ASSOCIATED PRESS: SPIN METER: Obama’s latest budget-tightening effort hardly makes a dime’s worth of difference: “Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you’ve just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday. The thrifty measures Obama ordered for federal agencies are the equivalent of asking a family that spends $60,000 in a year to save $6.”

UPDATE: Obama’s proposed spending cuts illustrated. Looks like one of those comparisons of the Earth to the Sun. . . .

HOW TO improve U.S. railroads.

SPACE SOLAR POWER PLANT: Also useful as a hurricane-killer?

RATTNER UPDATE: “Mr. Rattner’s high profile is nonetheless useful in drawing attention to the real story here, which is the growing evidence of corruption by officials who use their power over public pension funds to shake down private companies. This is the same political class that has been blaming banks for ‘greed’ in the financial crisis. The pension fund scandal exposes the myth of the superior virtue of the public and nonprofit worlds. Greed is universal. And the opportunity for corruption is enormous when political discretion is tied to vast sums of public money.”

TWO lemon pasta recipes.

CHRIS DODD attempts a political recovery.

“GREEN JOBS:” The New Sub-Prime?

ANDY KESSLER: How will the Fed put the toothpaste back in the tube?

SOME GOOD NEWS ON BUSSARD FUSION that I missed last week.

BREAKING NEWS: 9th Circuit Finds Second Amendment Incorporation. More here.

GET RID OF THE SERVICE ACADEMIES IN FAVOR OF ROTC? But what about the schools that won’t allow ROTC?

FREEDOM: F.B.I. and States Vastly Expand DNA Databases.

ROWBACK? A story on the Mexican drug cartels and guns that doesn’t blame U.S. gun shops. No, really.

THE LEGWAY: A DIY Human-Powered Segway.

RASMUSSEN: 51% View Tea Parties Favorably, Political Class Strongly Disagrees. No surprise there . . . .

Plus this: “One-in-four adults (25%) say they personally know someone who attended a tea party protest. That figure includes just one percent (1%) of those in the Political Class.”

And this has got to scare some people: “A majority (54%) of Mainstream Democrats had a favorable opinion of the tea parties.”

WILLIAM SAFIRE CALLS ME OUT on a case I hadn’t heard anything about:

It’s about David Ashenfelter of The Detroit Free Press, a Pulitzer winner threatened with jail next week for refusing to reveal a source for his article about a 2004 investigation of a federal prosecutor who was later indicted for withholding evidence. (Shades of the Ted Stevens case.) The prosecutor, who was later acquitted, sued Justice and demanded that the reporter testify about his sources. The judge threatens jailing for contempt. “Every word he wrote was true,” says Lucy Dalglish, the lawyer who heads the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, “yet now he faces jail and possible bankruptcy for doing his job.”

Here goes some punditry: In the age of pundicity, where are the other outraged blogs? Why is the Web-footed punditariat ducking? Where’s Instapundit?

This is the first I’ve heard about it, but I’ll look into things further. Sounds a bit like the Vanessa Leggett case, which I wrote about here. On the other hand, I’ve never believed that professional journalists have any special right to keep sources confidential, beyond that enjoyed by other Americans.

CONVERTING A COLD-WAR BUNKER into a mansion.

IN THE MAIL: Either You’re in or You’re in the Way: Two Brothers, Twelve Months, and One Filmmaking Hell-Ride to Keep a Promise to Their Father.

ERIC POSNER: Harold Koh, the Alien Tort Statute, and Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind: A Puzzle. “Koh has long supported a type of litigation that probably breaches international law and in any event universally offends foreign opinion. In what sense does this stance show decent respect to the opinions of mankind?” A fair amount of pushback in the comments, though.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: More earmark shenanigans.

Groups that monitor government transparency and the use of federal funds are especially troubled by the trend of members on the powerful House and Senate appropriations committees — which are in charge of setting specific money expenditures — earmarking taxpayer money to fund lawmaker-created non-profit organizations. Rogers and Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who like his Kentucky counterpart hails from an economically strapped region struggling to bring in new industry, stand out as prime examples of this practice, said William Allison, senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates for transparency in government.

“You’re using federal money to create organizations that wouldn’t exist,” Allison said. “They’re hiring people — sometimes bringing in political supporters. Sometimes (those supporters) promote the lawmaker as much as the group, because they’re out in the community and people identify the group with the member. It amplifies the member and it raises a lot of questions.”

Taxpayer advocacy groups also say such practices are an abuse of power, an example of Rogers using his political clout to channel millions in federal homeland security funds into pet projects for his district.

Read the whole thing. This should be illegal — but how likely is such a law to pass?