DAVID KRIS to head National Security Division at Justice. Orin Kerr thinks it’s a good appointment.

POLITICO:

This past year was not a particularly good one for Sen. Chris Dodd.

Wall Street crumbled as Dodd distracted himself with a failed presidential bid. And some of the financial titans who helped fund his campaign sit atop the very firms at the center of the collapse.

Top that off with revelations that a chief executive at Countrywide — a firm at the head of the mortgage meltdown — reportedly cajoled his colleagues into offering Dodd special terms on a home loan.

So redemption is the Dodd theme in 2009.

The road to redemption would seem to start with keeping his promise to release those mortgage documents . . . .

THAT WAS FAST: “Last fall I said that one good reason to hope for an Obama victory was that it would remove Biden from the Senate, where he was still capable of causing harm, and burying him in the obscurity of the Vice President’s office. I’m delighted that that prediction, at least, has come true so quickly.” Let’s just hope Obama stays healthy — for which I suppose Biden is some sort of insurance . . . .

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Obama on earmarks:

We are going to ban all earmarks, the process by which individual members insert pet projects without review. We will create an economic recovery oversight board made up of key administration officials and independent advisers to identify problems early and make sure we’re doing all that we can to solve it. We will put information about where money is being spent online so that the American people know exactly where their precious tax dollars are going and whether we are hitting our marks.

Plus this:

Democrats, attempting to defuse the politically nettlesome issue of earmarks, pledged to cut federal spending on the pet projects while making the process for doling out the funds more understandable to the public.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey and Senate counterpart Daniel Inouye said in a joint statement today they will cut funding for most types of earmarks in half from 2006 levels. The cuts would be smaller, about 12 percent according to committee earmark estimates, compared with the most recent levels.

The lawmakers also said they will begin requiring members of Congress to post online explanations of their individual earmark requests, which few lawmakers currently do.

That’s good, though I’d like to see deeper cuts, and it would be better if all of this stuff is posted on one central place, rather than scattered across 535 individual member websites. Not clear which it will be from the above. Not clear how the chairmen’s proposal will mesh with Obama’s plan, either. I’m glad to see some signs of movement here, though, and look forward to more details from Obama, perhaps as soon as today.

OBAMA BACKING AWAY from a Panetta pick?

NOAH POLLAK ON RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM.

NANCY PELOSI, war criminal?

UNIVERSITIES put their hands out for a stimulus. Plus, seeking money for universities, not students.

ROBERT KAPLAN: “Israel has, in effect, launched the war on the Iranian empire that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, in particular, can only have contemplated.”

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: Gaza could have been a model of the future Palestinian state. Instead, it is a place of repression and aggression. “Palestine is a common home for several religious and national groups, but Hamas dogmatically insists that the whole territory is instead an exclusively Muslim part of a future Islamic empire. At a time when democratic and reformist trends are observable in the region, from Lebanon to the Gulf, Hamas’ leadership is physically and economically a part of the clientele of two of the area’s worst dictatorships.”

MEET THE NEW BOSS, YADA YADA: Obama repeating Bush’s “boneheaded move” at the NSC?

HEH: A call for green civil disobedience. Of course, if there’s even one 1960s science teacher who used to do mercury-ball demonstrations left, it’ll all be for naught . . . .

HMM: AP Exclusive: Calendar shows key Ill. gov meetings. Note this: “On Sept. 2, Blagojevich was scheduled to have breakfast with investor J.B. Pritzker, whose sister is Obama supporter Penny Pritzker.”

L.A. TIMES: How 98 senators plus 3 = 100.

AT PJTV, A Gaza Update.

GEORGE WHO?

A NEW WAY TO COVER THE TVA coal ash spill.

RAND SIMBERG SAYS THE BLOOMBERG STORY I LINKED THE OTHER DAY WAS BOGUS: Panic over “tearing down” barriers between military and civilian space programs is much ado about nothing.

SO DOES THAT MEAN THE HONEYMOON IS OVER? Al-Qaida No. 2 blames Obama for Gaza fight.

MICHAEL HIRSCHORN: “Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. . . . But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?

UPDATE: Some thoughts in response, from Steven den Beste.

ELIOT SPITZER SAYS OBAMA DOESN’T UNDERSTAND STIMULATION.

Well, that is what he says, you know.

UH OH: Rangel not “comfortable” with Burris confrontation.

SANJAY GUPTA FOR SURGEON GENERAL? I guess those Iraq War ethics questions have blown over. That’s good, since they were stupid questions (even Arthur Caplan thought so!). And since the Surgeon General’s job is more to be a TV talking-head than an actual physician, I don’t see why Gupta’s TV experience should disqualify him; it’s not as if he isn’t a serious physician, too. Gupta also has an interest in life-extension, which I like.

UPDATE: What do you think? A poll.

MORE: Reader Lane Core emails: “From CNN to the Obama White House? It could hardly even be considered a transfer.”

REPORTING from MacWorld.

CHECK OUT ANDREW BREITBART’S BIGHOLLYWOOD.COM.