ALTHOUSE: ”Are we supposed to think of them [academics] as oversmart flakes who are tucked away in institutions where they won't screw up real life for the rest of us?”

Actually, yes.

Linked from this post by Instapundit. Read it all.

E.J. DIONNE gets it wrong again:

With their vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Republicans began their tenure on a negative footing....

Umm, don’t I recall an election back in November? And wasn’t the repeal of ObamaCare an issue in that election?

Obama will emphasize the importance of ... public investment in education, transportation and innovation.

It would be nice if Dionne understood how ‘public investment’ works -- or rather doesn’t work.

OF COURSE: Obama abandons plan to bring up Social Security reform in the State of the Union address. Getting re-elected is ...so... much more important.

THERE’S A COMMITTEE FOR THAT (first item).

COLOR ME UNIMPRESSED: Obama, the Great Deregulator.

HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED: “John Kennedy's inaugural, like Sargent Shriver's institution building, does not fit the partisan template of today's Democratic Party. Kennedy's words come closer to resembling those uttered by another American president, who delivered his first inaugural from the West Front of the Capitol 30 years ago last Thursday, Ronald Reagan. As Shriver's death and Lieberman's retirement suggest, Kennedy's heritage is now national and historic, not contemporary and partisan."

MARYLAND’S assault on alcohol. What happens when the liberals run out of sins to tax?

JUST DESSERTS: Rahm Emanuel booted from Chicago mayoral ballot.

STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH to call for boosting 'competitiveness' while nodding to need for budget cuts. Please explain to me how taking money from the economy, skimming some off the top for administrative and regulatory burden and subsidizing noncompetitive green industries will “boost competitiveness.”

SHOOTING AT A WALMART -- should we blame the rhetoric?

One person appears to have been killed in this incident. It's no laughing matter. So let me ask a serious question about the implications it has for our political discourse.

Should I expect a Paul Krugman column this week inveighing against the heated, anti-Walmart campaign that is being conducted nationwide by labor unions that haven't managed to organize WalMart workers? I hear they have the company in their cross-hairs.

TRADING YOUR JOB ”for a cute widdle lizard.” The endangered species we should all be concerned about is the American worker.

Read it all.

AND NOW THE NEWS.

TIMOTHY CARNEY: “[GE CEO Jeff] Immelt and [Chicago banker Bill] Daley don't represent a new side of Barack Obama -- they represent the unhealthy collusion of Big Business and Big Government that has always been the essence of Obamanomics.”

AN INTERESTING CONUNDRUM. The global warming enthusiasts want to make energy expensive to reduce the effects of global warming. But with no energy to speak of, isn’t global warming a good thing?

HOW COLD IS IT? So cold that I counted only 4 squirrels out at the feeder this morning. The rest are probably shivering in their nests.

FROM THE LEFT: We’re all right with violent speech, provided the Right doesn’t publicize it.

BANKRUPTCY FOR STATES? some thoughts at the Volokh Conspiracy.

OUR COLLEGES are turning into little Club Meds for twenty-somethings, with education as an optional extra, all supplied by the taxpayers, who naively believe that the universities care about teaching.

Related post here.

TO THE LEFT, Sarah Palin is scary not so much in 2012, but because she could be around for a long time to come. Except that we need Palin - or someone like her - soon.

MORE NEWS that doesn’t fit the liberal narrative.

Follow the link.