• Photos from Chile’s earthquake.
• British man jailed for six months for allowing people to smoke on his privately-owned property.
• Man quarantined after testing positive for TB. Naturally, he uses his time in isolation to make a charming, funny, self-produced rap video.
• NYU business prof sends complaining student a masterful dressing-down email.
• Some great selections from National Geographic’s international photography competition.
• ATF seizes shipment of toy guns.
• There’s really no part of your day-to-day life that politicians don’t feel they should be able to control.

So the men are terrible. They’re miles behind the women this year. It’s not really even worth going through the entire lineup. So many lost, nervy, forgettable performances. I’m not sure most of them are even capable of stepping it up. It’s Casey James, then Andrew Garcia, then everyone else.

James was great, and I can’t wait for him to try something more upbeat. Eager to see more bluesy guitar licks from him, too. But judges and Idol producers, please, stop playing up Kara Dioguardi’s crush on the guy. It was silly when she had him take his shirt off during his audition. Last night was just embarrassing.

I thought Garcia was very good too, despite what the judges said. Maybe his on-stage insularity was more apparent in the studio than it was on TV. But he sounded fantastic, and it’s a bit confusing for the judges to constantly be telling the contestants to “make the song yours,” then criticize this guy because they didn’t like how he altered the song.

Of the rest, Tyler Grady stands out as the biggest disappointment. I actually like the 70s shtick. But Grady was listless. If you’re going to invoke Jagger and Morrison, fuel up on the Adderall before you take the stage. I’m a huge fan of the Guess Who. That was one limp impersonation. I hoped for bigger things from this guy. Maybe it was nerves. I’ve thought Michael Lynche has been way overrated and overexposed through the preliminary rounds, and he confirmed that last night. Also, he’s the least healthy-looking personal trainer I’ve ever seen. Lee Dewyze has some promise, but I hate what he did to that Snow Patrol song. That song’s appeal is its hypnotic, shoegaze pull. Rasping it up and adding rock inflections completely killed the vibe.

Prediction: Tim Urban and John Park brought up the ass-end of a really mediocre lineup.

• More Blackwater shenanigans. How is this company still getting federal contracts?
• The good news about this repugnant screed is just how anachronistic it reads. Comes off like the last angry death rattle of terminal worldview, doesn’t it? Also, do the scare quotes around the phrase radical regime mean that Cliff Kincaid sees nothing radical about Uganda’s plan to exterminate homosexuals?
• A gallery of old breakfast cereal ads.
• Toll collectors gone wild!
• Obama exercises his SOTU-promised “belt-tightening” with plans for a new, $1 billion U.S. embassy in London. Also, a friggin’ moat?
• So much going on in this photo.

I thought the judges were pretty harsh tonight. Seems like they’re a bit jaded, or forgetting that they’re judging the first round, not the finals. Overall, not a bad round of performances for these girls’ first time before a massive national audience.

Here’s how I’d rank them:

Lilly Scott
Sang: Fixin’ a Hole
Should Have Sung: I have no complaints.
Performance: Best of the night. Not sure what Simon’s talking about. She has plenty of star power. She’s confident, poised, and has her own sound. Don’t know how far her retro vocals will go with Idol voters, though.

Michelle Delamor
Sang: Fallen
Should Have Sung: Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer”
Performance: I’m not an Alicia Keyes fan, but she was great. Polished and confident. “Too commercial” was a strange criticism from the judges. To come out that strong and seemingly nerve-free this early was an accomplishment.

Katelyn Epperly
Sang: Oh Darlin’
Should Have Sung: This was a great choice.
Performance: Fantastic. Sexy, sultry, terrific stage presence. Kara was right about her knowing her voice, wrong about her look. I thought it fit the song rather well.

Didi Benami
Sang: The Way I Am
Should Have Sung: “What I Am,” by Edie Brickell.
Performance: The judges were way too hard on her. This was a great first performance. Different than the others, and a stripped-down arrangement. The arrangement smartly put lots of focus on her voice, which is pretty unique.

Crystal Bowersox
Sang: Hand in my Pocket
Should Have Sung: Bob Dylan’s “Shelter From the Storm”
Performance: I like Bowersox quite a bit, but this was a little disappointing. Song choice was too predictable. Also, the harmonica’s a nice touch, but if she’s going to play it, she needs to play it correctly. It was off last night. Her terrific voice, phrasing, and inflection overcame both, but I figured she’d have been one of the front runners after the first week. She came up a bit short of that.

Siobhan Magnus
Sang: Wicked Game
Should Have Sung: Pretty good choice.
Performance: Had some doubts when she first came out. Lower register was off key (I think she had a mic problem, too). But recovered really nicely. Strongest finish of the night. But I’m also a big Chris Isaac fan.

Ashley Rodriguez
Sang: Happy
Should Have Sang: John Hiatt’s “Have a Little Faith in Me”
Performance: She was good, if a little boring. She has a very good, but very generic voice. Needs to pick some unconventional songs to stand out. It’ll probably help that she’s hot.

Janell Wheeler
Sang: What About Love
Should Have Sung: Alanah Miles’ “Black Velvet”
Performance: Verses sounded great, but she didn’t have the chops to bring home the big chorus. Both the song and the band got away from her. I like her, though. And like Rodriguez, her looks will help her through if she breaks off a couple weak performances early on.

Katie Stevens
Sang: Feelin’ Good
Should Have Sung: Maybe some Dusty Springfield?
Performance: She’s good. Another contestant the judges were way too hard on. They’re probably right that she needs to go younger and more playful next time around, though.

Paige Miles
Sang: All Right Now
Should Have Sung: I thought the song choice was pleasantly quirky, but she should have slowed it down, or quieted the band for a more stripped-down arrangement.
Performance: Not very memorable. She didn’t enunciate the lyrics well, and her voice was drowned out by the band. Seems like a common problem in the early rounds with people who pick songs with a strong guitar line. Strong finish, though. Still, she may be gone.

Haeley Vaughan
Sang: I Want To Hold Your Hand
Should Have Sung: Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”
Performance: I’ve been perplexed by the judges’ fascination with her up to this point. Is it the novelty of a black teenage girl who wants to be a country star? I find her annoying, and Simon’s description of her last night as a smiling wind-up doll was spot-on. I’m sure she’s a nice kid. I just don’t get the appeal.

Lacey Brown
Sang: Landslide
Should Have Sung: Anything else.
Performance: I think these last two were the only really bad performances. This one was all over the place. The choice to sing parts in duet with a male backup singer was a terrible one. She also lost her place, and was off-key throughout the song. Too bad. She had some good moments in the preliminary rounds.

Prediction: Brown and Vaughan should be gone. But Vaughan got so much publicity in the early rounds, she’s probably established enough of a fan base to get through. So I think Brown and Miles go home Thursday.

…is my kind of conservative.

• Man arrested for using publicly-owned equipment to make polka videos.
• Next up: an animal abuse registry.
• Respected journalists take money from Church of Scientology to investigate newspaper that has been investigating Scientology.
• Twitter feed turns into TV series.
• Speaking of Twitter, all credit to PJ Doland, who hosts this site, for the greatest Tweet tweeted to date. I’m amused that the Dalai Lama is now on Twitter. I picture him sitting on a rock, lotus-style, high atop a Tibetan mountain, giggling as he re-tweets stuff Ashton Kutcher and Shaquille O’Neal write, perhaps adding the occasional “QFT!”.
• Today on Judge Judy: the case of the cat-killing hipster.

So how long until this idiot gets caught in a public bathroom with a male prostitute?

I give it five years. It’s encouraging that he was booed, though. That wouldn’t have happened ten years ago. Or even five.

The rights theory babble is incomprehensible. Natural rights theory says we all own our own bodies, and own the product of our own labor. Not sure how you get from that to an argument that the government should be allowed to discriminate against you based on whom you allow to access your body.

(Note of explanation: The clip in the link is from a panel at this week’s Conservative Political Action Committee, the annual gathering of the righty acitvists in D.C.)

Lovely:

A libertarian flies a plane into an IRS building and you have nothing to say about it. That’s odd.

Wayne Nix

Sorry for my silence. It’s just that yesterday’s events have stunned me into a moral crisis. I’ve been up all night recontemplating my entire political philosophy. It’s so clear now how a philosophy that espouses nonviolence and peaceful, voluntary exchange could drive a man to fly a plane into a building in a murderous, suicidal act of hate.

I can’t believe I didn’t see it all along.

From the people who brought you Flat Daddy….

(And yes, it appears to be real.)

Just realized that Sunday marked the eighth anniversary of this blog.

Many of the college students I spoke to this weekend were in elementary school when I started blogging.

That’s crazy.

Coming soon…

Mary Beth Buchanan is running for Congress.

I’m trying to think of someone I’d less rather see in Washington.

The list is pretty short. Bill Belichick, maybe.

CNN reports has a story on parents who are fighting state efforts to keep newborn DNA on file after the child is tested for genetic defects.

The genetic tests are done without the parents’ consent, and some states then keep the DNA profiles for years. State laws vary on length of time the samples are kept, from just a few days in many states; to Indiana and New Jersey’s oddly specific 23-year cutoff; to California and Florida, which keep the DNA “indefinitely.”

States also vary on whether the newborns’ names are attached to the samples, and the procedures by which the DNA profiles are loaned out to academic researchers.

Damn, Tampa.

Talk about taking the show on the road.

Déjà Vu, a gentlemen’s club located on East Adamo Drive, has started driving what it calls the “Stripper Mobile” around town. The “Stripper Mobile” is a large truck with Plexiglas sides featuring a stripper pole and dancers inside, sort of like a peep show on wheels.

Reaction so far, according to Déjà Vu dancer Bree, has been crazy.

“Everybody’s taking pictures and running up and screaming and trying to get on the bus and throwing dollars outside. It’s actually very exciting,” she said.

The “Stripper Mobile” was originally driven in Las Vegas until local leaders there put the brakes on the vehicle last November. The owners eventually sent it to Tampa, where Déjà Vu’s general manager says they’re taking it out on Friday and Saturday nights between 10 P.M. and 2 A.M. in places like Ybor, Channelside and South Howard Ave.

“We have had a few frowns here and there, but for the most part it’s all thumbs up,” he said.

Apparently, even Vegas passed on the idea when it was first tried there.

Over the weekend, I spoke at the third annual International Students for Liberty conference.

All due props to Alexander McCobin, who started this organization. I’ve spoken at two of their big conferences, a regional conference, and at several campus chapters around the country. I’m a little more impressed by these students every time I speak to them.

This year there were about 250 students in attendance from all over the country. These kids are smart, engaging, interested, and incredibly well-read. I didn’t talk to a crazy person all weekend. Better yet, the conference was surprisingly gender-balanced. Diverse, too.

I don’t think I even heard the word libertarian until about my junior year in college, and I went to large Big Ten school. It’s great to see that that’s changing. At a couple schools I’ve spoken to in the last couple years, the SFL chapter is larger than the College Republicans or College Democrats. At many, they’re more active.

It’s been encouraging and heartening not only to watch the organization grow, but to grow without making least-common-denominator appeals to the nuttier, conspiratorial fringes of libertarianism.

Almost enough to temporarily relieve me of my cynicism. Almost!

This may be the greatest thing I have ever seen.

Weird poll of the day: According to a new New York Times/CBS News survey, 79 percent of respondents who identified as Democrats say they favor allowing gay men and lesbians to serve in the military, and 60 percent favor allowing them to serve openly.

But according to the same poll, only 59 percent of Democrats favor allowing homosexuals to serve, and only 44 percent favor allowing them to serve openly.

According to the New York Times’ “The Caucus” blog, the weird disparity wasn’t as prominent with Republicans and independents.

(DISCLOSURE: I enjoy brunch more than any straight man should.)