RUSSIA: The leader in spacecraft launches.

DON SURBER ON GRIM MILESTONES: “Hussein’s carnage averaged 70 to 125 civilian deaths every day for the 8,000 days he reigned. His 20,000 civilian deaths a year (on average) were considered ‘peace, while last year, under war, there were 14,298 civilian deaths.”

A TRANSATLANTIC Free Trade Area? ” Now I’m beginning to wonder if John O’Sullivan knew something I did not 18 months ago. I hope so — for one thing, I could then look forward to [hearing] Sherrod Brown complain about Polish plumbers.”

JOHN BROCKMAN ROUNDS UP THINGS TO BE OPTIMISTIC ABOUT. It’s interesting reading.

UH OH: “Today, amid a global oil boom, Mexico can barely keep up with its usual production, and it certainly can produce no additional oil or other energy. . . . You think Iran and Saudi Arabia are running out of oil? You think Venezuela is an oil disaster? Well, they are. But just check out the mess in Mexico.”

Sounds like we should be working on oil shale and tar sands, and building new nuclear plants, while we still have time.

OBAMA/OSAMA CONFUSION at CNN.

UPDATE: More here.

DEMOCRATS AND ETHICS: “If Democrats don’t seize this rare opportunity, their party will pay for a long time. Not only will they disillusion their own supporters, but, more important, the angry centrists of the Ross Perot stripe who voted the Republicans out last year will either go back to the GOP or seek other options.”

I think that’s right. (Via CQ).

HOW TRUE: “At every historic juncture since Israel was created in 1948, rhetoric has taken precedence over pragmatism in the Arab world. As a result, every one of these historic junctions has resulted, without exception, in material defeat for the Palestinians.”

THOUGHTS ON PROTECTIONISM AND TRAFFIC, from Daniel Drezner.

MARK TAPSCOTT ON KATRINA FRAUD: I TOLD YOU SO!

Remember the news photo of Bush flying over New Orleans and looking down on the devastation? He got lots of grief for not going there and being physically on the ground in the aftermath of the storm.

I told colleagues at the time that the attitude embodied by that picture could cost the Republicans control of Congress because I knew the billions in disaster aid that would follow would become a nightmare of waste, fraud and abuse unless the whole thing was done out in the open.

It was that same attitude of resistance to openness that led the GOP congressional majority to refuse to come clean on earmarks and to their view that they could buy their way to re-election with boondoggles and billions of new federal spending just like the Democrats had done for 40 years before them.

But have they learned their lesson yet?

A GRIM MILESTONE that the news media missed.

PATTERICO POSTS A YEAR-IN-REVIEW assessment of the Los Angeles Times.

MY MOTHER WAS RECENTLY COMPLAINING that nobody in her generation (just pre-Baby Boom) has made it to positions of power. With the new Congress, that turns out not to be the case.

CASTRO’S HEALTH MAY BE DUBIOUS, but Castro rumors are flourishing.

JAMIL HUSSEIN UPDATE: The Associated Press is playing The Black Knight.

Readers, however, are likely to look at its allegedly impressive edifice of reporters, editors, and fact-checking and conclude, “It’s only a model!”

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “I think I have a solution. The AP reports that Jamil is dead. Then Bob Woodward can interview him. That should clear up all the questions.”

BLOGCRITICS names the best films of 2006.

I’m guessing that Roger Simon wouldn’t include Dreamgirls.

BILL ARDOLINO continues to blog from Iraq.

JAMES WOOLSEY: “Bet on major progress toward independence, spurred by market forces and a portfolio of rapidly developing oil-replacing technologies.”

IN THE MAIL: An advance copy of Brian Doherty’s new book, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. Looks very interesting.

ANOTHER TEST FOR PELOSI:

There is so much wrong with the Conyers situation that Pelosi shouldn’t have to think twice about nixing Conyers’ chairmanship. Let us look at how the Conyers scandal epitomizes the ethics mess in the House:

First, releasing its report late on Friday before the New Year’s holiday weekend made it clear that the House “Ethics” Committee intended to minimize public understanding of the Conyers scandal. This is classic Washington Establishment manipulation of the news cycle to insulate itself against public accountability.

Second, Conyers responded to the “Ethics” committee by “accepting responsibility” for a “lack of clarity” in asking aides to work on his re-election campaign while on the official payroll instead of going on a campaign staff, as the law requires, and to do personal chores for him. The allegations came from senior staff members, including a former chief of staff, not interns or other short-term aides who might have questionable motives.

Third, the “Ethics” committee report also concerned a second investigation of Conyers from 2003 on allegations that his aides also worked on the Carol Mosely-Braun presidential campaign and JoAnn Watson’s Detroit City Council race. Would Conyers have applied the same slipshod legal standards to his Bush impeachment effort?

Fourth, the Conyers scandal shows it’s still business as usual for the “Ethics” committee. Pelosi should demand that Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., and Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., the committee leaders who signed off on the Conyers report, be removed permanently from the panel and barred from leadership of other House panels.

Finally, Pelosi should heed former White House chief of staff and ex-congressman Leon Panetta, who said “you can attack one party for having a lack of ethics, but if any of your own members have problems, it dulls the message with the American people, they begin to put everybody in the same box.” In other words, whenever one member of the House has an ethics problem, it damages the credibility of all members of the House, including most especially its most visible leader, the speaker.

Jim Wright and Dennis Hastert both suffered from that problem. So will Pelosi, if she’s not careful.

MY COLLEAGUE JOAN HEMINWAY’S BOOK, Martha Stewart’s Legal Troubles, is now out. Our podcast on the book, and on overcriminalization of corporate matters, and life in general, can be found here.

YESTERDAY I mentioned a book on space that I’d like to see. Turns out it’s on the way.

EASON JORDAN: “If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it – and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly.”

And he should know about such things.

POLITICIANS’ PROMISES HAVE SHORT LIFETIMES: “As they prepare to take control of Congress this week and face up to campaign pledges to restore bipartisanship and openness, Democrats are planning to largely sideline Republicans from the first burst of lawmaking. . . . instead of allowing Republicans to fully participate in deliberations, as promised after the Democratic victory in the Nov. 7 midterm elections, Democrats now say they will use House rules to prevent the opposition from offering alternative measures, assuring speedy passage of the bills and allowing their party to trumpet early victories.”

JAMES MCCORMICK REVIEWS Mark Steyn’s America Alone: “In more academic hands, America Alone would have been longer on statistics and historical references, and much shorter on wit and clarity. But in our current political environment, it’s hard to imagine an academic book, drawing on the same facts and arguments, climbing onto the bestsellers lists as quickly as this one. This will be the book that gets the arguments out in front of the general public in a palatable, even amusing, way. And because of the harmony of Steyn’s argument with the broader historical/technical discussions in the Anglosphere Challenge, Mark Steyn will be the leading proponent for American (and secondarily Anglosphere) exceptionalism over the next few years.”