Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

More at Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies," and Theo Spark, "Cartoon Round Up..."

Obama Pushes to Codify Rules for Drone Warfare

At the New York Times, "U.S. Election Speeded Move to Codify Policy on Drones":

WASHINGTON — Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified.

Mr. Obama and his advisers are still debating whether remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort against imminent threats to the United States, or a more flexible tool, available to help allied governments attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territory.

Though publicly the administration presents a united front on the use of drones, behind the scenes there is longstanding tension. The Defense Department and the C.I.A. continue to press for greater latitude to carry out strikes; Justice Department and State Department officials, and the president’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, have argued for restraint, officials involved in the discussions say.

More broadly, the administration’s legal reasoning has not persuaded many other countries that the strikes are acceptable under international law. For years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States routinely condemned targeted killings of suspected terrorists by Israel, and most countries still object to such measures.

But since the first targeted killing by the United States in 2002, two administrations have taken the position that the United States is at war with Al Qaeda and its allies and can legally defend itself by striking its enemies wherever they are found.

Partly because United Nations officials know that the United States is setting a legal and ethical precedent for other countries developing armed drones, the U.N. plans to open a unit in Geneva early next year to investigate American drone strikes.

The attempt to write a formal rule book for targeted killing began last summer after news reports on the drone program, started under President George W. Bush and expanded by Mr. Obama, revealed some details of the president’s role in the shifting procedures for compiling “kill lists” and approving strikes. Though national security officials insist that the process is meticulous and lawful, the president and top aides believe it should be institutionalized, a course of action that seemed particularly urgent when it appeared that Mitt Romney might win the presidency.

“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. With a continuing debate about the proper limits of drone strikes, Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous” program to his successor, the official said. The effort, which would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace, the official said.

Mr. Obama himself, in little-noticed remarks, has acknowledged that the legal governance of drone strikes is still a work in progress.

“One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18.

In other words, it's illegal, and for outward appearances it might be good if the United States wasn't completely fucking oblivious to international norms, much less international legal regimes, such as the Geneva Conventions, which make illegal the fatalities of civilian non-combatants. Obama campaigned in 2008 on a massive antiwar humanitarian agenda. He attacked the Bush administration on all fronts, from Guantanamo to the Iraq war. His antiwar image was one of the biggest attractions of his candidacy. He was going to heal America's reputation as a warmongering imperialist power. All that was talk, of course. Big rhetorical bullshit in the furtherance of power. One of the biggest scandals of his administration --- and there are many --- is the ease with which he's been able to kill both American citizens and foreign civilians with no checks and balances whatsoever, to say nothing of political consequences. The only person writing about Obama's historical authoritarianism is Glenn Greenwald. Otherwise, progressives down the line give this president a pass where previously they had sought war crimes indictments for such policies under his predecessor. That's the rankest kind of hypocrisy that makes its way all the way to the current Oval Office, for I don't for a second believe that President Obama embraces his unprecedented shift in war powers in terms of national security. No, this president sees targeted killings as gruesome fodder for earned reporting from the Obama media's press retinue, all in service of the maintenance and expansion of power. In contrast, President George W. Bush genuinely believed that his policies would make the nation more secure, and they have.

In any case, Greenwald considers Obama the worst civil liberties president in American history. I don't like Greenwald, although I have recommended his consistency on such matters. See, "Who is the worst civil liberties president in US history?":

Abraham Lincoln illegally suspended the core liberty of habeas corpus without Congressional approval. Wilson's attacks on basic free speech in the name of national security were indeed legion and probably unparalleled. Franklin Roosevelt oversaw the due-process-free internment of more than 100,000 law-abiding Japanese-Americans into concentration camps.

And then there are the two War on Terror presidents. George Bush seized on the 9/11 attack to usher in radical new surveillance and detention powers in the PATRIOT ACT, spied for years on the communications of US citizens without the warrants required by law, and claimed the power to indefinitely imprison even US citizens without charges in military brigs.

His successor, Barack Obama, went further by claiming the power not merely to detain citizens without judicial review but to assassinate them (about which the New York Times said: "It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing"). He has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, dusting off Wilson's Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute more then double the number of whistleblowers than all prior presidents combined. And he has draped his actions with at least as much secrecy, if not more so, than any president in US history...

Lincoln's Language and its Legacy

A lengthy review article from Adam Gopnik, at the New Yorker, "ANNALS OF BIOGRAPHY: ANGELS AND AGES":

The tendency to obsess over single words and phrases reflects, in part, the semi-divine status of Lincoln in American history. But it also reflects a desire to show that rhetoric and writing were as essential to his career as acts and orders and elections. In the past twenty-five years, and particularly since the publication of Garry Wills’s “Lincoln at Gettysburg” (1992), language and its uses has become a central Lincoln subject. Two prominent strains of rhetoric run through the period—the Biblical and the classical—and political ideas tend to get tinted by whichever of them the speaker uses. Reading Edward Everett’s Gettysburg address, the two-hour set speech that preceded Lincoln’s and was meant to be the real event of the Gettysburg commemoration, one is startled to see how relentlessly classical it is in tone and analogy: Everett goes on and on about Marathon and the Greeks and the Persian invasions, in order to “elevate” Gettysburg and the Union soldiers. Lincoln’s rhetoric is, instead, deliberately Biblical. (It is difficult to find a single obviously classical reference in all of his speeches.) Lincoln had mastered the sound of the King James Bible so completely that he could recast abstract issues of constitutional law in Biblical terms, making the proposition that Texas and New Hampshire should be forever bound by a single post office sound like something right out of Genesis.

What strikes a newcomer to Lincoln’s speeches, however, is how rare those famous cadences are; their simple, resonant language—“with malice towards none, with charity for all”; the concluding and opening lines of the Gettysburg Address—is memorable in part because there isn’t much of it. The majority of Lincoln’s public utterances are narrowly, sometimes brilliantly, lawyerly—even, on occasion, crafted to give an appearance of inevitability to oratorical conclusions that are not well supported by the chain of reasoning that precedes them. The undramatic, small-print language in which Lincoln offered the Emancipation Proclamation is the most famous instance of his mastery of anti-heroic rhetoric. (Karl Marx said that it reminded him of “ordinary summonses sent by one lawyer to another.”)

But Lincoln believed in legalism. One of his first public speeches, the Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum, in Springfield in 1837, declared a radical insistence on “reason” to be the only acceptable form of public discourse; the cure for the prevalence and epidemic of violence in American life would be “hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason”: “Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason—cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason—must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.” Lincoln tempered but never really abandoned that conviction. His rhetorical genius lay in making closely reasoned argument ring with the sound of religious necessity...

Grab a cup of coffe and read it all. It's well done.

Brisk Sales Point to Breakout Holiday Shopping Season

At LAT, "Shopping season off to strong start":

Opening their doors earlier than ever for Black Friday paid off for retailers as shoppers mobbed malls thick with sales across the Southland, snapping up electronics, toys and other deals.

Hundreds of bargain hunters surged toward the Glendale Galleria before midnight, some banging on one entrance and shouting to be let in. At the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, shoppers rushing into Urban Outfitters shattered a glass door. Mall traffic was a nightmare throughout Southern California.

Despite the chaos, early signs point to a blockbuster shopping day for merchants — with stores raking in even more than the record $11.4 billion for Black Friday they reported last year. More comprehensive numbers are expected Sunday.

"Overall it was a smash hit," said Britt Beemer, a retail expert at America's Research Group who has been tracking holiday sales nationally for more than three decades. "In all the years I have been out, I have never seen such crowds in my life."

Target, Sears and the Disney Store reported a surge in customers. Wal-Mart said it was the retail behemoth's best Black Friday sale ever. Mall operators saw long lines, and shoppers scooped up even some full-price items as well as bargains in stores and online.

The shopping frenzy cheered merchants and Wall Street, which enjoyed a big boost Friday.

There was no violence reported in Southern California, where last year at least 10 people were injured when a shopper used pepper spray to ward off rivals at a Porter Ranch Wal-Mart.

But protests erupted over working conditions at dozens of Wal-Marts nationwide, including one that led to the arrest of nine people blocking a street in Paramount. And two people were shot in what police said was a scuffle over a parking spot at a Wal-Mart in Tallahassee, Fla.

LAist has more on that, "Local Walmart Workers Stage Black Friday Walkout [VIDEO]."

Egypt's Islamist Coup

At WSJ:

The Egyptian revolution took another bad turn Thursday, as President Mohamed Morsi gave himself dictatorial powers over the legislature and courts. The world has feared that the Muslim Brotherhood would favor one-man, one-vote, once, and the Morsi coup is an ominous sign.

"The people wanted me to be the guardian of these steps in this phase," Reuters quoted Mr. Morsi as saying on Friday. "I don't like and don't want—and there is no need—to use exceptional measures. But those who are trying to gnaw the bones of the nation" must be "held accountable."

Mr. Morsi says his diktat will merely last as long as it takes the country to adopt a new constitution, which is what authoritarians always say. They claim to be a necessary step on the way to democracy, but democracy never arrives. Mr. Morsi's rationalization is that he must have this power to "protect the revolution," as if the demonstrators who deposed Hosni Mubarak in 2011 merely wanted another Mubarak with a beard and prayer rug. Mr. Morsi is claiming more power than Mr. Mubarak ever had.

Egyptians took to the street on Friday in protest, sometimes violently, and nearly every other major political leader denounced the putsch. That includes Abdel Monheim Aboul Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood leader and presidential candidate. The violence is regrettable, but the protests may be the only way Egyptians can prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from becoming their new dictators.

The Brotherhood doesn't control the military or Ministry of Interior, yet neither one is going to rush to defend a more liberal Egyptian state. The military's main goal is to protect its role in government and its economic interests, and the Brotherhood's draft constitution puts the military outside of civilian control.

As long as Mr. Morsi doesn't challenge those interests, the military and police may let him control the courts, the media and the legislature. This is a recipe for rule a la Pakistan, with an increasingly Islamist state but the military and intelligence services as an independent power. The immediate losers will be Egypt's liberals and the Western journalists who inhaled the vapors of Tahrir Square. But whatever Mr. Morsi intends, the Pakistan model is not a recipe for a more stable Egypt.

Mr. Morsi's coup is also awkward for the Obama Administration, which had been praising the Egyptian in media backgrounders for his role in brokering the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Mr. Morsi was hailed as a moderate statesman. Yet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had barely left Cairo before Mr. Morsi made his move. He may have figured that all the praise made it easier for him to grab more power.

It's awkward alright.

The administration basically installed the Muslim Brotherhood and now Morsi's making a bid for the region's pan-Islamist leader to rival even Iran's influence. You get what you bargain for, I guess. And boy, did Obama ever bargain for his Muslim Brothers!

RELATED: From David Goldman, "Obama Legitimizes Morsi’s Protection Racket."

Gratuitous Kate Upton Rule 5 Video

She's lovely and so far you can't get enough of her.

And speaking of Rule 5, congratulations to Bob Belvedere for his blogging milestone: "2,000,000 Hits – Thanks to You All."

And a little more from Bob, "Rule 5 News Special Report: The Mammary Murder Plot."

That'll get you another two million in no time!

'Gangnam Style' Video is Most-Viewed on YouTube

Well, it's pretty gay, so no surprise.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Psy's "Gangnam Style" video is the most-viewed video on YouTube."

Bethany's Black Friday Shopping

Well, this is much more relaxed than Walmart in Georgia:

Professor Paul Frampton Convicted in Denise Milani 'Honey Trap' Case

Well, clearly those big breasts proved too hard to resist.

At ABC News, "Paul Frampton: Court in Argentina Convicts UNC Professor of Drug Smuggling":

A court in Argentina has convicted an Oxford educated University of North Carolina professor of attempting to smuggle four pounds of cocaine into the United States.

Paul Frampton, a 68-year-old esteemed professor of physics and astronomy, says he thought he was flying to South America to meet with a bikini model but ended up getting caught in what they call a "honey trap."

Frampton flew to Bolivia from North Carolina earlier this year after communicating with someone who claimed to be Denise Milani, winner of Miss Bikini World 2007. She never showed up.

Instead, Frampton says he was met by a man who gave him a suitcase, identifying himself as an intermediary for Milani, and instructing him to take it to her in Argentina.

Once there, he says he could not find her and decided to board a plane home, with that suitcase in hand. Police opened it up at the airport and found more than four pounds of cocaine inside.

"He has a high IQ, is well-known and very distinguished in the field of physics and other scientific areas, but when it comes to common sense he scored a zero," said former DC homicide investigator Rod Wheeler.

The Argentinean court sentenced Frampton to serve four years and eight months in custody after prosecutors there presented evidence of text messages they say Frampton sent to the person he thought was the model, saying, "I'm worried about the sniffer dogs," and "I'm looking after your special little suitcase."

The University of North Carolina has cut off Frampton's salary in a move that prompted dozens of his colleagues at the university to sign a letter of protest to administrators.

"As more information about his case becomes available ... it becomes more and more obvious that Paul was the innocent, although very gullible, victim of a scam," the joint letter said.

Many wrote separate letters of reference on a website they created to support the embattled professor, who is hoping to serve his time under house arrest in Argentina at a friend's apartment.

From prison Frampton has said, "It does seem unfair that an innocent scam victim is treated as a professional drug smuggler."

Well, it's hard out there for swinging academics.

There's an ABC News video here: "Professor Paul Frampton Convicted of Drug Smuggling."

And see the Independent UK, "The Denise Milani conspiracy: 'Honey trap' professor gets five years in Argentina jail," and "The case of Denise Milani and the British scientist proves – set a honeytrap and men fall in every time."

BONUS: At Hollywood Tuna, "Denise Milani Picture Moment."

Arlington's One More Page Bookstore Caters to Royalty, Closes to Public During Obama's Presidential Visit

Well, you wouldn't want to inconvenience the presidential family by having the riff-raff nearby.

At London's Daily Mail, "Must be nice being President! Obama avoids Black Friday crowds as bookstore closes for his visit as he shops for Christmas presents with his girls."

Pictures at the link. And I don't see any red carpets. These people are slacking!

Here's the store's website: One More Page Books, located in Arlington, Virginia.

ADDED: Here's video, "Raw: Obama, Daughters Go Christmas Shopping."

Ideological Discrimination at University of Iowa Law School

At The TaxProf, "Jurors Agree: University of Iowa Law School Discriminated Against Faculty Applicant Due to Her Conservative Views" (via Memeorandum):

Following up on my previous posts (links below) about Teresa Wagner's federal lawsuit: Des Monies Register, Jurors Say They Saw Hiring Bias at University of Iowa; But University, Not Former Law Dean, Wronged Conservative Job Applicant:

A federal jury believed the University of Iowa’s law school illegally denied a promotion to a conservative Republican because of her politics, former jurors told The Des Moines Register.

However, jurors said they felt conflicted about holding a former dean personally responsible for the bias. They wanted to hold the school itself accountable, but federal law does not recognize political discrimination by institutions. “I will say that everyone in that jury room believed that she had been discriminated against,” said Davenport resident Carol Tracy, the jury forewoman.

Meanwhile, attorneys for Teresa Wagner on Tuesday filed a motion for a new trial in the case that scholars agree could have national implications in what some argue is the liberally slanted world of academia.

Des Moines Register editorial: U of I Needs to Respect Diversity of Thought, Too: The Claim of Political Bias in Hiring at the Law School Should Not End with the Deadlocked Jury...

Continue reading.

Hey, when you go after bias at the universities, you're hammering away at the enemy's beachhead of Marxist cultural power and ideological indoctrination.

More at Volokh, "Jurors in Bias Case Believe University of Iowa Engaged in Ideological Discrimination."

Peter Suderman's Twitter Tutorial Shows How Walmart Helps Nation's Poor

It's really very straightforward. Walmart's low prices make more goods available to more people, especially people at the lower income quintile. I used to talk a lot about Walmart during my class discussions on the economy. One thing Suderman doesn't mention is that Walmart's economies of scale create dramatic ripple effects throughout the entire economy. There's a tremendous benefit from lower prices for families across the board, as the company's market-setting impact improves the well-being of individuals and families at all income levels. Basically, Walmart helps keep prices low economy-wide. Suppliers, wholesalers, shippers and other interdependent businesses must keep costs down to stay competitive, or Walmart shifts its purchasing and contracting relations to more efficient concerns. Inflation is reduced nationally. And national well-being increases. Left-wing attacks on Walmart are not designed to help workers, who will end up losing their higher wages to big labor bosses in any case, when they pony up their mandatory union dues. It's power the big bosses want, not social improvements for society's poor.

See Twitchy, "Reason magazine’s Peter Suderman destroys the Left’s irrational Walmart criticism."

9. Raise prices to pay for increased wages and you cut into the store’s huge low-price benefits for the poor. It’s regressive.
— Peter Suderman (@petersuderman) November 24, 2012

And at The Blaze, "Reason Senior Editor Dismantles the Left's Chief Anti-Walmart Talking Points."

Walmart Black Friday Shopping

At JWF, "Bloody Friday: Deranged Shoppers Battle Over Cell Phones at WalMart."

(Also on YouTube, "Walmart Black Friday Fighting Over Phones During 2012.")

Republicans and the Hispanic Vote

Two articles getting some attention: Kim Strassel, at the Wall Street Journal, "The GOP Turnout Myth," and Byron York, at the Washington Examiner, "Hispanics favor Dems but didn't decide election."

I don't think Hispanics are naturally conservative (as Charles Krauthammer argued recently, erroneously), although I do think that Republicans can pick up enough Hispanics to reduce the Democrat electoral advantage in key swing states. Strassel's essay points that out:

In Florida, 238,000 more Hispanics voted than in 2008, and Mr. Obama got 60% of Hispanic voters. His total margin of victory in Florida was 78,000 votes, so that demographic alone won it for him. Or consider Ohio, where Mr. Romney won independents by 10 points. The lead mattered little, though, given that black turnout increased by 178,000 votes, and the president won 96% of the black vote. Mr. Obama's margin of victory there was 103,000.

This is the demographic argument that is getting so much attention, and properly so. The Republican Party can hope that a future Democratic candidate won't equal Mr. Obama's magnetism for minority voters. But the GOP would do far better by fighting aggressively for a piece of the minority electorate.

And that, for the record, was the GOP's real 2012 turnout disaster. Elections are about the candidate and the message, yes, but also about the ground game. Republicans right now are fretting about Mr. Romney's failures and the party's immigration platform—that's fair enough. But equally important has been the party's mind-boggling failure to institute a competitive Hispanic ground game. The GOP doesn't campaign in those communities, doesn't register voters there, doesn't knock on doors. So while pre-election polling showed that Hispanics were worried about Obama policies, in the end the only campaign that these voters heard from—by email, at their door, on the phone—was the president's.

Often missed in talk of the GOP's "demographics problem" is that it would take relatively modest minority-voter shifts toward Republicans to return the party to a dominating force. The GOP might see that as the enormous opportunity it is, rather than a problem. The key to winning turnout is having more people to turn out in the first place.

Texas Secession Fever

At the New York Times, "With Stickers, a Petition and Even a Middle Name, Secession Fever Hits Texas":

HOUSTON — In the weeks since President Obama’s re-election, Republicans around the country have been wondering how to proceed. Some conservatives in Texas have been asking a far more pointed question: how to secede.

Secession fever has struck parts of Texas, which Mitt Romney won by nearly 1.3 million votes.

Sales of bumper stickers reading “Secede” — one for $2, or three for $5 — have increased at TexasSecede.com. In East Texas, a Republican official sent out an e-mail newsletter saying it was time for Texas and Vermont to each “go her own way in peace” and sign a free-trade agreement among the states.

A petition calling for secession that was filed by a Texas man on a White House Web site has received tens of thousands of signatures, and the Obama administration must now issue a response. And Larry Scott Kilgore, a perennial Republican candidate from Arlington, a Dallas suburb, announced that he was running for governor in 2014 and would legally change his name to Larry Secede Kilgore, with Secede in capital letters. As his Web page, secedekilgore.com, puts it: “Secession! All other issues can be dealt with later.”

In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the center from the fringe right. It has emerged as an echo of the state Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on a variety of issues, including health care and environmental regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat.

But for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the 1830s and 1840s — it is a far more serious matter.

It's interesting, if not something of a sideshow.

RELATED: From Saberpoint, "Vox Popoli Hates Californians -- Even Conservatives."

Tea Party Looks to Oust Republicans Seen as Not Conservative Enough

This isn't anything new, although there's obviously greater urgency amid the left's information coup and the second term of the Obama disaster. Basically, double down hoping to gain some traction before we're all shot to hell.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Tea Party Seeks to Regroup: Movement Sets Sights on Ousting Republicans Seen as Not Conservative Enough":

The tea-party movement is trying to regroup after taking some licks in this month's elections. Several groups already are setting their sights on 2014 congressional races, in which they plan to promote their preferred candidates and hope to weed out Republicans they consider insufficiently conservative.

Many tea-party activists say they remain dumbfounded by the Nov. 6 defeat of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and favored GOP candidates for the Senate, and opinions are swirling over how the movement should push forward.

In Virginia, organizations that canvassed aggressively for Mr. Romney are now girding for next year's election for governor. Many are moving to support Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in his GOP primary contest against Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling.

Conservative groups also are considering potential challenges to GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Lamar Alexander in Tennessee and Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, whom some activists view as not conservative enough.

After scoring a wave of successes in the 2010 midterm elections, tea-party groups found the environment much less hospitable this year in states where President Barack Obama's campaign made gains with the electorate.

One of the movement's most outspoken advocates, Rep. Allen West of Florida, lost his first bid for re-election, while Rep. Michele Bachmann, a founder of the congressional Tea Party Caucus, barely scraped by to keep her Minnesota seat. Still, many House freshmen backed by the tea party in 2010 survived this year, and Republicans retained their House majority.

"This was a very difficult year, with the strength of the Obama ground game and the fact that Romney just didn't inspire much enthusiasm," said Jamie Radtke, an unsuccessful 2012 Senate candidate and founder of the Virginia Federation of Tea Party Patriots, a statewide umbrella group that continues to expand and now has over 60 member organizations. "But in many ways, we are stronger than ever," she said.

The federation, Ms. Radtke said, plans to play a big role in 2013 Virginia races, including those for the governor's and lieutenant governor's offices.

Across the country, tea-party activists are drawing different lessons from the year's setbacks.

One of the movement's big losses was in the Indiana Senate race, where Richard Mourdock, a favorite of tea-party activists, toppled six-term Republican Sen. Richard Lugar in the Republican primary, only to lose this month to conservative Democrat Joe Donnelly. Mr. Mourdock's campaign took a hit after he said that "even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen."

Tea-party activist Greg Fettig, a founder of Hoosiers for a Conservative Senate and a backer of Mr. Mourdock, said the main lesson from the loss is that activists need to be sure the campaigns they support are well-run.

In South Carolina, tea-party activists are looking to mount a primary challenge against Mr. Graham, whom they oppose in part because he voted to confirm Mr. Obama's Supreme Court nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

"I think he will face a strong primary challenge," said Joe Dugan, South Carolina coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots. "The extent of that challenge and the money that can be raised will depend on his actions from this time forward."

Mr. Graham didn't respond to requests for comment.

Andrea Alarcon to Take Leave of Absence

At LAT, "Mayor's top appointee on Board of Public Works will take leave."

She's also "seeking help." See: "Public works commissioner says she’s seeking 'professional help'."

Democrats need professional help, so there you go. And this lady's actions are criminal. She should being doing time for her kind of progressive child abandonment and endangerment.

PREVIOUSLY: "Andrea Alarcon, President of Los Angeles Board of Public Works, Under Investigation for Child Endangerment."

Protesters Storm Muslim Brotherhood Headquarters in Alexandria

The opposition to the Morsi coup is pretty widespread.

See, "Protests rock Egypt after Morsi seizes new powers."

More: "Morsy reassures Egyptians as protests grow."

Obama Copies California, While State's Residents Flee to Texas

An absolutely amazing development, but no surprise givien the long-standing stagnation of this once "Golden State." At IBD, "Obama Policies Copy Moribund California, Not Texas":

Anyone who thinks that President Obama's economic policies will spur strong growth should consider U-Haul rates between California and Texas.

Renting a 20-foot truck one-way from San Francisco to San Antonio, for example, will cost $1,693. But the U-Haul tab to go in the opposite direction is just $983.

To University of Michigan economist Mark Perry, who has tracked this "U-Haul Index," the difference in these rental rates is the result of straightforward supply and demand.

Put simply, far more people want to leave California for Texas than vice versa. Why? Because California's economy is moribund while Texas' is thriving.

"The American people and businesses are voting with their feet and their one-way truck rentals to escape California and its forced unionism, high taxes, and high unemployment rate for a better life in low-tax, business-friendly, right-to-work states like Texas," noted Perry, who is also a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

California Nation

The problem is that Obama's economic policies are pushing the country to be more like the California people are leaving and less like the Texas they're flocking to.

"Every dream program that the administration embraces — cap and trade, massive taxes on the rich, high-speed rail — is either in place or on the drawing boards" in California, notes Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.

Like President Obama, California's Gov. Jerry Brown pushed for a substantial new tax on the "rich" that raises the top rate to 13.3%, a hike voters approved in November. Even before these taxes kick in, California was the fourth most heavily taxed state, according to a ranking by the Tax Foundation.

Also like Obama, the state is regulation happy. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University ranks California as one of the four worst states in terms of regulations. The state also imposes one of the heaviest tax burdens on businesses.

As a result, California consistently ranks at or near the bottom for business friendliness.

And like Obama — who has pushed federal spending up to historic highs for the past four years — per-capita spending in California has climbed 42% from 2000 to 2010, even after adjusting for inflation. The state is now one of the biggest spenders in the country.

The contrast in economic policies between California and Texas — which otherwise share many things in common, since both are big-population border states with lots of immigrants — could not be more striking.

Continue reading.

Erin Andrews Models Brooklyn Decker Boots

Via Twittter.

And indeed, those are Brooklyn Decker boots: "Boots on a motha effin' plane."