SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:14 P.M. ET: 

GOOD FOR STEVE – From The Hill:  "Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says building the Keystone XL pipeline is 'inevitable' as the history and economics of a U.S.-Canadian relationship outlast a presidency.  In an interview with Bloomberg News, Harper said economic forces determine whether projects like Keystone go through, not fleeting political calculations.  'It is, in my judgment, a necessary and inevitable victory,' Harper said in a Jan. 16 interview before the State Department dropped its final environmental impact review. 'I absolutely believe that. I can’t see how it will be otherwise.'"  Harper is a really good guy, a conservative, and a man I wish were president of the United States...instead of the current pretender.

ANOTHER DENT IN OBAMACARE – From the Washington Examiner:  "The Obama administration is giving another delay to business groups concerned about the health care law's requirement that larger firms cover their workers.  The Treasury Department announced Monday that companies with 50 to 99 employees have an additional year to comply with the coverage mandate, until January 1, 2016.  For businesses with 100 or more employees the requirement will still take effect in 2015. But other newly announced provisions may help some of those firms.  The employer requirement was originally supposed to take effect this year for companies with 50 or more workers. The administration delayed it last year, the first sign of potential problems with the rollout of President Barack Obama's health care law."  Another great leap forward for American health.  Do you think the people who designed Obamacare should have their college degrees revoked?  I do.

PEOPLE WHO RUN THINGS – From the Chronicle of Higher Education:  "Thirty-four pages of research, branded with a staid title and rife with complicated graphs, might not seem like a scintillating read, but there’s no doubt that a report released on Wednesday will punch higher education's hot buttons in a big way.  The report, "Labor Intensive or Labor Expensive: Changing Staffing and Compensation Patterns in Higher Education," says that new administrative positions—particularly in student services—drove a 28-percent expansion of the higher-ed work force from 2000 to 2012. The report was released by the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan social-science organization whose researchers analyze college finances.  What’s more, the report says, the number of full-time faculty and staff members per professional or managerial administrator has declined 40 percent, to around 2.5 to 1."  The number of "administrators" at many colleges has reached the obscene level.  No parent sends a kid to college to experience the thrill of meeting an administrator.

HOLDER TO GO? – From the Washington Times:  "U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will step down this year, he said in an interview with the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin in the magazine’s Feb. 17 edition.
In a feature article, Mr. Holder said he plans on staying in his position 'well into' the year.  Last November, Mr. Holder, the first black attorney general, told CBS News he didn’t have 'any plans' to step down."  The nation would be better served by a more mainstream attorney general.  Holder has been an extremist and a racialist in too many areas.  But I doubt that Obama has the wisdom and vision to choose a better replacement.

February 10, 2014