Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Via Iowahawk through Glenn Reynolds.

Oscar E. forwarded this excellent Blues song.

LA Times:

Just after midnight Saturday morning, authorities descended on the Cerritos home of the man believed to be the filmmaker behind the anti-Muslim movie that has sparked protests and rioting in the Muslim world.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies escorted a man believed to be Nakoula Basseley Nakoula to an awaiting car. The man declined to answer questions on his way out and wore a hat and a scarf over his face. He kept his hands in the pockets of a winter coat.

Sheriff’s officials could not be reached by The Times, but department spokesman Steve Whitmore told KNBC News that deputies assisting the federal probation department took Nakoula to the sheriff’s substation in Cerritos for interviewing.

[Updated at 1:40 a.m. July 15, 2012: Whitmore told The Times that Nakoula was taken in for a voluntary interview with probation officials and has not been arrested or detained.]

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His many thousands of regular readers undoubtedly recognize that Glenn Reynolds is a harmless and mild-mannered intellectual guy with the classic range of nerdy interests, whose characteristic response to the insanities and outrages he notes in the course of his blogging is a sharp witticism.

Early yesterday evening, the seismic recorders in the neighborhood of Knoxville, Tennessee undoubtedly jumped alarmingly, as Professor Reynolds underwent a highly uncharacteristic meltdown of pure, white hot indignation at the news story above reporting that the obscure individual reputedly associated with the 13:51 “Innocence of Muslims” video had been hauled off for questioning in the middle of the night by a small army of law enforcement officers, acting under what was obviously the most questionable kind of authority in a country with Constitutionally-guaranteed free speech.

WHY BARACK OBAMA SHOULD RESIGN Reynolds furiously labeled his posting, which has been accreating additional commentary and bitter humor all day.

Example: Paul Crabtree writes: “Although the midnight raid to punish free speech is beyond deplorable, I guess we should be relieved that the Nobel Prize winner didn’t order a drone strike on his house.” Heh. We probably don’t have to worry about those . . . in the first term.

Glenn Reynolds & his associates instantly correctly penetrated the official malarkey. Under American law, there is no possible crime anyone could be charged with for creating and publishing a video satirizing Islam. Bassley Nakoula was dragged out of his home in the middle of the night by the local Los Angeles branch of the Gestapo for embarrassing the regime.

Barack Obama enters the auditorium for his Las Vegas campaign rally yesterday.

As the caskets containing the bodies of four slain Americans were being unloaded from the plane, Barack Obama was tweeting about campaign sweatshirts.

We also learned today that the same Hillary Clinton who early on banned military uniforms from the Clinton White House signed the rules of engagement that left the US Ambassador in Benghazi without Marine protection and defended by local guards without ammunition.

“It was the policy of the Obama administration to have a low profile in Libya. That’s why the rules of engagement were approved by the Secretary of State to have no Marines at Benghazi, and to have an American contractor hire Libyan nationals to provide security there. The rules were they couldn’t have ammunition.”

Mark Steyn, the Juvenal of the Decline and Fall of the American Republic, had some sharp comments.

When it comes to a flailing, blundering superpower, I am generally wary of ascribing to malevolence what is more often sheer stupidity and incompetence. For example, we’re told that, because the consulate in Benghazi was designated as an “interim facility,” it did not warrant the level of security and protection that, say, an embassy in Scandinavia would have. This seems all too plausible – that security decisions are made not by individual human judgment but according to whichever rule-book sub-clause at the Federal Agency of Bureaucratic Facilities Regulation it happens to fall under. However, the very next day the embassy in Yemen, which is a permanent facility, was also overrun, as was the embassy in Tunisia the day after. Look, these are tough crowds, as the president might say at Caesar’s Palace. But we spend more money on these joints than anybody else, and they’re as easy to overrun as the Belgian Consulate.

I’m inclined to be generous, and put some of this down to the natural torpor and ineptitude of government. But Hillary Clinton and Gen. Martin Dempsey are guilty of something worse, in the Secretary of State’s weirdly obsessive remarks about an obscure film supposedly disrespectful of Mohammed and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ telephone call to a private citizen, asking him if he could please ease up on the old Islamophobia.

In this case, as Secretary Clinton and Gen. Dempsey well know, the film has even less to do with anything than did the Danish cartoons or the schoolteacher’s teddy bear or any of the other innumerable grievances of Islam. The 400-strong assault force in Benghazi showed up with RPGs and mortars: that’s not a spontaneous movie protest; that’s an act of war, and better planned and executed than the dying superpower’s response to it. Secretary Clinton and Gen. Dempsey are, to put it mildly, misleading the American people when they suggest otherwise.

One can understand why they might do this, given the fiasco in Libya. The men who organized this attack knew the ambassador would be at the consulate in Benghazi rather than at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. How did that happen? They knew when he had been moved from the consulate to a “safe house,” and switched their attentions accordingly. How did that happen? The United States government lost track of its ambassador for 10 hours. How did that happen? Perhaps, when they’ve investigated Mitt Romney’s press release for another three or four weeks, the court eunuchs of the American media might like to look into some of these fascinating questions, instead of leaving the only interesting reporting on an American story to the foreign press.

For whatever reason, Secretary Clinton chose to double down on misleading the American people. “Libyans carried Chris’ body to the hospital,” said Mrs. Clinton. That’s one way of putting it. The photographs at the Arab TV network al-Mayadeen show Chris Stevens’ body being dragged through the streets, while the locals take souvenir photographs on their cellphones. A man in a red striped shirt photographs the dead-eyed ambassador from above; another immediately behind his head moves the splayed arm and holds his cellphone camera an inch from the ambassador’s nose. Some years ago, I had occasion to assist in moving the body of a dead man: We did not stop to take photographs en route. Even allowing for cultural differences, this looks less like “carrying Chris’ body to the hospital” and more like barbarians gleefully feasting on the spoils of savagery.

In a rare appearance on a non-showbiz outlet, President Obama, winging it on Telemundo, told his host that Egypt was neither an ally nor an enemy. I can understand why it can be difficult to figure out, but here’s an easy way to tell: Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, said some years ago that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. At the Benghazi consulate, the looters stole “sensitive” papers revealing the names of Libyans who’ve cooperated with the United States. Oh, well. As the president would say, obviously our hearts are with you.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the local doctor who fingered bin Laden to the Americans sits in jail. In other words, while America’s clod vice-president staggers around, pimping limply that only Obama had the guts to take the toughest decision anyone’s ever had to take, the poor schlub who actually did have the guts, who actually took the tough decision in a part of the world where taking tough decisions can get you killed, languishes in a cell because Washington would not lift a finger to help him.

Like I said, no novelist would contrast Chris Stevens on the streets of Benghazi and Barack Obama on stage in Vegas. Too crude, too telling, too devastating.

Here we are with a presidential election right around the corner. An insurgent conservative Republican is challenging an incumbent ultra-left liberal democrat. The US economy is in the toilet. Unemployment is terribly high. Gasoline prices are high enough to be a burden to American household incomes. The economic experts in Washington have no solutions. And the president tells us that we must be patient, his approach will eventually produce a new and better economy, a more moral economy along European lines.

And now, we have again Islamic militants storming US embassies and violating civilized norms and international law by laying violent hands on American diplomats. What will this president do?

I suspect that, like Jimmy Carter, he is going to wring his hands and spout conventional liberal platitudes while the country frustratedly looks on, wondering why he is incapable of understanding that the nation’s honor has been violated, American blood has been shed, and action is required.

Barack Obama probably fails to understand that this moment, right now, is the turning point in which the 2012 election will either be won or lost. The incumbent president of the United States has been presented with a challenge and an opportunity to exercise leadership in a crisis situation. The voters who are going to decide in under 60 days are watching what he does and how her behaves. His response to the attacks on America all over the Islamic Middle East will determine his fate.

So far Barack Obama is echoing Jimmy Carter and relying on his media allies to protect him.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds for the illustrative video.

A lady biker sits on Biden’s lap today at Cruisers Diner in Seaman, Ohio (click on photo for larger image)

The Hill tells us that no details are available as to how exactly the biker chick wound up sitting on the Vice Presidential lap, or what happened subsequently.

Jim Geraghty (by morning email) admired the scene.

Everything about this picture is perfect: Her expression, his expression, her attire, the looks on the two bikers on either side, her hands gently resting in an almost-provocative fashion, the fact that we can’t see Biden’s hands . . .

Without the Secret Service, Sheriff Joe gets stomped like a NARC at a Hell’s Angel’s rally.

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The Biden-Biker Chick photo would have been strange enough for any weekend by itself, but apparently President Obama was not going to let himself be outdone by the likes of Biden.

Obama’s photo reminded people everywhere that Joe Biden is a heartbeat from the presidency.

Jim Geraghty observed, snarkily:

Okay, so maybe Biden gets the second-string Secret Service guys. Maybe they’re not quick enough to prevent some chick from moving in and sitting on the Vice President’s lap, but at least Obama’s staff is quick, silent, always watching the crowd for anyone who wants to reach out to the president and . . .

President Obama is lifted in the air by Scott Van Duzer, owner of the Big Apple Pizza owner.

If moderate voters see this video, it’s over.

“That’ll teach him to send back my bust!”

Hat tip to Mark Kirsnis.