The big news, of course: the smuggest press secretary in the world resigned (under pressure?) awkwardly this morning. The top of the possible replacement list, amusingly, is currently employed by Fox News: integrity specialist Tony Snow.

Update: On Call's got coverage galore.

How to illustrate in fifty words or less the difference between life in the Big Ten and life in the Horizon League:

Probably the most expensive gift [reported by OH Gov. Bob Taft] was eight tickets to seven Ohio State University football games, valued at $3,808. The university traditionally gives Ohio governors football tickets.

Taft also reported a $12.50 lunch from Cleveland State University.

(Link courtesy of Wake-Up Call.)

Why people love Krugman:

To dismiss [the global-warming] consensus, you have to believe in a vast conspiracy to misinform the public that somehow embraces thousands of scientists around the world. That sort of thing is the stuff of bad novels. Sure enough, the novelist Michael Crichton, whose past work includes warnings about the imminent Japanese takeover of the world economy and murderous talking apes inhabiting the lost city of Zinj, has become perhaps the most prominent global-warming skeptic. (Mr. Crichton was invited to the White House to brief President Bush.)

It's only fair to both of them to point out that the subject of the briefing was not, as Krugman implies, global warming; rather, Crichton focused on assessing the likelihood of a murderous-talking-ape attack on the United States, a subject on which he is undeniably an expert. (And incidentally, I think you'll all be pleased to know that Crichton estimated that likelihood at only "low to medium.")

As transcribed by The Hotline, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Ca.) ventured Wolfward yesterday to defend Donald Rumsfeld:

"The fact that this is a tough time and a tough point in this progress toward a free Iraq doesn't mean that you change horses because you're in a tough ball game and there's lots of difficulties."

Well put. Because of all the analogies in the world, a ball game is the one you want to be using.