WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN (CONT’D): Potholes Gape From Detroit to New York as Funds Fade.

A LETTER FROM GENERAL PETRAEUS on the status of the war.

TAXES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE (CONT’D): New York City Charges Alec Baldwin With Evading Tax on Residents.

BRITAIN: MPs Slam “Secretive” Climategate Probes.

Also: Official inquiries into the ‘Climategate’ scandal ‘unsatisfactory’. “A committee of MPs has described two independent inquiries into the ‘climategate scandal’ as ‘unsatisfactory’ because they failed to answer important questions about allegedly missing emails.”

Plus: Climategate inquiries Criticised: “The University of East Anglia’s Climategate inquiries were not sufficiently transparent and failed to properly investigate some key issues, the Commons Science and Technology Committee has concluded.”

SCALIA: I’ve got better things to do than attend the State Of The Union.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “If I were more conspiratorial and Islamaphobic, the ‘five pillars’ mention with regards to the SOTU speech would send me on a You Tube bender. But I’m well adjusted, so I just going to get back to work.” Well, good.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Regulatory Adventurism:

Usually, the opposition attempt to frame the State of the Union speech comes after the President gives it in the official response, but Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) decided to get a head start. Barack Obama is widely expected to call for a consensus approach to governance with the House controlled by Republicans, but Inhofe gently reminds America that Obama hasn’t tried that approach on regulatory adventurism. Inhofe delivers what could be called a State of the Bureaucracy address, and asks Obama to get back to balance by reining in his EPA.

More at the link.

STORIES WE’D HEAR MORE OF IF THERE WERE A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT: Senior Citizens Suffer From Inflation.

MICKEY KAUS: “What are the chances that John Edwards will tell Sorkin the truth, as opposed to what he has told virtually everyone else involved (his wife, newspaper editors, the American people) throughout this saga? … Put that together with Sorkin projecting himself into the story, and you get … what, exactly?” It’s not even likely to be entertaining.

GRASSROOTS TYRANNY in Arlington, Virginia.

JOANNE JACOBS: “I think there’s a way to revive the Dream Act in 2011: Link citizenship only to military service, which Americans see as a sacrifice, dropping the link to college attendance, which most see as a subsidized benefit to the individual. Two years of college enrollment, with no degree required, doesn’t guarantee a productive citizen. Anyone can enroll in community college, if only to take remedial classes. (Only 22 percent of full-time students earn a two-year degree in three years.) It’s much harder to qualify for the military.” Yeah, but this’ll probably create political pressure to lower the military’s standards. Or am I too cynical?

HIGHER (AND LOWER) EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Money manager Whitney Tilson suggests that the fiscal crisis “means that the 100+ year bull market in education funding is likely over.” Over the last thirty years, we doubled staffing ratios, added generous pensions, and greased the wheels of reform with lots of extra spending–that is over. The ARRA stimulus will be noted as the zenith of education funding (and federal control in education); states are broke, the cliff is here.

Indeed it is, and denial won’t help.

ERIC CANTOR: No Bailout For The States. Echoing Jim DeMint.

Cantor flatly rejected any changes in the law that would allow state governments struggling with record budget deficits brought on by the economic recession and rising pension costs to restructure debt, including allowing them to declare bankruptcy.

“I don’t think that that is necessary, because state governments have at their disposal the requisite tools to address their fiscal ills,” the majority leader said, before going a step further.

“I think some … have mentioned this Chapter 9 equivalent for states is somehow going to stave off some kind of federal bailout — we don’t need that to stave off a federal bailout. There will be no bailout of the states,” Cantor said. “States can deal with this and have the ability to do so on their own.”

All they have to do is spend less.

TAXPAYERS PICKING UP Fannie and Freddie Execs’ Legal Fees. “Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud. The cost was a closely guarded secret until last week, when the companies and their regulator produced an accounting at the request of Congress.”

I THINK HE’S GOT AN AGENDA: Cornel West Sweet-Tweets Finnish Teachers. I say we take him at his word and peg U.S. teacher pay at Finnish levels . . . .

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, “CHRISTIANISTS” WOULD BE SUPPRESSING DISSENT. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! President of atheist advocacy group ejected from Cape Coral City Council meeting.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UCLA Associate Vice Chancellor David Feinberg Made $1 Million This Year.

JOHN BOEHNER’S opportunity box.

HMM: Obama’s Climate-Change Czar Leaving White House. “This’ll be spun as part of the standard midterm turnover inside the administration, but the big difference between her and people like Axelrod and Gibbs is that they’ll be replaced. She might not be, for the simple reason that her portfolio is all but dead in the new Congress. Which is to say, it’s not so much that she’s quitting. It’s that you fired her.”

LITTLE MISS ATTILA IS STARTING A NEW RELIGION. Make it sufficiently anti-western and it might work.

CHANGE SAME: Obama won’t endorse raising retirement age or reducing Social Security benefits. “President Obama has decided not to endorse his deficit commission’s recommendation to raise the retirement age, and otherwise reduce Social Security benefits, in Tuesday’s State of the Union address, cheering liberals and drawing a stark line between the White House and key Republicans in Congress.” Yeah, he’s serious about the deficit.

ORIN KERR THINKS IT’S A GOOD PICK: Obama To Select Donald Verrilli For the Vacant Solicitor General Spot.

TAXPROF: Oprah Hates Writing Checks To The IRS. No sweat — she backed the guy who extended the Bush tax cuts! Change! Er, I mean, same!

Hey, remember when the Obamanauts were calling McCain McSame — because they couldn’t imagine anything worse than a President who would continue the Bush policies on war and taxes? Heh.

UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.

CHANGE: Antitrust Bulldog Gary Reback Pushes Google Probe. “I can’t tell you how disappointing it is to have to go to Brussels, Belgium, to try to protect San Francisco companies. Our government ought to have a role in protecting the competitive system according to the antitrust laws, and whether we can get complete relief someplace else doesn’t solve the problem in my view.”

Gary’s from Knoxville. He’s a good guy.

WHY 2012 is not 1996.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: Since the Tucson shooting on Jan. 8, federal gun control advocates have made little headway and many states are considering expanding gun rights. Why?

Because people have figured out that gun control is a scam that costs liberty while making crime worse and leaving citizens defenseless.