IN THE MAIL: From Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindeth, Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses: Solving the Funding-Achievement Puzzle in America’s Public Schools. Blurbed by Jeb Bush.

RASMUSSEN: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 31% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That matches the lowest level yet recorded.”

Plus, “Just 26% of Massachusetts voters rate that state’s health care reform a success while 37% say it’s been a failure. Only 10% say it’s improved the quality of health care.”

JAMES JOYNER: Stacy McCain = Ken Layne = Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE: Stacy celebrates another successful round. “James Joyner is an extraordinarily insightful writer, and when he calls me ‘perhaps the most skilled attention whore in all the blogosphere,’ my instinctive reaction is, ‘Perhaps?’“

A CRACKDOWN ON FREE SPEECH at Bucknell University.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Sonja Schmidt on Senator Barbara Boxer.

A MADOFF QUESTION: “Why is it that someone who set up a Ponzi scheme gets more jail time than the majority of murderers?”

I think it’s because he made powerful people look stupid.

STONEWALL ANNIVERSARY: Texas officials want investigation of gay bar raid. Could be a lot of hoohah over nothing. Could be official harassment. I’m suspicious, though. “Gibson was so drunk he was vomiting and struck his head when he fell, the chief said.” Well, possibly. Stay tuned.

STUART TAYLOR: “The Supreme Court’s predictable 5-4 vote to reverse the decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and two federal appeals court colleagues against 17 white (and one Hispanic) plaintiffs in the now-famous New Haven, Conn., firefighters decision does not by itself prove that the Sotomayor position was unreasonable. . . . What’s more striking is that the court was unanimous in rejecting the Sotomayor panel’s specific holding. Her holding was that New Haven’s decision to spurn the test results must be upheld based solely on the fact that highly disproportionate numbers of blacks had done badly on the exam and might file a “disparate-impact” lawsuit — regardless of whether the exam was valid or the lawsuit could succeed.”

POLITICO: Vulnerable House Democrats in GOP sights after energy vote.

TAXPROF: Tax Oppression Index: U.S. Is #12.

IF YOU JUST SMILE, the recession will be gone! So give me something to smile about.

WALTER OLSON ON RICCI: Supreme Court: Discriminate — With Discrimination.

DUDE, where’s my renewable job?

WILLIAM JACOBSON: “There is something strange about the Obama administration’s diplomacy. We speak softly to our enemies, but use a big stick against our friends.”

MEGAN MCARDLE ON UNIONS AND OLIGOPOLY: “I think it’s great that people who maybe weren’t cut out for college had a decent way of earning a good living, getting ahead a little. I think it’s really sad that era is over, especially for people who were encouraged to bet their whole futures on a deeply troubled industry. It’s just that I’m also aware that the reason people could have well-appointed jobs-for-life was an oligopolistic cartel which was able to cut rich side deals in order to buy labor and political peace. The culmination of this was the hideous junk of the 1970s, which is the kind of place that oligopolistic cartels tend to end up. But that doesn’t make all this any less tragic for the workers.”

YESTERDAY I ASKED IF THERE IS A BLOG ON UNNECESSARY APOSTROPHES: And many readers sent links to The Apostrophe Abuse Blog! Thank goodness. Unnecessary apostrophe’s are among the most pressing problem’s that American’s face.

Ugh, it hurts just to type that, even in jest. . . .

KATHERINE MANGU-WARD: The Southern Lifestyle Will Rise Again. I’ve liked Garden & Gun since it first came out. I’d still like to see more “gun” though.

DEBT AND TAXES: The CBO’s Dire Predictions.

ANOTHER ROUNDUP OF IRANIAN REVOLUTION NEWS at the Berman Post.

CQ POLITICS: Ron Paul’s “Audit the Fed” Bill Gaining Steam.

He may have faded from the national political scene a year ago, after his dark-horse presidential run came to naught, but Rep. Ron Paul ’s influence is still being felt in campaigns and policy debates across the country. Indeed, the latest legislative priority of the libertarian Texas Republican — auditing the Federal Reserve — has gained support in unlikely quarters.

Paul’s legislation, popularly known as the “Audit the Fed” bill, has drawn 244 cosponsors, ranging from Ohio’s John A. Boehner , the conservative Republican floor leader, to Michigan’s John Conyers Jr. , the liberal Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Some Democrats have even picked up on Paul’s rhetoric. “It’s time to yank the shroud off the Fed and shine some light on these events,” New York Democrat Edolphus Towns , chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said at a hearing last week about the shotgun marriage between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch last fall to stave off the latter’s collapse.

Paul’s efforts have only gained in political significance since the Obama administration unveiled its proposal to give the Fed new powers over the financial regulatory system.

The sentiment was certainly showing at Monday’s Nashville Tea Party protest.

TIME FOR a 28th Amendment? We need something. I favor the somewhat-related Truth-in-Legislation Amendment.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Video: Energy Czar hasn’t read cap & tax, either. I think only the lobbyists have. . . .

WELL, DUH: “Beer Rules.”

HAR DE HAR HAR: Video: Press corps now openly laughing at Obama’s backtracking on taxes.

A 13-YEAR OLD SWAPS HIS IPOD FOR A FIRST-GEN WALKMAN: “It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.” Heh.