† The Media Love Obama, But He Doesn’t Love Them Back: This year’s White House Correspondents' Association dinner – an annual tradition since 1920 – was held at the Washington Hilton. Here’s how The Washington Post describes the $200-per-ticket wingding:

When President Obama made his debut as the nation's Stand-Up-in-Chief last night - the star attraction at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner - no one in his administration was safe from his one-liners. …

The correspondents' dinner always seems to convene a galaxy of stars, but last night's festivities were particularly incandescent, bringing back many of the celebrities who lit up Washington during Obama's inaugural events and parties.

The evening's guest list featured (in no particular order): Glenn Close; Robert De Niro; Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck; Natalie Portman; Stevie Wonder; Sting; Taye Diggs; John Cusack; Demi Moore; Alicia Keys; Brad Paisley; Eva Longoria Parker; Forest Whitaker; Jon Hamm; Chris "Ludacris" Bridges; young actors Miranda Cosgrove and Chace Crawford; and, for good measure, directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. …

The mistress of ceremonies for the evening was Wanda Sykes, an actress and comedian who grew up locally and got her start doing stand-up while moonlighting from her day job as a procurement officer at the National Security Agency. …

The star power was reminiscent of the Bill Clinton years but with a key difference: Clinton courted Hollywood to augment his pop-culture stature, while Obama doesn't have to. …

For media types, the dinner - staged since 1920 - has become a major schmooze-fest. Outside the Beltway, this stokes public perception of journalists sucking up to the power elite they cover. But the celebrity onslaught, which has become its own yearly tradition, may temper that critique somewhat: The journalists are more likely to be swooning over the star they've invited than the politicians they know so well.

Some highlights from Obama’s prepared remarks (click here and here to see videos of his shtick):

I would like to welcome you to the Ten Day Anniversary of my first 100 days. …

I confess I did not want to be here tonight, but I had to come. It’s one more problem I inherited from George W. Bush.

Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me.”  [Crowd of 2,500 journos, pols and celebs cheer wildly, reinforcing the perception that the MSM is in the tank for Obama. They cheered again a few minutes later when he mentioned lifting the ban on embryonic stem cell research as one of his accomplishments in the first 100 days.] …

During the second hundred days, we will design, build and open a library dedicated to my first hundred days. …

In the next hundred days I will learn to go off the Prompter and Joe Biden will learn to stay on the Prompter. …

I believe that my next hundred days will be so successful, I will be able to complete them in 72 days. And on the 73rd day, I will rest.

Editorial Note: Though the WaPo characterized Obama’s speech as being full of “zingers,” he did pull one punch: He should have said, “Most of you covered me; all of you covered for me.”

Towards the end of his speech, Obama noted the financial woes of the newspaper industry and declared, “When you are at your best… you help all of us who serve at the pleasure of the American people do our jobs better by holding us accountable, by demanding honesty, by preventing us from taking shortcuts …” If the media had done their job during the campaign and vetted Obama, John McCain – or Hillary Clinton – may well have been giving the speech instead.

Oh, and in addition to scooping Peggy Noonan (last item) with the quip about MO’s right to bare arms, The Stiletto scooped the president himself (“ … no matter which party you belong to, we can all agree that Michelle has the right to bare arms.”)

† Vivant Dans Ces Fou, Fou, Temps De Madodff (Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times): Ben Schott, who has started blogging about vocabulary for The New York Times, takes note of this article in The Guardian:

500 desperate Parisians a day drop off items ranging from jewelery to haute couture dresses, fur coats and violins, still using the old euphemism “chez ma tante” after a 19th-century adventurer who pawned his watch but told his mother he had left it “at my aunt’s.”

† The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II: The Houston Chronicle notes that “[a]mid a wave of publicity about drug-related gun violence along the Mexican border and police killings in U.S. cities, more Americans than ever oppose new government efforts to regulate guns”:

Recent polls show shrinking support for new gun control measures and strong public sentiment for enforcing existing laws instead. So strong is the shift in public opinion that a proposed assault-weapons ban - once backed by three in four Americans - now rates barely one in two.

Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, told reporters Tuesday that “every bit of data is showing us that Americans are getting more conservative about gun control.” …

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said the latest polls only confirm what his gun-rights group has been saying all along.

“The NRA has always been on the right side of this issue,” Arulanandam said. “There’s a realization that over 20,000 gun laws that are on the books are meaningless unless they are enforced. We have adequate gun laws on the books to address every situation.”

Even an assault-weapon ban is not the political “sure thing” it once was. An April poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal found that support for curbing the sale of assault weapons and semiautomatic rifles has dropped from 75 percent in 1991 to 53 percent today.

Meanwhile, writing in Human Events, Rep. Rob Bishop takes U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to task for her recent decision granting an injunction against a new National Park Service regulation (second item) applying state concealed firearms laws in national parks to allow law-abiding Americans “the same right to carry concealed weapons inside our national parks as they have outside of the national parks”:

Most interesting is Kollar-Kotelly’s reasoning and what she refused to consider when arriving at her decision. Astonishingly, in Kollar-Kotelly’s 44-page opinion, there is not a single mention of the Second Amendment. Not one. Not a single mention of whether or not the Heller decision is relevant.  In a case involving the federal government essentially banning the right to bear arms, this wasn’t even an issue.  Even though Kollar-Kotelly notes one of the main reasons why NPS gun regulations were changed concerns “self-defense,” she never addressed whether Second Amendment rights might be violated.  

Instead, Kollar-Kotelly decided that an injunction should be placed on the new regulations because of environmental concerns. More specifically, she found the Department of the Interior had used an “astoundingly flawed process” in creating the Final Rule on the NPS gun regulations because it did not do full blown environmental analysis on allowing concealed weapons in national parks. The process Kollar-Kotelly is demanding before allowing concealed weapons in national parks is called NEPA review (NEPA stands for National Environmental Policy Act) and was originally intended to have federal review of large scale projects, such as bridges, timber sales and dams. …

In one opinion, Kollar-Kotelly made our Second Amendment constitutional rights subservient to environmental regulations.  

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Employers Hiring Forged Documented Aliens Are Lawbreakers In Other Ways, Too): The Agriprocessors case sparked a crisis of conscience amongst Jews who keep kosher. The nascent “eco-kosher” movement will likely get a boost as a result. The Los Angeles Times explains:  

With Sabbath candles burning and 14 guests seated around her dinner table …

As is the custom, the guests observed the holy day of rest with a meal, but with a twist: They were sharing a "sustainable" Sabbath dinner on this Friday evening, with food that was locally grown, mostly organic and intended to elevate their practice of Judaism. …

The dinner reflected a powerful current in Jewish culinary consciousness: Growing numbers of people are choosing to express their values through the food they put on their tables, altering the most basic day-to-day decisions about nourishment. …

"Food is the most intimate relationship we have to the nonhuman world," said Zelig Golden, a San Francisco lawyer who co-chaired that gathering. It was the third food conference sponsored by Hazon, a New York-based environmental organization that in 2004 branched out into food issues. It has since become the primary force behind many programs in the sustainability movement -- an effort to use natural resources responsibly to avoid depleting them.

"Jewish tradition has a lot to say about the use of land, the treatment of animals and workers," said Nigel Savage, Hazon's executive director. "Jewish tradition should heighten our awareness of the choices we are making."

Even though Hazon's efforts are aimed at Jews, the marriage of sustainability and religion reaches beyond the Jewish world. …

Such efforts are part of a larger food movement whose advocates wrestle with ethical questions raised by the food they buy and eat.

Editorial Note: The Stiletto remains a carnivore, but prefers to know that the animals ending up on her plate have been treated humanely (last item) throughout their lifecycles – and that the workers who grow, pick, slaughter and process her food are also treated humanely, with all applicable immigration, safety and wage laws scrupulously followed.