LIBERAL WISCONSIN CARTOONIST sides with ... the Governor?

I have progressive values. I believe in gay marriage, I believe in mass transit, I believe in global climate change, I believe in abortion rights, I believe in urban planning and I believe in a single payer health care system. But on the issue of public employee compensation and the role that their unions play in our government, I find myself siding with conservatives.

Follow the link to see the editorial cartoons.

IS LIBYA NEXT? Two libyan colonels flee country in fighter jets after reports they were told to fire on protestors.

ROGER KIMBALL: A Watershed Momemt in Wisconsin.

What happens in Madison concerns not only the fate of some whining school teachers, fraud-abetting doctors, and the left-wing activists who are their enablers. It concerns the shape of this country, its hospitableness to liberty, economic growth, and individual autonomy. It was a battle Madison fought and won in the 1770s. But the price of freedom, as Madison’s rival and colleague Thomas Jefferson observed, is “eternal vigilance.” Our stupendous affluence and power has lulled us into complacency and public profligacy. It is time to wake up. “Two roads diverge in a yellow wood”: you cannot, as Frost put it in his famous poem, take both and be one traveller. Which will it be?

Read the rest.

BURT PRELUTSKY: the good, the bad, and the ugly. My favorite comment: “[T]the Berkeley, CA, City Council would like to roll out the red carpet for two Guantanamo detainees.... My guess is that after a couple of weeks, the jihadists would go running back to Gitmo, begging for political sanctuary, screaming, ‘Those people are crazy!’ ”

GEORGE SOROS: “President Obama has lost control.” The statement presumes he once had control ....

THE MARKET WORKS: the United States has already dramatically cut its emissions and probably has already complied with the Kyoto/Copenhagen goals for reduced emissions. And this has been done without taxes, without regulations and without government intervention.

DEMOCRATS: the real party of “No.”

ANOTHER FOX NEWS POLL: What should Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker do? Draw a line in the sand: If you want to keep your job, get back to work -- otherwise, you're fired (93%).

PLUMMETING DOWN THE ECONOMIC LADDER: a depressing story from an over-50 job seeker.

I can sympathize. As someone in a similar, but much better provisioned boat myself; I can tell you he’s right. For an over-50 with a wide variety of experience, getting a new job today is a matter of who you know and how well you schmooze.

But I continue looking for the same reason I occasionally buy a lottery ticket: even though the odds are on the low side of miniscule, eventually someone wins.

Related article here.

FROM MY EMAIL:

Scientists at NASA built a gun specifically to launch standard 4-pound dead chickens at the windshields of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, all traveling at maximum velocity. The idea is to simulate the frequent incidents of collisions with airborne fowl to test the strength of the windshields.

British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windshields of their new high-speed trains. Arrangements were made, and a gun was sent to the British engineers. When the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof shield, smashed it to smithereens, blasted through the control console, snapped the engineer's back-rest in two, and embedded itself in the back wall of the cabin, like an arrow shot from a bow.

The horrified Brits sent NASA the disastrous results of the experiment, along with the designs of the windshield and begged the US scientists for suggestions.

NASA responded with a one-line memo -- "Defrost the chicken.”

Long ago, in my high school days, I learned: “First, read the instructions.”

NEW JERSEY GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE speaks to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

If you don’t have time for the entire speech (1:05), at least watch these excerpts.

FROM THE ‘SO WHAT’S NEW’ DEPARTMENT. Identity politics are nothing more than socially acceptable bigotry.

OUR ‘ELITE’ HAVE SPOKEN: Wounded Iraq veteran gets heckled during Columbia University speech. It is well past time to deny all federal funding - including student loans - to any institution that behaves in such a reprehensible manner.

If I were a Columbia graduate - thank God I’m not! - I would be deeply ashamed of my alma mater.

A PRO-CHOICE CHOICE: shift course or lose. It's too late. The pro-choice movement died when prenatal sonocgrams became routine. We’re watching a movement in its death throes.

JAMES LILEKS on Michele Bachman. Some highlights:

She’s one of those inauthentic women who has not realized that the possession of ovaries requires one to fight for social justice and greater regulation of everything except the Department of Regulations.

[She] was characteristically sarcastic about the first lady’s push for more breastfeeding, as well as new tax breaks for breast pumps, noting she fed five without Fed help.

[S]he doesn’t care what [Chris Matthews] thinks! Has she no decency?

Read it all.

THE THIRD OF FOUR ON MULTICULTURALISM: "It’s a failure. The truth is that in all our democracies, we've been too concerned about the identity of the new arrivals and not enough about the identity of the country receiving them."

No sh*t, Sherlock. Now if only Obama will finally wise up.

ON FEBRUARY 4, the New York Times fired the first salvo in the Left’s quest to delegitimize Justices of the Supreme Court in the runup to what is to be expected to be one of the premier cases of the early century; that of the health care bill.

In November, they lost America; today, they’re losing Congress; so now they’re beginning IPB (intelligence preparation of the battlefield) for the next fight we intend to see them lose.

KATHLEEN PARKER on modern feminism:

Women's liberation worked in ways we might never have imagined. The feminist woman of the left, who burned her bra and insisted that all hear her roar, is today a taupe-ish figure who wonders where things went wrong. The daughter she begat may well be a Republican - a gun-toting, breast-feeding supermom of several who condemns government for being a "nanny" and tells men to man up.

Adding insult to injury, she's also probably considered a "hottie" by the men who stand by admiringly, watching their women show those libs a thing or two about being a "hard-core woman."

And what does a modern feminist wear? "Cargo pants and a very nice plaid T-shirt."

FAST TRAINS: the Obama administration is seeking $53 billion to promote development of fast train lines like those in Europe and Japan. "At least two projects—a proposed Tampa-to-Orlando route in Florida and a planned San Francisco-to-Los Angeles route—would allow trains to reach upward of 200 miles per hour, rivaling trains in Europe and Asia."

There are only two tiny problems: (1) California’s broke, and (2) Florida refused.

SO SHOULD WE expect Harvard and UC Berkeley to double down and drop their engineering curricula?

THE CHICAGO BOYZ - AND THEIR COMMENTERS - have some ideas about how to deal with the AWOL Wisconsin senators. If I were Gov. Walker, I’d take their ideas seriously.

UNION LABOR IS SO EXPENSIVE that not even unions can afford union labor. The solution? Create more homeless. Unions (and Acorn ... and other community activists) can afford to hire the homeless.

SIGH. 'Fully loaded' SUV puts D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown on the spot.

Several weeks after Kwame R. Brown was elected D.C. Council chairman in November, city officials were asked to order for him a "fully loaded" Lincoln Navigator L with a DVD entertainment system, power moonroof and polished aluminum wheels. It had to be black - all black, inside and out - and it had to arrive in time for his inauguration Jan. 2, never mind the District's projected $400 million budget shortfall.

When you’ve got a $400 million shortfall, what’s another $1900/month? And never mind that in D.C., the farthest you can drive in a straight line and stay within the district is 14 miles.

Make 'em all ride bicycles.