DAVID BERNSTEIN: “Still waiting for Glenn Greenwald to tell us what would be a ‘proportionate’ Israeli response to the launching of hundreds of missiles at its civilian population from Hamas-controlled Gaza, as opposed to what he calls Israel’s current ‘massively disproportionate response.'” An update shows that Bernstein can call spirits from the vasty deep bloggers from the vasty blogosphere — and they will come.

ANOTHER CHANCE TO PLAY NAME THAT PARTY! “Puerto Rico’s governor, indicted on corruption charges, posted a video on the popular social networking site Facebook admitting to making mistakes.”

SOME EXCITEMENT FOR THE NEW CONGRESS: Blagojevich will name Burris to Obama’s seat: “Gov. Rod Blagojevich is expected today to name former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate. The action comes despite warnings by Democratic Senate leaders that they would not seat anyone appointed by the disgraced governor who faces criminal charges of trying to sell the post, sources familiar with the decision said.” Will Harry Reid seat Burris, allowing Blagojevich the last laugh? Or will he refuse to, putting the Democratic Senate in the position of saying no to an African-American? Blagojevich has certainly managed to stink up the place further, anyway.

UPDATE: A delightful Burris tidbit.

HIGH-TECH AND LOW-TECH health care innovation.

KICKING THE ISRAELIS off of YouTube.

IN THE MAIL: Dead Easy, by William Mark Simmons.

CHARLES RANGEL UPDATE: Newshounds should stay on Rangel’s scent.

With a new president coming to the White House and an expanded Democratic congressional majority whose leaders are eager to enact lengthy lists of proposals, it would be easy to forget the Rangel scandals. Despite calls from fellow lawmakers and news outlets, including this one, Rangel hasn’t resigned from his chairmanship, much less from Congress. So it is appropriate to review what has been reported thus far. Among the most serious revelations are these:

* Rangel used official House stationery to seek contributions to the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York. House rules forbid use of official stationery for such appeals.
* Rangel led a successful congressional effort to protect a tax break that benefited a oil company after the firm’s chief executive pledged a $1 million contribution to the Rangel Center at City College.
* Rangel failed to properly report income he received from a vacation property in the Dominican Republic.
* Rangel failed to comply with state law regarding his ownership of four rent-controlled apartments in New York City.
* Rangel improperly claimed a tax deduction for a primary residence in D.C., despite also claiming his primary residence back home in his New York congressional district.
* Rangel routed $80,000 from his campaign committee treasury to his son for virtually no work on a web site.

Rangel of course has denied all wrong-doing and claimed that many of the problems uncovered by the media were either a product of innocent confusion on his part or mistakes by others preparing his official documents. Until only a few years ago, a congressman enduring the kind of attention that has focused this year on Rangel might actually have reasonably hoped to survive, once the heat was off. But Allison points out another critically important factor in Rangel’s media coverage – much of it was made possible by online resources such as the congressional financial disclosure forms archive maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics. Rangel would do well to ponder the prospect of further revelations, thanks to such online resources. The window of opportunity for a “clean” resignation is narrowing by the day.

Indeed.

Meanwhile, here’s a new headline: Rangel Pays Parking Tickets With Campaign Funds. “Regardless of any potential legal issues, the congressman is paying parking tickets with other people’s money.” Other people’s money — it’s pretty much a lifestyle!

MICHAEL SILENCE spots some, er, silence: “Unfortunately, all this does is reinforce Congress’ image of being slow, inept and ineffective.”

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: A Fatah Friend Writes: I’m Supporting the Israeli Air Force. “I’ve been talking to friends of mine, former Palestinian Authority intelligence officials (ejected from power by the Hamas coup), and they tell me that not only are they rooting for the Israelis to decimate Hamas, but that Fatah has actually been assisting the Israelis with targeting information.”

EXTREME MORTMAN: Top Ten Marketing Flops Bigger Than Caroline Kennedy. Ishtar is Number Two.

THE FIGHT OVER NASA’s future.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK — for tax purposes. Sorry, Adrienne Barbeau not included.

MICKEY KAUS on Life In The Left Cocoon. Plus, “The Arbitrariness of Wagner Act Redistribution. . . . If you organized the operators of drawbridges going into Manhattan, under the Wagner Act your union will be able to extract quite a premium by striking. If you organize fast food workers, not so much. I’ve never understood why leftish idealists ever bought into the idea that this is distributive justice.”

CONGRESSIONAL PAY RAISE MEETS WITH OPPOSITION. “In a situation where there aren’t many people in this country who are seeing their salaries go up, and in fact a lot of people are losing their jobs, the notion that Congress should be having an automatic pay raise without even a vote just doesn’t pass the smell test.”

ARNOLD KLING on bailout rage.

BEWARE OF malware-infected digital photo frames.

HMM: From the left, a call to end the current Dutch notion of tolerance.

CNN:

Congressman Charles Rangel’s fate hangs in the balance as a report concerning the Ways and Means Committee chairman is being prepared for release in early January.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she is waiting for the report from the House Ethics Committee before deciding what to do about several allegations against Rangel.

He’s under investigation for allegedly using formal letterhead to solicit donations to a school to be named in his honor; helping one donor’s company keep a tax loophole; having unreported income from a vacation villa; and having several rent-controlled apartments at below market rates, including one set up for his campaign operations in violation of state and local laws.

Democrats will have to decide what to do with Rangel. But it would be a mistake to only focus on punishing Rangel, if he is guilty, and not on the underlying issues that have been raised by this scandal.

We should remember that Rangel is not the first chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to find himself in political hot water. Rangel could join a cohort of powerful Ways and Means chairmen who have met notorious fates.

The chairmanship is a position that elevates legislators to the nexus of political and private interest group power. The temptation to abuse the position has been overwhelming to some.

Give the government less power, and it will be less of a magnet for corruption. I doubt, though, that Speaker Pelosi will favor that remedy.

BRET STEPHENS: Hamas Knows One Big Thing.

Michael Ledeen: The Battle of Gaza and the Real War.

CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY: Dodd’s Dealmaking Skills Tested by Financial Crisis.

His diminished popularity in his home state will complicate his work as he seeks a sixth term in 2010. A Hartford Courant/University of Connecticut poll in October 2008 found 48 percent of residents disapproved and 42 percent approved of his performance, a dip Dodd said did not surprise him. “People are angry,” he told the newspaper. “This is the most difficult time economically in my political life.” . . .

Another negative for Dodd was the controversy over whether he received a sweetheart deal on two mortgages in 2003 from Countrywide Financial Corp., a lender. The Senate ethics committee said in June 2008 that it began an initial investigation into whether Dodd and North Dakota Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad got preferential treatment. Dodd said that even though he had been told he was put in a “VIP program,” he did not assume he would get any special favors.

He also promised to release the documents, but has never done so.

UNDERFUNDED? MAYBE NOT. OVER-GENEROUS? Seems likely: “One Texas legislator who never made more than $7,200 annually as a legislator retired after 39 years of service with an annual pension of $92,704. Not bad for a session that lasts 140 days every other year.”

MORE VANITY FAIR FUMBLES: “The shredding of civil liberties? You guys must be referring to that FISA law that Barack Obama voted to keep in place?”

RETAIL SALES DROPPED: “But it seems to me that this is actually good news for consumers and, in the long run, the economy. Americans are massively over their heads in debt, and have been consuming beyond their means for a long time. The data shows them cutting back their spending to more reasonable levels, and cutting back the most in the most discretionary categories. I feel bad for Hermes and all, but we couldn’t keep propping them up forever.”

So my suspicion that jewelry sales were off, mentioned earlier, seems to have been right — but not as right as it would be if this headline accurately reflected the story!

UPDATE: They’ve fixed the headline now. It used to say that jewelry sales dropped 80%; now it says they dropped for 80% of jewelers, which is what the story actually reports.

ANTISEMITISM AT Vanity Fair? “One would have thought that this sort of ‘humor’ died out at a country club in Greenwich around 1958, but I guess not.”

SARAH PALIN’S NOT JUST A GRANDMOTHER — she’s a popular one: “Word came this weekend that a new USA Today – Gallup Poll found the 44-year-old Palin, a mother of five, is the nation’s second most-admired woman, behind only Hillary Clinton and ahead of someone named Oprah Winfrey.”