DISHONEST POLITICIANS in Massachusetts:

According to an affidavit, the agents recorded Dianne Wilkerson, a longtime state senator, accepting a $1,000 bribe from a constituent who wanted her help getting a liquor license for a proposed nightclub called Dejavu.

The evidence helped lead to Ms. Wilkerson’s arrest in October on charges of taking more than $23,000 in bribes, and one piece in particular — a photo of the senator appearing to stuff cash up her sweater and into her bra — has become a symbol of broader problems on Beacon Hill. . . . Ms. Wilkerson and the councilor, Charles Turner, were only the latest in a string of public employees charged with corruption here this year, and the arrests have stirred anger among voters and hand-wringing on Beacon Hill. Within days of Ms. Wilkerson’s arrest, Gov. Deval Patrick appointed a “task force on public integrity” that will recommend changes to the state’s ethics and lobbying rules by year’s end. . . .

While the current scandals are not as outsized as the case involving Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, political observers here say that distrust of government officials has not been so acute in years.

If you don’t trust ’em, then don’t trust ’em with so much of your money. Massachusetts voters had a chance to do something about that in November, but didn’t. I wonder how many are regretting it now?

Meanwhile, the “task force on integrity” response is right out of the book.

SO IS THIS GOOD OR BAD NEWS? Stricter toy regulations claim Selecta as victim.

EMBARRASSING: AG Lisa Madigan’s argument to the Illinois Supreme Court about ousting Governor Blagojevich. Illinois state government is looking like one big clown show.

TOP KIDS-AND-FAMILY DVDs OF 2008.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ASKS: Has the 401(k) failed?

I don’t think 401(k)s have done any worse than defined-benefit plans — those are in terrible shape too, as a bit of poking around at PensionTsunami.com will illustrate — but one advantage of 401(k) plans and the like (including 403(b)s, 457s, SEPs, etc.) is that they’re transparent. When your 401(K) balance drops by 30-40% you know your retirement is in trouble; when public (or corporate) pension funds take a similar hit we get bland reassurances that everything’s okay. Isn’t it better to know where things stand?

Of course, with defined-benefit plans, you can always hit up the taxpayers or shareholders, one way or another, to make things up. But that only goes so far, and there’s reason to think we’re hitting the limits of what can be done that way.

HMM: Senate Democrats Had Enough Republican Votes to Pass the Bailout. Just not enough for political cover, given its unpopularity.

MICHAEL BARONE: Rod Blagojevich, the Stupidest Governor in the Country, Puts Obama in a Bad Light. “I’ve long since come to the conclusion that Rod Blagojevich is clearly the stupidest governor in all of our 50 states, and he may be the stupidest governor I’ve had occasion to write about in the four decades when I’ve been co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.” How did he become Governor? Family connections: “Blagojevich is the son-in-law of 33rd Ward Democratic Committeeman Dick Mell. Ward committeemen are hugely important in Chicago politics: Dan Rostenkowski and his father had been the 32nd ward committeemen from 1935 to 1995; the ward committeemen from the 11th ward since some time in the 1940s have been Richard J. Daley, Richard M. Daley and John Daley; the 13th ward committeeman Bill Lipinski, retiring suddenly from Congress in 2004, was able to get the Democratic nomination for his son Dan Lipinski from a group of ward committeemen despite the fact that Dan Lipinski was a political science professor at the University of Tennessee and hadn’t lived in Chicago for years.”

SO I SUFFER FROM HyperHimboism? It’s a fair cop. And yes, it is Bill Whittle’s fault.

Meanwhile, in response to the question of what to do about endocrine-disrupters, I’d say that if the science suggesting a hazard holds up (right now it’s pretty preliminary), they should be regulated so as to eliminate (or at least reduce substantially) the risk. Mark Kleiman will probably regard this as some sort of huge concession, but that’s based on his rather serious and ongoing misapprehension of what I’m about. As anyone who has read my work on regulation (e.g., this piece) would know, while I’m skeptical of regulation in many cases, I am not, in fact, opposed to all regulation, all the time. That’s a straw man, with a rather crude caricature of my face daubed on. Honestly, when I read Kleiman’s comments about my blog I often wonder what he’s reading in place of InstaPundit. (Here are some related thoughts from Megan McArdle.)

But hey, maybe others see me differently. Maybe I’m hyper-masculine after all! Please weigh in, gentle readers, via this latest Insta-Poll:

MICHAEL GREENSPAN WRITES: “I was reading through old posts (mine, not yours — I’m a big Instapundit fan, but I’m not insane) and found this: ‘It seems to me that the best hope for the Democrats is for Bush to be so successful at foreign affairs and national security that by 2008 nobody cares anymore.'”

Heh. It did kinda work out that way.

ARTHROPODS: Is there anything they can’t do? “Now, I’ve finally gotten Glenn Reynolds and Glenn Close together in one post — with ticks.”

Anyway, I think the linkage between parasites and politics is pretty straightforward . . . .

OOPS: Rahm Emanuel, Blagojevich staff talked.

Meanwhile, Jim Lindgren offers a defense of Obama, Emanuel, et al.

MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED / OVERGENEROUS PUBLIC PENSION FUNDS:

Governor Carcieri has cut the state’s work force to its lowest level in recent memory, leaning heavily on a change in retirement benefits that pushed hundreds of workers into retirement earlier than they had planned.

But the exodus has put an unexpected strain on Rhode Island’s public retirement system.

There are now fewer active employees paying into the pension system and more people collecting retirement payments than had been predicted.

The result is a projected hole of $20.4 million that Rhode Island taxpayers will make up in the coming year. That price tag may be offset by savings this year, but the jump in those collecting pensions also adds $33 million to the retirement system’s already massive unfunded liability, according to a report by the state’s actuary, Texas-based Gabriel Roeder Smith & Company, that was made public yesterday.

The problem is likely to get worse.

CHRIS DODD UPDATE: Senator opens mouth, inserts foot:

Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, suggested on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that Rick Wagoner, the chief executive of GM, “has to move on.”

Where does Dodd get the temerity to make such a proposition in light of his own incompetence and scandal? Dodd is in charge of the committee that could have kept us from entering the current credit crisis. He’s the same man who is in charge of regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and is No. 1 on their list of donations. . . .

Dodd also received preferential loans from Countrywide Mortgage Bank, and then said he wasn’t aware that he was getting a “special” deal. How is that possible?

The bottom line is that Dodd received special treatment from a company that he was in charge of regulating and to this day he has refused to release details of those transactions. If Dodd has done no wrong, then why not release the documents and dispel the accusations?

Why, indeed?

WHICH WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE: Internet access or sex?

MICHAEL GREENSPAN on bow-ties and hypermasculinity.

Plus, the downside of hypo-masculinity:

One occupational hazard, she says, is cheap men — guys who want to haggle over the “donation” all night. One particularly odd phenomenon she’s noticed: The men who ask her to use a strap-on on them — guys who want to be pegged — are the cheapest clients. “They always want to negotiate the price or tell me they only have so much,” she says. She shrugs and shakes her head. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s like every time.”

Bummer.

UPDATING Greg Palast.

POTS, KETTLES, and Bill Moyers.

CHARLES DUNLAP, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Talk of the coup of 2012. God, no.

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple Empire.

MICHAEL YON: On the Front Lines in Afghanistan, Part Two. My favorite part: Lithuanian Special Forces as “sort of a weaponized version of Borat.”

BAILOUT ANGER: “Festering animosity between the United Auto Workers and Southern senators who torpedoed the auto industry bailout bill erupted into full-fledged name calling Friday as union officials accused the lawmakers of trying to break the union on behalf of foreign automakers. . . . Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama all house auto assembly plants from foreign automakers, and union officials contend the senators want to drive UAW wages down so there would be no reason for workers at the foreign plants to join the union.”

GREENHOUSE UPDATE: Czech president hits at EU climate deal. “Czech President Vaclav Klaus hit out at the EU climate deal concluded Friday and described global climate issues as ‘a silly luxury.'”

MICKEY KAUS: “Now that everyone is criticizing work rules, it’s easy to forget that they don’t represent a perversion of the collective bargaining process–they are the intended result of that process, and were once celebrated as such. . . . Sen. Corker’s proposed bailout compromise apparently did try to tackle the issue of work rules. But the UAW balked at the Corker requirements (which would also have cut pay to parity with Toyota and Honda’s U.S. factories) and the deal collapsed. That shouldn’t be a surprise. A ‘web of rules’ is what adversarial Wagner Act unions were designed to produce.”

NOT EXACTLY A TRAGEDY in Illinois. But not exactly a comedy, either.

POSTPONING THE GALA: “Amid an intensified ethics investigation of Representative Charles B. Rangel, an opening reception for a school named in his honor has been postponed. . . . The reception, scheduled for Tuesday evening, would have come a week after a House ethics committee voted to examine the congressman’s role in preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company whose chief executive pledged $1 million to the Rangel Center project.”