A dense cloud of volcanic ash drifting from Iceland forced the closure of airports in northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland on Sunday.

The Icelandic weather service said "presently there are no indications that the eruption is about to end." ...

Eyjafjallajokul (pronounced ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) erupted in April for the first time in nearly two centuries. During its last eruption, starting in 1821, its emissions rumbled on for two years.

An angry electorate, which already has delivered a series of shocks to the political system, will render a fresh verdict on Washington, incumbency and both party establishments in a slate of high-stakes contests Tuesday that are shaping up to form one of the most important voting days of the year.

Democratic pollster Peter Hart said anyone searching for meaning from Tuesday's races need only look to grievances that have been building for months. "How many times do we need to tell the same story, which is that voters are looking for something that is not in Washington right now," he said. ...

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, said the contests this week -- dubbed the Super Tuesday of 2010 -- must be seen through this prism: "They will be another measure of the depth of anger at Washington and the current state of the country."

The marquee race is the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania where Specter, who switched parties in 2009, is trailing Rep. Joe Sestak. Elected five times as a Republican, Specter defected to the Democrats because he feared he might lose his bid for re-nomination in the Republican primary. Now he could lose as a Democrat, although he enjoys the support of Obama and the Democratic establishment.

Republicans have their own intraparty warfare to contend with on Tuesday. Kentucky has become a laboratory for measuring the relative powers of the "tea party" movement vs. the GOP establishment in the race to succeed retiring Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.). There, upstart Rand Paul is seeking the nomination against Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who enjoys the support of McConnell, the state's preeminent Republican.

Also, a special House election in western Pennsylvania to fill the vacancy created by the death of Rep. John P. Murtha (D) could provide clues to the prospects for Republicans to capture control of the House in November.

The more powerful anger is aimed broadly at Washington. Obama's policies have sparked a significant backlash on the right, and many independent voters who backed him in his 2008 campaign have defected since he took office.

The Obama administration may not like to think of being at war with radical Islam, but the jihadists are definitely at war with the United States. Rather than running from the expression "radical Islam," the administration should be openly discussing the ideological motives of the terrorists and finding ways to delegitimize them. Instead of hedging, obfuscating and ignoring, these Democrats should confront the challenge frankly, openly and honestly. Pretending that a radical, violent strain of Islam does not exist will not make it go away. To the contrary, it will make the situation much worse.

President Obama's continuing solicitude toward the faith of Muhammad is inexplicable, and as these acts of denial continue, it is becoming dangerous. The United States will not defeat an enemy it is afraid to identify.

After the Los Angeles City Council passed legislation banning the city from doing any further business with the state of Arizona because of its new law targeting illegal immigration, some Los Angelinos are hoping that the Los Angeles Lakers will get behind the cause. In a bit of serendipitous timing, the Lakers are about to face an Arizona team, the Phoenix Suns, in the NBA Western Conference Finals, starting Monday. Obviously, it would be absurd to expect the Lakers to boycott their series with the Suns. But as the representatives of an area with the largest Hispanic population in the country, could the Lakers take some kind of stance, symbolic or otherwise, against a law that the NBA Players Association has already called "disturbing?" Especially after the government of the city it represents has passed a bold measure? "The Lakers are critical to continuing the momentum," says Los Angeles City Council member Jose Huizar, who moved to the U.S. from Mexico when he was four years old.

San Diego tourism leaders and hoteliers fear they could lose a sizable chunk of business this summer from valued "Zonies" who are so angered by elected leaders’ recent censure of Arizona for its illegal-immigration law that they’re mounting an informal boycott of their own.

The San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau and several hotels report receiving e-mails and letters from Arizona visitors saying they intend to change their plans to travel here in light of local outcry over their home state’s anti-illegal-immigration stance.

Tourism officials are striking back. In an open letter, they urge Arizona residents to overlook local politics and come to San Diego just as they always have for its mild climate, beaches and attractions. The visitors bureau, in conjunction with the San Diego County Hotel-Motel Association, plans to circulate the letter to media outlets and in advertising this weekend in The Arizona Republic.

Last week, Obama was at it again. He blasted the oil companies and his own government for lax regulation in the Gulf, apparently convinced that no one in the media would consider his last 16 months of governance in any way responsible for, well, federal governance.

(I don’t have strong views on the degree of culpability a president has for lax federal agencies amid disasters, only that I learned from the media between 2004-8 that a president must accept a great deal of blame after most catastrophes [at least Katrina was nature- rather than human- induced].)

Obama also trashed, inter alia, Halliburton for the spill, as he had done on other matters ritually in the campaign ("I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all," "The days of sweetheart deals for Halliburton will be over when I’m in the White House"). Obama seemed to assume that few cared that his administration just gave Halliburton a $568 million no-bid contract.

When a Senator Obama a while back weighed in on the ill-fated Harriet Miers, he quite logically predicated his skepticism on a dearth of publications (though I found that embarrassing at the time since Senator/Law Professor Obama was essentially without a record of scholarly work), and an absence of judicial experience—both legitimate concerns.

So, of course, are we now to expect Obama to talk up his recent Supreme Court nominee Ms. Kagan, and ignore her relative lack of scholarly experience without a　judicial past (sort of like being secretary of education without having taught anything)?

Does the president, who as a senator voted to deny a court seat to Alito and Roberts, think Kagan is better qualified than either, and, if so, on what grounds—more scholarship, more judicial experience, a more diverse upbringing, intangible criteria like once recruiting Barack Obama?

I once wondered during the campaign whether such serial contradictions in the Obama narrative ever mattered. During his denials of ever hearing Rev. Wright engage in the pastor’s trademark hate speech, I recalled Obama’s 2004 interview with the Sun-Times when he was running for the Senate and wanted to boast of his religious fides. When asked, "Do you still attend Trinity?" Obama snapped right back, "Yep. Every week. 11 o’clock service." Every week, but mysteriously not one in which Wright did his customary race-bashing?

When for the first time since 1976 a presidential candidate reneged on promises to participate in pubic financing in the general relations, I remembered Obama’s early promise to do the opposite. The press slept on that.

The list of his blatant contradictions could be multiplied. I’ve written here about the past demagoguing on tribunals, Predators, Guantanamo, renditions, Afghanistan, Iraq, wiretaps, intercepts, and the Patriot Act, and the subsequent Obama embrace of all of them, in some cases even trumping Bush in his exuberance. ...

We could play this game with the entire health care debate—all on C-SPAN, will save billions, not cost billions as the CBO now attests, etc.—the pledge not to hire lobbyists or allow earmarks, the pledge to post legislation for a specified time on the government website, the pledge to prohibit his team from returning within 2 years to the private lobbying revolving door, and so on.

The blatant hypocrisy and untruths are superimposed on a constant (it has not yet begun to let up in his second year) refrain of either "Bush did it" or "the opposition won’t let me be bipartisan."

Where does this disregard for the truth arise? On the most superficial level, of course, Obama realizes that the media is obsequious and sanctions almost anything he does. 　He knows that his base was always interested in power, not principle (has anyone seen any war protests the last few weeks against Afghanistan or Iraq, or Guantanamo, or the quadrupling of Predator attacks? Or for that matter, are there anti-Obama Hispanic protests over the increased crackdown on employers and greater deportations than during the Bush era?).

How does our tenure with Obama as dean end?

I have no idea other than I think at some point Obama’s untruths, hypocrisies, and contradictions will, in their totality, finally remind the voter that he is a citizen and not a student.

It’s bad enough when an officer discredits himself and his colleagues in public, but now that news reports on the incident have been shown across the country, all police officers in Seattle will be carrying an added burden for some time to come. Cobane himself knows this. "To my brother detectives," he said at his press appearance, "I offer my sincerest apology as I know that my comments have made your jobs more difficult"

And they’ll make his own job a lot more difficult if he’s lucky enough to keep it.　 But those calling for Cobane to be fired and even prosecuted are presuming that his conduct during this one incident is typical for him. If that’s shown to be true, by all means the city of Seattle would be better off without him. But published reports have described Cobane, a 15-year veteran of the department, as an exemplary officer, and his decision to accept responsibility and offer a public apology speaks well of him.

Given the economic damage inflicted on us by the current administration and many state governments, most readers of this column would probably be quite happy to live in a state where:

• The number of people either working or looking for work has actually grown during the past twelve months (in most states, the labor force has contracted significantly).

• The economy grew in 2008, and probably did so again in 2009.

Unless you live in Oklahoma, you’re not in that state.

House Bill 1804 was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate of the Oklahoma legislature. The measure’s sponsor, State Representative Randy Terrill, says the bill has four main topical areas: it deals with identity theft; it terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

Oklahoma is no longer "O.K." for illegal aliens, Terrill observes. "When you put everything together in context," he contends, "the bottom line is illegal aliens will not come here if there are no jobs waiting for them, they will not stay here if there is no government subsidy, and they certainly won’t stay here if they know that if they ever encounter our state and local law enforcement officers, they will be physically detained until they’re deported. And that’s exactly what House Bill 1804 does."