POPULAR MECHANICS WINDS UP its long-term test of the Toyota Highlander hybrid. They like it. I’ve had mine for about 15 months, and about 24,000 miles and I’ve liked it too: Roomy, comfy, and zippy, with excellent mileage. Of course, I paid under two bucks a gallon for gas today, but still . . . .

ANN ALTHOUSE: Is it getting obvious that Sharpton can’t stand Obama?

DONALD SENSING LOOKS AT THE NEW IRAQ STRATEGY, and likes what he sees.

Meanwhile, a question for Chuck Hagel, et al.: “Rather than back a non-binding resolution of disaproval, why didn’t the gutsy Senators, like Chuck Hagel, who are riding the surf of public opinion opposed to the troop surge and taking on a president with approval ratings at the freezing level vote aginst General Petraeus’ confirmation? Their convictions hold that he has endorsed a wholly unjustified escalation and will be leading troops on a futile mission. They want a role in the conduct of the war and with the need to win Senate confirmation of Gen. Petraeus the Constitution has given them one, but they have taken a pass. ” If Petraeus succeeds, they’ll be bragging that they voted for him. If he fails, they’ll note that they opposed the surge. As John F. Kennedy noted, political courage is scarcer than physical courage . . . .

UPDATE: Criticism of the old strategy, here.

IN THE MAIL: Ian Shapiro’s Containment: Rebuilding a Strategy against Global Terror.

$600K FOR FIRED PROFESSOR:

Virginia State University has agreed to pay $600,000 to Jean R. Cobbs, whom it fired as a tenured professor in 2005 and whose claims against the university have been backed by several academic groups.

Cobbs and her supporters have said that she was dismissed for her political views (she is an outspoken black Republican at a historically black college where her views place her in a distinct minority) and for backing other professors (of a range of political views) in disputes with the Virginia State administration. In announcing the settlement of her case, the Virginia Association of Scholars — one of the groups backing Cobbs — said that information obtained by Cobbs’s lawyer showed that the university’s provost, W. Eric Thomas, replaced Cobbs with a woman with whom he is living.

Sounds like a lawyer’s dream.

AN IMMORTAL TURN OF PHRASE FROM DENNIS KUCINICH: “You know how they say, Don’t ever ask how laws or sausages are made? Well, I can attest to the wisdom of that with the exception of kielbasa made with tofu.”

DON SURBER: McClatchy reporter should have questioned Jay’s intelligence.

AN AMUSING Ahmadinejad caption contest.

JOHN MCGINNIS AND ILYA SOMIN: Should International Law Be Part of Our Law?

TOM DELAY WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT?

Well, I want to be an astronaut. And my chances are better than his. . . .

PLAGIARISM CHARGES AIMED AT SAM BROWNBACK: Seems like pretty weak tea to me.

Some thoughts of mine on plagiarism, including a defense of Joe Biden, can be found here. And read this, too.

UPDATE: The “Toqueville quote” is apparently spurious anyway.

MARK STEYN: “The institutional performance of government departments other than Defense has been abysmal. This is one of the greatest failings of United States foreign policy.”

AND WE HAVE A WINNER: I’ve been testing out compact fluorescent bulbs in my house, with not very good results even though I started with high-end, expensive bulbs. But my latest test involved the G.E. “soft white fluorescent 75,” which is fairly cheap. I test these in a fixture over my kitchen table — it’s a pretty severe test because the light shines straight down onto a table with a white tile top, with no shade, etc., to soften it or improve the color. Most bulbs look bad there, but the G.E. bulb looked great — the Insta-Wife, who’s even pickier about light quality than me, couldn’t tell the difference. Actually, switching back to the 60 watt clear incandescent that’s usually in the fixture, you could tell that the fluorescent bulb, despite its claim to be as bright as a 75 watt incandescent, isn’t really quite as bright as the 60. But it’s a minor difference, and the quality of the light is good: warm and natural. By contrast, a Sylvania “soft white 100” that I bought at the same time is absolutely ghastly. I don’t know what makes the difference, but it’s quite dramatic. Anyway, I’m going to start replacing bulbs around the house with the G.E., because it looks fine.

UPDATE: Various people ask where I got these: I bought mine at Target. Reader Nicholas White says they’re available on Amazon — I bought a four-pack, but these look to be the same. And reader Matt Fisher emails: “I went to Sam’s club last week and bout 2 five packs of GE soft white 100 CFL’s and think they are great. Plus they are only a little more than $2.00 a bulb.” Now that I know where to look, I found those on Amazon, too.

MY MINDLESS MINION JIM TREACHER has joined the Hillarysphere at my command, and wants your help.

A LOOK AT Hillary Clinton and Margaret Thatcher, and their differences.

WORST PART of Hillary running for President? The Clinton scandals are back!

A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee asked a federal judge this week to schedule a new court date in a case against Tony Rodham, the brother of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., accused of failing to repay $109,000 in loans from a carnival company whose owners received controversial pardons issued by President Bill Clinton in the last hours of his presidency.

According to documents filed in the case, Rodham received the loans, before and after the pardons were granted, from United Shows of America, Inc., owned by Edgar Gregory and his wife, who had been convicted of defrauding several banks.

ABC has more, and no doubt all sorts of stuff like this will be popping up over the next couple of years. Oh, well, I got a book out of ’em last time.

AT THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF ROOSEVELT’S COURT-PACKING SCHEME, Prof. Alasdair Roberts emails that he has collected some political cartoons on the subject from 1937.

BLACKFIVE SEES something afoot in Iraq.

JONATHAN ADLER REVIEWS Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science, in Regulation. You can download his review, Don’t Politicize Science (Unless You’re on My Side), for free.

Adler has more on this at The Volokh Conspiracy.

OVER 10,000 PEOPLE have signed Hugh Hewitt and N.Z. Bear’s NRSC Pledge, vowing not to support any Republican Senator who votes against the surge.

Dean Barnett, meanwhile, has posted some FAQs.

UPDATE: A response to critics. I have to note that my own support for this effort is of limited value — I’ve never donated to the NRSC or, as far as I can remember, to any Republican Senatorial candidate. But folks like Hugh Hewitt make up the core of this movement, and they’re quite different.

MOHAMMED SAYS IT’S QUIET IN BAGHDAD: Maybe too quiet.

A REPORT FROM DAVOS:

This year there is a weird imbalance here between thinkers and doers.

Usually you can count on a healthy tension between the dreamy thinkers (for these purposes, anyone who writes or talks for a living, such as economists, journalists and most politicians) and the pragmatic doers (in Davos, business people).

The former come up with wild theories and grand plans. The latter say it will never work in practice.

But now, not least in Davos, it is the eggheads who are fretting and the men in Brioni suits who are looking on the bright side.

In the dinners and the discussions, the journalists and economists and politicians raise all the questions about inequality between winners and losers, deplore the absence of political leadership and compare this age of globalisation gloomily with the one that collapsed with the first world war.

The business people reply, by and large: “Come off it”.

It is not that they are being complacent, the business people say. Far from it. They are realists. They see things from the ground up. They see progress in each shampoo bottle bought in eastern Europe, in improvements to Africa’s health care, in the broadening of choice everywhere.

You see this in the United States, too, where the financial markets are much happier than the pundits. I think — and, even more, I hope — that the business people are right here.

UPDATE: Related item here: “When you pick up a newspaper, turn on the television or radio news you would think by the drumbeat that things are awful: Iraq, Iran, Afgan, Global Warming, America’s loss of status, on and on it goes. Meanwhile the markets day after day vote on the overwhelming economic resiliency and strength and breadth of the economy.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Over at The Speculist, some thoughts on why the world seems to be getting better even as the news keeps seeming worse: part one, and part two.

ANN ALTHOUSE ON SCIENCE: “Shouldn’t gay rights advocates care when they sound like the religious fundamentalists they usually deride?”

BAN KI-MOON’S first coverup?

UPDATE: Reader Ric Manhard emails: “Can we call it ‘Ban Ki panky?'” Why not?

MICAH SIFRY:

It’s taken me a little longer than I had hoped to pull together the data on how the Republican presidential candidates are doing in terms of bottom-up support for their campaigns online, for which I apologize. Here’s the headline: They’re almost invisible on the web. Compared to the Democratic presidential field, which I posted on a few days ago, the Republican contenders* are playing bush league ball online. Not even Triple A.

To give you just one example, if you add up all the friends all the Republican candidates have on their MySpace pages, and compare it to all the friends the Ds have, the totals will amaze you: 4,007 to 51,471. If I take fringe candidates Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo out of that equation, the Republican total drops below 2,000.

Same with total incoming blog links, which for the Republican are woeful in part due to the fact that most of them don’t have serious websites yet.

There are some pockets of excellence, but overall the Republican effort is way behind the Dems.