The usually-excellent conservative legal blog, Volokh Conspiracy, had this unfortunate cheap shot yesterday on the Alabama budget crisis. Quoting the nation's paper of record:

The Horror!

After the rally at Troy State, Lucy Skellett, a sophomore cheerleader, explained how the budget woes affected her. Last year, the cheerleading squad got to travel with the football team. This year, there is no money for away games.

"Four games," Ms. Skellett said. "That's all we get to cheer now, is four games. You know how hard we work out for that?"

If Alabamians won't vote for a $1.2 billion tax increase to help out Ms. Skellett ... well, I'm just speechless. Oh, the humanity!

As an unabashed and unapologetic fan of cheerleaders and cheerleading, I feel it incumbent to defend the honor of Lucy Skellett and the rest of her teammates on the Troy State squad. Unlike college football and basketball players, cheerleaders don't get paid for what they do. A great deal of work and practice goes into it, and their only reward (besides an improvement in their social life) is to hear the third-rate cracks from the geeks and nerds they won't go out with (like me).

More to the point, however, is the fact that this budget cutback is happening at Troy State. Not Alabama. Not Auburn. Troy State. I guarantee you, if the Crimson Tide were forced to cut back on any aspect of its football program due to budget cuts imposed by an outdated tax code, the powers-that-be in that state would rise up, and demand higher taxes !! But since the cutbacks are occurring at a "lesser" state school (no doubt similar sacrifices are going on at the historically black colleges in that state as well), well, we can laugh at the poor girl who has to work her ass off (figuratively speaking) for the honor of being treated like a joke by her home state.