FRED THOMPSON goes after McCain.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FACING CONGRESS? Apparently it’s hearings on baseball and steroids. Extreme Mortman gives ’em the needle.

“THE HIDDEN DART sometimes sticks.“

FANS OF GUINNESS, OR OF RUBE GOLDBERG, will enjoy this commercial.

BRENDAN LOY has thoughts on South Carolina.

LOTS OF MACWORLD COVERAGE from the Popular Mechanics folks. “In Steve We Trust?”

DAVID BROOKS on what some of us are enjoying about the Clinton / Obama contest: “The problem is that both the feminist movement Clinton rides and the civil rights rhetoric Obama uses were constructed at a time when the enemy was the reactionary white male establishment. Today, they are not facing the white male establishment. They are facing each other.”

GOP CANDIDATES at the Detroit Auto Show. Of course, they should have been talking about . . . well, you know.

FROM BILL BRADLEY: Continuously updated Michigan primary coverage.

IN THE MAIL: A new edition of Isaac Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky. I’m glad to see classic science fiction staying in print.

JAMES LILEKS ON THE HOUSING SLUMP:

I’m on a neighborhood email list that has some people who work in the real estate and financial field and they report that one of the remarkable problems with these properties is that the owners often don’t really seem all that interested in selling them. The owners being banks, finance companies, etc. You would expect that when the price drops below a certain point, buyers want to buy but not if the sellers won’t cooperate.

I think that the problem is that a lot of them still think that this is a game of hot potato–they think they can unload the dogs as paper to another institution with less hassle. Somebody needs to tell them game over man.

I am not saying it has to be the government, but there is an accountability problem here. Some of the entities that hold these houses are big banks with shareholders, who ought to be concerned about the financial health of a bank that is essentially treating properties as losses without actually writing them off. I am also waiting for some enterprising lawyer to sue a bank for not maintaining a property that leads to some awful crime. Right now, the lack of maintenance is mostly creating headaches for neighbors, in unshoveled snow, uncut grass, etc. One realtor mentioned that a lot of foreclosed property owners didn’t bother winterizing the houses and now some have ruptured plumbing to go along with all the other problems that make it an unattractive purchase.

Plus, inklings of worse to come.

UPDATE: James Lileks emails: “That’s not James Lileks. And I should know, being him. It’s from another buzz.mn blogger.” D’oh! The dreaded co-blogger confusion strikes again!

THOUGHTS ON Jerry Seinfeld, language, and law.

PLANTED QUESTIONS: It’s not just Hillary: “A Romney staffer’s mother plays herself in the real-life campaign stop: ‘Romney Visits Economically Anxious Family.’ It’s like when TV producers find an aunt with the medical problem du jour….” And it underscores the phoniness problem that Romney has.

GM UNVEILS another hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.

My driving experience with — and reservations about — the fuel-cell Equinox can be found here.

HILLARY WON’T LIKE THIS: “Is Barack Obama the New Bill Clinton?”

A ROUNDUP OF BOOK REVIEWS from this weekend.

RICHARD COHEN on Obama’s Farrakhan test. (Via The Volokh Conspiracy, where there are more thoughts).

CAMPAIGNING TO bust the budget.

DID SYPHILIS COME TO EUROPE FROM the New World?

Plus, a new drug-resistant bacterium is being sexually transmitted among gay men.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Why on Earth would we choose to put the Clinton family drama at the center of our politics again?

BRITAIN: (Over) Ripe for Revolution.

THE CONVENIENTLY LOST CONTRACTS of campaign contributors.

A ROUNDUP OF Caldecott and Newbery Award winners.

MODELING urban panic.

OUCH:

GM’s outspoken Vice Chairman Bob Lutz told reporters today at the Detroit Auto Show the U.S. government’s 35 mpg CAFE standard will push car prices up by $4,000 to $10,000 per vehicle, or an average $6,000.

By contrast, implementing Bob Zubrin’s flexfuel plan would do much more good, and would cost only about $100 per vehicle. Plus, U.S. auto companies are actually ahead of foreign competitors in flexfuel technology. I’m just sayin’. . . .