A CREDIBILITY PROBLEM for higher education? Well, it’s been a bad couple of weeks.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Okay, this looks pretty damn piggish:

The Senate on Monday overwhelmingly approved a bill authorizing $23 billion in water resource projects, including $3.5 billion in work for hurricane-ravaged Louisiana, despite warnings from some lawmakers and watchdog groups that the bill did not provide crucially needed changes to the Army Corps of Engineers, which would do most of the work. . . .

But opponents, led by Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, made a forceful, if futile, case that the bill would fail to address the most important needs, even in Louisiana, which is the biggest beneficiary of the measure.

“After a decade of government and independent reports calling for reforming the corps and pointing out stunning flaws in corps projects and project studies, and after the tragic failures of New Orleans levees during Hurricane Katrina, the American people deserve meaningful reform,” Mr. Feingold said in a speech on the Senate floor. “How many more flawed projects or wasted dollars will it take before we say enough is enough?”

Especially since Hurricane Katrina, the corps has been criticized as mismanaged and lacking oversight and accountability.

The White House has said that President Bush will veto the bill because it is too expensive and stuffed with political pork. In a letter to Congressional leaders, Rob Portman, the former budget director, and John Paul Woodley Jr., the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, noted that the Corps of Engineers already had a backlog of $38 billion in projects. They urged Congress to pass a cheaper bill.

Not likely, alas. Plus this: “We are diverting our spending for the high priority projects to the political priority projects.” Indeed.

CONGRATULATIONS TO MY UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE COLLEAGUE JAY RUBENSTEIN, who just got a MacArthur genius grant.

DAVID BROOKS says that the adults are in charge in the Democratic Party now.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan: “If Clinton is that comfortable with a permanent occupation of Iraq at this point in the election cycle, how comfortable do you think she’s going to be next year? You think a politician so obsessed with gaining and wielding power is happy to relinquish any in the Middle East? . . . Hillary is Bush’s ticket to posterity. On Iraq, she will be his legacy.”

Hey, maybe she will turn out to be “the most uncompromising wartime President in United States history” after all. Science fiction sometimes comes true . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Can you say “inherent authority” to go to war? Hillary can.

A ROUNDUP OF UNCOMMON MEATS: I’ve been cooking with buffalo more lately — we had buffalo steaks the other night and they were delicious, lean, and (this is what surprised me) very tender.

Plus, survival of the fittest . . . M&Ms? “I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world. “

LIKE WATCHING YOUR DAD DANCE AT THE PROM: Microsoft wants to buy into Facebook.

NEW FIRMWARE UPDATE will shut down unlocked iPhones. Thanks, Apple!

A LOOK AT Al Qaeda’s strategy in Pakistan.

MICKEY KAUS: “I didn’t realize that anti-gerrymandering reform had died once more in California. The state’s Democratic leaders again failed to deliver on the reform promise they made when urging voters to reject a Schwarzenegger-backed anti-gerrymandering ballot measure in 2005. … The big hang-up was fear that Nancy Pelosi would oppose any measure that ended gerrymandering of Congressional districts as well as state legislative districts. But Schwarzenegger deserves some blame for not knocking heads and getting a gettable deal.”

GAY RIGHTS UPDATE: “A UN vote on homosexual human rights was yesterday derailed at the last minute by an alliance of disapproving Muslim countries. The UN had been due to vote on the matter for the first time in its almost 60-year history, but five Muslim countries delayed the vote until today and introduced amendments designed to kill it off. . . . The British gay rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, said: ‘The vote has been derailed and delayed by Islamic fundamentalist states where gay people are either jailed, flogged or beheaded.'”

UPDATE: Oops. Somebody emailed this to me and I didn’t notice the date. Old news, though, alas, I don’t think much has changed.

KILL YOUR HUSBAND — get a house and car! Sorry, but this isn’t Christian forgiveness. It’s enablement.

IN THE MAIL: Joseph Cummins’ Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots, and October Surprises.

This might profitably be read along with John Fund’s Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy. Our podcast interview with Fund is here.

ARNOLD KLING LOOKS AT the political problems of hindsight bias.

JOHN NOBLE WILFORD remembers Sputnik.

Plus, these depressing thoughts: “Some space age. It has been 35 years since anybody was on the Moon, or more than 300 miles from Earth, for that matter. ”

While there are some bright spots on the private-space side, it’s hard to argue against the proposition that the government’s space program has been a bust for the last 35+ years.

John Tierney has some thoughts on what should come next, with a proposal for the world’s plutocrats: “You’re too late to start a new age of exploration — Nikita S. Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy beat you to it — but a new world is there for the taking. Why waste your money on football teams or America’s Cup yachts when you could send the first humans to Mars?” Plus this advice: “Whether you offer a prize or send your own expedition, insist that the ship carrying the first humans to Mars be named after you. Sure, you’ll be accused of egotism, but pay the critics no heed. They’ll be dead soon enough. Your name will live forever.”

AXIS OF EVIL, MARK II? Democracy is in retreat around the world, according to Freedom House. China, Iran, and Russia get most of the blame.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Saudi Religious Police attacked by girls with pepper spray.

A CALL FOR TRANSPARENCY IN POLITICS. What we need is a more open society . . . .

But we’ve seen this problem before.

TENURE PROBLEMS AT BARNARD? This wouldn’t be getting so much attention, I suspect, if it weren’t for the Ahmadinejad story, the Larry Summers story, the Chemerinsky story, etc. It’s been a bad run for academia these last few weeks. Academics are fond of warning business that, not withstanding free enterprise, abuse of authority will lead to government regulation. This is a warning that the academic world would be wise to heed as well.

I LINKED ED DRISCOLL’S ATLAS MUGGED ARTICLE the other day, but reader Tom Johnson emails: “Wow! You underhyped this article. The most spot on analysis of the MSM vs. the blogosphere I have seen. By far. You should give it a replay.” As requested!

A BIG BREAK in the Johnia Berry murder case.

BUSH PROVIDES back-channel advice to Hillary. This bespeaks maturity on both their parts.

DOES THE MPAA HAVE undue influence in Canada?

WEB 2.DOH!

THE FIRST RULE OF TODAY’S GQ MAN: Be a wuss! I agree with Mickey: “Could the piece have been as bad for the Clinton camp as the publicity they’re now getting? Are they still not quite operating in the internet age?”

NO GAYS, NO GAY HAIRCUTS, no gay executions, and no gay ties. “Some things really aren’t funny. I guess that’s the whole point of gallows humor…” I still like the Glenn Greenwald photoshop, though.