THIS GUY PROBABLY DOESN’T HAVE A “CO-EXIST” BUMPER STICKER ON HIS CAR: Oklahoma authorities have arrested an Illinois man found with materials and instructions for making molotov cocktails, and a list of 48 Oklahoma churches he planned to bomb. The New York Times, et. al. have already dispatched investigative teams to Oklahoma to assess this latest threat to freedom of religion, thought and expression in the Bible Belt, right?

OBAMA HAS ONLY HIMSELF TO BLAME FOR BEING OUT OF SPARRING PRACTICE: Dana Milbank of The Washington Post nails it: “For the past four years, he has worked assiduously to avoid being questioned, maintaining a regal detachment from the media and other sources of dissent and skeptical inquiry.” More here.

AND IN THIS CORNER IS WASHINGTON POST BLOGGER ERIK WEMPLE: Who I challenged this morning to explain exactly what he thinks The Washington Examiner “over-promised and under-delivered” with its recent special report – The Obama You Don’t Know.

UPDATED WITH IRS RESPONSE! SOMETIMES WHAT THEY DON’T SAY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT THEY DO SAY: Cause of Action, an independent non-profit legal activist group based in Washington, D.C., filed a Freedom of Information Act request in March asking for documents on presidential requests for tax returns of individuals or businesses. COA says that what the IRS did not say in its denial of that FOIA suggests President Obama has indeed sought copies of tax returns for somebody. Find out what happened next here.

WHY WOULDN’T EPA TALK ABOUT OFFICIALS USING SECRET EMAILS TO DO PUBLIC BUSINESS? A Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) lawsuit in federal court demands documents on what appears to be a long-standing practice at the highest levels of the agency. An agency spokesman declines to comment. This could be the most important FOIA litigation in decades.

AND YOU THOUGHT THE GUY IN THE TUB WAS A WASTREL: Veterans Department Inspector-General pretty much ran the table in scathing report pointing out ways VA officials wasted tax dollars at the two “Patton parody” conferences: $16,500 for “Happy Face” videos of bureaucrats doing karaoke, $184,000 for breakfast sandwiches for bureaucrats being reimbursed for meals, $20,000 for bottles of water, and on and on and on and ….

HERE’S HOW THE MSM WILL COVER WEDNESDAY’S OBAMA/ROMNEY DEBATE: Peter Roff, a U.S. News & World Report contributing editor who also happens to be among the best columnists around these days, has the details, including how Obama seemed to be floating a foot or so off the ground as he first took to the stage.

IF WALL STREET BANKERS HATE OBAMA SO MUCH, HOW COME THEY’RE SHOWERING HIM WITH CAMPAIGN CASH? Check out the top five organization employees giving to Obama, as compiled by CNS.com and OpenSecrets.org.

WELL, THAT’S EMBARRASSING! Seems I mis-read the CNS graph regarding Wall Street contributions. Had I read it correctly, the headline here would have said WALL STREET BANKERS LOVE ROMNEY SO MUCH, THEY’RE SHOWERING HIM WITH CAMPAIGN CASH. For the record, Obama’s top five include: University of California, Microsoft, Google, Harvard and the U.S. government. My apologies to Obama, Romney, CNS.com, OpenSecrets.org, Glenn Reynolds and, most importantly, Instapundit’s readers. And my thanks to my good friend at the Sunlight Foundation, Bill Allison, for so diplomatically pointing out that I royally, totally, and I do mean completely, screwed this one up.

IF 2,100 PEOPLE HAVE TO BE TRAINED TO IMPLEMENT IT, maybe, just maybe, a collective bargaining agreement is too complicated? Not only did the Veterans Department have to train that many of its employees on the agency’s latest deal with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), more than two dozen training conferences were convened across the country, at a cost in excess of $5 million. The Washington Examiner’s Mark Flatten has yet another government conferences expose.

WATCHDOGS SAY WATERS PUSHED ETHICS LIMITS: The California Democrat hired her grandson, paid him well as her chief of staff. So House Ethics Committee reproves the grandson?

AND THEN THEY WONDER WHY NOBODY BELIEVES THEM! Two major stories this week that the elite media either ignored or buried – the coming death of Electric Vehicles and how liberals, including Obama, corrupted the noble cause of affordable housing for the poor.

REMEMBER WHEN JIMMY CARTER WAS BLOWING REAGAN OUT OF THE WATER? Powerline’s John Hinderaker offers a timely reminder that something very similar to what is happening now with the Gallup Poll and President Obama occurred at a similar point in the 1980 campaign. “Americans are by no means infallible, but are they really dumb enough, or self-destructive enough, to want another four years of Barack Obama’s failures,” Hinderaker asks. Me, neither.

CALL OFF THE ELECTION, OBAMA HAS ALREADY WON: University of Virginia’s Center for Politics declares the presidential race all but over, with President Obama sure to win at least 290 electoral votes, leaving Republican Mitt Romney gasping for air with six weeks left before election day. We’re not sure but it appears Professor Larry Sabato and colleagues aren’t breathing a sign of relief in noting Democrats will likely keep the Senate and “claw closer” but not quite retake the House majority.

YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN ME! That’s what candidate Obama told an ACORN assembly while campaigning for president in 2007. The Washington Examiner’s Charlie Spiering has the previously unreleased video. Among the many gems is this one: “Once I was elected there wasn’t a campaign that ACORN worked on down in Springfield that I wasn’t right there with you and since I’ve been in the United States Senate, I’ve always been a partner with ACORN as well.”

BARONE ON OBAMA’S WAR ON YOUTH: And you thought the only electorally significant war in 2012 is the one the GOPers are allegedly waging on women. Here in the real world, the war that counts, according to The Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone (discussing Walter Russell Mead), is the one where Obama keeps imposing his choices on the Millennial Generation’s playlists of life. Next question: Does Romney understand the political lessons of the iPOD playlist?

ARE WE ABOUT TO WITNESS THE DEATH OF THE EV? Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward surveys the recent news and concludes a Green Weenie is in order. I survey the same scene and am inspired to revive the old blog where I once pronounced without restraint my two-cents worth about cars, carmakers, car experts, car killers (mostly in Washington and California) and related car topics. So if anything unpleasant follows from this little anticipated revival, it’s all Hayward’s fault!

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE INTERNET? Well, according to Scott Cleland of the Precursor Blog, it isn’t the new Internet Association, headed by a former top staffer for House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton.

HERE COMES OBAMA’S NEXT SOLYNDRA: Smith Electrics, which got a $32 million Obama economic stimulus program boost to build electric delivery trucks for the Pentagon, cancelled its IPO last week and now, according to The Washington Examiner’s Richard Pollock, faces a bleak future reminiscent of Solyndra in its last days before going bankrupt.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR THE EV NANNIES: Tesla Motors is slashing its revenue and production projections, citing worries about insuring quality in its Model S offering, according to Bloomberg Business Week.

WATCHDOG.ORG SEES TROUBLE AHEAD for the re-election campaign of Sen. Jon Tester, D-MT, in a new Mason-Dixon poll that shows him trailing Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-MT

$57K TO SEND ONE BUREAUCRAT TO A CONFERENCE ACROSS TOWN? Even worse, according to The Washington Examiner’s Mark Flatten, USDA refuses to explain why.

MONTANA SENATE RIVALS CO-SPONSORED EARMARKS THAT FATTENED CAMPAIGN COFFERS: Rep. Denny Rehberg sponsored three earmarks for companies his son’s firm later represented, then banked thousands in contributions. Guess who co-sponsored the same earmarks? You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, even if we have to run against each other in 2012.

WHO KNEW DEMOCRATS NEED TRAINING TO PLAY THE RACE CARD? Well, apparently they do, according to House Democratic Caucus documents obtained by The Washington Examiner’s Joel Gehrke.

THEY SAID IF MCCAIN WAS ELECTED, BROWN-BOOTED THUGS WOULD KILL THE FIRST AMENDMENT: But who would have expected them to go after one of America’s most eminent surgeons and black philanthropists? Or that they would do it at of all places, Emory University where academic freedom and the courage of open inquiry are the rule?

WARNING: THIS IS NOT ABOUT GAY MARRIAGE! But it is about a major national Democratic leader and the consequences he is now enduring as a result of his evolving explanation for how all that presidential campaign money somehow turned up in support of his mistress and love-child. The New York Post’s Tara Palmeri has the tawdry details. BTW, anybody taking odds on how long he spends in the slammer?

BLUNT WANTS SOLIS TO EXPLAIN WHY PRESS MUST USE HER GOVERNMENT SOFTWARE, COMPUTERS: The Missouri Republican senator sent the Labor Sec a tough letter today demanding to know, among much else, “what precedents exist for forcing journalists to utilize government-owned systems and networks to report the news.”