ethical.” Indeed. Well, we’ve always got the computers.

SPENGLER: Yes, Arianna, We Have No Bananas. “If only the Greeks still troubled to have children, Mrs. Huffington’s sentiments would have more resonance. Greek fertility (number of children per female) fell to only 1.28 in 2005, the rock bottom of the European pile.”

A CREEPY MOTHER’S DAY CARD: “Show your mom you care enough to make her a data point in the president’s reelection campaign!”

DSM 5: Is psychiatric diagnosis becoming a debacle, or is the extent of the debacle just becoming clear now?

UPDATE: “New diagnoses in psychiatry can be far more dangerous than new drugs.”

THIS WEEK IN THE FUTURE.

VESTA, the planet that could have been.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE DEBT-SERFDOM UPDATE: Student Loans: A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College.

Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter. “If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith.

As I’ve said before, any other industry that did this to its customers would be regarded as predatory in the extreme. And, in a related note, my The Higher Education Bubble, soon to be published by Encounter Broadsides, is now available for pre-order. Just sayin’ . . .

FASTER, PLEASE: Rare-Earth Mining Rises Again in United States.

China now controls 95 percent of total rare-earth supply. A figurative sneeze on its export policy is all that’s needed to shake global markets, and in 2010 China began restricting rare-earth exports. International prices spiked, reaching near-dizzying levels last summer before crashing in the fall. In the wake of the World Trade Organization case, they’ve perked up again. . . .

That may soon change. Encouraged by rising prices and political support, new mines are starting up around the world, most notably in Malaysia and in California, where a company called Molycorp has reopened what until the 1980s was the world’s flagship rare-earth mine.

“In five years there will be rare earths produced all over the world and China will lose its edge,” said mining analyst John Kaiser, editor of Kaiser Research Online. “Molycorp is part of that equation. They’re putting back into production what was once the largest rare-earth mine in the world. And this is a good thing because it takes away power concentrated in China.”

Located in Mountain Pass, California, about an hour west of Las Vegas, the mine sits atop mineral deposits discovered in the late 1940s by geologists looking for commercial-grade uranium. They found some of the world’s richest reserves of bastnasite, a mineral containing higher-than-usual concentrations of rare-earth elements like cerium, lanthanum and yttrium.

My advice to the Chinese: Pay off some environmental groups to shut this down.

BARACK OBAMA ON faceless multitudes, waiting to be told what to do. Plus, “the problem with people like Joyce.”

UPDATE: This item seems quite popular with readers.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Man sustains life-threatening injuries after jumping from bridge.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Violent criminal on federal payroll as informant. “Despite a history of abusing women and violent behavior in prison, Joshua Allan Jackson managed to become a federal informant, trigger a citywide Seattle police alert and hold a 18-year-old woman as his sexual prisoner.”

If law enforcement were liable to lawsuits in the same fashion as private business, things like this wouldn’t be the regular occurrences that they are now.

POINTS AND FIGURES: Our Energy Future.

At the Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business Management Conference Friday, I listened to a panel discussion on energy. It was interesting, primarily because the two panelists didn’t mince words.

They offered up some interesting stats. Did you know that Chevron ($CHV) spends $33 billion a year just to keep the doors open and the lights on. Amazing operating budget. For that 33 billion spend, they control 2% of the world wide oil market.

Conclusion: Running an oil company isn’t cheap and has a lot of fixed costs.

Question: Why do we demonize, regulate and tax the crap out of them?

Another data point they offered was that in the next ten years, the world will need 40% more energy to operate. Demand is going up. The reason? In America, when we go through our daily lives, we implicitly trust that lights will go on, air conditioning and heating will work. We know if we plug something in, the electricity will power it. We use cell networks. We don’t walk and bike everywhere, and generally get to place to place using some form of powered transportation.

Well guess what. The rising middle class in the rest of the world wants the same thing. As China, India Brazil and other countries increase their standards of living, they will demand more energy.

Much more at the link.

UNEXPECTEDLY: U.S. Biofuel Mandates Looking Unrealistic. “In 2007, Congress vastly overestimated the government’s ability to create a market for cellulosic biofuels, which remain much more expensive to produce than corn ethanol. There was no commercial production of cellulosic fuel in 2010 or 2011—even though the 2007 law originally called for 100 million and 250 million gallons, respectively, for those years (the requirements were subsequently scaled back to around 6.5 million gallons for each year). The chart above shows the actual biofuel production, so far, compared to future mandates.”

GREEN ACRES IS THE PLACE TO BE? Higher Heart Risk From Exposure To Car Exhaust.

ELECTRIC-CAR INQUEST: Engine packaging to blame for Fisker Karma garage fire?

THE NORTH CAROLINA DEBACLE CONTINUES: Democratic Party chairman resigns, then unresigns. “David Parker, the besieged state Democratic Party chairman, said Saturday that he would remain in his post after the party’s ruling committee voted not to accept his resignation. In doing so, Parker defied pressure from party leaders from Washington to Raleigh to step aside because of the concern that his handling of sexual harassment accusations by a staffer would damage the party’s efforts in the fall.” Ya think?

Say, has anyone asked Obama how he feels — now that he’s “evolved” on gay marriage — about having the Democratic National Convention in a state that’s just voted by a huge margin to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage? Maybe I missed that while I was away. . . .

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Last Domino Standing. “Embattled Syria aside, Algeria is the last of the secular Arab authoritarian governments still standing. . . . Algeria is even more critical to the stability and prosperity of the Mediterranean than Libya. It is a major source of immigrants to the former colonial power (France — and many educated Algerians speak French to this day), and what happens in Algeria will often spill over onto the streets of France.”

NOEMIE EMERY: The Year Of Losing Touch With Reality.