IT’S GETTING CROWDED UNDER THAT BUS: College presidents alarmed over Obama’s cost-control plan.

Fuzzy math, Illinois State University’s president called it. “Political theater of the worst sort,” said the University of Washington’s head.

President Obama’s new plan to force colleges and universities to contain tuition or face losing federal dollars is raising alarm among education leaders who worry about the threat of government overreach. Particularly sharp words came from the presidents of public universities; they’re already frustrated by increasing state budget cuts.

Academia has been a major source of money and footsoldiers for Obama. This kind of talk won’t help. And while he could bash Wall Street in public, then cut sweetheart deals in private, the academic world is too diffuse for that approach to work, I suspect.

Plus this: “At Washington, President Mike Young said Obama showed he did not understand how the budgets of public universities work.”

It’s not at all clear that Obama understands how budgets work in general.

UPDATE: Reader Kendall Gelner writes: “At some point, you are charging enough tuition.” Heh.

IT’S ESSENTIAL TO BE PRO-CHOICE, except when it’s not. “I vividly remember back around 1990, the progressive gay-rights-type people I knew were intent upon portraying sexual orientation as a choice. I won’t name the famous lefty who snapped at me for entertaining the notion that homosexuality might have a biological basis: If it exists at the biological level, it will be perceived as a disease and people will try to cure it. That was really the same point as Besen’s, oddly enough, in that it was about acceptance as opposed to treatment.”

Plus this: “Does he want truth to win out or something more like good policy or political pragmatism?” Or, as usual, my tribe.

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ELECTION PERSPECTIVE: F.A. Hayek on “The Great Utopia.”

TIM CAVANAUGH: How many public transit expert/advocates actually ride on public transportation?

I have met more than three folks, in and out of the establishment media, who speak with authority about mass transportation yet somehow can never get around to using it in the heat of their daily struggles. Judging by this storied Onion headline, I’m guessing others have met such people as well.

But how frequently, really, are we getting our fix of transit-solution bloviation from people with no practical experience of the “systems” they’re diagnosing and claiming to cure?

I wonder this every time an expert makes the case for more intelligently planned transit networks featuring smarter coordination throughout the hub or loop or grid. There’s one thing you learn by your second day of using transit when you actually don’t have a choice: For every transfer in your itinerary, you need to double the time allotted for the trip.

Yep.

UPDATE: Reader Donald MacQueen writes: “The Washington DC area public transit system is run by WMATA. WMATA’s board consists of elected officials from DC. Maryland, and Virginia, all of whom, you will be shocked – shocked! – to know, have reserved parking spaces for cars at WMATA headquarters. Public transit, like all the other things our elite betters say is good for us, is for the little people.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Greg Reihing writes: “As a former bus operator in Toledo,Ohio I know first hand of the inefficiencies in Public Transit. Only one board member ever used the bus regularly and even he rubber stamped the management ideas. I tired of explaining to the riders why it took 2hrs to get to their job when a car ride would take 20 minutes. The claims of energy savings and environmental benefit are all bogus. There aren’t enough seats available to make one iota of a difference in air quality. Safety? Public transit is a big target for litigation. The entire industry is influenced by the American Public Transit Association (APTA) who lobbies congress for funding. It’s a boondoggle-first rate.”

INFLUENCE: But for “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” there’d have probably been no Grateful Dead.

NEXT ROMNEY CAMPAIGN TALKING POINT: 4 Reasons Why Space Sex Sounds Like An Awful Idea. Take that, Newt!

UPDATE: Jim Bennett writes: “Talk about speculation in advance of data! But seriously — those are arguments for a lunar colony, not against one. All of those potential problems apply only to zero-G on current facilities like the ISS. Lunar gravity might be the optimum tradeoff between acrobatic potential and useful anchoring forces. But I for one refuse to leap to conclusions before the issue is joined. So to speak.”

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SCIENCE: Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again): Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years. “The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.”

Getting more and more like Fallen Angels every day.

UPDATE: Thoughts from Mike Stopa. “Suppose it turns out that CO2 has essentially nothing to do with the earth’s climate. How will the history of this colossal mistake be written?”

MORE: Don Surber comments. “Do not expect the American press to pay any attention to this story. The Associated Press offered no re-write of the London Daily Mail’s blockbuster story.” Doesn’t fit the narrative. But watch the polls, which already show vastly increased skepticism over just a couple of years ago. Nowadays, the truth gets out.

Bad news for bankrupt governments, though, which were hoping that carbon taxes to “save the planet” would save their balance sheets. Now voters and taxpayers will be unlikely to go along.

MORE STILL: Maybe the Daily Mail’s willingness to report what the New York Times won’t explains why it has passed the Times to be the #1 newspaper in the world.

WASHINGTON TIMES: Obama’s Twisty Light Bulb Logic. “Some critics have charged that hyping mercury poisoning in MATS was just a cover for the EPA to ramp up its regulatory assault on the coal industry. Trace amounts of mercury from coal-fired power-plant emissions affect a small number of Americans, chiefly those who live near the emissions sources. At the same time, however, the Obama administration has been trying to force Americans to accept even greater mercury risks by insisting that traditional incandescent light bulbs be replaced with compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). The mercury vapor in CFLs is at a much more dangerous concentration than anything coming out of power plants.”

The incandescent phaseout is underway, but it’s still not too late to stock up!

CHANGE: It’s Working in Walker’s Wisconsin: The governor’s controversial labor reforms are already saving taxpayers millions.

THIS WEEK in the future.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Girl, 19, disguises herself as a boy on Facebook to trick two girls into sex.

WAIT, I THOUGHT “UNILATERALISM” WAS BAD: California breaks rank again, demands over 15% of cars sold be non-polluting by 2025.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Is it unfair to compare the Obama and Reagan economic recoveries? No. I disagree. It’s well-established that any comparison that makes Obama look bad is per se unfair. This comparison makes Obama look bad. So . . .

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: What We Do Not Want To Hear Anymore. His conclusion: “Human nature and the laws of physics, not technocratic liberalism, are still the best guides to the madness around us. Money borrowed has to be paid back or the debt eaten by someone, period. Poverty is defined by a want of material necessities, not by lacking the appurtenances that someone else better off enjoys. Gas and oil are miracle fuels and it is very hard to find alternate energies at comparable costs and reliability. And as a rule, the green class of environmental elites usually uses more fossil fuels per capita than do the muscular classes who mine and drill them out of the ground — and who do not jet, drive, or live in the comparable fashion of their critics.”

MARCO RUBIO: Obama Made Everything Worse.

The Florida Republican, considered one of the GOP’s brightest rising stars, said that while Obama inherited a high national debt and a troubled economy when he took office, he had exacerbated both crises.

“This president didn’t talk about his record for one simple reason; he doesn’t want you to know about it. But you do know about it, because you feel the failure of his leadership every single day of your life,” Rubio said.

“The bottom line is this president inherited a country with serious problems. He asked the Congress to give him the stimulus and Obamacare to fix it. The Democrats in Congress gave it to him. And not only did it not work, it made everything worse.”

Yep.

IS SPIKE LEE THE NEW BILL COSBY? “Your generation, they now equate intelligence with acting White and ignorance with acting Black, and they wear it like a badge of honor. They say, ‘I’m ghetto. I’m gangster.’ What they are is ignorant.”

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VIDEO: Anna David On Sex And The Single Girl: 2012.

RAND SIMBERG: New Space Policy Questions and Advice for Mitt: In the interest of continuing to improve him as a candidate should he get the nomination. “There is no one more fervent than me in their desire to see that Barack Obama is a one-term president, but your space policy behavior, so far, is the first time I’ve seen any reason to give him another term.”

POLITICO: Dems bash, bank secret cash.

Democrats have seized on a new attack line: Republicans as the party of unlimited secret money.

The only problem: so are the Democrats. n recent days, Obama released an ad blasting “secretive oil billionaires” for attacks on him, Nancy Pelosi unveiled a campaign slogan, calling for “a new politics free of special interest influence,” and the Democratic National Committee released a Web ad accusing Mitt Romney of lying about his ties to a super PAC that’s spent millions supporting him.

Maybe that would have sounded better in 2008, when Obama put the kibosh on the Democratic outside money infrastructure — or even in 2010, when Obama led a chorus of Democrats assailing Republicans’ outside spending.

But this year, Democrats are playing the same game. Obama’s team has blessed a network of super PACs trying to raise the same seven-figure checks as Romney’s. And Obama’s allies have gone even further than Romney’s, setting up nonprofit groups that do not disclose their donors at all.

In fact, top Democrats are so adament about the need to raise unlimited — and sometimes secret — cash this year that some operatives aren’t pleased about the recent attacks. It’s a whole lot tougher to get wealthy liberals to fork over mega-checks when the politicians who’d benefit are ripping Republicans for taking the same types of contributions.

Forked tongues.

BYRON YORK: In NASA-land, Romney, Gingrich battle over space. It’s nice to see people debating space policy. It’s odd to see Republicans picking one of the few areas where Obama has a pretty good approach in place already.

IN THE NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN TODAY, I argue against the latest proposal from Mayor Bloomberg’s anti-gun group.

I couldn’t resist adding this bit: “A recent study found that mayors belonging to Bloomberg’s group have been arrested at a much higher rate than Tennessee handgun-carry permit holders, for crimes ranging from perjury and embezzlement to child sexual assault. But there’s no background check for politicians.” Maybe there should be . . . .