"Good fighters and good boxers, they keep pounding away at the cut. We knew they would come after us."

"It was like a heavyweight fight."

"Will.i.am said his attempt to tweet during the performance was thwarted after he discovered his cell phone had no service."

"His Twitter handle was silent until after the game, when he sent out a series of tweets beginning with: 'Att crashed ... ahhhh!!!! The worse.'"

Blame AT&T. AT&T is to blame for everything. Why not blame AT&T for how bad the Black Eyed Peas were?

The choice of the Black Eyed Peas was intended to bring some youthful vigor back to the halftime show after the NFL — feeling burned by the infamous "wardrobe malfunction" of Janet Jackson with the aid of Justin Timberlake in 2004 — chose a string of safe, near-geriatric icons for the halftime for the next six years, ending on a low note with a much-maligned concert by The Who last year.

You did "Sweet Child O' Mine" and near-geriatric icon Slash appeared. Then you did "(I've Had) The Time of My Life." Did near-geriatric icon Jennifer Grey back out at the last moment?

Why is the New York Times just noticing this?

Liberals (including President Obama) think the Supreme Court was wrong in Citizens United to say that corporations have free speech rights, but newspaper and book publishers are corporations. For some reason, the NYT is acting like it took a year to notice this hitch (which has been perfectly evident since the Citizens United litgation began in the lower courts). I guess the excuse for pretending not to see what was obvious is that it has been hoping to rely on the notion that some corporations have more rights than others. This new piece — a column by Adam Liptak — begins to concede that is an unworkable argument.

“There is no precedent supporting laws that attempt to distinguish between corporations which are deemed to be exempt as media corporations and those which are not,” Justice Kennedy wrote in Citizens United....

Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, has reviewed the historical evidence. The bottom line, he said, is this: “If ordinary business corporations lack First Amendment rights, so do those business corporations that we call media corporations.”

But Liptak's column peters out with a quote from a lawprof who calls it a "difficult question" and...

There good arguments both ways about whether corporations ought to be covered by the First Amendment. But it is harder to say that some corporations have First Amendment rights and others do not.

Yes, yes, it's obvious what the answer needs to be, and yet the debate must go on and on because it's so important to restrict the speech of people who organize themselves into corporations. Some of them. The bad guys. Not the good guys, like the ones who take a year to getting around to half-conceding the crushingly obvious.

"Where are the liberal civil rights leaders in response to the openly racist comments and calls for violence against America's black Supreme Court Justice?"

"These same men -- all men, I believe, as per usual with the black civil rights groups -- got all in a multi-week, if not many month, tizzy with their allegation that what obviously was a 'say it don't spray it' situation at a Tea Party rally was a spit attack on a black Member of Congress, but they evidently do not care when persons at an event affiliated with one of the nation's most established liberal groups, Common Cause, publicly say they want Clarence Thomas physically attacked and put into slavery."

Says Amy Ridenour, via Instapundit, who uses the word "hypocrisy." It's something beyond hypocrisy, though, I think.

Obama: "Over the first two years of my presidency, we had a complete disaster. Right?"

Right.

Remember when it was fun to mock Arianna and her little HuffPo project?

Begun with $1 million, it's now being sold to AOL for $315 million, with Arianna reigning as as president and editor in chief.

By handing so much control over to Ms. Huffington and making her a public face of the company, AOL, which has been seen as apolitical, risks losing its nonpartisan image. Ms. Huffington said her politics would have no bearing on how she ran the new business.

What difference does it make? AOL as a brand meant something to me in the 1990s, but not now. Who cares whether AOL retains a semblance of political neutrality? In any case, mainstream media always feels pretty liberal, so why would anyone really notice. Now, that quote is from the NYT, so... think about it. The NYT would like to be the big news site that looks neutral (but satisfies liberals). HuffPo is the raging competition, which needs to be put in its place.

Mitch Daniels in the WSJ: "Unless you're in favor of a fully nationalized health-care system, the president's health-care reform law is a massive mistake.."

The Indiana Governor (and potential GOP presidential candidate) ponders what the states can do if the law is not repealed or judicially voided. The states cannot be commandeered to run the program, so there is leverage to bargain. These are the conditions that 21 governors have proposed to the Secretary of Health and Services:

• We are given the flexibility to decide which insurers are permitted to offer their products.

• All the law's expensive benefit mandates are waived, so that our citizens aren't forced to buy benefits they don't need and have a range of choice that includes more affordable plans.

• The law's provisions discriminating against consumer-driven plans, such as health savings accounts, are waived.

• We are given the freedom to move Medicaid beneficiaries into the exchange, or to utilize new approaches to the traditional program, instead of herding hundreds of thousands more people into today's broken Medicaid system.

• Our state is reimbursed the true, full cost of the administrative burden to be imposed upon us, based on the estimate of an auditor independent of HHS.

• A trustworthy projection is commissioned, by a research organization independent of the department, of how many people are likely to wind up in the exchange, given the large incentives for employers to save money by off-loading their workers.

Obviously, this is a very different system than the one the legislation intends....

That's a GOP proposal on how to tweak health care reform, which is what Obama and others have said they need. With the prospect of 21 states dropping out of the enforcement regime, there should be real pressure to work with them and try to draw them back in.

On the other hand, you really are in favor of a fully nationalized health-care system, then you might celebrate the states failure to go along with the attempt to include them. And if what happens is, as Daniels predicts, "first-rate operational catastrophe," then that sets up the collapse into the only workable fix a fully nationalized health-care system.

"I know that Ronnie would be thrilled and is thrilled to have all of you share in his 100th birthday."

"Does it seem possible?"

Watch the Super Bowl with us!

Come, hang out at Meadhouse.

UPDATE: Packers win the Super Bowl!!!!!!

UPDATE2: It's 28° outside, but guys are opening their doors to yell to each other what everybody already knows: Packers win the Super Bowl!

UPDATE3: I must say I enjoyed seeing George W. Bush there. George and Laura and Condi.

Sunday on skis.

This was our second stop...



The first was Governor Nelson, but I didn't take a picture. We stopped at Steve's Liquor Store on the way home, not because we needed anything, but because we knew they were having a pre-Super Bowl tailgate party, which is to say, free brats. So we bought some beer and Nueske's bacon and grabbed a free brat to share as we drove home.

"What's on besides the Super Bowl?"

"'Sex and the City' marathon... 'Toddlers and Tiaras' marathon... 'Bewitched' marathon... 'Worst Cooks in America' marathon... 'Jerseylicious' marathon..."

"Is it harder for women to be sports fans?"

(Bonus question: Is it harder for women to speak without sounding like everything is a question?)

Hey, everybody mistakes 4-star generals for waiters.

"In fact, when military personnel wear their dress uniforms of short jacket and striped trousers to black-tie parties, they themselves often make jokes to each other about waiting tables. [ Four-star Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli -- the No. 2 general in the U.S. Army] wears a chestful of medals, which [Valerie] Jarrett apparently did not see."

"A young Wisconsin trio could shape the direction of the GOP."

WaPo:

They all grew up in southern Wisconsin. They are close in age, ranging from late 30s to early 40s, and have known and worked with one another for many years. [Paul] Ryan and [Scott] Walker met when they were in their 20s. Ryan's chief of staff roomed with [Reince] Priebus in college.

They are not only friends but political soul mates. They share a worldview, a set of conservative values and a determination to show the country that conservative governance can solve many of the nation's problems. And in Wisconsin, they found a way to unify the party establishment with the tea party movement, avoiding many of the conflicts that occurred in other states.

It's all about Wisconsin....

"With a classic showman’s swagger, Bill O’Reilly has declared that more people will see his live pre-game interview with President Barack Obama..."

"... on Sunday than 'any other interview that’s ever been done in the history of mankind.'"

Blech. Why are those 2 non-football characters trying to horn in on the Super Bowl? Can you just leave us alone for one day?

Movie watched last night: "Citizen Kane."

What was the motivation to pull the old reputedly-greatest-movie-ever-made down off the shelf? Some conversation about putting together a story by interviewing various people who knew a specific individual one had never met and wanted to try to understand. I said that's the famous, highly praised narrative structure of "Citizen Kane," you realize, but you didn't realize that because you'd never seen "Citizen Kane." How do you get through life without seeing "Citizen Kane"? People are always pushing "Citizen Kane," which you rightly pointed out is a reason to resist it. So thanks for not resisting it when I pushed it, which I did not because I'm shocked that you'd failed to take in the greatest movie blah blah blah — in fact, I admire resistance to that sort of pressure — but because it had to do with an idea we were already talking about that had nothing to do with the irritating pseudo-accomplishment of seeing all the things you're supposed to see.

"Citizen Kane" questions for discussion:

1. Why did you see "Citizen Kane," or how have you managed to avoid it? Have you been bullied into seeing it, or are you one of the bullies? Do you feel like there are movies you're supposed to see, and do you see them or avoid them?

2. If you've seen it, do you like it? What don't you like about it? Do you like that kind of extreme visual composition where one actor is right up against the edge of the frame and the other actor walks away into the set and looks about one tenth the size of the other guy? Do you like that stagey acting? Do those special achievements in makeup from 1941 drive you crazy or do you find them heart-rendingly touching evidence of striving after Art?

3. With all this snow we've been having, we could make a list of movies with important snow, and "Citizen Kane" belongs on that list. What else? "The Shining"...

"Do you think it's gonna be a Packers blowout? Do you see where that could happen?"

Rush Limbaugh asked Ken Hutcherson on Friday's show:

THE HUTCH:  Well, I do.  That's why I was gonna make you promise me that you won't turn the TV off at halftime.

RUSH:  I would never turn the Super Bowl off at halftime no matter what's happening....

THE HUTCH:  ... But if you will notice, why do most advertisers want to advertise on the first half?

RUSH:  Well, Hutch, it's because the women stop watching at halftime.

THE HUTCH: (laughing) No.  Because they know, man, that the Super Bowl has a tendency to be one-sided. We've had some great Super Bowls in the last....

RUSH:  Yeah, but it hasn't been the case in the last five or six years.  This game has gone down to the last play...

THE HUTCH:  But there is a possibility that someone could be put to shame this week. I'm not gonna push, but I believe my Green Bay Packers are gonna come through....

So, Packers win in a blowout, right? Anyway, you see the subject of women came up. It comes up again at the end of the discussion: