PROPOSED CUTS IN FARM SUBSIDIES: Good idea. The Nebraska Guitar Militia will be pleased that there may be a bit less “Farming the Government” in the future. Though I wouldn’t bet the, er, farm just yet.

UPDATE: Virginia Postrel:

Will other Republicans stand up for fiscal responsibility and market principles? Will conservative pundits make a big deal of this issue? Will the libertarians and liberals who’ve scored the Bush administration for its earlier fiscal (and trade) foolishness? In other words, is there any kind of vocal, principled coalition to balance the concentrated interests of subsidized agriculture?

We’ll find out, won’t we?

YES, IT’S A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME THEY’RE PLAYING: SKBubba notes something that I had noticed — that the Bush Administration let news of Rumsfeld’s offer to resign after Abu Ghraib leak out now, when it was too late to help them before the election, and observes:

I thought that the Gonzales nomination was being offered up as a sacrificial lamb for Abu Ghraib to take the heat off of Bush and Rumsfeld and that his confirmation defeat would put an end to the whole sordid affair.

Now that he’s confirmed, and apparently nobody gives a damn, Rumsfeld comes out and takes responsibility. Go figure. Maybe he was Plan B? These guys are playing a level of 3-D Vulcan chess that I can’t even comprehend.

I think they’re playing the long game, not the short game. And here’s another example: the retroactive increase in death benefits paid to the families of servicepeople killed in action. They waited until after the election, when doing it sooner might have gotten them some votes. At a guess, I’d say that they want the troops to know it’s genuine, and not just political — and that’s why they waited.

Stephen Bainbridge notes that Michael Kinsley is confused, too. Well, if SKB is confused, I’d expect Kinsley to be flummoxed.

THOUGHTS ON THE WARD CHURCHILL STORY, and the future of academic freedom, over at GlennReynolds.com.

Meanwhile, Churchill is showing his usual diplomacy: “A professor who likened World Trade Center victims to a notorious Nazi suggested to a magazine that more terror attacks may be necessary to radicalize Americans to fight the misuse of U.S. power.”

ANOTHER SUSPICIOUS DEATH IN GEORGIA:

GEORGIA was yesterday plunged into crisis after it was revealed a political associate of dead prime minister Zurab Zhvania had apparently committed suicide.

There were fears of a return to the old Soviet ways of dispensing with political foes by alleged accident or suicide after the third death in the government in as many days.

Zhvania, a moderating force in the Georgian government, and a colleague died apparently of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty heater last week.

Next somebody will fall down an elevator shaft or something. (Via Publius Pundit).

THEY’RE LIVEBLOGGING THE SUPER BOWL at AnkleBitingPundits and at Capt. Ed’s.

UPDATE: Hey, they’re blogging it at USA Today, too!

ANOTHER UPDATE: More liveblogging here (focusing on commercials) and here. And a list of livebloggers here, courtesy of Liveblogging.org.

MORE PRAISE for John Scalzi’s book, Old Man’s War, from reader Al Reasin:

I just finished reading Old Man’s War. What an entertaining and engrossing book. I couldn’t put it down until I was finished reading it. I hope Mr. Scalzi writes again with the same characters. Ah, what an amazing universe he weaves.

I liked it very much, and so far I don’t think I”ve heard from anyone who didn’t agree.

ORANGE REVOLUTIONS IN CENTRAL ASIA: I’m not sure those can be pulled off just yet. But we should be supporting them.

UPDATE: Plans for elections in Haiti, too. It’s even harder for me to be optimistic there, but it’s worth a try.

MY GOODNESS: There’s now an entire blog devoted to the Eason Jordan matter, which seems like a big deal to me. I wonder how this will fare in comparison to the unwritten blacklist that Gerard Van der Leun describes.

It seems to me that if Jordan was misunderstood, he should be working hard to get the video of his presentation out. That would clear up any misunderstanding, wouldn’t it?

UPDATE: Interesting comparison of how much attention the James Dobson / SpongeBob story got in relation to the near-blackout of Eason Jordan’s remarks.

JACK BALKIN IS UNDERWHELMED with the reasoning of the New York gay marriage opinion I linked the other day.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from one of Balkin’s students.

BELDAR is blogging again.

WHY DON’T I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY about Max Schmeling’s death? Er, why would I? It’s not really my kind of subject. Schmeling comes off pretty well in my law school classmate Chris Mead’s book, Champion Joe Louis: A Biography, which was excerpted as a cover story in Sports Illustrated when it came out. But I don’t know much more than that.

MICKEY KAUS writes that it’s not about the nipple:

I watched the game with a group of non-evangelical, non-moralistic dads who were uniformly horrified. The problem for them wasn’t sex–their kids see flesh all the time in videos–but a form of sexism, not prudery but piggishness. Surely there are some types of behavior–homophobia, perhaps, or racism, or Republicanism–that even Frank Rich wouldn’t want implicitly endorsed during a telecast watched by most of the country’s teens and pre-teens. Yet the press has effectively recast this complicated issue as an uncomplicated case of “Nipple-gate,” of blue-noses overreacting to the sight of a breast. No wonder red staters respond negatively when New Yorkers call them simplistic.

The only two forces in American politics are joyless religious prudes and the brave cosmopolitans who resist them. Everyone knows that! At least, everyone who reads Frank Rich, and nothing else . . . .

WINDS OF CHANGE has some questions for antiwar progressives. Here’s one: “What would have been the best, most legitimate way for Iraq to achieve democratic elections? Can it be applied to Burma, North Korea, Iran, and other dictatorships?”

UNSCAM UPDATE: Closing in on Kofi?

ACADEMIC FREEDOM UPDATE: Jim Lindgren has a lengthy post on professor Hans Hoppe of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, whose story I linked earlier. Lindgren: “As with so many of these stories of supposed academic misconduct, one must be careful not to assume that the whole story has been told, since usually only one side is talking publicly. But if Hoppe indeed said what he says he said and no more, then I think that it is the administrators at UNLV who deserve reprimands. They should have explained to the student that such claims are clearly within academic freedom, whether true or false. I have no doubt that what Hoppe said would be offensive to some students—and indeed, he is probably wrong on the merits of most of his claims—but his claims are empirical ones. The proper response of someone who is angry with Hoppe is to gather evidence tending to show that he is wrong, and to challenge Hoppe to offer his own evidence to support his claims.”

Judging by Hoppe’s online teaching evaluations (a dubious source, I’ll admit) not everyone is offended. Though why students should have a right not to be offended — and why only certain types of “offense” count — is beyond me.

UPDATE: Power Line, meanwhile, features a skeptical email claiming that “academic freedom” is largely illusory these days. And Roger Kimball writes that Ward Churchill is not the problem.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Evidence for the weakness of academic freedom, here: “A graduate student at LeMoyne College has been expelled for writing a paper on his opinion that corporal punishment should be allowed in the classroom. ”

NORM GERAS has transcribed some Iraqis’ comments on the election from the BBC. Interesting reading.

ED MORRISSEY remains Eason Jordan central. Just keep scrolling, as he offers quite a few links suggesting that the story will hit the Big Media next week. Meanwhile, here’s a column on the subject from Jack Kelly in the Toledo Blade. And Hugh Hewitt is all over this story, too.

WALTER OLSON WRITES that Mayor Bloomberg’s overreaching is likely to backfire:

In January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed a bill passed by the City Council making gun makers and dealers liable for crimes perpetrated with their products unless they adopt a “code of conduct” that, among other things, would limit the number of handguns they can sell to one person and require background checks on prospective buyers at gun shows. The strange thing about this new law is that it applies not only to sales within New York City, but also to sales in other states and cities. . . .

When the issue returns in this year’s (more pro-gun) Congress, Mr. Bloomberg’s new law is likely to serve as a prime exhibit of the case for federal pre-emption on the issue of gun liability. The new city law makes it absolutely clear that anti-gun enclaves intend to inflict their will on other states. Lawmakers from the rest of the country will then, appropriately, move to defend their states’ preference through federal legislation.

The mayor and City Council of New York seem to think they can make laws that bind the rest of the country. That’s an arrogant stance – and when the rest of the country is heard from, it’s apt to be a losing stance as well.

Indeed.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Who benefits from academic freedom? You do!

Meanwhile, I agree that this Ohio legislation is a bad idea, but I also agree that it’s a warning shot that shouldn’t be ignored.

“HARD FACTS HAVE FINALLY CRACKED THEIR ECHO CHAMBER:” Austin Bay responds to a slam from The Guardian.

REUTERS IS WINGING IT again, according to Craig Brett.

ANN ALTHOUSE wants to see Russ Feingold run against Condi Rice in 2008.

We could do worse. And probably will!

NORM GERAS, who has profiled so many bloggers, is profiled himself in the Sunday Times.

MUSIC INDUSTRY SUES 83-YEAR-OLD DEAD WOMAN:

Gertrude Walton was recently targeted by the recording industry in a lawsuit that accused her of illegally trading music over the Internet. But Walton died in December after a long illness, and according to her daughter, the 83-year-old hated computers.

More than a month after Walton was buried in Beckley, a group of record companies named her as the sole defendant in a federal lawsuit, claiming she made more than 700 pop, rock and rap songs available for free on the Internet under the screen name “smittenedkitten.”

I’m guessing that this was a ‘bot-based complaint, and I really think that there ought to be consequences for initiating legal action on such a flimsy basis. Live people sign affidavits on these matters, after all, swearing that they have ascertained the facts. (Via Basil).

TIM BLAIR has a roundup of news brieflets.

And yeah, blogging’s been light today. But I’ve had a lot of domestic chores. It’s not all floor-scrubbing, though. At the moment, I’m blogging from the deck, where it’s nearly 60 degrees and steak-grilling is about to commence. There are chores, and then there are chores.

Another sort of roundup can be found here.