SHOCKINGLY, “CARBON CREDITS” often turn out to be utterly bogus. More thoughts here.

(ANOTHER) CULTURE OF CORRUPTION UPDATE: “House Democratic leaders are not expected to pressure embattled Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) to forfeit his lone remaining committee assignment, even as two Republican lawmakers who similarly face intense FBI scrutiny have relinquished their posts in recent days.”

IN THE MAIL: David Verklin and Bernice Kanner’s new book, Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here: Inside the 300 Billion Dollar Business Behind the Media You Constantly Consume. I actually managed to read a bit of this yesterday and it’s very interesting. With the sea change going on in the ad market and the growth of online media, lots of people are likely to want to read this book.

BACK FROM IRAQ, Fred Kagan comments on Congress’s actions. Excerpt: “I’ve been struck by the degree to which the debate in this town, in Washington, seems to be lagging behind reality in Iraq. And one would hope that with the briefings that the Congress is getting from General Petraeus and others, that we would start to catch up and realize that the world is different from the way it was in November, 2006.”

I think they’re more interested in November, 2008 than, well, anything else, including the welfare of the country.

TERRORIST-SUPPORTING LAWYER LYNNE STEWART has been disbarred. This is in response to her earlier conviction for providing material support to terrorists.

VIRUS WRITERS TARGETING Google’s sponsored links. I never click on those anyway, which is apparently a good thing.

GEN. PETRAEUS will talk about Iraq at 10:00 EST, and it will be streamed on the Pentagon Channel.

DAVID BRODER CALLS HARRY REID The Democrats’ Alberto Gonzales. That seems about right.

Broder observes: “It has been impossible for his own members, let alone the White House, to sort out for more than 24 hours at a time what ground Reid is prepared to defend.”

I imagine the troops are having the same problem.

TAXPROF: OVER 450,000 FEDERAL WORKERS ARE TAX DEADBEATS.

HEH.

I HAVEN’T FOUND THE ECONOMIST’S DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA blog quite as interesting as its Free Exchange blog, perhaps because the latter is a lot closer to The Economist’s core strength. But John McWhorter has been guestblogging at Democracy in America — suggesting that maybe the editors have figured this weakness out too — and he’s made a number of interesting posts.

JULES CRITTENDEN: The people have spoken!

TONY SNOW will be returning to work next week. That’s good news, though the press briefings have certainly been amusing in his absence . . . .

But then, everything’s amusing in Frank J.’s world.

STEPHEN HAWKING experiences weightlessness.

And read this post on the appeal of space tourism.

CONVERTING YOUR VIDEO FILES TO FILM using an inkjet printer? Yep. (Via BoingBoing).

TUNC PRO NUNC: It’s back to the future at the Supreme Court.

VLADIMIR PUTIN says he won’t seek a third term:

Putin’s second term in office ends in 2008, and he is constitutionally barred from running for a third. While many observers have suggested he would try to stay in office, Putin has consistently dismissed the idea and did so again Thursday.

“The next state of the nation address will be given by another head of state,” he said.

He then acknowledged that many had expected this speech would be his opportunity to openly state which person he wants to follow him, but instead he drew a laugh by saying “it is premature for me to declare a political will.”

Putin’s compliance with the requirement is a good thing — or, rather, his failure to do so would be the final nail in the coffin for Russian democracy. Things still aren’t good, they’re just not as bad as they might have been.

I AGREE WITH MATT STOLLER that carbon cap-and-trade schemes, however appealing they might sound in the abstract, are likely to be scams. If you’re going to get into this game at all, a carbon tax, or an old-fashioned fossil fuel tax, is likely better. However, I think that any such tax should be revenue neutral, with offsets somewhere else so that it’s obvious that it isn’t just a grab for revenue with global warming as an excuse.

JEFF SOYER NOTES THAT BRIAN MONTOPOLI OF CBS is calling on the press to gin up political support for gun control by the way it reports the news.

It’s just Evan Thomas’s fifteen percent applied to another cause.

UPDATE: Then there’s just plain old reportorial ineptitude.

JOHN HINDERAKER wonders if the Republicans might lose more seats in 2008, perhaps even enough to give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority. It’s awfully early yet, but it’s certainly possible, especially given the cluelessness and self-servingness of the GOP congressional delegation to date.

Democrats — who mostly made other issues than the war their priority in the ’06 election and who lost (Ned Lamont, anyone?) when they put the war up top — are now claiming that the elections were a mandate for surrender. Republicans may be tempted to endorse the idea that the elections were a referendum on Iraq, too, because that would get the GOP Congress off the hook for its miserable performance on, well, just about everything else. In fact, however, the elections were very close, and regardless of the war the GOP could have at least retained the Senate with only a very modest improvement in performance — an improvement almost no one was willing to make.

And they could be doing a lot more to put the Democrats on the spot if they were willing to back up Tom Coburn’s anti-pork crusading and the like, instead of being “brothers in pork” with Democratic incumbents. But the GOP delegation is, for the most part, just as corrupted as the Dems — and they managed to get that way faster — and there’s no longer any stomach for challenging the status quo. Most of them, it seems, would rather be a fat, happy minority than do what it takes to win (or even keep) a majority. (See this about Trent Lott). And if that’s what they want, that’s probably what they’ll get.

UPDATE: Bob Krumm writes: “My guess is that whichever side’s leader portrays himself as the most anti-status quo, will win not just the White House, but a larger majority of both houses next year.”

MICKEY KAUS has questions about Unity ’08.

WE KEEP HEARING THAT JOBS ARE LESS SAFE, AND LESS STABLE THAN IN THE PAST, but that doesn’t seem to be the case: “The story about inequality is indisputably true. But we’re starting to learn that the second story, the one about instability, is more complicated. It may even end up being wrong. . . . Volatility may or may not have increased over the last generation, but it does not appear to have changed in a fundamental way.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to hang a picture.

WILL SERBIA AND RUSSIA DRAW A LINE IN THE SAND over Kosovo’s independence? Spengler thinks they might, and that the consequences might include “a small shooting war.” This seems like something to avoid if possible.

JOHN MCCAIN BLASTS HARRY REID: Two other Senators call for Reid to resign.

UPDATE: Much more here.

Plus, Harry Reid mythbusting. And some people seem to be losing it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s the roll call on the surrender vote.