Peggy Noonan argues that British-style Question Time between lawmakers and the chief executive isn’t what America needs. Why are conservatives on board with this effort at all, save for short-term political reasons? After all, it was progressives like Woodrow Wilson who argued our Constitution should be more British.

Ross Douthat says Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal offers a way forward: “Ryan’s roadmap holds out the possibility of at least some common ground between the limited-government right and the redistributionist left — and long-term solvency into the bargain.” Reihan Salam, meanwhile, defends Ryan’s plan from its critics on the Left and concludes that it “offers a stable, sustainable course for the welfare state that promises to be far more stable than a centrally directed alternative that burdens the federal government with more complexity than it can successfully manage.”

A Pew quiz shows how alarmingly ignorant many Americans are of current events, while an ISI study finds that college graduates can’t answer basic civics questions. Ilya Somin offered a few thoughts on rational political ignorance back in 2008.

And last but not least, BeyondDC offers up a few reasons why city-dwellers have it better.

Perhaps the best advertisement of Sunday’s Super Bowl was also the funniest.

In one scene, a half-dozen “Green Police” officers surround a man who fails to sort his garbage correctly. Government agents also arrest homeowners for “offenses” like using unapproved light bulbs and running hot-tubs at impermissible temperatures. Later, agents shut down a highway to search cars for environmentally-unfriendly contraband. This is perhaps the best, and funniest, argument I’ve seen against the increasingly intrusive green agenda.

Yet the ad turns out to be for carmaker Audi and — implausibly enough — in support of the green agenda. At the end, an Audi driver bypasses the highway checkpoint because his car meets with government approval, and a tagline is superimposed: “Green has never felt so right.” Audi admits in a press release that the ad is tongue-in-cheek, yet they also praise the work of the “real Green Police,” the nanny-state bureaucrats around the world who enforce environmental pieties.

If Audi intended to draw on consumer sympathy for green technology to drive car sales, this ad missed the mark. What viewers are sure to remember are the images of the government devoting tremendous resources to impose arbitrary environmental rules on ordinary Americans. These images are sure to resonate all the more since the ad isn’t really so far-fetched: not only are there real “green police,” the federal government is considering new measures to enforce its intrusive emissions regulations. As one friend quipped, “I have never been so moved not to recycle.”

Reason’s Nick Gillespie makes the case that much of the Left’s reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United is overstated.

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President Obama has proposed a freeze on discretionary, non-entitlement, non-military, non-emergency federal spending. Yuval Levin says this is “a welcome tiny first step.” Dan Mitchell is more skeptical.

Newsweek says neoconservatism is alive and kicking.

CAP responds to Citizens United:  “Indeed, with hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate profits at stake every time Congress begins a session, wealthy corporations would be foolish not to spend tens of billions of dollars every election cycle to make sure that their interests are protected.” Of course, it’s the fact that billions are at stake whenever Congress meets that’s the real problem. Ilya Somin, meanwhile, defends free speech rights.

And finally, Conan O’Brien stays classy in his final Tonight Show.