For those of you who don't have time to read the entire Claire Berlinski oeuvre, I've managed to condense everything I believe into a six-minute segment on Secure Freedom Radio. Fast-forward to minute 43. For those of you who don't even have time for that, here are the highlights:

• Catch me on Ricochet
• Economic freedom is moral
• Pay more attention to Turkey

Green Claire Berlinski is a little bit like Claire Berlinski on Twitter, but better for the planet, in some undefined but very spiritual way. I'm working on making my opinions leaner, meaner and Greener still. I'll have them boiled down to three minutes by the end of the week.

Those of you who are not yet advanced enough to appreciate this level of environmental awareness may of course still opt to kill a tree. Don't feel bad about it, though; as you can see, I'm rapidly offsetting the damage.

This update brought to you by our friend, Robert Stacy McCain:

3:25 p.m. ET (11:25 a.m. local) — After preliminary count of absentee ballots from Anchorage division, Joe Miller leads by a 1,325-vote margin, with 48,051 votes to 46,726 for Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Although this narrows Miller’s lead from 1,668 in Election Day results, it is being interpreted as good news by the Miller campaign, because Anchorage had generally leaned toward Murkowski. Miller’s stronghold is in the Mat-Su Valley, where preliminary results of the absentee ballot count will be repoted later today.

Chalk up another victory to Sarah Palin, kingmaker.

James Glassman’s fascinating article in the September issue of Commentary, “The Failure of the Liberal Econonic Experiment?”, is only partly about economics. The other part is about Jim Glassman’s sense of perplexed surprise.

From June 2008 to June 2009, Glassman notes, output suffered the worst decline since 1946, and from 2008 to 2010 unemployment doubled. The American people should have turned against the free-market policies that were then in place. They didn’t. Americans have instead turned against the interventionist policies the Obama administration has enacted. It’s as if a drowning man, thrown a life saver, spat at it.

When the financial meltdown occurred, it seemed almost certain that Americans would judge that the conservative economic experiment of 1981-2008 had failed. Instead, they seem to be leaning in the opposite direction—toward a conclusion that it was the liberal economic experiment of 2009-10 that has failed.

This conclusion is not being warmly embraced so much as reluctantly conceded….Still, when you consider that a repudiation of free-market capitalism…appeared almost certain when the crisis broke, we should be both humbled and thankful for this strange and constructive turn of events.

A strange turn of events indeed. Conservative policy wonks knew that the life saver Barack Obama insisted on throwing to the American people was a fake, of course, but how were the American people to know? No Republican of national standing decried Obama’s policies. For that matter, you could scarcely name a Republican of national standing in the first place—no counterpart to Ronald Reagan now exists. The mainstream press? The press supported Obama overwhelmingly. You have to give credit, I think, to Fox News and conservative talk radio—but only partial credit. The audience for those outlets numbers in the low double digit millions at the very most.

Which leaves whom? Which leaves the American people themselves.

During the economic expansion of the last quarter century, Americans have developed certain habits. They know how to start businesses and invest in mutual funds. They’ve lost their fear of changing jobs. They’ve learned that new technology makes us richer, not poorer. Whereas FDR presided over a population with large elements that Marx would have recognized as a proletariat—urban, uneducated, largely propertyless—Barack Obama presides over a nation of investors and homeowners. Obama and his economic advisers have their Keynesian theories, but that’s all they have. The American people have actual experience—a quarter of a century of life with free markets and limited government.

Maybe the rejection of Obama’s policies shouldn’t have surprised us conservatives nearly as much as it has. Maybe we lacked faith in our own tenets. Free markets don’t merely produce goods and services. They nurture freedom itself.

An outspoken female governor of a western state. Reviled by all of the right people. Attacked in the press. Takes clear stands on controversial issues. Seems to have lots of real brass.

Sarah Palin or Jan Brewer, governor of Arizona?

As Diane notes in a previous post, Sarah Palin is having trouble convincing people that she'd be an "effective" president, whatever that means. Diane and I agree, I think, that one of the things that has hurt Palin's credibility -- at least it has for me -- is her abrupt resignation from her post as governor of Alaska.

Being a governor matters. A sitting governor can have a huge amount of influence on the national conversation, and the direction of the country.

So, how about an informal Ricochet poll? Who would be a more effective president, Sarah Palin or Jan Brewer?

My vote: Governor of Arizona Jan Brewer.

I don't know why, but Brits write the best obits. From the recent Economist, a tribute to Bill Mullin, the D-Day piper. An excerpt:

He was ordering now, as they waded up Sword Beach, in that drawly voice of his: “Give us a tune, piper.” Mr Millin thought him a mad bastard. The man beside him, on the point of jumping off, had taken a bullet in the face and gone under. But there was Lovat, strolling through fire quite calmly in his aristocratic way, allegedly wearing a monogrammed white pullover under his jacket and carrying an ancient Winchester rifle, so if he was mad Mr Millin thought he might as well be ridiculous too, and struck up “Hielan’ Laddie”. Lovat approved it with a thumbs-up, and asked for “The Road to the Isles”. Mr Millin inquired, half-joking, whether he should walk up and down in the traditional way of pipers. “Oh, yes. That would be lovely.”

Three times therefore he walked up and down at the edge of the sea. He remembered the sand shaking under his feet from mortar fire and the dead bodies rolling in the surf, against his legs. For the rest of the day, whenever required, he played.

It's the best obit you'll read today. Good as it is, the last two grafs are a reminder that writers are sometimes best when they get out of the way, and just tell the tale. Maybe that's why the Brits do obits well.

So Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent out a memo to his employees -- and by definition our employees -- last week, encouraging them all to go to that big rally they held last weekend in Washington, DC. No, not that big rally. The other one. From the Washington Examiner:

President Obama's top education official urged government employees to attend a rally that the Rev. Al Sharpton organized to counter a larger conservative event on the Mall."ED staff are invited to join Secretary Arne Duncan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other leaders on Saturday, Aug. 28, for the 'Reclaim the Dream' rally and march," began an internal e-mail sent to more than 4,000 employees of the Department of Education on Wednesday.

It wasn't exactly a happy, non-partisan celebration:

"[Conservatives] think we showed up [to vote for Barack Obama] in 2008 and that we won't show up again. But we know how to sucker-punch, and we're coming out again in 2010," Sharpton said.

Speakers at the Sharpton rally praised Obama and took jabs at the Tea Party.

"Dr. King gave us a miracle in 2008. He gave us the first African-American president, and we must let them know today that we support [Obama]," said John Boyd, Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association.

D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said Beck's rally "would change nothing. ... We will move right over you."

Education Department spokeswoman Sandra Abrevaya defended Duncan's decision. "This was a back-to-school event," she said.

Back to school, indeed. But imagine if this had happened during in the Bush years. Imagine if a sitting cabinet secretary had written a memo to employees reminding them about a political event -- maybe, and I'm just fantasizing here, a Thank You, Vice President Dick Cheney rally on the Mall.

It would have been a six-act, tear-stained, wailing finish melodrama, with lots of talk of "concern" and "chilling effects" and "coercion" from all of the usual suspects.

This past weekend, Vanity Fair released the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll that finds that a third of adults polled nationwide believe in ghosts, 46% think taxing tanning at a salon is a bad idea, and 76% are just as likely to see Mel Gibson's movies now as they were before he became known for his racist rants. All in all, the poll asks pretty worthless questions. But one question's results are garnering a bit of attention throughout the blogosphere. The question:

Do you think SARAH PALIN would have the ability to be an EFFECTIVE PRESIDENT?

All adults: No = 59%; Yes = 26%; spread of -33%

Republicans: No = 40%; Yes = 47%; spread of +7%

Democrats: No = 75%; Yes = 12%; spread of -63%

Independents: No = 63%; Yes = 21%; spread of -42%

Liberals: No = 80%; Yes = 15%; Spread of -65%

Moderates: No = 70%; Yes = 19%; Spread of -49%

Conservatives: No = 40%; Yes = 41%; Spread of +1%

I tend to agree with William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection on this one:

These Vanity Fair polls are a joke; there are few choices given to the interviewees, there is no depth of questioning, and they mix pop culture questions in with political questions.

But I'm also curious about the discrepancy between Republicans and Conservatives. As Christian Heinze over at GOP12 asks:

Why would conservatives be more likely than Republicans, at large, to doubt Palin's executive abilities?

From Time this morning:

... a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that - for reasons that aren't entirely clear - abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one's risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers' mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

Moderate drinking, which is defined as one to three drinks per day, is associated with the lowest mortality rates in alcohol studies.

Some of us have known this, however unscientifically, since our early twenties. But it's nice to see the puritanical/nanny impulse in our society butt up against inconvenient facts.... I'm sure it will be just another decade or so before somebody finds "CFLs Found More Harmful to Environment than Iridescent Bulbs." How many times do the know-it-alls have to be reminded -- there are way too many things we just don't know??

As many of you know—especially those of you who plan your social life around the Mayan calendar—the end of the world is coming in 2012. Recently, a hit film simply called 2012 showed the planet cracking up and threatening not only the earth’s nearly 7-billion people, but even worse, John Cusack and his family.

The Mayans—like the Aztecs—were a fairly well-advanced civilization in southern North America. They built great monuments, had advanced mathematical and scientific systems, and, all in all, despite minor issues with things like human sacrifice and slavery, were pretty well ahead of their time.

I don’t know all the arguments for and against, but there are people who believe the Mayan calendar points to the world ending on December 21, 2012. All sorts of websites have sprung up with information on just how this will happen; something about sunspots or colliding galaxies or Rosie O’Donnell getting a new talk show. Whatever it is, supposedly nations are preparing by building secret underground chambers for their leadership and some of their population. Now I’m not smart enough to figure out whether any of this is real, and, to tell you the truth, I’d feel better if the Mayans had been able to predict the end of their own civilization. Still, I'm thinking about fast-tracking my bucket list just in case.

There are some upsides to the impending apocalypse. For example, coming a few days before Christmas, I won’t have to do any gift shopping in 2012. And in the off chance the world doesn’t end, there would still be a few days left to pick up some stuff at the mall. It would also mean the 2012 Presidential election would be our last, so we wouldn’t have to endure to any more political campaigns, and it would also mean the end of the Kardashians.

I don’t mean to make light of the end of the world, but it’s just that there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it. So I’m just going to try to enjoy the next 28 months or so. After all, if John Cusack survived, maybe I can, too.

A few federal court opinions have been making a big public splash recently by taking surprising positions on how the Fourth Amendment applies to location surveillance. The latest opinion in the line is Magistrate Judge James Orenstein’s decision in In The Matter Of An Application Of The United States Of America And Order For An Order Authorizing The Release Of Historical Cell-Site Information, handed down on Friday. The decision holds that historical cell-cite data — records generated by cell phone providers in the ordinary course of business that indicate which cell towers were communicating with a phone, and thus, the rough location of the phone — are protected by the Fourth Amendment and its warrant requirement.

It’s only a decision by a Magistrate Judge, and it is not binding on anyone. But it is an extraordinary opinion, in my view: It’s an extraordinary result, reached in an extraordinary way, and based on an extraordinary number of errors. -- Orin Kerr

The question of surveillance and its relationship to the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures has been a huge problem for years. Clearly it is a search to enter someone's house and ransack its contents. It has long been held a search to listen to a phone call or to intercept and read a letter or email. But in Smith v. Maryland (1976), it was held that simply tracking who made a phone call to whom was a form of surveillance that did not involve a search. It was no different from watching someone walk up and down the street, from which it was possible to draw inferences as to unlawful behavior. No warrant was needed. With historical cell-site data, the government in effect learns which communication towers are used to transmit calls from a given call, which allows it to track the whereabouts of a suspect. Something known as the Stored Communications Act restricts the ability of the government to undertake this surveillance to cases where there is a "reasonable suspicion" of wrongdoing, which is a lower standard than the "probable cause" needed for a warrant under the Fourth Amendment.

So the question is whether the continuous monitoring goes beyond that of tracking phone numbers, and I confess that it is hard to see the distinction. A recent District of Columbia case held that placing a GPS device on a car was a search, which is explicable given that there is a trespass to the property of the party whose motion is tracked. Yet that case itself might not survive Supreme Court scrutiny given that the trespass did not allow the government to overhear conversations like the traditional phone tap. It is clear that the issue is headed for higher places. With each new generation of technical advances, the ability to watch over and track citizens increases—along with the need to do both. My sense is that in the end the distinction between fact of communication and content of communication will turn out to be the only workable line. It tracks reasonably well the privacy interests that the Fourth Amendment protections. But it is not the be-all-and-end-all of tests. But then again nothing is in connection with the Fourth Amendment.

Facing a retrial on 23 counts of corruption, ex-governor Blagojevich has found the perfect way to show potential jurors that he's actually a crusading reformer, namely, a guest appearance at the Wizard World Chicago Comic Convention 2010 (h/t Kevin Underhill's "Lowering the Bar" column at Forbes).

Here's Blago sitting at the wheel of the original Batmobile. He posed for photos, hung out with original Batman Adam West, and sold autographs for $50 a pop (replenishing that defense fund!).

It's worth remembering that not so long ago, the President used to have weekly strategy meetings with this guy. But then again, he also went to Rev. Wright's weekly sermons.

As if global politics weren't turbulent enough, the Obama administration better start thinking about impending dynastic successions in two different but very dangerous places. Read this Economist article for a brief rundown on Egypt, where dictator Hosni Mubarak is mortally ill and laying the groundwork for a transfer of power to his sun Gamal. Egypt is widely regarded as the most important country in the Middle East, and while Mubarak is no democrat, he has kept the peace with Israel and fought jihadist terror. It's not only his son jockeying for position, however. The Muslim Brotherhood is an important force in Egyptian politics, and it may make a play to rule if it sees an opportunity. Meanwhile, Egyptian democrats like Ayman Noor and Mohamed El-Baradei are also in the mix.

Then there's North Korea. Kim Jong-Il's slave state is on the cusp of meltdown. (Read Barbara Demick's excellent New Yorker article on Kim's disastrous November 2009 currency "reform.") Kim has traveled twice to China in recent months, perhaps introducing his Chinese patrons to his son, Kim Jong-Un. Noko watchers say the elder Kim will designate his son heir at an upcoming party conference. But will the North Korean military, political, and intelligence establishments accept a third Kim as god-king?

The White House has a full foreign-policy plate already. Is it ready for a second helping?

Read Shikha Dalmia at Forbes:

The General Motors IPO, the second largest ever, is arguably this decade's most hyped financial event. But it might also turn out to be this decade's biggest financial fiasco. Its timing is driven not by the financial needs of the company-- or the interests of taxpayers who are poised to get royally screwed--but the election-year needs of the Obama administration.

[...] potential investors are likely to take a dim view of the company's prospects right now, making it nearly impossible for taxpayers who still have somewhere between $40 billion to $60 billion "invested" in it to come out whole. For that to happen, the Treasury's 304 million of the company's 500 million common shares would need to average $131 to $197 per share, notes Brad Coulter director at O'Keefe & Associates, a Michigan-based corporate finance firm. That would put GM's implied valuation at somewhere between $65 billion to $98 billion.

To understand just how absurdly high this is consider that Ford Motor Company, whose earnings are expected to be six times those of GM, has a market value of only $40 billion. "There is no rational reason for investors to choose GM relative to Ford right now," notes Francis Gaskin of IPODesk.com. But even if investors valued both companies the same that would still represent a 50% loss for taxpayers. It was always unlikely that taxpayers would ever recover their entire investment, but a more auspiciously timed IPO might at least have limited their losses.

Tonight, in his Oval Office address on the Iraq War, President Obama will studiously avoid one very tarnished phrase. But, as Dalmia notes, if actions speak louder than words, the GM IPO makes for one very large MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner. Quite the backdrop for a prime time address.

It's still early, yet, but it's not that early. There's something happening, here, and what it is is pretty straightforward: the Democrats in Congress and the White House are not very popular, and they are not very popular because of their policies. Yesterday Diane noted Gallup's new poll showing a ten-point Republican lead on the generic Congressional ballot -- the largest such margin in history -- and Rasmussen's finding that voters trust the GOP over the Dems on all ten of the issues regularly tracked by the polling shop. But wait -- there's more.

* "[T]he gap between registered and likely voter polls this year," writes Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, "is about 4 points in the Republicans’ favor — so a 10-point lead in a registered voter poll is the equivalent of about 14 points on a likely-voter basis. Thus, even if this particular Gallup survey was an outlier, it’s not unlikely that we’ll begin to see some 8-, 9-, 10-point leads for Republicans in this poll somewhat routinely once Gallup switches over to a likely voter model at some point after Labor Day — unless Democrats do something to get the momentum back."

* One of two Republicans -- compared to only one of four Democrats -- are "very" enthusiastic about voting in November. The GOP's advantage is the largest of the year. (Gallup)

* One of three likely voters polled say the country is headed in the right direction. Almost three out of four independents say the country is on the wrong track. (Rasmussen)

Here's a visual aid to put that in perspective:

If bad right track/wrong track numbers are the kiss of death for a party in power, trend lines like these are akin to a makeout session with the grim reaper.

Look way back at the very beginning of the graph, in the top left hand corner. See that 70% wrong track reading? That's right: we have yet to reach the upper limit of our national disgruntlement. Republicans would do well to guard against peaking too early. But this kind of deep dissatisfaction doesn't look like a peak.

Last week, a decrepit Kim Jong-il took a midnight train from North Korea into China, where he met with Chinese president Hu Jintao in the northern Chinese industrial city of Changchun.The trip had two probable motives. The first was to avoid having to meet Jimmy Carter, who was in Pyongyang to free an American citizen. The Dear Leader can be forgiven his desire to skip an encounter with the world's most irritating man.The second motive was probably to introduce his son and heir, Kim Jong-un -- dubbed Youth Captain -- to his Chinese overlords. After a long struggle, a consensus has emerged: Kim Jong-un is the new Kim on the Block. So what do we know about the Youth Captain? Not much. A photo of him as a boy is on the right. Other than that, you know, the usual. From the Chosun-Ilbo:

Those who knew "Pak Un," the name he used at the Swiss school, say he was indifferent to political issues and never made any anti-American comments. He worshipped basketball players in the NBA. A friend who visited his apartment at #10, Kirchstrasse, Liebefeld, recalls that Kim had a room filled with NBA-memorabilia.

In class, Pak Un was generally shy and awkward with girls, but he became a different person on basketball court, according to his classmates. "A fiercely competitive player," said classmate Nikola Kovacevic. "He was very explosive. He could make things happen. He was the playmaker."

Kim also had a collection of Nike sneakers. "We only dreamed about having such shoes. He was wearing them," recalled Kovacevic, who estimated the price of each pair at around US$200.

Shy and awkward with girls? Loves basketball? We can work with that, right? May I suggest Special Envoys to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Kobe Bryant?

There's a new book out that changes everything. Just listen:

Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science--as well as religious and cultural institutions--has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.

How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can't be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. While debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book.

Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. [...] The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.

Polyamory: the last refuge of a socialist. In an era when radical egalitarianism has been intellectually discredited as a political program, good old sex is there to fuel the emotional fantasies of the frustrated leveler. We're hardwired to share everything! Exclusivity is a social construct at the most fundamental level -- that of our own bodies! Take that, Aristotle! Over to you, Megan:

Lifetime monogamy may not be the evolved human template. But I'm pretty sure that carefree polyamory isn't either. And at some level, who cares? Rape seems to be pretty "natural", but I'd still like to build social institutions that fight this "natural instinct". The book might have been thought-provoking, but so far, in trying to prove too much, they end up proving nothing at all. And the "I bet you didn't know about . . . bonobos!!!!" tone is incredibly off-putting.

Look: since the time of the prophets and the philosophers we have known (no need for scare quotes) that we humans are naturally apt to fantasize simultaneously about natural and unnatural things. There's something exciting about purposefully imagining a conflation of what's natural with what isn't. What else, to provide a chaste example, is the human longing for flight? It seems to me safe to say that our nature is eminently compatible with a monogamous sexual order, but that our nature doesn't dictate any sexual order, monogamous, bigamous, polygamous, or anything else. Our nature as human animals is to want to eat our cake and have it too when it comes to order of any kind. We want the benefits of compliance when we want them, and we want the benefits of noncompliance when we want those, too. This isn't the first time that the fantasy of sexual socialism has led progressive crusaders to run up the banner reading Eros Lo Volt!, and it won't be the last. But it's time we stopped taking them seriously.

One of the favorite topics for left-leaning reporters is the deep and crippling rift splitting apart the Republican Party.

I mean, it must be one of their favorites, because they trot it out all the time. Go ahead: Google deep rifts in the Republican party or split in the Republican party for a sample. The left seems awfully concerned about the Republican party's unity.

Of course, it's all fantasy and wish-fufillment. They spin themselves into a cozy cocoon with visions of rifts and splits and civil wars on the right, none of which have ever erupted.

Meanwhile, as the always witty and insightful Russ Smith points out on Splice Today, it's the left that's falling apart:

There’s a bounty of disharmony on the left, but a few pieces stick out, as former brothers-in-arm are now in opposing camps: David Corn and John Judis, for example, fret that Obama has blown, at least for now, a unique opportunity; on the other hand, E.J. Dionne and Jonathan Alter, represent the faction who simply can’t believe Americans are so dumb that they can’t comprehend the astonishing progress Obama has made in his first term, even if it hasn’t been communicated in the most efficacious manner.

It's all part of the Kubler-Ross model, the Five Stages of Grief. Now they're turning to Stage Two: Anger. Angry at the voters, at Fox News, at Obama himself.

Next up: Bargaining. I'm not sure when that's going to start -- probably a few weeks after Labor Day. But as always, what we're all waiting for is Stage Four: Depression.

Stage Five is Acceptance, but I'm not holding my breath for that one.

More from Rob Long

Sarah Palin or Jan Brewer?

Imagine If Bush Had Done This, Part 9,623

New Nork Ruler: Loves Basketball, Shy With Girls

The Midterm Elections: Animated. In Chinese.

Via Dave Weigel, who remarks, rightly: "Interesting." Here's Huckabee's video. Why the thanks? "In taking on the federal government’s new health care law," Huckabee tells Cuccinelli, "you are doing what’s right. I appreciate your efforts on behalf of Virginians and all Americans who are frustrated with this unprecedented expansion of the federal government’s powers."

Is it a simple stunt? Maybe it's a stunt and a nice idea, too. That's the fun thing about politics. One thing is certain: Huck '12 speculation? Fueled.

I can't make heads or tails of this story about today's foiled terrorist attack:

Airport security screeners in Birmingham, Alabama first stopped al Soofi and referred him to additional screening because of what officials said was his "bulky clothing."

In addition, officials said, al Soofi was found to be carrying $7,000 in cash and a check of his luggage found a cell phone taped to a Pepto-Bismol bottle, three cell phones taped together, several watches taped together, a box cutter and three large knives. Officials said there was no indication of explosives and he and his luggage were cleared for the flight from Birmingham to Chicago O'Hare.

Have I understood this correctly? They found a box cutter, a knife collection and "mock bombs" in his luggage, and then let him fly through to to Amsterdam? Maybe ABC was just so eager to get the scoop here that they left some key part of this story out? The part that would make me think the TSA does in fact care whether planes are blown out of the sky? I think this is just badly written, or "developing," as they say, but if it really happened this way, consider me dissatisfied with the TSA's performance--not that I was a huge fan to begin with.

Sorry about your Chardonnay, Denise.

About ten weeks until the midterm elections, the Republicans have taken a 10 point lead in the generic ballot. The latest Gallup poll is here.

But, honestly, I prefer to get my news from our friends at Next Media in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Their hilariously Chinese animated explanation of the coming midterms is here, and it's really worth a click.

I say "our friends at Next Media" because they are our friends -- we've got some Next Media folk as members -- and because the founder of the company, Jimmy Lai, is a true defender of liberty and a thorn in the side of the oligarchs in Beijing.

Look, you can get your news from graphs or an RSS feed or boring old newspaper articles, or you can get it from funny cartoons from Taiwan who put Carly Fiorina on a giant elephant.

My choice is made.

Some encouraging news for Republicans from the newest Gallup poll:

Republicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP's largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress.

Gallup's poll comes on the heels of last week's Rasmussen poll showing that voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on all ten key issues.

The million dollar question: will pro-GOP sentiment reach its crescendo too early, or will the numbers continue to improve leading into November?

Today's Uncommon Knowledge segment with Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi has produced a couple of comments about the GOP and the "Southern Strategy." The basic question: In appealing to the South, did the GOP play on racism? Back in the Fifties and Sixties, GOP backed a few unsavory candidates. But the work of historian Gerard Alexander--superb, searching work, thoroughly documented--demonstrates that the basic answer is "no." For a brief example of Alexander's work, take a look at his 2004 essay in the Claremont Review of Books.

An excerpt:

The mythmakers typically draw on two types of evidence. First, they argue that the GOP deliberately crafted its core messages to accommodate Southern racists. Second, they find proof in the electoral pudding: the GOP captured the core of the Southern white backlash vote. But neither type of evidence is very persuasive. It is not at all clear that the GOP's policy positions are sugar-coated racist appeals. And election results show that the GOP became the South's dominant party in the least racist phase of the region's history, and got—and stays—that way as the party of the upwardly mobile, more socially conservative, openly patriotic middle-class, not of white solidarity.

We’ve been talking quite a bit here on Ricochet about the unholy mixture—as I see it—of the religious and the sacred with the secular and the profane.

To that end, yesterday evening, I attended a wonderful evensong service at the National Cathedral in Washington DC—a building whose architectural splendors rival that of Notre Dame in Paris. This was the scene of Ronald Reagan’s funeral, as well as that of Woodrow Wilson’s, Dwight Eisenhower’s, and Gerald Ford’s.

After the service, which ended around 4.30pm, I toured the beautiful grounds to have a few quiet moments and settled down in a courtyard in front of a steely, modernist fountain that felt like an unwelcome intruder in this gothic church.

Then the unnecessary gave way to the unwanted when I spotted something else that seemed way out of place. Three young girls, dressed in spike heels, and skin-tight, see-through white outfits began provocatively posing and photographing each other on the cathedral grounds. And when I mean provocative, I mean even Justice Potter Stewart might have proclaimed these little hotties to be pornographic if he’d lived to see them—it was like they were making love to the archways that they were pressing up against. I caught one of the gyrating poses with my cell phone’s camera, above.

It gave me a good laugh, how out of place they were. But it also made me queasy. I knew that the church’s chaplain was somewhere nearby, ushering the tourists out of the church since it was about to close, and I kept wondering what he would make of the sacrilege being committed against the archways of the garden.

It also reminded me of something a former boss of mine said. This was a couple of years after Reagan’s funeral. I was interning at a magazine and my boss there one day told me about attending Reagan’s funeral at National Cathedral. He was rhapsodizing sweetly over the sanctity of the church, the heaviness of the event, and all the magnificent people who were there to attend President Reagan’s passing when my boss then came to a full pause and said: “And then I saw Clinton. He was leaning back in the pews, with his legs crossed.” Then he paused again. “It was just so disrespectful—to sit like that, in God’s house.”

I wonder what my old boss would have made of the young aspiring internet bunnies I saw yesterday.

Up today, my Uncommon Knowledge interview with the governor of Mississippi, Ricochet's own Haley Barbour. Just go to the right hand side of the Ricochet homepage, scroll down until you see a picture of the governor and me, and then click. You'll be transported to National Review Online, where Uncommon Knowledge first appears.

Beginning with tomorrow's segment, the governor starts throwing punches. Today, though, he and I engage in a kind of warmup round, discussing his political origins. Which are pretty amazing. Haley Barbour chose to become a Republican activist at a time when Republicans accounted for only six percent of Mississippi voters.

What comes through in this segment, I think, is, well, flavor. By the time these five minutes are over, you know you're listening to a man who's tough and determined, intensely Southern, and utterly without pretense or guile. Also--and this is more important in a politician, I believe, than is generally realized--a sense of sheer enjoyment. Contrast, for example, our current chief executive, who less than two years into his job appears testy and petulant, with FDR and Reagan, who manifestly loved their work. Haley Barbour is in the Reagan school. He's having a high time.

After you click through to NRO to take a look, be sure to return to Ricochet to let us know what you think--or as Gov. Barbour would put it, Ya'll come back.

Global warming makes strange bedfellows. Eight states are suing a group of coal-burning utilities on the grounds that their greenhouse gas emissions constitute a "public nuisance." Last week the Obama Administration filed an amicus brief siding with . . . the utilities. The Natural Resources Defense Council declared itself "appalled."

It's not that Obama likes utilities, of course, but the Administration argues that the EPA's emerging plans to regulate greenhouse gases pre-empts state action. I'm no expert on pre-emption, but I don't buy it. For example, the EPA also regulates lead paint, but the feds never tried to stop the rash of state nuisance lawsuits on lead, like this one in California.

My guess -- and it's just a guess -- is that the Administration doesn't want the state attorneys general stealing Obama's thunder and taking the credit for tackling global warming. The pre-emption argument makes global warming an exclusively federal concern. Hey, if global warming is so bad, don't the feds want all the help they can get?

I'm on my way to Minneapolis for a day trip from San Francisco. I know, I know. But with fewer fellow taxpayers spinning the federal Wheel of Taxation in the old economic hamster cage, the rest of us have to run that much faster.

Minnesota is different. I can already tell in the SFO gate area. Amidst the iPhone tapping, Blackberry scanning and movie watching, two strawberry blond women are knitting. Yup, you betcha. Old fashioned, carbon-neutral, socially productive recreation.

Of course, it could be some sort of elaborate plot or TSA security test -- those knitting implements are awfully pointy. I hope I make it.

When I lived in Washington, it often struck me that the secret to reducing opposition to spending was to make it boring. The Congressional Budget Office has just confirmed this.

In an excellent posting on his own excellent website, my former White House colleague Keith Hennessey discusses the arithmetic that went into the CBO's finding that Obamacare would "reduce federal budget deficits over the 2010-2019 period by a total of $143 billion." Now -- five months later -- they reveal the math: while mandatory outlays were projected to rise by $401 billion, revenues would go up $525 billion.

I'm not going to repeat everything Keith says here: he is one of the cleanest writers on economics out there, so it's worth seeing for yourself. He doesn't fault the CBO scoring. But he rightly points out that we would have had a more honest debate if people knew that the savings weren't cost or spending reductions but the result of expected higher revenues from higher taxes.

My daughter went back to school this morning and I regained my life and my morning touch-point with Ricochet!

Last Wednesday I flew to Santa Fe. The lines were horrendous, so my husband and I decided to carry on our bags, forgetting we had an expensive bottle of Far Niente Chardonnay nestled in our underwear. A birthday gift for our friend in New Mexico. Needless to say TSA took it. No surprise. But I was surprised that there was no system for retrieval. None. The only thing you can get back is a firearm...after your arrest. Nice.

The image of some bureaucrat kicking back with the fine wine he just happened to find amidst the shelves of six ounce shampoos really hacked me off. The goodly officer was kind enough to say if I had a friend, I could be ESCORTED back outside and hand it off. Luckily we had parked in a nearby lot, nearby being a mile, so I hoofed the lethal bottle back to my car, sweating and panting my way back in time for my plane.

The ultimate irony (and I hate irony) is that I don't drink wine. But hell if I'm giving it to the Feds.