On Friday, July 3, I will be filling in for Michele McPhee from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Boston's Talk Evolution 96.9 WTKK. Tune in to 96.9's strong FM signal in Boston and the surrounding environ. Outside New England? No problem. Click on listen live at their website to, well, listen live. So, information junkies, I ask you: what shall I talk about this Friday night?

No man is above the law, including presidents. The enthusiasm for this precept among presidents can be gauged by the reaction by Chavez, Castro, Ortega, and Obama to the removal of Honduran would-be usurper Mel Zelaya. Mary Anastasia O'Grady's piece in the Wall Street Journal is must-reading on this front. Zelaya, apparently hoping to become a minor-league Chavez (himself a minor-league Castro), disregarded the nation's constitution in an effort to extend the duration of his reign. "While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president," O'Grady writes. "A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress. But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had Mr. Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela." Shortly thereafter, the Honduran Supreme Court, aided by the military, decided Venezuela might be a better stomping grounds for the strongman Zelaya.

Don't turn on that switch. The lightbulb police maybe watching. "The first step we're taking sets new efficiency standards on fluorescent and incandescent lighting," President Obama announced yesterday at the White House. "Now I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and our businesses." It is getting dark.

"Oh God," Jacqueline Kennedy said after learning the identity of her husband's murderer. "Some silly little Communist. He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights." That reality became so difficult for tens of millions of people to swallow that they bought into tales of the CIA, the mafia, or some other shady power assassinating John F. Kennedy. Ordinary people won't allow extraordinary lives to suffer ordinary deaths. Elvis Presley didn't die on the toilet; he's in aisle six at WalMart. The British Royal Family, not a car crash, killed Princess Diana. The Kennedys, rather than the drugs, offed Marilyn Monroe. It's less than a week since Michael Jackson's death. We don't know exactly how he died. When we do know, count on people telling us that we really don't know how he died. They do. Many can't accept that larger than life figures are mere mortals when it comes to death.

Mixed martial artist Lee Murray's most famous fight took place outside of the octogon when he floored former UFC light-heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz with a series of punches on a London street. More significantly, this prize fighter seized his greatest prize outside of a cage when he masterminded the theft of $92 million from an English cash warehouse in 2006. Watch ESPN's two-part piece on Lightning Lee Murray, an amazing thug whose evasion of British justice in a Moroccan jail continues to frustrate British law enforcement.

You're realizing your age today if you grew up in the 1970s or '80s. Farrah Fawcett, whose iconic image was as ubiquitous on the bedroom walls of American teenage boys as Kim Il Sung's was in the homes of North Koreans, died of cancer at 62 yesterday. Age is the cruel fate of all sex symbols. In Fawcett's case, she not only contended with Father Time but with the public's changing tastes that dated what once symbolized sex. Demographics, and Sir-Mix-a-Lot, killed the bleach-blond anorexic's pin-up girl monopoly. But even twenty years after her heyday, '70s postergirl Fawcett so symbolized sex that her 1995 appearance in Playboy became the bestselling issue of the 1990s. To put this in perspective, an over-the-hill Farrah Fawcett beat Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, and Denise Richards in their primes. Six years after Farah Fawcett appeared on the bestselling poster of all time, Michael Jackson released the bestselling album in history. Thriller was so big that, not only did it inspire fashion and dancefloor trends, it outsold numbers two and three on the all-time list combined. Jackson, who before our eyes morphed from cuddly, precocious singing/dancing machine to the world's biggest pop star to Howard Hughes, died yesterday too. For Jackson, life's victory lap--that even an overweight and jumpsuited Elvis enjoyed--eluded him. The last image embedded in the public's mind is that of Michael Jackson in a courtroom rather than on a stage. A court of law acquitted him of sexually abusing a minor. The court of public opinion convicted him of being strange. Seeing Farrah Fawcett in her red bathing suit, or Michael Jackson moonwalking, brings us back to a time when we were young. News of their deaths reminds us that we're old.

Thirty years ago, Western intellectuals, inebriated by the anti-Americanism of the revolutionaries, looked upon the Iranian Revolution and saw themselves. When something quite different from responsive democracy, oil socialism, and commitment to peace materialized in Iran, the cognoscenti emerged with egg on their faces. Read my article @ City Journal to understand why those aghast at the anti-Americanism of the Persian theocracy risk making the same mistake by projecting their values upon today's revolutionaries rebelling against the Iranian old guard.

Cigars are about the only "luxury" items in which I indulge. I define luxury to mean unnecessary, overpriced, and pleasurable--so CDs, books, and beer (at least the kind of beer I buy) don't count. A month or so back, I noticed that the Near Eastern people who sell cigars to me had raised their prices for the third time in about a year. I made a point of politely telling them that the low-end high-end cigars--cheap ones found in humidors rather than behind 7-11 counters--they specialize in now were affixed with high-end prices outside of my affordability neighborhood. With the two other in-town tobacconists already out of price range, I reverted to the quick-smoking, often crumbly low-end brands that one finds in gas stations and convenience stores. Alas, they too had inflated in price. For instance, Swisher Sweets, which I used to purchase for $2 per five pack less than a decade ago, have more than tripled in price since. Garcia Vega Game cigars, which are quite good, go for nearly $7 per four pack.

It didn't dawn on me until reading this article that Uncle Sam, rather than Uncle Ibraheem, was responsible for the price hike (I served penance by purchasing three cigars yesterday from Uncle Ibraheem.). The federal cigar tax that I discussed months back passed, albeit in a more tempered form, and went into effect on April 1. Rather than the proposed $10 tax on individual cigars, the federal take is 40 cents. It's not as bad as it was in some cigar-hating crank congressman's imagination; it's not as good as it was before April Fool's Day.

If the tax increase kept me from low-end high-end cigars for several months, and led me to consciously partake in several cigar sobriety days each week, could it not have had a similar effect upon millions of other Americans? The closing of Tampa's Hav-a-Tampa cigar factory suggests an affirmative answer to that question.

"We can't afford to make these cigars in the U.S. anymore," Hav-a-Tampa's Denise Harrison told the Tampa Tribune. Well, not exactly, at least if you consider Puerto Rico--where Hav-a-Tampa will relocate--part of the United States. Like the beer that made Milwaukee famous shifting operations to Chicago, there is something seriously wrong with "Hav-a-Tampa, Made in Puerto Rico." About 500 Floridians, including one man who has worked at Hav-a-Tampa for fifty years, will lose jobs. Aside from the human costs, there are aesthetic costs to stripping a city known for cigars of its cigar industry. "We're the last of the Mohicans," Bobby Newman of J.C. Newman Cigar Company, Tampa's sole remaining cigar outfit, told the St. Petersburg Times. The Tampa Tribune piece notes employees pinning the blame on a number of factors, including bans on indoor cigar smoking and the recession. Special emphasis, however, is placed upon the tax hike from five to forty cents upon cigars that went into effect almost three months ago.

For people constantly talking about how interdependent the world is, politicians seem recklessly oblivious to the effects of their taxing and spending upon the economy. When the government bailed out Chrysler, Bear Stearns, and AIG, the water bilged over the side of those sinking ships sunk other less politically-connected companies. Tax funds used to bail out huge corporations came from taxes levied upon other corporations. One of those smaller companies drowning in excess taxation and regulation is Hav-a-Tampa. They are drowning in part because cigar smokers like me can less afford their product. To make matters so much worse, the government increases the price of cigars just when the size of our wallets decreases. Taxes effect my behavior, and my behavior contributes to the loss of jobs in Tampa. It isn't that hard to understand.

To make new revenue schemes politically palatable, elected officals rhetorically tethered the new taxes to spending programs packaged to maximize empathy. In the case of the cigar tax, the program nominally attached to it is the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides health care to low-income children, hence, the ubiquitous cry, "It's for the children." But what about the children of 500 Hav-a-Tampa employees? Sure, they can now apply for S-CHIP benefits. But their parents don't have jobs to put roofs over their heads or food in the bellies. Don't worry, there are government programs for all that too.

Mark Rudd led the 1968 takeover of Columbia University, rioted at 1969's Days of Rage in Chicago, participated in a bombing campaign that took the life of his best friend in 1970, and spent the better part of the '70s evading the FBI. Then he grew up. Read my review @ First Principles of Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen, which details Mark Rudd's 1960s and the hangover that followed.

I have a Twitter account that I never signed up for, and a number of Twitter followers who have never received a tweet. Every day, I add new followers who won't receive my non-existent tweets. Curious about the unfamiliar names alerting me of their receptivity to my tweets, or twittles, or whatever they're called, I clicked on one of the names of my followers. It turns out she wasn't interested in me for my tweets but for my cash. The oldest profession always uses the newest technology.

I don't understand Twitter. Is a mirror too low-tech to satisfy the narcissistic impulse that drives one to announce the mundane occurances of everyday life? Among the tweets my thorough five-minute investigation came across: "And it's Friday night," "Shower and then off to NU," and "My hair is untame-able today." Yawn. Twitter is for people who are too ugly for reality television. Not every exhibitionist rates a voyeur.

Twitter is email for people with A.D.D. However much I wish some people spoke in 140 characters or less, it's difficult to convey anything too meaningful within those limitations, which moves me to grant a pardon to the guy who wrote "The S is for 'sleepy.' Goodnight, Twitterverse," but not to those who believe that Twitter is the future of journalism. Twitter is to the Internet what soundbytes are to television and haiku is to poetry. With a scientific study, and common sense, indicating that Internet users scan more than read, Twitter meshes well with the zeitgeist. It is technology's latest enlistee in its ongoing war against literacy.

What's the point of Twitter when there's gmail and text messaging? This is not a rhetorical question. If Twitter really offers something original, and not just a repackaging of existing technology, I'd like to participate. My clock didn't stop in 1995. I have a blog, after all.

But Twitter? FaceBook? iPhone? Kindle? You're losing me people. Save me from atavistic irrelevance. That guy who still uses a typewriter, calls you on a rotary phone, plays the hits on his Victriola, needs a converter box to watch Barney Miller on his black and white TV set--am I becoming that guy? Or, alternatively, am I becoming another guy? You know, the guy who never said "Ten-four, good buddy" on his CB radio, never sold his eight-tracks at his yard sale, never watched Jaws on his Betamax, and never rode his Segway to the grocery store because he never fell for every hyped-up fad that came and went.

Ashton Kutcher goes on Larry King to tell the world he loves Twitter. UFC announcers broadcast that Dana White would be tweeting the results of the untelevised preliminary cage fights on Saturday night. News reports tout Twitter's role in the uprising in Iran. How much is Mr. Twitter paying these people? The revolution will not be televised. It will be tweeted, and even if it's not, the Twittericans will say that it is.

"States Turning to Last Resorts in Budget Crisis" reads the New York Times headline. But the reality, at least here in Massachusetts, is that the first resort of the state and localities is to cut what most people would consider the last resort. "Whenever a town wants to scare the voters into increasing their own property taxes, they begin to cut services, in the order in which taxpayers care: fire, police, high school football, garbage, libraries," Howie Carr writes in the Boston Herald. "Now it's the state's turn to play Chicken Little. They're going to close a dozen Registry of Motor Vehicles branches--places everyone has to visit at least occasionally. That'll teach a good lesson to those taxpaying bastards who actually have to work for a living!" In other words, strategic cuts in services perversely become propaganda for tax increases.

More Americans disapprove of Barack Obama's job performance than approve according to a new Rasmussen poll. This is the first time the president's negatives have outweighed his positives. Part of the decline is probably the inevitable result of Obama fatigue. The media has been forcefeeding this guy down our throats for more than a year. Saturation Obama was bound to work against itself eventually. Part of the approval slide is probably due to policy. After irresponsibly spending money the government doesn't have, Obama and the Democratic Congress now want to spend even more money the government doesn't have on an expensive health-insurance entitlement. Like Obama fatigue, in which Obama has been an ironic victim of his own boosters, ObamaCare may become a casualty of Obama's policies. After spending trillions on stimulus, bailouts, wars, and other big-ticket items, Obama wants trillions more for the biggest-ticket item on the menu, national health insurance. Even Democrats question whether we have the money to pay for it. The American people told Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton "no." Barack Obama's declining poll numbers suggests they are telling him the same thing.

Why are small budget cuts always deemed "deep" budget cuts? "Budget Calls for Tax Hikes, Deep Cuts," reads the Boston Globe headline. The Associated Press similarly contends that the Massachusetts budget makes "steep government service cuts." FY10's budget? $27.4 billion. Last year's budget? $28.1 billion. By way of comparison, the tax increases, which weren't prefaced by "steep" or any such scare words, are nearly twice the size of the cuts.

If there's one thing I hate, it's rumble strips. No, no, what I really hate more than anything else is speed bumps. Correction, I completely despise speed humps. I grew to hate these obstacles living in Washington, DC, where they are a civic menace rivaling the likes of 14th Street hookers and ubiquitous street vendors hawking "FBI" hats. "From 2001 to 2005, the District's Department of Transportation installed approximately 50 speed bumps," WTOP reports. "Since 2007, DDOT has installed 534 of the traffic calming devices. There are no plans to slow down the process." Streets are means of transportation, not the private parking lots of wealthy homeowners.

Barbara Boxer represents 38,000,000 people. Wrap your brain around that, particularly the word "represents." In the military, you're trained to say "yes, sir"/"no, sir" and "yes, ma'am"/"no, ma'am." It would be disrespectful, for instance, to say "yes, general," and in fact, I witnessed a young lance corporal get written up for saying, "yes, captain." So it is with complete ingnorance of military culture, and complete contempt for the military itself, that Senator Barbara Boxer scolded Brigadier General Michael Walsh for showing her respect by calling her ma'am and not any of a half dozen more fitting designations.