The ACLU is complaining, too.

I should note that FIRE does good work, and if you're looking to make an end of the year charitable donation, you could do a lot worse than sending some cash their way.

In her seminal book, The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel writes about the real political divide — not left versus right, but what she calls stasists versus dynamists. The former fear change and want to use government power to minimize it, if not eliminate it. The latter accept that improvements in the human condition require change by definition, and understand that the best way to ensure it is to allow individuals the freedom to make choices, with consequences, both good and ill, to be borne by them.

By these definitions, both presidential candidates in this election were largely stasists.

Read the whole thing.

Plus, a drag race between the Dodge EV and a Dodge Challenger.

UPDATE: Following Circuit City's lead? If newspapers want to survive, they should keep the best reporters and focus on hard-news reporting. Yes, that costs more, but it also gives customers something they actually want.

So what's Shiff's economic prediction for the Obama Administration?

Problem? I don't see it as a problem, really . . . .

The Postal Service is investigating whether the nation's postmaster general improperly received a sweetheart deal on a mortgage from Countrywide Financial Corp., the chairman of the service's governing board said.

Postmaster General John E. Potter is one of several prominent current and former U.S. officials who received discounts and other benefits from the mortgage giant. The Postal Service has hired an outside investigator to review the deal, which reportedly included one shaved point and waived fees for Potter's $322,700 loan. . . .

Sens. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Kent Conrad, D-N.D., have acknowledged receiving mortgages through the VIP program but have said they were unaware of any favorable treatment. Dodd was instrumental in crafting a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry.

Stay tuned -- there are more "friends of Angelo" out there, I suspect.

There was quite a turnout of Nashville notables -- Sen. Doug Henry was the very first person I saw on the way in, and he seems largely unchanged from when I was in college -- but what was most impressive was the turnout of extended family and childhood friends. Quite a few partners from his brother's law firm turned out, too, which I thought was a very nice touch.

Bob was a terrific guy, and the world is diminished by his loss.

Meanwhile, a lot of Utah Mormons are thinking "they're boycotting Sundance? Sweet! Maybe Robert Redford will take it somewhere else from now on."

Yes, that seems like odd targeting.

UPDATE: Reader Greg Gransden writes:

I watched it, too. I would have been more reassured if the FDR book Obama says he's been reading was Amity Shlaes' "The Forgotten Man," which painstakingly demonstrates how Roosevelt's economic policies helped to prolong and worsen the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, the book Obama's been reading actually lavishes praise on FDR's economic management in the early months of his presidency - which seems to me precisely the wrong lesson to take away from that period.

Uh oh. More on FDR's policies and the Depression here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Quick is taking the not-a-dime's-worth-of-difference angle.

Plus, guns scare journalists.

Work? That's unAmerican! Besides, who needs to work when Obama will be paying our mortgages?

UPDATE: Ann Althouse offers a sixth: "What myths have been left untold? I'll supply one, something I thought people would say that I was waiting to debunk: Obama has a mandate."

Ripley also has a blog.

UPDATE: Reader Debbie Eberts writes:

Glenn, I've read Amanda Ripley's book. It's interesting, but a little dry. I also recommend "Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why" by Laurence Gonzalez. In it, he looks at more individual cases. For example, 4 people trapped on a raft in the middle of the ocean, why only two survive. Gonzalez' theory is how your brain responds to severe stress will determine your likelihood of survival. The people best able to endure are those that can bifurcate between their logic and their emotion and not let the emotion overcome the logic. I'm not doing the book justice - it's a fascinating look at survival and also why seemingly intelligent people do seemingly stupid things when they are in a crisis. (Hint: from their vantage point, it does not seem stupid at all). Thanks for all your great work!

Thanks! I think I posted something on that a while back.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Ah, yes, here.

In Pigeon Forge with the family to take advantage of the fact that no one is supposed to be shopping this year. Everyone else had the same idea. It’s packed.

Heh. Plus, from the comments: "All of the shopping plazas around here have been crazy packed, too. It’s very odd." Probably all the deep discounts from retailers worried that no one would be shopping . . . .

Plus, from The New York Times: "The selection of Mr. Emanuel and other veterans of President Bill Clinton’s administration to run the transition stood in contrast to Mr. Obama’s message about finally moving beyond the Clinton era."

UPDATE: Well, at least there won't be a bunch of Skull-and-Bones types running things. Oh, wait . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Dan Riehl thinks the Clintonista influx is a good thing, and I agree. It's just not very changey.

He doesn't think much more of Spitzer's recommendations than he does of Spitzer . . . .

UPDATE: Saving Detroit: An Investment in Future Failure.

President-elect Barack Obama has imposed stricter conflict-of-interest restrictions on his White House transition team than any president before him. But a list of transition team members that his office made public on Friday includes a complicated tangle of ties to private influence-seekers.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss . . . .

Plus this: "Federal appetites may know no bounds. But the federal government's ability to borrow is not limitless. Already, our nation's unfunded liabilities total $52 trillion -- about $450,000 per household. There's something very strange about issuing debt to solve a problem caused by too much debt."

Because it is vacuum-sealed in a can and does not require refrigeration, Spam can last for years. Hormel says “it’s like meat with a pause button.”

Yum! One thing that isn't clear from the story is whether people are buying lots more spam because it's all they can afford now, or whether they're stocking up against possible hard times yet to come; seems more like the latter than the former.

On the other hand, there's an uptick in consumer confidence. So which way does that point?

Plus this artful phraseology:

In a 2007 speech, he said he was "running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. They won't work in my White House."

A few days later, he changed the phrasing to say that lobbyists "are not going to dominate my White House."

Quite a backslide. It'll be interesting to see if he can even live up to the watered-down promise . . . . How big a deal is this? Well, you can make too much of these appearance issues, but on the other hand, he promised an entirely new kind of government. So far, that's looking a lot like the similar promises of rectitude from Congressional Democrats in 2006, promises that -- to put it mildly -- weren't borne out once the election was over.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Mullen emails:

It's quite a backslide to say go from saying that the days of lobbyists setting the agenda are over, to saying that they are not going to dominate my White House?

No, it's a backslide to go from saying that "they won't work in my White House" to saying that they won't "dominate" it.

Unsuccessful efforts to uncover the identity of Internet bloggers critical of the Memphis Police Department and its top officers will cost the city $88,000.

The city filed suit in state court in an attempt to identify the people behind a Web site called MPD Enforcer 2.0, but the lawsuit was eventually dropped.

The legal bill for that suit has arrived, and The Commercial Appeal reports it totals about $88,000. The city’s legal department declined giving a breakdown on the legal expenses, and the police department had no comment.

Hey, it's not as if budgets are tight or anything.