THE THORNY QUESTION OF who, exactly, academics work for.

WINNING THE FUTURE? U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions. “The federal government’s financial condition deteriorated rapidly last year, far beyond the $1.5 trillion in new debt taken on to finance the budget deficit, a USA TODAY analysis shows. The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for. This gap between spending commitments and revenue last year equals more than one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product.” Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be.

BRINGING COMPETENCE BACK TO THE PRESS: Congrats, New Media: Journalism Is Back.

A FOLLOWUP ON A STORY INVOLVING OUR CRIME-FIGHTING LOCAL COMMISSIONER: Convicted killer pleads to aggravated assault in case involving Greg ‘Lumpy’ Lambert.

Already doomed to die in prison, a convicted killer on Monday made a last-minute decision to take a plea deal in a related armed encounter with former Knox County Commissioner Greg “Lumpy” Lambert.

With prospective jurors waiting in the hallway, defense attorney Richard Gaines announced in Knox County Criminal Court that Kane Stackhouse would take a deal he earlier had rejected and admit he pointed a gun at Lambert in a bid to steal a getaway car from Lambert’s Clinton Highway car dealership. . . . Lambert, who has a handgun carry permit, whipped out his own weapon and disarmed Stackhouse, who fled.

Since then, the Kel-Tec pocket pistol he carried is known in local gun circles as a “Lumpy special.”

PERHAPS THE PROBLEM IS WITH THE INTELLECTUALS, NOT THE GEEKS: Larry Sanger: Is There A New Geek Anti-Intellectualism?

SASHA VOLOKH ON the Exclusion Of Gary Johnson From the New Hampshire Republican Debate. I can’t imagine why they’re doing this.

CHANGE: Rebellion among Senate Dems over Reid’s no-budget agenda?

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF ACADEMIC INSULARITY: Rice U. Criticized for Dismissal of Police Officer. “Houston police officers are criticizing Rice University for dismissing a member of its police force after he left campus to assist law enforcement dealing with a man who shot two police officers in a non-campus incident, The Houston Chronicle reported. The Rice officer who lost his job said he rushed to assist when he heard about the incident on a police scanner, and local police officers are calling him a hero. Rice declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but said in a statement that the fired officer ‘left his post when only two other officers were on duty and failed to notify his supervisor of his whereabouts for nearly an hour, which could have endangered the safety of our students and campus.'”

A simple “radio us if this happens again so we know where you are” would have been sufficient, I think.

AMERICA’S HOTTEST INVESTMENT: Farmland?

YA THINK? Irradiation Underused To Fight E. Coli In Foods.

HEY, KIDS — IS THIS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR WHEN YOU VOTED FOR “CHANGE?” Senate Confirms Former RIAA Lawyer for Solicitor General. “Verrilli, one of at least five former RIAA attorneys appointed to the administration, is best known for leading the recording industry’s legal charge against music- and movie-sharing site Grokster. That 2003 case ultimately led to Grokster’s demise, when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with a lower court’s pro-RIAA verdict. Grokster produced a legal foundation which the RIAA used against file sharing service LimeWire, which shuttered last year and agreed to pay the labels $115 million to settle a lawsuit. The elevation comes as lawmakers are moving to bolster copyright laws, and as federal authorities employ constitutionally suspect measures toward that end.”

SO WHEN I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT PRINTERS, people always comment on ink cost. Consumer Reports has looked at operating costs for inkjet printers, and their two favorites are the Canon Pixma MG8120 and the HP Photosmart C309n.

UPDATE: Thoughts on printers from James Lileks.

WHY ROUGHHOUSING IS GOOD FOR KIDS and their parents. Too bad nannyists have treated it like some sort of social disorder.

WASHINGTON POST FACTCHECKER: President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout. “What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan.”

Perhaps we should call this the Subprime Presidency.

RANDY BARNETT ON LIBERTY AND ENUMERATED POWERS.

I can put the matter another way. For 2 years there was no bill of rights, and no Due Process Clause. Therefore, the position of Tribe et al is that, for 2 years, Congress had unlimited powers. I should have thought it obvious that there are not one but two means of constitutionally protecting liberty: (1) enumerate and limit grants of power and (2) protect rights.

Read the whole thing, and also this column in the Washington Examiner.

AT JERRY POURNELLE’S PLACE, BIOTERROR ADVICE: “Do not fear the garage biologists. Okay, fear them but fear this person more: the disgruntled graduate student or post-doctoral fellow.”

WHY CHRIS MATTHEWS is like Dr. Laura.

KINDLE JOY: Reader Dave Voda writes: “I bought Temporary Duty. You’ve got to love ebooks for instant gratification. May I call your attention to MY ebook on Kindle — Sales keep picking up each month. I wonder why?”

The book is How to Protect Your Money from the Coming Government Hyperinflation.

So, I dunno. Everything I hear on the nightly news says the economy is just swell.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Do People Eat Dirt?

FIXING BROKEN BONES with stem cell therapy.

BRUCE STERLING: Hit Spammers At Their Payment Processors. “Nearly all financial transactions arising from spam operations are handled by just three banks, according to a paper from 15 researchers from the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at San Diego, the International Computer Science Institute and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. The three banks are Azerigazbank in Azerbaijan, DnB NOR in Latvia, and St. Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla National Bank in the Caribbean. As potential solutions, the researchers recommend that issuing banks in the US refuse to conduct ‘card not present’ transactions for known spammers.”

MITSUBISHI’S ELECTRIC VEHICLE can power your home. “In light of the devastation caused by the recent earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan, Mitsubishi is releasing, a year ahead of schedule, a device which allows i-MiEV owners to power their electric appliances at home using their EV’s battery should they find themselves without power. Mitsubishi claims that the 16 kilowatt-hour battery pack can supply power to an average Japanese home for almost one and a half days.” So for an American home, that would be almost an hour! I’d like a hybrid that could do this — it would be a generator that you could drive. . . .

CULTURE: Something is starting to creep me out about advertising in general, and Apple’s advertising in particular. “Apple ads promise a world with perfect racial and gender diversity — but almost no other kind of diversity.” That’s why Apple is so popular with academics and Hollywood types.

IN THE MAIL: From Ric Locke, Temporary Duty.

NEW YORK POST: Yale’s Latest Gift To Anti-Semitism.