ORIN KERR ON Encryption and the Fifth Amendment Right Against Self-Incrimination.

HEY, RUBE! Obama Is on the Brink of a Settlement With the Big Banks—and Progressives Are Furious.

SPENGLER: Forget about Economic Recovery: Obama Is Toast. “People are hurting, and badly. The official unemployment rate may have fallen, slightly, but the real unemployment rate — the number of working-age Americans who aren’t working — rose from about 12% before the 2008 crisis, to about 23%, and hasn’t come down. That includes people who have retired early because they can’t find work, spouses who used to earn a second income but have gone back to homemaking because work isn’t available, self-employed people whose businesses have collapsed, young people who live in their parents’ basement because they can’t afford tuition and can’t find work. . . . Roughly one out of eight Americans who presumably want to work, and were working before 2007, can’t find work today.”

BLOOMBERG/BUFFETT UPDATE: I emailed a mole at Bloomberg and now the story link works again. It was, apparently, a glitch: “Sometimes coding freaks out when a story is updated to add latest tidbits (share price, add’l comment, etc.)”

LIBERTARIAN CANDIDATE GARY JOHNSON EMAILS THIS COMMENTARY ON THE SOTU:

“If the idea tonight was that the President would fulfill his constitutional duty to give us ‘information of the State of the Union’, we should be able to expect some truth. I didn’t hear much truth. Truth is that the real unemployment rate is probably still above 10%. Truth is that after all the hand-wringing and deals of the past couple of years, instead of cutting spending, the President and Congress are going back to the well for another $1.2 Trillion debt limit increase. And the truth is we are seeing nothing from either the President or the Republicans that will really change any of those unacceptable realities.

“Only in the twilight zone that is Washington could a President who has bailed out and stimulated our economy to death stand in the Capitol and declare there should be ‘no bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs’. Can anyone spell GM or TARP or Solyndra?

“The President said we deserve a government that plays by the same rules as millions of hard-working Americans. Perhaps that should begin with the government not borrowing and printing 43 cents of every dollar it spends – something hard-working Americans can’t and don’t do.

“Until we see a real plan – not a Washington smoke and mirrors plan – that puts a stop to deficit spending and really puts America back to work, all of this rhetoric is just wasted breath.”

Pretty much.

THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF THE UNION, from Ira Stoll.

WAS IT A STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS? Or a State Of The Election Address?

BYRON YORK: What Really Happened With The Gingrich Ethics Case? “The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich’s former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich’s ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand. It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior, after which Gingrich in essence pled guilty to two minor offenses. Afterwards, the case was referred to the Internal Revenue Service, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter. And then, after it was all over and Gingrich was out of office, the IRS concluded that Gingrich did nothing wrong. After all the struggle, Gingrich was exonerated.”

MITCH DANIELS: ‘Nothing wrong with the state of our Union’ that free Americans can’t fix. Full text of the GOP response at the link.

WELL, I DIDN’T WATCH THE STATE OF THE UNION, but I did fix the dishwasher, and teach a fairly decent class on the non-delegation doctrine, and edit some page proofs of a forthcoming law review article. So it was a pretty good day.

SOTU FOLLOWUP: Fact Checking President Obama’s Claims About Domestic Energy Production.

Related: U.S. Auto Dealerships Turning Away Chevy Volts. “If the customer doesn’t want it, and the federal government insists on it, what are the car companies to do? They may have only one recourse; force dealers to take Volts and other plug in hybrids on their way to market.”

It’s like Atlas Shrugged come to life.

HEH: “Which way am I going? This way or that?”

From the comments: “I believe he asked which way to the first tee.”

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: “Kimberly Strassel writes about an issue briefly noted here in December — government employees who planted lynx hairs on land so as to use the endangered species act to prevent its development.”

MESSAGE FROM a young Iranian woman.

HEARTS AND MINDS: A surprisingly gun-friendly story in Elle Magazine. You wouldn’t have seen anything like this a decade ago.

GIVEN THE HISTORY OF CELEBRITIES SPEAKING OUT ON POLITICS, I’D SAY TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY: Tim Thomas and the Obama snub: free speech or impolitic politics?

MORE ON WARREN BUFFET, THE DEEP-SIXED BLOOMBERG STORY, AND THE WHITE HOUSE, from Mark Meckler. “This story certainly is inconveniently timed and very messy. It definitely dirties up the optics for Buffett and the President, with Buffett’s secretary sitting in the Obama family box for the SOTU.” Yes, this does smell, even by the standards of today’s politics.

STIMULUS: Oak Ridge Government Hotel Averaging 18% Occupancy.

THE INSTADAUGHTER SAYS OBAMA’S TIE WAS “A TERRIBLE CHOICE — IT TOTALLY CLATCHES WITH THE FLAG BEHIND HIM.” (“Clatches” = clashes but you think it matches). That’s surprising — his suits and ties are usually perfect. That’s my only SOTU liveblog. We’re going to watch Big Bang Theory. It’s a rerun, but so is this speech.

Here’s the text.

OBAMA: U.S. must reclaim values of fairness for all.

Which is why we need to repeal the Eisenhower Tax Cuts!

MAYOR BLOOMBERG, TAKE NOTE: Bed Bug Confidential: An Expert Explains How to Defend against the Dreaded Pests.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Under Obama, Price of Gas Has Jumped 83 Percent, Ground Beef 24 Percent, Bacon 22 Percent. Not the bacon!

THIS SEEMS TO BE A COPY of that deep-sixed Bloomberg story on how Warren Buffett made out like a bandit from the Keystone Pipeline decision.

UPDATE: Professor Stephen Clark writes: “If Buffett’s assistant indeed is sitting with the first family for the SOTU, then this Bloomberg story makes the Keystone decision stink to high heaven. It’s cliché, but could you imagine what would follow any similar sequence of events during the Bush-Cheney years? Why Republican’s aren’t hammering Keystone, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the overt politicization of DOJ, DOE, BLS, and other agencies right down the line, and the recent memo on the stimulus to name just a few is beyond me. It used to be a stereotype that politicians always pivoted from a question asked to answer the question they wanted asked. Seems that the recent crop of GOP contenders have forgotten what used to be a routine skill.”

And with a compliant press, Obama doesn’t need it.

THE FOLKS AT CATO will be live-blogging the State Of The Union and the GOP Response.

Also Stephen Green is drunkblogging. That guy’s got a liver like . . . er, Stephen Green.

MEN STRUGGLE FOR RAPE AWARENESS.