A “SERIOUS CONVERSATION ON THE BUDGET,” FEATURING Arthur, the subsidized aardvark. I like Arthur, and Marc Brown, and I’m actually quite disappointed to see him politically weaponized by the folks at PBS.

UPDATE: Reader Trey Monroe writes:

Having 8 year old triplets, I have watched my share of children’s programing. And for the record, Phineas and Ferb kick Arthur’s ass. The theme of the show is that kids can accomplish cool things with quiet confidence. The stars are NEVER mean, and they constantly foil their controlling would be nanny of a big sister. Oh, and the music is killer.

All the product of two guys pitching the idea for 16 years before production and without a nickel of tax payer assistance.

Perry the Platypus would eat Arthur and Binky for lunch. Don’t get me started on DW.

Heh. After my time, but nice to hear.

ORIN KERR HAS MORE ON WHAT STILL LOOKS LIKE a ridiculous situation at Widener Law School.

One of the common ways that law professors keep students mildly entertained in class is by posing hypotheticals involving their professors and the Dean. I ‘m not sure why this is so funny, but students just love it. If you teach first-year criminal law, which typically focuses heavily on homicide crimes, that means you spend a lot of time imagining your colleagues meeting horrible fates. If A kills B out of revenge, that’s just a boring hypothetical. But if the hypo involves the students’ Torts Professor killing the Dean out of revenge — or better yet, a conspiracy in which the Dean and the students’ Torts and Contract Professors agree to kill their Criminal law Professor for beer money — well, that’s serious entertainment. It may seem a bit morbid at first. But it’s the opposite, I think. Putting Professors or the Dean in the place of real criminals and real victims makes the scenario so absurd that it adds a bit of levity to what is otherwise a very depressing topic. As a result, it’s a common tool Criminal Law professors use when teaching first-year students the basic doctrines of criminal law. I suppose over the years I’ve murdered pretty much every 1st-year teacher — and certainly all my Deans — and they’ve all murdered me, too. (All during in-class hypos, mind you.)

In light of this, I was astonished to see this article about a Criminal Law professor being put on administrative leave for posing hypotheticals in class. . . . Perhaps there is some back-story to this I don’t know, or perhaps there is some aspect to the classroom hypos that takes them way outside the usual I-killed-the-Dean hypo. The actual hypos haven’t been made public. But based on the story alone, at least, it sounds to me like a ridiculous overreaction.

And thus, worthy of ridicule. Meanwhile, F.I.R.E. is on the case.

And Widener Dean Linda Ammons has a blog, but she doesn’t seem to have addressed this story there.

EVERYBODY’S DESPERATE, TRYING TO MAKE ENDS MEET. Work all day, still can’t pay the price of gasoline and meat.

Plus this: “Industrial output unexpectedly falls in January.” Unexpectedly!

“ALL OF YOU ARE WHITE! GO TO HELL!”

COUNTRYWIDE SCANDAL UPDATE: Darrell Issa Subpoenas “Friends of Angelo.”

VIOLENCE: THE TEA PARTY GETS BLAMED, BUT IT’S USUALLY THE UNIONS WHO ACTUALLY DO IT: “Many of the letters from Wisconsin today have to do with violence: threats against Governor Walker and members of his administration, the increases in their security details, their worries about their spouses and children, and so on. I have heard from people closely connected to the threatened individuals. Their letters are hard to take. The last few days have made quite clear that, if you cross the public-employee unions, you run risks: and not merely political risks (which are nothing). . . . I have a feeling that, if conservatives had staged a lunatic and thuggish rally like the one the public employees just staged in Wisconsin, it would be huge news all across the country: cover of Time, cover of Newsweek. (Do those magazines still exist?) Sarah Palin would be called on to explain herself. David Gregory and other Sunday hosts would be warning of a sickness in the American soul — would be warning of the brownshirting of America. There is a sickness, all right.”

RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION AT U.C. DAVIS: With universities in California facing budget cuts — and having to fight it out with well-organized police, prison guard, and K-12 teachers’ unions — they would be well-advised to pay more attention to stuff like this.

UPDATE: Davis backs down.

HOPE AND CHANGE SAME! Panetta: If Bin Laden Is Captured, We’ll Send Him To Gitmo:

If the U.S. captures top al-Qaida leaders Osama Bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri, they would likely be sent to the Guantanamo Bay military prison, CIA Director Leon Panetta told senators Wednesday.

This suggests that, given the choice, President Barack Obama would not try the men in the U.S. court system, opting instead for the Bush administration’s policy that the president has long criticized.

I remember when Guantanamo was an inhuman hellhole stupidly insisted upon by the Evil Bush NeoCons. Now it’s an important national security asset, reluctantly employed by our dedicated warriors against terrorism.

I HEARD THE GENERAL, WHISPERING TO HIS AIDE DE CAMP: “Be watchful for Mohammed’s lamp.”

THIS WILL TURN OUT WELL, I’M SURE: In sharp reversal, U.S. agrees to rebuke Israel in Security Council.

BEST LINE ON THE GERMAN NYSE TAKEOVER: A Börse with No Name.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A REVOLUTIONARY GUARD: For dictators, storm troopers are not a luxury.

JIM TREACHER: Batton Lash is my friend, and Lawrence O’Donnell is an idiot. “Idiot” is a mild term for a guy who gets his talking points from Media Matters.

Plus this: “’The most famous African-American woman in the world, and the most admired.’ Did ya hear that, Oprah? Just kidding, of course you didn’t. Larry O’Donnell said it.” And really, if portraying Barack Obama as having . . . wait for it . . . big ears is somehow racist then — well, screw it, there’s no way that sentence can make sense. He’s got big ears. And Michelle Obama is about as convincing a spokesperson for healthy eating as, well, Oprah. Live with it, Larry.

BLINDNESS: Major Hasan: “Star Officer.” Every branch of the military issued a final report on the Fort Hood massacre. Not a single one mentioned radical Islam. “For the superiors in charge of Hasan’s training at Walter Reed and his two years at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the taboo was of a more complicated order—one that required elaborately inventive analyses through which Hasan’s stated beliefs, ominous pronouncements, and evident unconcern with standards of behavior required of an officer could all be represented as singular virtues, proof of his exceptional value to the Army. It could not have been easy. Still, they managed. . . . A resident who didn’t represent the diversity value that Hasan did as a Muslim would have faced serious consequences had he behaved half as disturbingly. Here was a world in which Hasan was untouchable, in which all that was grim and disturbing in him was transformed. He was a consistently mediocre performer, ranking in the lowest 25% of his class, but to his evaluators, he was an officer of unique talents.”

NORAD training flights over DC. And apparently, all over the U.S. and Canada, to brush up on their interception skills.

SO, THE RADIO-CONTROLLED HELICOPTER CAME, and I have to say, it’s a steal for 29 bucks. It’s small, but jewel-like in construction and seems to be pretty rugged. It comes with spare rotors and tailrotor blade, though. The remote takes 6 AA batteries; the copter charges via a USB connection. 45 minutes or so is good for 6 or 7 minutes of flying. It’s pretty easy to control, though it takes a very light touch on the vertical control, while the forward-and-reverse — which is driven by a rotor at the back, not by tilting the main rotors — is a bit slow to respond by comparison. It was easy to get it to take off, hover, fly around the room, and land, though I overshot once and hit the ceiling fan (about 15-20 feet up in the living room) and that produced a tumble that nonetheless left it undamaged. Lots of fun for the price, though. It’s charging as I write this . . . .

UPDATE: Mike Flynn emails:

I received mine today (thanks for the link), and it is a blast. I was caught shorthanded on AA batteries, but I managed to scavenge enough from the Flip camera (from another Instapundit link-thanks again) and a spare TiVo remote to get it in the air.

You are right about the build quality of this thing. I can’t believe it was only 29 bucks. It seems pretty durable and looks really cool. It is a bit touchy on the vertical control, but after a few minutes and a couple of fairly spectacular crashes I had it flying pretty well.

Thanks again for the tip. Keep the great Amazon links coming! Oh, and all the other stuff, too.

I’ll try.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College, Earnings, And Learning:

The explanation, I submit, is that the earnings disparity is not due to the high skills of college graduates (although some certainly do have them), but rather that over the last several decades, good opportunities for people who don’t have college degrees have been vanishing. Fifty years ago, hardly any career paths in the business world were foreclosed to people without a college degree, but today we find that few career paths remain open. That is because credential inflation has set in with a vengeance. Many firms now require that applicants have college degrees, even for work that calls for nothing more than basic trainability. Thus, those who don’t have college credentials are confined to an increasingly narrow segment of the labor force where the prospects for great advancement are bleak.

Credential inflation indeed.

OBAMA’S RADIO: Death threats over a cartoon after an MSNBC story.

VIDEO: We…really have little idea why our teachers brought us here to protest some dude.

FIVE WINNERS in the 2012 Pentagon Budget.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on strength-training equipment.

VOTE ON THE FINALISTS in this National Debt Video Contest. I was one of the judges — recruited by Mary Katharine Ham — and there’s some good stuff here.

IN WALKS THE VILLAGE IDIOT, AND HIS FACE IS ALL AGLOW. He’s been up all night listening to Mohammed’s radio.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Reality Hurts: “Carol Hanisch’s dictum that the “personal is political” got it wrong. In reality, when something becomes personal it stops being political. A Guantanamo detainee living in America is political. The same detainee living next door is personal. The masses taking their revenge on the imperialist West is political; Lara Logan being raped is personal. When somebody else is being beheaded one can examine which political attitude to take. When it happens to you, then you just want it to stop. . . . Those who still haven’t caught on, soon will.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: More on UNLV’s “Fiscal Collapse.”