SO I JUST WATCHED THE CHESLEY SULLENBERGER DOCUMENTARY BRACE FOR IMPACT, on TLC and it was really good. All I can say is, he deserves the rock star sex.

GOOD QUESTION: Why Are New York Democrats So Afraid Of Harold Ford, Jr.?

UPDATE: Charlie Martin writies: “Obviously, because he’s a light skinned African American who doesn’t speak with a negro dialect.” Oh, right.

OUCH: Reader Dan Friedman writes: “This bitter, ham-fisted loser would probably have spelled David Axelrod in a McCain administration. In retrospect, makes you wonder whether we got the lesser of two jerks after all.”

DEMS WORRIED ABOUT COAKLEY: “When ‘senior Democratic strategists’ are anonymously moaning to the WaPo, you know that all is not well in Charlestown (Coakley HQ).” Yeah, shades of Creigh Deeds.

INSIDE THE VAST LEFT-WING CONSPIRACY?

TOP DEMOCRAT Defends Reid for “Negro” Remark.

A BUNCH OF INTERESTING food links.

WILLIAM JACOBSON: Nothing To See On January 19, Move Along. “Democrats of Massachusetts, listen up. The special election is all but over. Martha Coakley has won.”

UPDATE: More from Sissy Willis.

FLYING BARELY: “They make you turn off your telephone, so I didn’t get any pictures…”

HEH: How To Brew A Good Cup Of Coffee.

MAUREEN DOWD LOSING INTEREST IN OBAMA? “Dowd and her colleagues complain now — but he was their kind of guy.”

UPDATE: Why Obama Is Faltering.

JONATHAN ADLER ON TED OLSON ON GAY MARRIAGE. Plus some further thoughts from Dale Carpenter. My take is similar to Dale’s, I think — I favor gay marriage and would enact it myself if allowed to, but I don’t believe that litigation is the way to go at present; it’s unlikely to succeed and it’s likely to generate backlash if it does. I think that acceptance of gay marriage is only a matter of time, and not a while lot of time at that, and that changes via litigation are less likely to be seen as legitimate than changes via legislation. Of course, with an anti-gay-marriage President in the White House, I guess it’s hard to put a lot of faith in electoral politics right now . . . .

UPDATE: Thoughts from Andrew Marcus. Yeah, separating marriage and state would be best, but I see that as the least likely outcome, alas.

LOW-COST SOLAR INVADES KENYA.

People think that these low-cost solar light kits are only for the poor. They’re wrong. I use them, as do many middle-class Kenyans if they can get their hands on them. The market is bigger than just the “bottom of the pyramid”.

Finally, I’m greatly pleased to see legitimate businesses, not NGOs, leading this charge. The quickest way to ruin this fledgling industry is by false ceilings imposed by development/aid subsidies around these products.

(Via Toby Buckell, who speculates about leapfrogging.)

PROGRESS: John Scalzi finds an old floppy disk and observes: “The real irony of this disc is that the amount of memory you can write to it (1.44 MB, if memory — heh – serves) isn’t enough to store the jpeg of the picture of it which came out of my camera (1.49 MB). That’s progress for you.”

IN CANADA, Rex Murphy booted for “climate change denial.”

UPDATE: Link above is now returning “Forbidden” for some reason. Here’s the cached version.

TEST-DRIVING A fuel-cell Mercedes. I test-drove a fuel-cell Chevy a while ago, but . . . it wasn’t a Mercedes, you know.

SO I FIGURED THE DEMAND-SMOOTHING ASPECT OF OVERNIGHT CHARGING would make it easier for utilities to cope with plug-in electric cars. But now there’s this: “Most utilities employ undersized transformers, which are designed to cool overnight. Without time to cool, sustained excess current will eventually cook a transformer’s copper windings, causing a short and blacking out the local loads it serves.”

HOPE: White House Economic Adviser: Jobs Picture is ‘Still Terrible.’ “Council of Economic Advisers chief Christina Romer said it’s devastating that some workers have been unemployed for two years and that job losses were continuing nearly a year after passage of the so-called stimulus bill.”

CUBAN DOCTORS defecting to the U.S. via Venezuela.

STARTING: A 20-Year Mini Ice Age?

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.

Brr. I don’t want a mini ice age.

PATTERICO: Harry Reid’s History Of Racial Posturing.

CALIFORNIA ON THE VERGE OF BECOMING “A FAILED STATE.” George Will looks at why.

AMTRAK’S “TRAIN FROM HELL.”

TRAILER: Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths.

SO, HOW’S THAT SIGNING-STATEMENT PROMISE WORKING OUT?

I am sure that I am not alone in noticing that the White House webpage hasn’t had a new constitutional signing statements posted since last summer.

This article by the NY Times’ Charlie Savage Friday sheds new light on why that is. According to the article, the Administration has a new policy on signing statements that it has adopted in the wake of last summer’s kerfuffle with Congress. In short, it will still take the position that certain provisions of newly enacted laws would unconstitutionally infringe on Executive Branch prerogatives (or would otherwise be unconstitutional). It just won’t say so in signing statements.

I can’t imagine that those in Congress who objected to this practice will consider this an improvement. Although the Bush Administration was openly mocked in some quarters for saying its practice promoted transparency, it may be regarded as better than the alternative.

Perhaps some fresh mockery is in order now?

A TIMELY Saturday Night Live Skit. “Do you think Harry Reid was watching SNL last night? Obviously the writers concocted this sketch before anyone knew about Reid’s remarks in the Halperin/Heileman book being released tomorrow, but they couldn’t have timed this any better if they had tried. I imagine that Lorne Michael’s staff was doing some high-fives when the news broke yesterday, knowing this was running after the football game:”

MICHAEL S. MALONE: Got $2 billion to spare if it has a chance to turn around the economy?

THE PERILS OF turning civilization into software.

IN THE MIDST OF A DEEP FREEZE, the British Met Office insists it’s a warm winter:

A period of humility and even silence would be particularly welcome from the Met Office, our leading institutional advocate of the perils of man-made global warming, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and one of the “warmest winters on record”. In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”

Well, that’s certainly going to enhance their credibility.

STEPHEN GREEN: The Week In Blogs: Bobo Fetish & Mall Cop Comes to DHS.

SCOTT OTT: The key to GOP victory lies in the local GOP committeeperson.

DARN: Boston Consulting Group says car battery costs will not fall far enough in the next 10 years to allow a massive shift toward electric vehicles.

JOHN EDWARDS’ CHICKENS, coming home to roost.

MICKEY KAUS: We Remember Jim Johnson!

IN THE MAIL: From Dr. Roberta Lee, The SuperStress Solution.

MICHAEL STEELE: Reid should step down from leadership role for ‘Negro’ remark.

“I think he should, if the standard is the one set by [Trent Lott],” Steele said on “Fox News Sunday” when asked if Reid should resign his post. Trent Lott resigned his post as Majority Leader in 2002 after praising Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential candidacy during a birthday celebration for the 100-year-old South Carolinian.

Mark Halperin and John Heliemann report in their new book, “Game Change,” that Reid said during the campaign he thought Obama could win because, while black, he was “light-skinned” and lacked a “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

Interesting. Related item here.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON HARRY REID ON BARACK OBAMA: “Can we infer that they were pretty much all saying that?”

Plus, from the comments: “If this is what they say about Obama behind his back I can only imagine how they talk about gay people.”

UPDATE: Hmm. Remember when Reid disparaged Clarence Thomas’s language skills? More on that here. “We suppose Reid will find some staff knucklehead to take the fall for this appallingly shoddy research, but the question remains: Why is the Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate so intent on insulting the intelligence of Clarence Thomas, the only black member of the Supreme Court?” While demonstrating that he himself hasn’t actually read anything relevant? Yep, Reid is an inspirational figure, proof that one needs neither personal appeal nor political skill to rise to Senate Majority Leader.

IT’S HARD TO TAKE CONOR FRIEDERSDORF’S CRITIQUE OF LAZINESS SERIOUSLY WHEN HE SAYS THIS: “I’m not sure if traffic is up at Instapundit these days or down.” And when, you know, there’s a sitemeter that answers the question right on the Instapundit front page. But Friedersdorf can’t be bothered to look for things like that. (Or, apparently, to distinguish properly between “knew” and “new.”) He’s got a point to make here. Which is, I think, trolling for his Tucker Carlson’s new venture, which launches Monday. Good luck with that, Conor. I understand you’re planning to distinguish yourself by featuring carefully researched, non-sloppy pieces. . . . .

Meanwhile, as I noted earlier, InstaPundit is for serious blog readers. The rest will have to keep up as best they can. Or not . . .

UPDATE: Actually, rereading this piece where Friedersdorf praises “the talented Tucker Carlson” while slagging Breitbart, et al., it’s not entirely clear to me if Friedersdorf is actually working for them or not. It sure sounds like it, and I’d heard that from somebody, but maybe not. Still, the Sitemeter counter’s right here on the page . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Shawn Church writes:

Noting that I’d never even heard of Friedersdorf prior to your posting, you did pique my curiosity enough that I went and read his, well, critique I guess.

Personally, I felt as though he completely missed the point of Instapundit. I’ve never come to your site to be told what to think, or even to be told what _you_ think. Rather, you do a great job in aggregating a great deal of information that I use to help me form my own opinions on a variety of issues. As an infophile, you make my life _easier_. I don’t always agree with your positions (when you express them – I wonder if Friedersdorf bothered to count the number of posts you make which are simply a link and a title? I like that “read it and make up your own mind” approach).

Is there a selection bias for the links you choose to post? Well of course, there has to be such a bias by definition. But since many of your interests (either expressed or implied by your link choices) coincide with mine, that selection bias is _useful_ to me. And you throw enough stuff out there that I might not normally read, or might disagree with strongly, that it helps keep me on my toes.

You’re not the only blog I look to regularly, not even the only aggregator, but the utility of your contribution is huge.

Thanks! In an age where Twitter is prized, it’s funny to be slagged for excessive pithiness. But if Conor’s disappointed with InstaPundit, there are plenty of other blogs out there. Unlike a TV station, or a local newspaper, I don”t occupy a limited niche with little room for alternatives. One criticism he didn’t make, but that I think is fair, is that I’ve gotten into a bit of a rut on my blog rounds. I’ve been trying to do better lately, so if you’ve got stuff, especially from smaller blogs I haven’t linked lately, that you think is worth my attention, then please send it along.

And I appreciate the kind things Conor said, too. But, you know, it’s a one-man blog — I don’t have ghostbloggers like Andrew Sullivan — and it’s going to reflect my prejudices, interests, tiredness, crankiness, and enthusiasm as things happen. That’s how it is around here.

And reader Gerry LaMontagne writes: “Is it ironic that Friedersdorf takes about 1500 words to talk about ‘pithiness?’ Or is that just me?” Heh.

MORE: Jim Treacher writes:

Conor Friedersdorf is not working for the Daily Caller. I am, though! Check me out starting in about 11 hours or so.

http://dctrawler.dailycaller.com/

P.S. Could you maybe put up a correction that Friedersdorf has nothing to do with the Caller, and we’re no more fond of his attempts to divide and conquer than you are?

For a fellow pithiness-devotee, of course!

FINALLY: Pithiness is hard!

KENNETH ANDERSON: More Predator Drone Debate, in the Wall Street Journal, and What the Obama Administration Should Do as a Public Legal Position.

FINALLY REVEALED: The Exodus Emails.

WE’VE BEEN COLONIZED: 8 Percent of Human Genome Was Inserted By Virus, and May Cause Schizophrenia.

HOPE: Schwarzenegger says health care bill a ‘rip-off’. “California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says concessions made to Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson to win his vote on the health care overhaul bill were a ‘rip-off’ for his state and is urging California lawmakers to vote against it.”

GAME CHANGER:

The relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden grew so strained during the 2008 campaign, according to a new book, that the two rarely spoke and aides not only kept Biden off internal conference calls but refused to even tell him they existed…

[W]hen Biden, at an October fund-raiser in Seattle, famously predicted that Obama would be tested with an international crisis, the then-Illinois senator had had enough.

‘How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?’ he demanded of his advisers on a conference call, a moment at which most people on the call said the candidate was as angry as they had ever heard him…

Speaking to his own staff, Biden insisted that it hadn’t really been a gaffe. And feeling a bit defensive, he invoked one of the worst memories of Obama’s primary campaign.

‘I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t say anything about bitter people who cling to their guns and religion,’ Biden cracked, the authors paraphrase.

Okay, now analyze the body language in this picture.

MORE REPORTING FROM Scott Brown headquarters, by Prof. William Jacobson.

WHAT BARACK OBAMA said about Trent Lott. Yeah, but Lott was a Republican. Reid is a Democrat.

SALENA ZITO: Dems’ 2010 Strategy To Win.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How to stop a vampire epidemic.

MASS. CONFUSION: Mass Confusion: Brown Up a Point in One Poll, Coakley Up 15 in Another. With barely more than a week to go, it hardly matters: It should be pedal-to-the-metal either way.

SOME “AMAZING RETRO-PULP ART,” plus a cool steampunk ray-gun.

MORE ON THE NEWARK DEBACLE:

Shutting down the airport, wasting thousands of people’s time by pointlessly rescreening them, treating them as animals in pens without food or drink or bathroom breaks for hours on end, causing them to miss their flights and screwing up their lives… none of that is Mr Jiang’s fault but that of the money-no-object TSA that imposes stupid petty rules on everybody else but doesn’t even follow its own. And that’s why Senator Lautenberg’s anger is misdirected: It’s not Mr Jiang’s fault that Newark’s “security” is a laughingstock.

Indeed.

MIKE FLYNN compares Harry Reid with Trent Lott. And the press reaction to both. Though as I recall, the press was kinda slow to pick up on the Lott story, too.

DEATH TO skeptics.

MARK STEYN: Obama Can’t Say Who We’re At War With.

ED DRISCOLL: Coupe De Flipflop.

PATTERICO RECEIVES DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE, is unimpressed.

PROBLEM: 75% of GOP Voters Say Republicans in Congress Have “Lost Touch” With Party’s Base…

WELL, THEY LOOK LIKE THEY’RE HAVING FUN, but to a Tennessee fan this is pretty much a Satanic Mass or something.

THE “LORDS OF TOLERANCE” BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: Bill Clinton 2008 on Obama: A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee. “As politically tempting as it is to demagogue this, and duly aware that the left would never give the benefit of the doubt to a conservative in an argument over racial subtext, I can’t believe Billy Jeff meant it ‘that way.’ Comparing a guy running to become the first black president to some sort of servant is astoundingly tone-deaf, but that was par for the course for Clinton throughout that campaign.” So he gets a kind of Joe-Biden pass then. . . .

Plus: “A parting thought that scarcely needs articulating: Had a Republican said what BJ said, he’d be finished, finished, finished.”

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Network Effects: Liberals And Conservatives In The Academy.

TEA PARTY MOVEMENT PLANS Detroit Auto Show Protest.

SHOWING YOUR PATRIOTISM in a new and very special way.

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “A patriot and a great date as well.” One would think.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Asking the tough questions.

YOU DON’T SAY: Brown grassroots vs Coakley machine: “I don’t think they play at all fairly.”

UPDATE: Dan Riehl on what you can do.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader James Doherty writes: “Just wanted to say – I am a MA resident, and the Coakley ads that were nowhere to be seen in the entire campaign have hit the airwaves big time today. Also, we got called twice by her lackeys tonight alone. Something has clearly changed, and not for the better in her opinion.”

POLL: Massachusetts Senate Race Now A Toss-Up. I had noticed that the powers-that-be in Massachusetts were acting kinda nervous, so maybe their own polls say something similar. It must be troubling when your push-pollers ask people if it would affect their vote if the guy was a Nazi and the respondents say “Nope, he’d still be better than Coakley.”

UPDATE: Reportedly, the Boston Herald poll is a toss-up, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jules Crittenden emails that there is no such Boston Herald poll.

HALLE BERRY: Dealing with airport security lines is for the little people. I saw the same thing happen with Michael Bolton last year.

MORE FROM C.E.S.: GPS and software evolving.

BILL WHITTLE INVESTIGATES: Islamist infiltration in our government?

SEEMS THE FIRST QUESTION SHOULD BE “SECRET INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT? WTF?” Legislators Worldwide Asking Questions About ACTA. “Legislators around the world are demanding more information on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.”

MORE ON THE NEWARK DEBACLE: “This guy just comes off as a knucklehead. The one who needs to be accountable is the idiot ‘security’ person who let him slip by.” Yeah, it’s not like he’s Halle Berry or something.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Analysis: Obama’s buck-stopping goes only so far. “He says ‘the buck stops with me,’ but nearly a year into office, President Barack Obama is still blaming a lot of the nation’s troubles — the economy, terrorism, health care — on George W. Bush.”

FOLLOWING IN TRENT LOTT’S FOOTSTEPS: Harry Reid apologizes for “light skinned” remark about Obama.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) apologized today for referring to President Barack Obama as “light skinned” and “with no Negro dialect” in private conversations during the 2008 presidential campaign.

“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” said Reid in a statement. “I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans for my improper comments.”

President Obama said in a statement that he and Reid had spoken about the matter on Saturday afternoon. “I accepted Harry’s apology without question because I’ve known him for years, I’ve seen the passionate leadership he’s shown on issues of social justice and I know what’s in his heart,” said Obama. “As far as I am concerned, the book is closed.”

Also, he needs him for health care. Here’s more coverage from CNN.

Dan Riehl comments: “Thank God Reid isn’t a Republican, or he’d be being savaged as a racist. We all know that’s not true. They aren’t racists. They simply don’t believe blacks can be successful without being helped by a white person. That isn’t racism, silly. It’s compassion, or so we’re told.”

And Robert George is not kind.

UPDATE: “Speaking Stupid All The Time.” I don’t really think Reid will follow too far in Trent Lott’s footsteps, though. Obama wants him to stay — and, I suspect, so do the Republicans . . . .

Meanwhile, on Facebook, Bruce Bartlett posts some other racial statements by Democrats, from his book Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Drudge has fun:

Meanwhile, a reader emails: “There went his chance at owning a football team.” Heh.

MORE: Over at Talking Points Memo, where Trent Lott came in for plenty of criticism, reader Brian Torrez notes that there’s currently . . . nothing about Reid’s remarks at all. Well, people blog about what they find interesting and apparently this doesn’t interest ‘em. I’ll note that I was on the Lott story, though . . . . (Bumped).

MORE ON Vitamin D deficiency.

KENNETH ANDERSON HAS MORE on targeted killing and Predator drone strikes. “The logic of much of the legal opposition to the use of these weapons, beyond the specifics of the legal arguments in specific circumstances, as has been said to me dozens of times by leading lawyers in the human rights community, academics, and activists, is that the more discriminating the weapon and the less it risks American soldiers in its use, the greater the incentive for it to be used, thus raising the threshold of violence.”

IS VITAMIN D DEFICIENCY BEHIND higher rates of cardiovascular death in blacks?

EVIDENCE OF DECLINE at Dartmouth?

PROF. WILLIAM JACOBSON REPORTS from Scott Brown headquarters.

UPDATE: Reader Jane Woodworth emails:

I just got back from 3 hours at the Worcester phone bank for Scott Brown.

The place was full – maybe 20 phones, with people waiting to help.

I probably made 100 calls to registered republicans and independents. It was least an hour before anyone said they were voting for Coakley. After 3 hours the total was: 2 for Coakley, 2 undecided, 96 for Brown.

The most pleasant surprise was how enthusiastic people were.

Interesting. (Updated to fix typo).

POLIWOOD: Is Avatar Avatrocious?

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple Empire.

IN TENNESSEE, a judge who personally ordered a Fourth Amendment violation.

CLAIRE MCCASKILL: “We should have a conference, and C-SPAN should be in there.”

RON BAILEY ON reproductive contracts and the best interests of children.

BOINGBOING: You Will Become Mentally Ill in 2013. I predict more diagnoses of “sluggish schizophrenia.”

THE PARTY OF Big Business? I like this: “I’ve always thought that regulatory risk is a lot like having Tony Soprano for a business partner. The U.S. government, our stand-in for Mr. Soprano in this analogy, may not have interests that are directly congruent with that of the business owner (as David Scatino found out in season 2 of The Sopranos), but there’s no better ally to have if you want to discourage competition.”

POPULAR MECHANICS ANNOUNCES ITS Editor’s Choice Awards at CES. Yeah, now I’m kinda wishing I’d gone, especially since it’s so cold here. But I had family duties, and a law review article to write.

ED MORRISSEY: Is Gruber the Armstrong Williams of the Obama administration? “Heads should roll for this, and Orszag’s should be the first, and that’s not just because he’s managed to screw up for the entire year. This is not incompetence — it’s corruption.”

KEPLER’S HUNT for new earths. Faster, please.

IN THE MAIL: From Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.

REASON TV: THE REAL WORLD DC: HEALTHCARE REMIX.

From the comments: “If I have my way, it’ll be canceled on November 2.”

A READER SENDS THIS FROM THE WASHINGTON POST on how it’s now possible, but still very hard, to get a handgun in D.C. (Via Dave Hardy, who comments: “I never thought I’d see the day when articles like this would be allowed in the Post…” Though there’s still room for progress, especially in D.C., the gun-rights example disproves the belief — common in many circles — that rights lost to government can never be retrieved. They can be, if people are willing to fight for them. Better, of course, not to lose them at all. And yeah, I know this article is from last fall.)

WHERE U.S. HEALTH CARE RANKS NUMBER ONE: Isn’t ‘responsiveness’ what medicine is all about?

SCOTT BROWN: Winning “the battle of the blogosphere?” That’s not where elections are settled, but it’s something.

MEGAN MCARDLE LOOKS AT THE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE BUST. “One of the most persistent narratives of the recent crisis portrays a nation of unsophisticated home buyers led astray by greedy bankers. Supposedly those bankers were willing to write risky loans because they intended to pass them on to some unwary investor. But this explanation falters in the face of a legion of failing commercial deals. Prospective landlords had all the expertise they should have needed to put a fair price on properties—and the majority of lenders who were originating loans for their own portfolios had ample incentive to perform careful due diligence. The best explanation for the calamity that has overtaken us may simply be that cheap money makes us all stupid.”

CAROL SHEA-PORTER GOES ROGUE ON HEALTH CARE REFORM: “One thing is clear: Unless Sen. Harry Reid and President Barack Obama back down on the excise tax in the health reform bills being merged in a secret conference committee, Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter will not vote for the final bill. And that’s not the only feature of the final bill Shea-Porter is likely to oppose.” I guess she can read a poll. I wonder if we’ll see more defections like this?

WILL COLLIER: Government Health Care: Like Your Local Cable Monopoly On Steroids. I don’t trust Comcast with my liver.

NEVADA: Harry Reid Hits New Low In Poll.

HMM: La. politician who cast a national spotlight on slow early federal response to Katrina resigns.

Democrat Aaron Broussard resigned Friday as president of Jefferson Parish near New Orleans, saying through an attorney that he wanted to “clear the air” amid a federal probe of alleged government corruption. . . . Broussard gave a searing account of Katrina’s destruction on NBC’s “Meet The Press” soon after the 2005 storm, blasting the federal government’s early sluggish response.

He also was heavily criticized for sending parish pump workers away before Katrina hit and flooded thousands of homes.

Stay tuned. (Via Dan Riehl).

UNEMPLOYMENT: 10% IN 2010. Plus some not-very-serious advice on how to deal with it.

Remember: 2010 is the year of lean and mean.

UPDATE: Why things don’t look as good as they did in 1982.

SCOTT BUDMAN: The Swagger Returns To The Consumer Electronics Show. And me not there this year . . . .

ADAM KEIPER: Richard Feynman, The Futurists, and the Nanotechnology Initiative. “So far, none of that federal R&D funding has gone toward the kind of nanotechnology that Drexler proposed, not even toward the basic exploratory experiments that the National Research Council called for in 2006. If Drexler’s revolutionary vision of nanotechnology is feasible, we should pursue it for its potential for good, while mindful of the dangers it may pose to human beings and society. And if Drexler’s ideas are fundamentally flawed, we should find out—and establish just how much room there is at the bottom after all.”

I’ve written on the PR battles in the past, here.

TIM CAVANAUGH: Don’t Worry, America. You’re Still Paying to Bail Out Second Mortgages.

MORE ECONOMIC GLOOM, FROM THE FINANCIAL TIMES: Jobs gloom hits west’s recovery hopes. “Grim jobs market reports on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday highlighted the ongoing human cost of the credit crisis and kept alive concerns over the sustainability of the recovery. In the US, news that the economy shed another 85,000 jobs in December dashed hopes that a quickening labour market turnround could add momentum to the rebound and make it more robust. Meanwhile, eurozone data showed unemployment hit 10 per cent in November – matching the jobless rate in the US. It was the first time that eurozone unemployment has hit double digits since the introduction of the single currency a decade ago.”