Anybody doubt Ms Thomas knows the answer to just how many Jews can you fit into a Volkswagon…? Of course, she said this with a smile, so, you know — nuance. (h/t JHo)

Me: “I’ve got a joke for you, John. Ready? Why did the Elephant Man cross the road?” Merrick: “I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!” Me: “Oh. So you’ve already heard it. Me: Well then never mind.”

And only a couple years too late, too! Progress! Kimberly Strassel, WSJ: For those wondering what it would look like when the White House’s Chicago politics finally hit a Washington wall, the answer is Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff. A patronage-politics mentality brought the Obama team to this pass, and a shifty cleanup effort threatens to turn it into a political scandal. It took the eve of a holiday weekend

“U.S. Hiring Disappoints, Jobless Rate Falls to 9.7%,” Bloomberg: Employers in the U.S. hired fewer workers in May than forecast and Americans dropped out of the labor force, showing a lack of confidence in the recovery that may lead to slower economic growth. Payrolls rose by 431,000 last month, including a 411,000 jump in government hiring of temporary workers for the 2010 census, Labor Department figures in Washington showed today.

Two words: finally master the hacky sack!

At least, that’s what Michelle Malkin calls it. Flannery O’Connor, were she still alive, might have called it “A Good Man is (Still) Hard to Find.” God rest her perceptive soul.

I’ve already detailed how the ever-malleable Commerce Clause, after Raich, could hurt constitutional challenges to ObamaCare — though I suspect this time around Scalia would be less enthusiastic about its expansion, and so would walk back prior reasoning. Obama’s Justice Department likely realizes this as well, which is why they hope to delay any kind of legal ruling until after the November elections. Happily for classical liberalism, the Justice Department

John Judis, TNR: If the Tea Party movement, with its fanatic libertarianism and selfish individualism, were to gain any measure of power, it would wreak havoc on the economy (imagine America without a Federal Reserve System), shred the social safety net, and undermine what exists of the great American community. So I am not suggesting, as Christopher Caldwell did in the Financial Times, that “the Tea Party has no explicit

Peter Suderman, Reason’s “Hit and Run”: The coming battle over President Obama’s nomination of Donald Berwick to the top spot at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is, like the health care reform debate before it, a struggle between centralizers and decentralizers. Indeed, Berwick is an almost prototypical centralizer. In particular, he has repeatedly expressed fondness for Britain’s NICE, which does cost-benefit analysis for the country’s government-run health care

Don’t worry. Pretty soon you’ll have to give, if I ever decide to get credentialed as a Journalist, so you may as well use this next week as a sort of trial run. Thanks in advance! Friday update: Not so hot, actually. Thanks to the 10 folks who’ve contributed this month. Monday update: Tuesday will be the last day of the fundraiser. Thanks to all. I’ll be heading to SF