ANDY KESSLER on the Chicago Cubs economy.

OH, GOOD GRIEF. Well, at least they waited until he was sworn
in.

UPDATE: Or not. Several readers email that the site was up pre-inauguration. Oh, well.

JULES CRITTENDEN: From the people who wanted to run the war . . . apologies for bungling the inauguration. “NPR reported thousands stuck in the tunnel for six hours. No toilets.”

REASON TV: With the Shoe Throwers at Dupont Circle.

THE HIDDEN BENEFITS of H.O.V. lanes.

IT’S ABOUT JOBS! “I urge our new Commander-in-chief and our new congress to release the funds for the production of the F-22 Raptor immediately.”

SOME PHOTOGRAPHIC ADVICE from Chris Orwig.

WHY IS THIS MAN SMILING? Photoblogging from Bush’s flight to Texas.

UPDATE: Uh oh.

SOME NEWS ON what’s happening with Aptera’s electric car.

TAXES AND SPENDING IN CONNECTICUT: “Governor Rell pretends to order a hiring freeze, garnering accolades for her stern budgetary discipline. Result; 824 new employees hired since May. . . . Our former Governor Lowell foisted an income state on us by arguing that we could actually save money by having a reliable source of income to calculate our budget on. Proving that if you give a politician a dollar he’ll spend two our state payroll has more than doubled since that tax was enacted, while our population dropped. Now we’re returning to the estate tax which was abolished when the income tax came in, to fill some of the shortfall in our projected multi-billion dollar deficit.”

Are there lessons from this for the national level?

HOPE AND CHANGE: Senate confirms Hillary as Secretary of State.

ASKING THE UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS: “Everyone’s hailing Obama’s decision to suspend all Guantanamo trials for 120 days. But I thought the problem with Guantanamo was the people being held without trial.”

WHITE-POWDER MAILINGS aimed at the Wall Street Journal and Alan Dershowitz. With Knoxville postmarks.

A GALLERY: UNSOLD CARS around the world.

THE NEXT FRONTIER: Gadgets for your pets.

INTELLIGENCE ADVICE TO OBAMA, from James Woolsey.

TONIGHT IN D.C.: Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie Discuss Being “Libertarian in the Age of Obama.”

IT’S A DRINKING-AGE-LOWERING GROUNDSWELL! Dump the drinking age and let 18-year-olds have a legal beer.

ACTUALLY, I THOUGHT IT WAS A PRETTY GOOD SPEECH. But, “Authors Against Obama?”

AT HERITAGE, a roundup of deficit-spending stimulus skeptics.

JON STEWART on Obama as Bush III. “I guess when Obama says this stuff, I don’t think he really means it. And that gives me hope.”

A “TO-DON’T LIST” for people on the right during the Obama Presidency.

HMM: J-prof uses satellite images to calculate that 800,000 attended inauguration ceremony. Plus, Michael Silence offers a cautionary note on crowd estimates. Anyway, if the turnout’s disappointing, I blame Adrian Fenty!

UPDATE: Good news and bad news on the TV front. It was the most-watched televised inaugural since 1981 — but it got beat out by American Idol.

MEGAN MCARDLE: “A drinking age of 21 is an embarrassment to a supposedly liberty-loving nation.” Obviously, I agree.

WE’LL SEE: Will Obama’s Anti-Terror Policies Vindicate Bush?