This has to rank among the better political ads of 2010.

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Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), won the Republican primary on Tuesday in part by smoothing over differences with traditional conservatives, as David Weigel explains. Can this new, libertarian-leaning fusionism prevail in November?

Paul seems to have already gotten himself in some trouble for his  remarks about the Civil Rights Act. Mark Tapscott warns that the liberal-leaning media is likely to jump all over such rookie mistakes.

Cautioning that Paul’s particular brand of conservatism may not be viable outside Kentucky, Daniel Larison outlines the younger Paul’s political beliefs:

First of all, Paul is one of a very few Republican candidates in the country who is truly serious in his desire for fiscal responsibility. In his hostility to expansive government and reckless spending, he does not make exceptions for military spending, and he is appropriately skeptical of government power whether it comes in the form of military adventurism and empire-building or sweeping social legislation and bailouts.

Speaking of sweeping legislation, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget offers a budget simulator that challenges you to push the federal debt under 60 percent of GDP by 2018. It’s curious that many (though not all) of its fixes amount to fiddling around the edges, where more substantial reforms, like tax simplification or paring back of whole spending programs, may be more appropriate. Special challenge: win the game without imposing onerous new taxes!

Almost two years old now, Saturday Night Live’s definitive takedown of MSNBC host Keith Olbermann stands the test of time.

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Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul eloquently defends capitalism and free enterprise in his Republican primary victory speech.

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Cities like New York and Washington are undergoing something of a baby boom as families increasingly settle in urban areas instead of the suburbs. This demographic development is causing new sorts of problems—like the relative unfriendliness of some city services to children—and conservatives need to be ready with real policy solutions for these young families.

It turns out Obamacare’s alleged Medicare savings don’t really add up to much. Too bad the AP tells us after the legislation passes.

Mother Jones’ May issue includes a truly astounding series of articles on population and sustainability that argues, explicitly, that Malthus was right after all. One article, not online, even goes so far as to suggest the government deliberately engineer a zero-GDP-growth economy, a scheme even the author admits suffers from more than a few conceptual and practical flaws.

Heather Mac Donald swats down the New York Times’s sloppy accusations of NYPD racism: “The actual crime rates reveal that blacks are being significantly understopped, compared with their representation in the city’s criminal population, another reason for omitting them from the paper’s reporting.”

And last but not least, Megan McArdle explores whether obesity is as much of a problem as the worrywarts tell us. The surprising conclusion: not really, and we can’t do much about it anyway.