FRESHMAN SENATOR impatient with her colleagues.

As I watched the Sunday talk shows yesterday, everyone seemed to be talking about the possibility of a government shutdown. I have only been here 40 days and may be new to the process, but I must wonder why the Senate is taking this week off if they are so concerned about a shutdown on March 4th.I understand that today is Presidents’ Day, but why not start work this Tuesday instead of waiting another week to get the Continuing Resolution enacted. We are about to hit the “fiscal wall”, yet the Senate is in recess.

On the brighter side, the more the Senate procrastinates, the less damage it can do.

THINK PROGRESS, think stupid: “Talent, apparently, is in short supply on the left.”

HEH: University of Wisconsin to investigate doctors who gave out fake sick notes to protesters.

More here.

I hope some doctors lose their licenses to practice medicine. They won't, but I can hope.

JOHN KERRY: These global warming skeptics are Neanderthals. It’s an honor to be “insulted” by that idiot.

HEH. NUTRITION FOR THEE, ribs for me.

JENNIFER RUBIN educates two Washington Post columnists (Ezra Klein and E.J. Dionne) in one day. Thanks for trying, Jennifer, but it’s a losing cause.

THE NEW ASTROTURF: fake people.

BECAUSE NOTHING is more important than diversity.

Instapundit favors the proposal, "because it will remind people that the U.S. News rankings have only a limited connection to educational quality." I suspect that any serious study would find that diversity is at best only loosely connected with any measurable quality metric.

BUT, BUT ... that's what community organizers do.

DEATH PANELS ARE OK because 'social justice' demands them.

The new medical ethics.

Bonus points: killing off the sick is one way to keep healthcare costs down.

FIGHT OBESITY - quit feeding the government.

WISCONSIN REVEALS class war between Haves and Have Yours.

Taxpayers are becoming acutely aware of the have-yours as a class -- something like Angelo Codevilla's ruling class -- whose gains in salaries and benefits aren't associated with harder work and important innovations but political access. Public-sector unions rallying in Madison aren't even taking a hit for their political activism, given that their protest is made possible by paid sick days, negotiated for them by their collective bargaining units who, it must be said, donate to the very people with whom they negotiate.

I think a more accurate description is a war between the “have nots” and the “have yours.” More here: It's the unions vs. the people.

"EQUALLY SHABBY." It doesn’t apply to liberals, of course. They’re entitled to “something extra” as compensation for the enormous burden of controlling everyone else’s lives.

The original post is here.

WHAT’S “LIBERATING” about socialism?

PUTTING THEIR OWN INTERESTS FIRST. I wrote Monday on DC Council chairman Kwame Brown’s extravagant SUV; today it’s DC mayor Vincent Gray having his problems with an extravagant staff.

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 ....