RICHARD MINITER on the Palin email hacking story: “I predict that the same crowd that said that Palin should have been able to control her 17-year old daughter will defend the 20-year old hacker by saying no one can control their kids. At least they will be right once.”

UPDATE: Reader Peter Muth emails: “Speaking of errant children, I don’t think certain people were talking about this topic when this was going on in Milwaukee.”

Plus, a denial: “Tennessee state Rep. Mike Kernell, Memphis Democrat, last night disputed published newspaper reports, including one in the Tennessean that said his son was the focus of the Palin hack investigation.” Stay tuned for developments.

ONE PROBLEM WITH A LOWER STOCK MARKET: Professors delaying retirement. Yeah, we were talking about this at work the other day. (Via TaxProf). Of course, prudent managers will have reduced their equity exposure substantially in the years leading up to retirement — but, then, it’s not just an equity slump at the moment, is it?

QUESTIONS ABOUT Obama and Fannie Mae’s Franklin Raines. So what exactly is their relationship?

EXPLAINING the AIG rescue.

Plus, did Eliot Spitzer contribute to AIG’s demise?

BEWARE OF FINANCIAL TERRORISM?

BARACK OBAMA’S EMAIL HACKED! Here’s a screenshot. Heh.

POLITICO: Poll: GOP brand making comeback. “New polling suggests that the Republican Party is beginning to regain some of its luster and, perhaps as important, is experiencing a surge in excitement among its political base.” Well, that would be news.

PHOTOS OF hurricane destruction in Cuba.

MORE ON OBAMA and the Iraqi government.

BIDEN ON THE WAY OUT? Reader Lewis Harkow emails: “Wondering if you have heard the rumors that Biden is going to step down due to health reasons after the debate and Hillary is going to take his place.”

Well, I’ve heard people predict that. I don’t really believe it. However, the action at Intrade on the Biden-withdrawal contract suggests that some people do. I very much doubt it, though. I think the Hillary opportunity has passed Obama by.

FISH. BARREL. CORRECTING KEITH OLBERMANN.

HMM: Biden’s Refusal to Appear At Iran Protest Caused the Disinvitation of Palin.

CANADIANS inform Paul Krugman of the drawbacks of socialized medicine.

TODD ZYWICKI:

One interesting aspect of the recent government bailouts has been the complete irrelevance of Congress. The operation and decision-making seems to be run almost entirely by the Secretary of Treasury and Federal Reserve. Congress appears to lack the ability, the will, and the decisiveness to play any role except spectator, as a handful of senior executive branch officials have nationalized major portions of Wall Street.

What is further interesting is that Congress is not missed in the slightest. No one is clamoring for a greater role for our elected representatives in dealing with these problems. I haven’t heard anyone saying, “We really need to get Congress more involved in this. They’ll know what to do.” . . .

Put more generally, Congress’s ridiculousness has increasingly caused it to forfeit its status a co-equal branch of government. 40 or 50 years ago it might have been plausible to imagine Congress addressing important public policy issues like entitlement reform or health care reform (I’m not saying they would have done it, but it seems like it was more plausible then). Serious people were in the Senate then–Taft, Johnson, etc. Today, however, the idea that serious solutions to pressing social problems might originate in Congress is hard to suggest with a straight face.

Read the whole thing, which states a serious problem.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY: So build your own robot!

UPDATE: Reader Ian Watson writes:

I’m a 23 year old law student and my mom got me that LEGO mindstorm package for Christmas. I didn’t quite know what to think about it… then I spent the entire Christmas break drinking beer and making a robot that would patrol my kitchen and chase the dog. The programming software for it is rather easy (done with pictures and a little bit of logic), and you can do a whole lot with the sensors it gives you. My robot could drive around the kitchen, and when it hit something turn around and find another way. Then every 30 seconds it would stop, scan the distance in front of it, then rescan… if the number changed (something moves in front of it), the robot would make a horrible noise and go full blast forward until it hit something. I called him Lance.

Sounds like fun!

KATIE GRANJU: Replace Biden with Hillary: not as nuts as it sounds.

Meanwhile, reader Lewis Harkow emails: “Wondering if you have heard the rumors that Biden is going to step down due to health reasons after the debate and Hillary is going to take his place.”

Well, I’ve heard people predict that. I don’t really believe it. However, the action at Intrade on the Biden-withdrawal contract suggests that some people do. I very much doubt it, though. I think the Hillary opportunity has passed Obama by.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: Actually, the President can remove an SEC Chairman.

ABC News David Wright got the most erroneous meme of the day started when, in reporting John McCain’s criticism of SEC Chairman Chris Cox, Wright claimed that “while the president nominates and the Senate confirms the SEC chair, a commissioner of an independent regulatory commission cannot be removed by the president.” I’ve explained why this is wrong in an earlier post, but Wright’s claim is being widely — and uncritically repeated—all over the web.

Read the whole thing. And Bainbridge’s earlier post is pretty hard on McCain, but notes that the lefties are managing to attack McCain for the one thing he got right.

HOW NOT TO buy a sports car.

POLITICO: Reid dodges AIG bailout questions. I guess those are above his pay grade.

NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN: State rep confirms that son is subject of Palin e-mail chatter. A UT-Knoxville student, no less. Should’ve studied harder . . . .

UPDATE: Do journalists care about your privacy if you aren’t a terrorist? “Here we have an actual invasion of an American citizen’s privacy, and what is the press’s attitude? If the AP is representative (and given its organizational structure, it should be), it is to regard ‘questions about the propriety’ of the victim as more important than the invasion of privacy itself.” That depends. Had Obama’s email been hacked by a Republican, it would be Watergate all over again. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Gerard van der Leun argues for mercy.

Plus, a reader emails: “Could you at least mention that he is a democrat, because no one else will?”

The Tennessean story does. And so does this story from the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

GLENN LOURY: If Obama’s a better uniter, why didn’t he cross the gender line? “When the opportunity came to actually unite . . . he doesn’t do it.”

Related item here.

Meanwhile, it’s not as if some of the Bloggingheads commenters are out of touch with reality or anything. Check out this criticism of Loury: “When Brown v. Board of Education is overturned by the McCain Supreme Court, we’ll have Glenn to thank.” Jeez.

MORE ON THE PALIN EMAIL HACK from Wired. (A Tennessee connection? Possibly.) While the whodunit aspect, and the invasion of privacy angle, have gotten a lot of press, this is probably the money quote:

The hacker said that he read all of the e-mails in the Palin account and found “nothing incriminating, nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped. All I saw was personal stuff, some clerical stuff from when she was governor…. And pictures of her family.”

Likely to backfire, it seems.

UPDATE: Reader Greg Nesmith emails: “How many public figures could withstand such scrutiny? If you let a hostile force loose in the private e-mail accounts of public figures, what would they find on Charlie Rangel? Harry Reid? Bill Clinton?” We may find out, now . . . .

WHY YOUR FLIGHT GOT CANCELED.

THOUGHTS ON SCOTT CROSSFIELD and judging a book by its cover.

MCCAIN AND OBAMA on the economy.