Just because you can,

.....doesn't mean it's a good idea is a great description for White House plans to generate electricity using soccer-balls.  No, I'm not making this up; there are evidently people who have concocted a soccer ball with a battery that kids can kick around all day, and at night they'll be able to light a lamp or charge a cell phone.

OK, so we're going to greatly increase the cost, and either we make it much heavier (and risk injuring people), or we make it lighter so it won't last a week, and whichever way we choose, it won't bounce like a real soccer ball, so the kids will go back to a real soccer ball as soon as they have the chance.

One would figure that the White House, having just visited Africa, might have been aware of the possibility of using that yellow ball in the sky to implement this 1960s technology with far less cost, but apparently not.  Nothing is too generous--or foolish--for those spending someone else's money and facing no particular criticism from a media that chose journalism because it didn't involve math, I guess.