AT AIRCONGRESS, introducing Hill Tweet News.

TIGERHAWK DEFENDS the “working affluent.” Hey, a lot of them donated to Obama. Bet fewer will next time. For one thing, they won’t be able to afford it . . . ..

IN THE MAIL: When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency.

HEH: Roland Burris’s credentials.

ROGER KIMBALL: The President, shock and awe, and Tertullian. “Many people, I believe, have been stunned by the President’s behavior in his first weeks in office. It’s been a shock and awe performance. Historians of this period will look back in wonder: how ever did a new President waltz into office and, before he had even finished unpacking, extract $800,000,000,000 from taxpayers for for partisan spending programs?”

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: When Will Obama ‘Get It’ On Earmarks?

ARE YOU MY FATHER?

“I’M SORRY:” Obama voters express their regrets.

CBS: NANCY PELOSI’S enemies list. Heath Shuler is at the top, but “Pelosi allies Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and John P. Murtha (D-a.) aren’t in the speaker’s doghouse, but many people around her think they should be.” Yeah, but influence-peddling isn’t as bad as challenging her power. “‘Nancy is standing by them, to her detriment,’ said a senior Democratic aide in the House.”

HEY, WASN’T HE CALLING WASHINGTONIANS SNOW-WIMPS JUST THE OTHER DAY? Barack Obama cancels press conference with Gordon Brown “because of snow”.

UPDATE: “What happened to that ‘flinty Chicago toughness?'”

IMPORTANT BUFFET ADVICE from Eugene Volokh.

MICKEY KAUS: “And here I almost believed Obama’s health care plans were all about lowering costs and getting the budget under control.” That’s for the rubes . .. .

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple Empire.

ALINSKY: “The administration is focusing now on rule number 12 of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Does this work when the target is bigger than you?

UPDATE: So if Rush runs the GOP, does Michael Moore head the Dems? And if the answer is “yes,” does that mean the path to political influence involves doubling-up on dessert?

DAVE WINER on why journalism is dying.

RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: “A recent Daily News survey found a slew of trouble spots in the busy commercial hub where cops, firefighters and other government workers use parking permits to park illegally with impunity.”

SOLVE THE ECONOMIC CRISIS BY removing women from the workforce? An amusing parody.

AT TAXPROF: Yet Another Obama Nominee’s Tax Problems. A Ron Kirk roundup.

HOW LOW can the market go? We’ll see a few bear-market rallies, but I certainly have no reason to think it’s hit bottom. Of course, market bottoms are mostly visible in retrospect, but I’m not seeing many people who think it’s time to put money in. And, given current economic policies, I don’t know why anyone would.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Isn’t this the definition of a bottom ?” Heh. Could be. Certainly with my investment history, if I call a bottom it won’t be, and vice versa!

MEGAN MCARDLE ON PLAYBOY’S TEA-PARTY airbrushing. “The accusation against Santelli is potentially libelous, which is, I assume, why the article disappeared this morning. If I were Santelli, I’d sue.”

VIDEO FROM the Asheville, NC tea party protest. “This is not a Democrat/Republican thing . . . it’s an American thing.”

HMM: “Taxpayers Are Chumps.” It is kinda starting to feel that way.

HOPE AND CHANGE: A.P.: Obama beats early retreat on promise to fight pork. “Despite campaign promises to take a machete to lawmakers’ pet projects, President Barack Obama is quietly caving to funding nearly 8,000 of them this year, drawing a stern rebuke Monday from his Republican challenger in last fall’s election.”

And this Bush comparison has got to hurt:

“I’m here to tell everyone that we have an obligation as members of Congress to help direct spending to our states,” Reid told reporters last week.

That’s the kind of treatment President George W. Bush got from his allies in Congress after he took office eight years ago. Like Obama, he wanted to curb lawmakers’ appetite for pet projects, but he also was firmly rebuffed.

Ouch.

MORE ON THE Murtha / Visclosky / Moran / PMA scandal:

In some ways, Visclosky’s story tells a generic tale of corruption that apply to more than a few of our elected Representatives and Senators on Capitol Hill. He sits on the most powerful committee, Appropriations, which lays out the budget for the entire federal government. His vote on budgetary matters has much more influence on spending than others, which allows Visclosky to champion or kill projects at whim — and donors know it. That makes Visclosky the same as every other member of Appropriations, including the Republicans.

The question will be whether Visclosky actively sold his vote in return for contributions or personal remuneration. The feds have seized PMA’s records, which might shed some light on the question, but no one has been charged with corruption or bribery … yet. They seemed most interested in Murtha, but the sheer volume of contributions to Visclosky and his sponsorship of tens of millions of pork dollars to PMA clients in return certainly give an impression that Visclosky was available for rent, if not for sale.

Critics of porkbusters chide us for the relatively small pickings pork-barrel politics provides. The amount of money isn’t the point; it’s the influence-peddling and corruption from earmarks that is thr corrosive danger. Capitol Hill argues that it’s better to have Congress delineate spending on projects rather than faceless bureaucrats in federal agencies, but they have procurement rules imposed on their spending, including competitive bidding and conflict-of-interest restrictions that have the weight of criminal law. Earmarks bypass all of that, and allow elected officials to set up contribution machines such as PMA. In essence, they pay for their continued incumbency with our tax dollars, and regardless of how much that costs, it’s simply not democracy and it’s simply corruption.

Indeed.

THIS COULD BE BAD NEWS FOR THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL: Report: 1 in 4 TN lawmakers has handgun permit.