SADDAM’S HALF-BROTHER, hanged.

I’VE BEEN SURPRISED BY THE ECONOMY’S STRENGTH, and apparently I’m not the only one: “Economists are hastily upgrading their forecasts for the US economy after a series of surprisingly strong reports suggesting the so-called ‘soft landing’ may be over and growth is accelerating. Over the past week, surprises have come in stronger-than-expected reports on US job creation, the trade balance and retail sales — all key contributors to economic activity. . . . The latest data showed US employers added a healthy 167,000 new jobs in December, with unemployment holding at a low 4.5 percent. Average wages were up 4.2 percent annually.”

UPDATE: Spengler wonders what the markets know.

Meanwhile, at BizzyBlog, an I-told-you-so. “That’s what happens when economists like Ethan Harris read too much Paul Krugman and Rex Nutting, and not enough of yours truly.” (Bumped.)

JOSHUA CHAFETZ’S NEW BOOK gets praise on Oxblog. Okay, that’s not really news.

ADVICE TO CONDI RICE: Adopt Barbara Boxer. Heh.

“SAY IT AIN’T SO, JIMMY:” “It’s hard to read Alan Dershowitz’s denunciation of former President Jimmy Carter without getting a sinking feeling.”

“THANK YOU, MS. HESS.”

OMAR REPORTS that insurgents in Baghdad are already running away: “the bad guys are adjusting their plans as the government and US military adjust theirs.” That’s how it works, generally.

ANOTHER CRITICAL TAKE ON DINESH D’SOUZA’S NEW BOOK, from Clayton Cramer.

ACUTE POLITICS is another cool military blog from Iraq.

MITT ROMNEY’S VIEWS ON GUN CONTROL AND THE SECOND AMENDMENT are discussed (somewhat unsympathetically) in this Boston Globe story. (Via Anklebiting Pundits).

GETTING IT WRONG AGAIN at the Star Tribune.

THE FOLKS AT CNN’S “RELIABLE SOURCES” just emailed me this excerpt from today’s show transcript with UPI reporter Pamela Hess:

KURTZ: Pam Hess, has the sending of 20,000 additional troops gotten a fair hearing in the media or has it gotten caught up in this wrenching, emotional debate about whether the war itself was a mistake?

PAM HESS: I think it’s gotten caught up about it, and the debate about it is actually all wrong. What reporters know and what Martha says is that 20,000 really isn’t that big — isn’t that big a jump. We’re at 132,000 right now. It’s going to put us even less that we had going in going across the line.

What we’re not asking is actually the central question. We’re getting distracted by the shiny political knife fight. What we need to be asking is, what happens if we lose? And no one will answer that question. If we lose, how are we going to mitigate the consequences of this?

It’s so much easier for us to cover this as a political horse race. It’s on the cover of “The New York Times” today, what this means for the ’08 election. But we’re not asking the central national security question, because it seems that if as a reporter you do ask the national security question, all of a sudden you’re carrying Bush’s water. There are national security questions at stake, and we’re ignoring them and the country is getting screwed.

Better that the story should be missed, and the country screwed, than that a reporter might look unacceptably friendly to Bush!

UPDATE: Read this, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Pam Hess video is available here.

MORE: Don Surber has questions for the press. And the CNN transcript is now available online.

And courtesy of reader Jim Brant, here’s someone who’s asking the tough questions that, as Pam Hess notes, other journalists are afraid to.

Gerard van der Leun: “As always in these times, both the Right and the Left are wrong, have been wrong for quite some time, and will continue in their error since the object of their policies is neither victory abroad or security at home, but the mere destruction of the other in political terms. It is a small and ignoble goal, but it seems to be all our pundits and politicians are capable of at this time. The times demand heros and giants but we are only seeing pygmies and cardboard figures. This is likely to continue until some deeper shock wakes us from our sleep.”

Jules Crittenden: “Thank you, Ms. Hess.”

More thoughts from Bruce Kesler.

THE APPLE IPHONE: Complete with DRM iHandcuffs?

UPDATE: More on this at BoingBoing from Cory Doctorow.

IN AN EARLIER POST, I noted Mickey Kaus speculating that the Alternative Minimum Tax is mostly bad because of the hassle. But reading Ann Althouse, I wonder if Turbo Tax isn’t a friend of Big Government.

Ann Althouse says it’s not the hassle, it’s the money:

I use TurboTax, which does the calculations automatically, and the AMT cost me $4900 last year. It’s definitely the money!

And if you want to know why the AMT costs me so much, let me tell you it’s a reason that Democrats should care about, because it’s all about living in a blue state. The deductions I lose in the AMT calculation are — as I wrote here — are state and local taxes, like my incredible $12,ooo property tax bill.

Althouse explains why liberals should hate the AMT and conservatives should like it: The AMT makes it harder to maintain high state and local taxes.

That’s real money. On the other hand, the hassle factor probably does matter some, and programs like Turbo Tax also make increased tax code complexity easier. Should conservatives hate those, too?

NIFONG UPDATE: A bad review for Paula Zahn.

WHAT HAPPENS when your site drops off of Google. This is perhaps another reason to use multi-engine search services like Dogpile.com.

UPDATE: Forget Net Neutrality — Matt Sherman wants to know about Search Engine Neutrality: “Now, this sounds to me exactly the phenomenon that net neutrality advocates are fearing: a money-hungry company effectively controlling who does and doesn’t see your site. . . . Google has much more power over what you see and don’t see than any network provider. In the telecoms world, no company has more than 22% of the consumer market, while Google’s share is somewhere between 50% and 70%, depending on whom you ask.”

SOME THOUGHTS ON the psychology of self defense.

UPDATE: In the comments, a recommendation for this book on self-defense. And, of course, you can’t go wrong with Jeff Cooper’s Principles of Personal Defense.

BARBARA BOXER VS. CONDI RICE: Mark Daniels says it’s not sexism, but prejudice against the childless, which he says is a common feature in American society.

It’s a good point — though if a white Republican male had said the same thing to a black Democratic female it would be a clear case of racism and sexism.

OVER AT ED MORRISSEY’S, Norm Coleman explains his opposition to the surge in a podcast interview.

BUYING CYBER-WEAPONS on the black market. The Chinese seem particularly interested.

VIDEO: BARNEY FRANK gets upset over questions about exempting American Samoa from the stem cell bill, as it was exempted from the minimum wage increase. I think that the combination of YouTube and C-SPAN is going to provide a lot of new opportunities for the minority.

UPDATE: C.J. Burch emails that this may be good for entertainment, but not for the country: “The majority is intent on quietly lining its own pockets. The minority is intent on screwing with the majority. Neither cares much one way or the other about governing. Where have I seen this before? Of course now the press will be much less invested in reporting on the fact that the majority is quietly lining its pockets, but nothing stays the same forever.” Sadly, I think he’s right. If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be entertaining. But they are.

BRITISH MUSLIMS seceding from the National Health? “The problem is not Islam, it is the National Health Service.”

DINESH D’SOUZA’S NEW BOOK gets some harsh criticism from Eric Scheie.

Hollywood and the universities? They got al-Qaeda so stirred up that flying planes into buildings was the only way to stop cultural depravity?

Hmm…

Does that make Brokeback Mountain a sort of victory film?

Read the whole thing.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “War? What war?”

UPDATE: Some further thoughts from John Wixted.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: “The more we learn about Sandy Berger’s brilliant career as a document thief, the clearer it becomes that there is plenty we still don’t know and may never learn.”