It even kind of looks like TOTUS...

... so what the heck are they waiting for?

The Obama administration has nixed the idea of reinstalling solar panels on the White House roof.

Some 32 solar panels were first installed on the executive mansion's roof by then President Jimmy Carter as part of his efforts to tout clean, renewable energy during the 1970s, when the U.S. faced severe shortages and price spikes after an oil embargo by Arab countries. Carter held a rooftop news conference in 1979 to show off the panels and discourage reliance on foreign oil.

The panels were yanked off after Ronald Reagan took office a year later, but they didn't disappear. Instead, some of them have been stored for the past 30 years by environmentalists at Unity College in Maine, where they were used to heat water in the school's cafeteria. Last week, a group of students loaded one of the vintage 6-by-3-foot panels into a biodiesel van headed for Washington.

The group was led by Bill McKibben, founder of the environmental group 350.org, who described the mission on his blog: "If the president can't climb up on the roof and hammer in some solar panels, clearly we need to push him up."

The technology used in the Carter-era solar panels is now outdated, but a California company called Sungevity offered to outfit the White House with new panels for free. More than 8,000 people have signed on to a Facebook group in support. McKibben appeared on David Letterman's "Late Show" last week to plug the effort as well.

What does it say about an administration that they, after constantly lecturing the rest of us country classers on the noble and moral merits of green power, wouldn't follow through on this easy button-type of substantively meaningless yet highly symbolic gesture?

The article indicates that some inside the administration are skittish about doing so because it may lead to Carter comparisons. That horse has left the barn, folks - and the fact that it's solar panels, for crying out loud, providing the Carter-Obama nexus which has the regime spooked amuses us to no end.