Virginia Postrel has reviewed Gregg Easterbrook’s new book for the New York Post, and came away rather unimpressed.

Alex Knapp compares season 5 of Star Trek: The Next Generation with the same season of Deep Space Nine. I generally concur with Alex’s assessment that DS9 is the better series of the two—however, it’s the only Trek series I’ve never seen every episode of, so I’m looking forward to seeing the series when it comes to SpikeTV later this year (especially since the DVD sets of Trek are remarkably overpriced, even when compared to genre series like Stargate SG-1 and Babylon 5).

Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber is hosting an interesting discussion of libertarian principles on marriage and divorce that’s worth a read.

Jeremy Blachman of En Banc watched the Iowa Democratic debate today instead of having the good sense to watch the Packers–Seahawks game. I actually tried to watch a few minutes of it, but every time I switched it on I almost immediately felt like throwing something at the screen.

I’m not a huge fan of literacy tests, but I have make an exception: every candidate for public office should be required to present evidence of having taken—and passed—a course in economics at some point in their lives. Especially idiotic was one candidate’s pronouncement (I think it was Kerry’s) that free trade would be just dandy if every country was exactly the same; of course, if that were the case, you wouldn’t trade at all because nobody would have a comparative advantage.

Meanwhile, Steve Verdon examines another aspect of Democrats’ economic illiteracy—their obsession with outsourcing.

Chip Taylor, who’s done a nice redesign on his blog over the past couple of days, comments on David Brooks’ latest NYT column that articulates a new organizing principle for the Republican Party:

For my money, the best organizing principle for Republicans centers on the word “reform.” Republicans can modernize the (mostly Democratic) accomplishments of the 20th century. That would mean entitlement reform, tax reform, more welfare reform, education reform, immigration reform, tort reform and on and on. In all these areas, Republicans can progressively promote change, while Democrats remain the churlish defenders of the status quo.

Now, I’ll grant that consolidation and reform can be an effective political strategy: successive British governments since 1979, from Maggie Thatcher through John Major to Tony Blair, have essentially followed a course of reforming the most counterproductive aspect of Britain’s immediate post-war policies without eliminating the essentials of the welfare state. Perhaps Republicans can follow a similar tack—although I’m unsure that playing “Democrats lite” will be popular enough with the party base over the long term. On the other hand, if the apparent Deaniac-Krugman alliance continues to pull the Democrats to the left, Republicans may get the political center all to themselves for a few years before the Dems regain their collective senses.

Dear lord: as Kevin Aylward, Oliver Willis, and Lair Simon have noted, Britney Spears apparently got married on Saturday morning, to another 22-year-old named “Jason Allen Alexander” of Kentwood, La.—apparently unrelated to the KFC pitchman and former Seinfeld co-star. Quoth the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Rumors were flying late Saturday that the surprise wedding at the Little White Wedding Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip was in the process of being annulled.

Meanwhile, the Sidney Morning Herald pulls out the scare quotes normally reserved for such normative terms as “terrorist” to describe the happy event.

On TV at the moment on Turner Classic Movies is WarGames, one of my favorite movies from when I was a kid. And, somewhat apropos of Matthew’s discussion of such things, it features Ally Sheedy, my first actress crush.

Also noteworthy: the classic quotes:

Jennifer: [Falkner] wasn’t very old, was he?
David Lightman: Oh, he was pretty old, he was 41.
Jennifer: Wow, that is old.

and, on the “it flew over my head when I was seven” scale:

Malvin: I can’t believe it, Jim. That girl’s standing over there listening and you’re telling him about our back doors?

Then again, I suspect “back door” wasn’t quite in the vernacular in 1983.