OOPS: Biofuel Crops Seen As Threat To Tropical Rain Forests.

HEADLESS BODY in Legless Story. If a Mormon had done this, it would be all over the news. Or a Baptist.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: For Ethics Hawks, Congress Could Be Next. “House Democrats have done their best to tamp down smoldering controversies involving Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and John Murtha, D-Pa, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. But the questions dogging the two are not likely to go away soon. . . . The ethics-sensitive tone set by President Obama may make it harder for lawmakers on Capitol Hill to sweep ethics controversies under the rug. However, observers differ over whether Obama’s new ethics rules have brought, or can bring, real change to Washington. There’s little disagreement that recent steps to strengthen the ethics process on Capitol Hill have been largely symbolic.” Symbolic mostly of a focus on symbolism rather than substance. Geez guys, get the book!

Meanwhile, they’re even noticing at NPR: The ‘Culture Of Corruption,’ Redux. “Democrats are watching this closely, with apprehension.”

A CATO VIDEO: Moving Beyond the Fake Stimulus: Reviewing Policies that Produce Real Growth.

NOEMIE EMERY: Iraq and Democracy: What went right and why.

KNOCKING OUT MALARIA? “The first vaccine for one of the world’s most deadly diseases is on the way.” This may not pan out, but I sure hope it does. There are few worse scourges in the world today.

UNLEASHING THE HATE AGAINST . . . . Milton Friedman? Yeah, because Fannie, Freddy, and Countrywide were totally his idea. It’s not like Chris Dodd or Barney Frank had any responsibility.

“IT’S THE LEAD:” Donald Sensing smells a rat. But a more-reasonable — and less-restrictive — rule would be to ban shooting except in emergencies, rather than to ban weapons-carrying in National Parks.

HERE’S MORE ON PLANS FOR A TAXPAYERS’ PROTEST in Mesa, Arizona.

OOPS: Burris’ Senate-seat story changes again. Love the photo.

UPDATE: Chicago Tribune calls for Burris to resign. Why not? They don’t need his vote for the stimulus any more.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Elia and John Kass both agree with the theory that there was a lot of desire to seat him for the stimulus vote and that led Dem leaders — Kass specifically blames Obama — to push him through.

CHILL OUT, CANADA: Despite Tough Campaign Rhetoric Obama Will Not Touch NAFTA. Like Austan Goolsbee said, all that talk was just politics. I’m torn here: On the one hand, I’m frankly relieved by this broken promise, as by many others of Obama’s. On the other hand, I can’t help but want to mock the starry-eyed Obama-worshippers who thought they were electing a messiah rather than a Chicago politician. So, mockery it is!

IN THE MAIL: From the folks at Cato, In The Name Of Justice. Thoughts on criminal law from such luminaries as Alex Kozinski, Harvey Silverglate, Richard Posner, and James Q. Wilson.

LIBERTARIAN ADVICE to Britain’s Tories.

RICK MORAN: Did Democrats cover up Burris’s perjury issues to get the stimulus passed?

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: Dodd does damage: Connecticut U.S. senator jeopardizes bank bailout by pandering on bonuses. “Sen. Christopher Dodd has taken a beating in the polls for becoming too cozy with the head of a subprime mortgage lender – and now he’s playing destructive politics in hopes of winning rehabilitation.” Read the whole thing.

Plus, Dodd Man Out:

Time magazine’s recent list of “25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis” included many obvious choices, and a readers’ poll named Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995-2000, as the No. 1 culprit.

Conspicuously absent was the current chairman, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. Yet on the same day the list was published, Time also had this Dodd ditty: “This is, of course, the same Chris Dodd who was Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee beginning in 2007, when the banks began their meltdown. He was the one who received the most campaign cash of any senator from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two companies that he defended against increased regulation that might have actually tempered some of the disaster that has followed. He was the one who spent a huge chunk of 2007 not in the Senate, but on the campaign trail, carrying out a lackluster presidential effort funded largely by the banking and insurance industries. … His top contributor was Citibank. His fourth largest contributor was the now-collapsed firm, AIG, a major purveyor of the complex derivatives that helped cause the crisis. He was also the one who in 2007 went before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to praise the ‘history of solid regulation’ in the U.S. capital markets. ‘Win or lose, (people) invest with a high degree of confidence that American balance sheets are accurate, that investment products like securities and derivatives are properly valued, and that the markets are well-policed against those who would commit negligent, deceptive or fraudulent acts,’ he said.”

How is it possible for one person to be this wrong this often, and cause so much financial hardship and havoc, and still not make Time’s top 25?

Ouch.

MANLINESS AND THE CONSTITUTION: Very interesting. “Hobbes argued that men’s violent hypermasculinity made them ineligible for the disciplined and mature enterprise of self-government; he believed that only an absolute monarch could control men for purposes of collective peace. Filmer also argued that men were generally incompetent for self-government. But unlike Hobbes, he argued that men were psychologically infantile and thus insufficiently manly for self-government. Filmer insisted that only the king had the requisite manliness of a powerful father and that men required the former’s love and guidance while they owed him complete obedience. The American colonists constructed a new understanding of male identity, one that was compatible with the logic of self-government in their constitution.” So where are we in that project now?

ZACH WAMP ON BARACK OBAMA on the deficit.

POLITICO: The White House’s missing documents. “In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire. Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration, Obama managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps. The moves escaped notice because they were never announced by the White House Press Office and were never placed on the White House web site.”

Well, to be fair “the intense scrutiny a president gets” hasn’t been very intense anyway this time around.

Plus, Open Government: Rhetoric vs. Reality: “A political science cliché is that candidates who run for office promising open government renege on that promise once in political power. . . . vividly illustrating the current discrepancy between promise and practice is the recent digital TV bill signed into law by the president on February 11.” And where are all the press questions about Gerard Salemme’s role? I mean, besides in Ars Technica?

NOT ALL THE BUSINESS NEWS IS BAD: Wal-Mart’s global sales break through $400bn.

THOUGHTS ON shame and behavior from Megan McArdle.

JOHN STEELE GORDON: A Short History of the National Debt. “Deficits are nothing new. It’s the trend that should worry us.”

SNUBBING FEDERAL GUN CONTROLS in Montana.

TAXPROF: The Next Obama Tax Kerfuffle: Rahm Emanuel’s Rent-Free Use of Capitol Hill Townhouse.

THE NEXT BIG THING: Paper water bottles? A good way to display conspicuous environmental sensitivity, for those who value that . . . .

FROM KATIE GRANJU: A letter to Tennessee legislators. “Yes, I know, I know. You – along with the liquor store lobby – want me to make yet another stop to get my bottle of wine – at the liquor store. But as the good conservative you are, you must know that this should be about what I want. Because, you see, I am the consumer. The consumer’s unmet needs should be driving the market, not a special interest lobby. And I guarantee you that many, many other busy Tennessee mamas are being actively stymied in our desire to simply grab a bottle of table wine at the grocery store, instead of having to schlep all over town – with children – to accomplish this basic task.”