Lightning Round - 010813

Go fast or go home.

• It's easy to be tired of the SEC and their imperious brand of football, but unless and until someone else beats their teams, and Alabama in particular, they will continue to hold hegemony in the sport. Notre Dame had a nice season but they weren't even close to the second-best team in the country. And while I posted the Monty Python video last night in jest, it was actually a pretty apt summation of what happened in Florida yesterday. Notre Dame isn't ready for prime time yet.
• President Obama nominated Chuck Hagel and John Brennan for key spots in his administration yesterday -- Hagel to run Defense and Brennan to run the CIA. There are a lot of people squawking that the two gentlemen in question tend to be, at best, skeptical about Israel. In the case of Hagel, there's a record of open hostility. For what it's worth, it might be better for Israel to know that the current U.S. administration is actively hostile to its government. If you know something up front, you can chart your course accordingly. And whatever you think of Hagel and Brennan, the president should get a certain amount of deference in choosing his team. Not that such deference happens very often.
• The new DFL lege arrives today. The DFL has been waiting for this moment for 20 years -- total control of state government. It may not go well, though, since all the goodies they'd like to disburse will require raising taxes and the feds got there first. As I've mentioned before, we're going to see a very interesting study in contrasts on either side of the St. Croix this year, with Wisconsin now being in Republican hands. Let's see which state does better in the next two years.