DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S Carnival of Space!

BRINGING ON ANOTHER POST-HELLER TEST CASE? L.A. council tightens gun, ammunition law.

TARGETING HIGHLY METASTATIC MELANOMAS with nanotechnology.

MORE ON Al Sharpton’s opposition to Card Check.

Plus, thoughts from Mickey Kaus. Is Card Check really “teetering on the brink?” I hope so. If it’s too far left for Al Sharpton and George McGovern, then it’s even too far left for me!

MARC DANZIGER’S EXPOSUREMANAGER.COM IS COOL: I use it to host a lot of my photos. Now he’s unveiled BuyThisImage.com, a site designed to help you sell images. Very cool. And I’ve already ordered this T-Shirt.

DOG BITES MAN: California Democrats devise plan to hike taxes. “California’s Democratic leaders were planning a vote today on a brazen proposal to raise gas, sales and income taxes through a series of legal maneuvers that would bypass the Legislature’s minority Republicans.”

HE HAS NOT YET BEGUN TO WANK: Atrios makes Barack Obama “Wanker of the Day” over the Rick Warren decision. John Hawkins has a big roundup of reaction from the leftosphere. So, once again the “who are the rubes?” question raises itself. . . . (Via the InstaWife).

And Ann Althouse comments: “Who needs omens when Obama was always clear that he opposed same-sex marriage? He said so every time he was asked.” Yep, but Obamania was such that even those who pride themselves on seeing what is in front of their faces ignored it.

Also, Gay Obamaniacs Just Got Punk’d. More on that here.

THOUGHTS ON exotic women and intermarriage, from Jeffrey Goldberg and Ta-Nehisi Coates. I’m on record as being pro-miscegenation myself! Hybrid Vigor — it’s more than just a classic rock & roll album!

I MISSED THIS STORY YESTERDAY: Becerra Won’t Be Obama’s Trade Rep. “Saying that he has come to the realization that trade is not the highest priority for the incoming Obama administration, Rep. Xavier Becerra has decided not to accept Barack Obama’s offer to be United States Trade Representative.” I’m very worried about a descent into protectionism, which would turn the economic situation from problematic to disastrous all by itself. This isn’t making me feel better.

STEVE CHAPMAN on Caroline Kennedy and the lure of royalty.

JAMES RUMMEL on canceling his cable. “Yesterday I finally bowed to the inevitable and canceled my cable service. I kept the Internet connection, obviously. . . . Does anyone else out there remember when cable TV was the wave of the future? Most cities had three broadcast channels, and that was it. The first cable services would usually bring in an independent channel station or two from larger cities, TBS, CNN, and MTV. If you were lucky you got ten extra channels coming through the wire, which seemed to be pretty amazing at the time. The world turns, though. Now I am dissatisfied with close to 100 channels, all because they don’t provide the content I want when I want to watch. Instead of cable, I now look to free video-on-demand to entertain me for the four hours or so a week where I actually want to watch television.”

Other bad news for cable companies — every financial-advice guru I see advises folks strapped for cash to cancel their cable as one of their first money-saving moves. How many people who do so will go back later, when they have more money? Fewer than half, I’d guess.

MATT WELCH: “After two months of relentless scaremongering by the nation’s elite politicians and journalists, how’s that whole bailout thing doing at the polls?” Not so well. . . . Matt concludes: “Like Dick Cheney, I don’t believe in governing by poll. But that won’t prevent me from taking heart in the fact that, once again, Americans seem to have more instinctive faith in capitalism and less enthusiasm for government blank checks than their elected representatives.”

SOME GOOD COMMERCIAL SPACE NEWS: “The tone of excitement in the voices of some commercial space industry leaders was noticeable Tuesday as they talked about Spaceport America’s official designation as a fully licensed facility by the Federal Aviation Administration.”

GOOD: Ohio official in ‘Joe the Plumber’ flap resigns. “An Ohio agency director resigned Wednesday in the wake of a finding that she improperly used state computers to access personal information on the man who became known as ‘Joe the Plumber’ during the presidential campaign. Two other officials who were suspended from their positions for their role in the computer search will not be returning to their jobs, an agency spokeswoman said.” When we interviewed Joe for PJTV last night — video here, free w/no registration — he said he intends to sue everyone involved. I wish him luck, as this is the only way to discourage such things in the future.

POLICE OFFICERS become unintentional YouTube stars. Some are okay with it, some seem to labor under the false impression that videotaping police is illegal.

VOLT ENGINE PLANT ON HOLD: “Word is that GM has shut down construction because it doesn’t have the cash to pay for steel structural members.” Ouch.

MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED / OVERGENEROUS PUBLIC PENSIONS: Connecting CALPERS and Madoff. Is that too harsh? Never mind — when the government does it, it’s not a crime!

More here: “Calpers in recent weeks said it expects to report paper losses of 103% on its housing investments in the fiscal year ended June 30. That’s because Calpers invested not only its own money, but billions of dollars of borrowed money that must be repaid even if the investment fails. In some deals, as much as 80% of the money invested by Calpers was borrowed.”

JACK SHAFER: “The misery of a laid-off or bought-out journalist isn’t greater than that of a sacked bond trader, a RIF-ed clerk, or a fired autoworker. The only reason we’re so well-informed about journalists’ suffering is they have easy access to a megaphone.”

MORE ON THE NIGHTMARE THAT IS Zimbabwe.

THE RIGHT TO MARRY does not entitle me to a spouse.

WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: Charles Martin says the United States isn’t bankrupt.

CHRIS DODD UPDATE:

Sen. Chris Dodd’s failed presidential campaign appears to have hurt him in Connecticut according to a new survey that showed the Democrat with his lowest poll numbers in 14 years.

The poll by Quinnipiac University shows the Senate Banking Committee chairman with a 47 percent approval rating. That’s down from 60 percent in May 2007 shortly after he declared his candidacy for president. Dodd faces re-election in 2010.

To know him is not to love him, so publicity isn’t his friend, as his Iowa performance demonstrated. But there’s also this:

Dodd also has undergone scrutiny in the local media about mortgage loans he received from Countrywide Financial, which included Dodd in a special program. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, questions have arisen about conflicts of interest in the arrangement, although Dodd has denied knowing he was given any special treatment.

Yeah, as I’ve mentioned the local media have covered this story better than national media, for some reason.

MORE QUESTIONS about Eric Holder: “The Republicans want to find out if Holder has a good explanation of his conduct in the Clinton-era pardons as well as in matters such as the Elian Gonzales case. . . . And then today we learn that Holder neglected to list on his confirmation questionnaire his work for Blago — yeah, the story that keeps on giving — on an Illinois gaming board. If it was an effort to conceal, it was dumb and counterproductive to his effort to convince the Senate that he is above reproach. And if it was sloppiness that doesn’t say much for his professional skills. More fodder for the hearing, no doubt.”

CAROLINE KENNEDY as Sarah Palin? Only without the moose angle.

UPDATE: Serious alterations at the NYT.

THEY SAID IF YOU VOTED MCCAIN-PALIN, WE’D SEE EVANGELICAL PREACHERS CLOSE TO THE WHITE HOUSE. And, well . . . Gay leaders furious with Obama: “Barack Obama’s choice of a prominent evangelical minister to perform the invocation at his inauguration is a conciliatory gesture toward social conservatives who opposed him in November, but it is drawing fierce challenges from a gay rights movement that – in the wake of a gay marriage ban in California – is looking for a fight. . . . Obama opposes same-sex marriage, but also opposed the California constitutional amendment Warren backed. In selecting Warren, he is choosing to reach out to conservatives on a hot-button social issue, at the cost of antagonizing gay voters who overwhelmingly supported him.”

Plus, Obama To Gay Rights Progressives: Drop Dead. You know, as I’ve noted before, the reason not to get too excited about elections is that the guy you like generally turns out to disappoint you, and the guy you don’t like generally turns out not to be as bad as you feared. A lot of Obama voters are encountering the downside of this phenomenon. . . .

More on the reactions from Dan Riehl (“A worn Sullivan just wrings his hands acknowledging the betrayal in Ugh! But then all his energies have been zapped, what with him off chasing maternity questions in the foreign and un-American land he seems to think Alaska represents . . . The rest of the Left is not quite so resigned.”) and JammieWearingFool (“The funny thing is, it was an overwhelming Obama vote in California that helped pass Prop 8. The angry gay left just cannot rationalize it yet that the guy they poured their gay marriage effort into also brought out the voters who reject gay marriage. When you’re a single-issue voter, you’re often going to be angry when you don’t get your way. . . . I almost feel sorry for Obama having to deal with these children.”)

UPDATE: “Obama just keeps disappointing supporters. Odd, but refreshing.” Particularly as the ones he’s disappointing are the ones who cast their disagreement with Bush on those same issues as a matter of ultimate good vs. evil.