21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: My brother and I were always close, but now we’ve started making out.

GALLUP: Obama lowest-rated re-elected President since WWII. “Why does this matter for Obama? He will argue this week, starting today, that the American people validated his agenda, but clearly that’s not the case. . . . Small wonder that Politico takes a pessimistic view of Obama’s opportunities in a second term.” I expect him to go full-steam ahead, though.

UPDATE: Ouch: “We interrupt this orgy of Obama worship to recall that his campaign huddled early in 2012 and reflected that they could not run on his first-term record. Accordingly, the strategy was ‘Kill Romney.’ Congratulations. That what we’re celebrating today.”

MARK LEVIN’S INAUGURAL DAY THOUGHTS: Punch back twice as hard!

OVER AT THE VOLOKH CONSPIRACY, Randy Barnett has some thoughts on my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece.

THE CARNIVAL OF NUCLEAR ENERGY is up!

REASON TV’S INAUGURAL VIDEO: 90 Seconds Of Rhetoric vs. Reality.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on training equipment from Adidas.

Also, 65% off on Mannix: The Complete Series.

And, today only, Save Over 50% on Select Sony Memory and Storage Products.

ROGER KIMBALL ON DISTURBING TRENDS IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

“It is seldom,” David Hume once wrote, “that freedom of any kind is lost all at once.” That sucking sound you hear throughout the land is the sound of freedom being drained away, slowly here and there, with amazing rapidity elsewhere.

Nowhere do the political classes care all that much for freedom. Freedom provides insufficient opportunities for graft, and ego-stroking. Freedom obtains in spite of political classes, not because of them.

JOEL KOTKIN: The New Power Class Who Will Profit From Obama’s Second Term.

When President Obama takes the oath of office for the second time, he will also usher in a new era in American power politics. Whereas the old left-wing definition of “who rules” focused on large corporations, banks, energy companies and agribusinesses, the Obama-era power structure represents a major transformation.

This shift stems, in large part, from the movement from a predominately resource and tangible goods-based economy to an information-based one. In the past, political struggles were largely fought over how to divide up the spoils generated by the basic productive economy; labor, investors and management all shared a belief in the ethos of economic growth, manufacturing and resource extraction.

In contrast, today’s new hegemons hail almost entirely from outside the material economy, and many come from outside the realm of the market system entirely. . . . To understand the possible implications of the new power arrangement, it is critical to understand the nature of the new clerisy. Unlike traditional capitalist power groups, including private-sector organized labor, the clerisy’s power derives not primarily through economic influence per se but through its growing power to inform opinion and regulate everything from how people live to what industries will be allowed to grow, or die.

Yeah, that’ll work out well.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, UPPITY RAPPERS WHO CRITICIZED THE PRESIDENT WOULD BE THROWN OFF STAGE: And they were right! “Lupe Fiasco just got thrown off stage here at the Hamilton Live after he went on an anti-Obama diatribe mid set.”

EVEN FOR HIM: Katie Pavlich: Eric Holder Displays Extraordinary Hypocrisy On Gun Control.

REASON TV: Nassim Taleb Talks Antifragile, Libertarianism, and Capitalism’s Genius for Failure.

SO IF YOU MISSED IT YESTERDAY, my Due Process When Everything Is A Crime piece — or an early draft, anyway — is now online. It’s pretty short, as I plan to submit it to the online law reviews for faster turnaround. Maybe later I’ll write a longer piece on the topic — I’ve already been asked if I’d like to do a book, but I’m not sure. Maybe someone else will pick up the ball and I won’t have to. . . .

SALENA ZITO: “People who live and work outside Washington, D.C., say their way of life and values have not changed. But they think those who live, work and legislate inside the Beltway have, frankly, gone bonkers about everything. . . . Their answers are a glaring look into the cultural chasm that is expanding between urban America and rural America. Fascinatingly, at least half of these folks were young, Democrat and college-educated — bucking the concept of unhappy, conservative Republican, older white men.”

Yeah, they really seem to have lost all restraint.

MAN OUTSOURCES OWN JOB TO CHINA.

It’s a worst-case scenario for most employees: There’s someone in China who can do your job quickly, efficiently and for about one-fifth of your salary, and your boss absolutely loves his work.

But one U.S. software developer turned this nightmare on its head and actually benefited from outsourcing, a report says. That’s because, unbeknownst to his bosses, he hired a Chinese developer to do his job, allowing him to take home impeccable performance reviews while actually spending the day watching cat videos and shopping on EBay.

According to Andrew Valentine, who works on the Verizon Risk Team investigating data breaches, the employee, who Valentine calls Bob, had pulled off the stunt for some time, allowing him to relax and earn a good salary while someone in China did his job for him. . . . Suffice it to say, Bob is no longer working for the company. It’s possible that he is missed, though. His performance reviews were impeccable, and his company considered him the best developer in the building.

Heh.

HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Universities Bludgeon Adjuncts With Obamacare Loophole.

Many colleges are cutting back on the number of hours worked by adjunct professors, in order to avoid new requirements that they provide healthcare to anyone working over 30 hours per week. This is terrible news for a lot of people; 70 percent of professors work as adjuncts and many will now have to cope with a major pay cut just as requirements that they buy their own health insurance go into effect. . . .

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen serious unintended consequences from Obamacare, and it’s unlikely to be the last. It’s already become painfully obvious that the law’s creators failed to think through its full implications.

But beyond alerting us to one of the many problems that implementing Obamacare will cause, this news provides a depressing look at the underbelly of the academy. Universities are citadels of blue model thinking and most faculty members are relentlessly liberal in their politics. But the reality is that these same universities are some of the nastiest and most exploitative employers in America. The exploitation of adjuncts is an ugly feature of contemporary American academic life, and the smug complacency about it among many beneficiaries of the two tier system should remind us all that moral hypocrisy can co-exist with impressive degrees.

The more talk about equality you hear, the more likely you are to find it comes from an aristocracy squatting atop a pyramid of serfs.

DIGITAL INFIDELITY: Switching from iPhone to Android.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: How To Save The Republican Party: Win. “In reality, Republicans have a broad consensus on program and policy. But they don’t have the power. What divides Republicans today is a straightforward tactical question: Can you govern from one house of Congress? Should you even try? . . . Obama’s postelection arrogance and intransigence can put you in a fighting mood. I sympathize. But I’m tending toward the realist view: Don’t force the issue when you don’t have the power.”

What you can do, however, is send a lot of bills to the Senate that it will be embarrassing to let die.