FOR SOME A NIGHTMARE, FOR OTHERS A DREAM: What the U.S. would look like under an “austerity budget.” Hey, we’ve already got college students rioting over tuition . . . .

WILL DAWN JOHNSEN FINALLY GET A VOTE? Plus, a not-so-stirring tale of Obama Administration competence: “According to Firedoglake’s Empty Wheel, Senate Democrats had 60 votes to confirm Johnsen last year but failed to get the job done.”

TRANSPARENCY! White House bars media from event, puts out own video instead.

AT THE HILL: Does Obama Need to Get Tough With Congress?

STUDENTS TWITTERING AND FACEBOOKING DURING CLASS: Not a reliable source of hard news, usually.

AN OUTBREAK OF MACHO at Salon.

FLIP. FLOP. Washington Post: Obama advisers set to recommend military tribunals for alleged 9/11 plotters. The fierce moral urgency of same!

JOEL ENGEL: SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED.

It is all but impossible to fire even the worst teachers if they’re members of United Teachers Los Angeles and work in the L.A. Unified School District. The union that spends millions on radio and TV ads telling you that more funding is needed “for our students” has forced the cash-strapped district to spend $3.5 million over the last 10 years “trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance.” Of those, “only four were fired, during legal struggles that wore on, on average, for five years each. Two of the three others were paid large settlements, and one was reinstated. The average cost of each battle is $500,000.”

So it’ll be interesting to see how vigorously UTLA stands behind the three Wadsworth Elementary School teachers accused not of poor performance but of political incorrectness.

Unreliably, would be my guess.

OBAMA’S VIETNAM: “This is the last helicopter out of Saigon.”

PETER KEISLER CRITICIZES the “Al Qaeda 7” business. “There’s perhaps some irony that Peter Keisler is defending Obama Administration nominees from such attacks, when he himself was subject to scurrilous attacks when he was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. More evidence Keisler is more honorable than those who kept him off the bench.”

UPDATE: From the comments:

All probably true.

But note that, while maintaining that honor, Peter Keisler is “Mr. Keisler” and not “Judge Keisler.” And the allegedly dishonorable people who kept him that way are running the country.

Virtue had better be its own reward . . . .

REASSURING HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Pelosi: Dems Not In Crisis.

KEEPING THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE BELOW 10% by hiring Census workers.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Students protest university cutbacks, reality. “But while I’m sympathetic to students finding it harder to attend college, I’m not sure what they think is supposed to happen. There’s no money. This is not some question of reallocating resources from bad uses to good–everything is being cut because their institutions are under serious financial duress. When administrators point this out, the students reiterate how hard it all is, as if doing so will spur the administration to shake the money tree harder until extra cash falls from the skies.”

Related thoughts from Moe Lane. “Personally, I’d handle this situation by expelling everybody who participated in this thing. Not because it’d solve the fiscal crisis*, but because it offends me that these people so blithely toss around the phrase ‘police brutality.’ We have standards by which to judge that, these days. Or did we start executing students for protesting these days, and I just missed it?”

Also, protests in Davis, led by a 5th year women’s studies major.

And reader Nick Jacob sends this picture from the University of Washington. I hope they’re not English majors.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “To be fair, they were smart enough to add the ‘e’. And to give them even more credit, they may have never heard of White Out to take care of the ‘.”

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: Bill Delahunt will not seek re-election. He wants to spend more time with his family.

3 SHOT AT PENTAGON: “According to Pentagon Force Protection Agency spokesman, the suspect walked up to the main entrance of the Pentagon at 6:40 p.m. and opened fire, hitting two officers. The officers fired back and hit the suspect, whose injuries were said to be more serious.”

CUTTING THE BUDGET, Montana style.

AT AMAZON, up to 50% off Home and Garden stuff.

WHY IS THERE no Jewish Narnia?

OOPS: “Barack Obama won the presidency by holding himself out as powerfully virtuous, as the man who would change the way Washington works. When I voted for Obama, I didn’t think that was going to be the set-up for sarcastic, world-weary jokes.”

Meanwhile, they told me if I voted for John McCain, the White House would be the butt of sarcastic, world-weary jokes. And they were right!

OVERVIEW: Top 10 High-Tech Luxury Cars at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show.

CLEVER, but wrong.

A NEW BACKLASH AGAINST CASUAL SEX? Feminism has always been opposed to EastAsia casual sex!

ONLINE FOR FREE: 137 years of Popular Science.

ANDROID PADS will challenge the iPad?

THE 2010 IACP Cookbook Award Finalists, Half-Baked.