MICHAEL TOTTEN: Iraq At The End Of The Surge.

INDEED: “With the indictment of the Democratic Governor and his purported interest in Mr. Rezko, I think Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is just about on the verge of losing his near mythic status among the Washington-New York media.”

UPDATE: What did the SEIU know and when did they know it?

Plus, Marc Ambinder on what this means for Team Obama.

MORE: “This crap is perfect antidote for all of us who think that deep down, things are different.” Hope and change!

And Happy International Anti-Corruption Day!

DETROIT NEWS: Democrats must crack the whip on wayward Rangel.

Time: Rangel’s Troubles Create a Problem for the Democrats.

CNN: Rangel Not Stepping Down.

UNEMPLOYMENT: Hitting men harder than women. More from Daniel Drezner, who notes a major error by Linda Hirshman that slipped past those layers of editors and fact-checkers. (Thanks to reader John Chilton, who adds: “What was that about standalone bloggers?” Maybe we’re not obsolete yet!)

UPDATE: Hirshman responds in the comments, and Drezner responds to her response. And there’s more discussion over at Megan McArdle’s.

A WORLD GOVERNMENT? It seems beyond the ability of our political class to govern even nations. . . .

WHAT A DEAL! Al Gore as a green go-fer in an Obama administration?

IN THE MAIL: The Tales of Beedle the Bard, by J.K. Rowling.

THE CHICAGO WAY: Illinois Gov. Blagojevich, chief of staff, arrested. “In one charge related to the appointment of a senator to replace Barack Obama, prosecutors allege that Blagojevich sought appointment for himself as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the new Obama administration, or a lucrative job with a union, in exchange for appointing a union-preferred candidate.”

UPDATE: Another chance to play Name That Party!

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Simply put, it is the most breathtaking corruption scandal in the history of Illinois politics.” Now that’s saying something!

A copy of the criminal complaint is here. (PDF).

MORE: Related? A complaint on the Rezko/Obama land deal.

A REPLY TO JUDGE WILKINSON ON HELLER: Unraveling Judicial Restraint: Guns, Abortion, and the Faux Conservatism of J. Harvie Wilkinson, III.

GEORGE WILL: Broadcast ‘Fairness’ Fouls Out.

HMM: Grad School Enrollments Drop, Business & Law School Enrollments Increase, During Recession.

GOOD NEWS: Malaria Vaccine Effective in Latest Trials. If this pans out, it will be a huge boon to humanity. Thank GlaxoSmithKline, and the Gates Foundation, if so.

A BID TO DESPISE: Government encouraging discrimination against white men. In the name of equality!

APPARENTLY, I’M OBSOLETE: “A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.”

InstaPundit is far more efficient than HuffPo, though. That’s one advantage of being a stand-alone.

UPDATE: Reader Rob McNickle emails: “You may be obsolete, but with millions of page views per month, you are much too big to fail. I feel a bailout coming…..”

I’d like my billion in gold, please, just in case.

ONCE YOU GO BLACK, you don’t go back.

JOHN TIERNEY on the Drug Czar controversy.

MORE RANGEL MUCK:

The ethical clouds hanging over Rep. Charlie Rangel grow thicker by the day.

Thursday, it came to light that Rangel’s campaign committee steered some $80,000 to his son’s Internet company for work that Politico.com’s Luke Rosiak and Glenn Thrush describe as “poorly designed” and shoddy.

So how can House Speaker Nancy Pelosi practically guarantee when the ongoing House Ethics Committee probe into Rangel’s conduct will conclude?

Yet she’s doing exactly that.

So, is the “fix” in?

The smart money is on “yes.”

NICK GILLESPIE: “When the history of this awful moment of bailout hysteria is written, there’ll be a chapter or 20 on the complete bogosity of what might call ‘the infrastructure flim-flam’—the idea that government can boostrap the economy out its funk by hiring two guys to dig a hole and a couple more to fill it in.”

My prediction: It’ll be the Big Dig taken nationwide.

THE PRESIDENT-ELECT’S TOP PROP.

REDEFINING ENGLISH, at Harvard.

IGNORING SKEPTICS on California’s global-warming policy? More here.

IN NATURE: Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy. (Thanks to reader Josh Gourneau for the link).

JAMES SHERK: UAW Workers Actually Cost the Big Three Automakers $70 an Hour.

Plus, economic questions: “Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler rely heavily on an economic impact study by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) in making their case for a financial bailout. This report claims that the simultaneous failure of these three companies would result in a loss of 3.3 million jobs nationally in the same year as the company shutdowns.[1] However, this estimate is based on highly dubious assumptions.”

DOES MORE SLEEP make for better doctors?

MORE BIG-MEDIA TROUBLES: Zucker says NBC may scale down programming hours.