SOMETHING TO BE PROUD OF: The folks at F.I.R.E. emailed me that the University of Tennessee was one of only eight universities to get a “green light” rating for free speech. More background here.

TOYOTA’S MISSISSIPPI PRIUS PLANT is now officially on hold: “Blame for the plant’s postponed start date can be placed squarely on the downturn of the global economy and US automobile sales in particular.”

A LOOK AT HOW WELL-PREPARED THE F.D.A. IS to regulate nanotechnology.

A BUNCH OF videogame markdowns at Amazon.

INSTA-POLL:

JOHN HINDERAKER on the Minnesota recount and the “fifth pile.”

MICHAEL BARONE: Who Is at Fault for the Decline of the Big Three?

DAVID ZARING: Will Toyota Sue if Treasury Bails Out GM?

STEVE CHAPMAN: Obama’s ‘My Pet Goat’ Moment. “Why did it take Barack Obama 48 hours to renounce Rod Blagojevich?”

IT’S A FAIR COP:

Republican opponents of the auto bailout are being accused of putting ideology ahead of the economy’s well-being. They are accused of having an ideological animus against bailouts.

“That criticism pays Republicans a compliment they don’t deserve,” said Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “The Republican opposition to the auto bailout was not a matter of principle, but of pragmatic nit-picking.

“A principled opposition to the auto bailout would have denounced as immoral any attempt to use taxpayer money to prop up failing companies. It would have insisted that such attempts at central planning are destructive and un-American. It would have said that the government’s proper function is not to engineer the economy, but to protect individual rights and otherwise leave the economy free. That is not what the Republicans claimed. . . . The tragic fact is that Republicans do not regard central planning as objectionable–they merely disagree with the Democrats’ central plan.”

Sigh. Would the voters have bought the principled argument? Maybe — the polls show a lot of hostility to an auto bailout. Sadly, we’ll never know . . . .

MICHAEL SILENCE: The Nothing But Caroline Network: “Clearly, NBC Nightly News is running the U.S. Senate campaign of Caroline Kennedy. In a jaw-dropping move, her run for the office was the network’s lead story Monday evening. The American auto industry is on the verge of bankruptcy, President-elect Obama makes key cabinet appointments, Illinois is impeaching its governor and some fatcat bilks more than $50 billion from the rich and not so famous, and NBC chooses to launch Kennedy’s campaign?”

UPDATE: Claudia Rosett on Caroline Kennedy and the Banana Republic of New York:

When you’re done reading the Blagojevich complaint, with its attendant insights into Illinois politics, spare a thought for New York — where Caroline Kennedy wants a sit-down with Governor David Paterson, with the aim of claiming Hillary Clinton’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.

Is there anything wrong with that picture?

Well, let’s imagine for a moment that it’s not New York State we’re talking about, but some province – call it the State of Banana — in some nameless republic rife with dynastic politics.

Read the whole thing.

I DON’T SEE THE SCANDAL HERE: “Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel missed more votes than any other New York House member, according to a study released by Congressional Quarterly.” He’s old, and he was in the hospital for a while. Plenty of Rangel scandals already without making a big deal about this.

IT’S NOT JUST HOLLYWOOD THAT MAKES ANTI-AMERICAN MOVIES THAT NOBODY WATCHES: They do it in Russia, too! But not everything is the same:

Interestingly, the linkage of “American” and “gay” is part of the mindset of hardcore America-hating in Russia: the preferred anti-American slur of recent years, pindos, bears a strong resemblance to pidoras, the Russian equivalent of “fag.”

Of course, that could have been in Redacted, too — who’d know? On the other hand, some things are the same: “The audiences didn’t like the film any more than the critics did. Not only was it crushed at the box office (unsurprisingly) by the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace; it was also trounced by the Kevin Smith comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno–which made 13 million rubles (about $481,000) in its first week of release in Russia, compared to just 3.4 million rubles for Strangers.”

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

JOHN KASS ON BLAGOJEVICH: Governor has friends who also have friends.

OOPS: Colonoscopies Miss Many Cancers, Study Finds. “Instead of preventing 90 percent of cancers, as some doctors have told patients, colonoscopies might actually prevent more like 60 percent to 70 percent.” Still worth having, but . . . .

SENSING WEAKNESS? Pelosi lays down the law with Rahm.

USING EMBRYOS to make sperm and eggs.

MICKEY KAUS: From Taylorism to Wagnerism.

TOBY HARNDEN: “Barack Obama may be the new Mr Cool on the block but you have to give President George W. Bush his due for a supremely self-composed and dignified reaction to the Baghdad shoe thrower.” Well, if you’re leader of the free world, you ought to be able to handle an airborne brogan. Still, I remember Madeleine Albright’s deer-in-the-headlights reaction to some heckler at Dayton, so I guess such composure isn’t to be taken for granted.

ILYA SOMIN on political ignorance: “The true lesson of political knowledge polls is not that either Democrats or Republicans are uniquely ignorant, but that we should reduce the power of government. That way, fewer important decisions will be made under the influence of electoral processes where ignorance, bias, and irrationality play such an enormous role.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: A Scandal Guide.

A SECOND AMENDMENT BOOK BOMB: David Theroux of the Independent Institute just called to tell me about an effort to celebrate Bill of Rights Day (that’s today) by trying to push Stephen Halbrook’s new book, The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms, up on the Amazon and NYT bestseller lists, as Ron Paul supporters did for his last book. Halbrook is a terrific Second Amendment litigator and scholar, so if you want to help the cause of gun rights, buying (or giving) a copy of his book isn’t a bad idea. I’ll order one myself, and I’ve actually already read the book. More background here.

UPDATE: Well, I ordered one, but now it’s showing as “temporarily out of stock.” Guess this thing’s working! (Bumped).

ED CONE: Google Not as Evil As Wall Street Journal Thinks.