TIM NOAH: Robert Rubin’s Free Ride.

HAPPY ABOUT THE SUNSTEIN APPOINTMENT, at the Wall Street Journal. My own thoughts on the subject, at Forbes, are here.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON NOTES some ironies of the past year.

REFRESHING THAT memory. “The Johnson campaign of 1964, in which Moyers played a key role, smeared Goldwater as a reckless warmonger and portrayed LBJ as a man of peace, even as Johnson was planning the ‘escalation’ in Vietnam.” Yet that story has been buried and nearly forgotten and Bill Moyers recast from hatchetman to wise old head. That’s nothing to what we’ll be seeing in the way of revisionist history as the Obama Administration establishes its not-so-new approach.

ARNOLD KLING:

You will hear Keynesians cry over the “lost output” that results from having unemployment. That is somewhat misleading. The reason we are getting less output from home builders, mortgage securitizers, and auto makers is that we do not want so much from them. Putting them back to work doing stuff people don’t want may produce output in an accounting sense, but in economic terms it is still lost output.

We certainly don’t need many more houses at the moment.

MARK STEYN: The “oldest hatred” lives, from Gaza to Florida.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: My Comment to the FCC on DRM.

IN THE MAIL: From John Ringo and Julie Cochrane, Honor of the Clan. The latest in Ringo’s Posleen series.

ANOTHER EDITORIAL ON CHRIS DODD AND CHARLES RANGEL:

Rep. Rangel is a perfect storm of embarrassment for his party. He has been charged with occupying several rent-controlled New York apartments when he was only entitled to one, taking tax breaks for residences in both Washington, D.C., and New York when he was only entitled to one, failing to report rental income from a vacation home, and arranging tax breaks for donors to the Charles B. Rangel School of Public Service at City College of New York.

Sen. Dodd was the beneficiary of two loans arranged by the president of Countrywide Financial, a major player in the collapse of the housing market, and he was also the sponsor of legislation allegedly helping Bank of America after it purchased Countrywide. Sen. Dodd has been criticized for refusing to release the details of the two loans which would clarify whether he received preferential treatment. As long as he stonewalls, Sen. Dodd will be an embarrassment to his party.

Democratic candidates in 2006 ran successfully against what they described as a Republican culture of corruption and promised to clean things up. That promise has been greatly undermined by Rep. Rangel and Sen. Dodd. If they do not have the grace to step aside as chairmen while under investigation, their colleagues should intervene.

Yes, they should.

OBAMA GIVES CIA INTERROGATORS a pass on torture. Of course he does.

UPDATE: Maybe he’s following Cass Sunstein’s advice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Col. Douglas Mortimer emails:

Of course, indeed. Just this week, NPR (Terry Gross?) had some British yak talking about how he hopes during Eric Holder’s confirmation hearing, he is asked whether he thinks waterboarding is torture. The guest went to say that he hopes Holder says “yes,” and that he then goes on to investigate and prosecute everyone who was involved in waterboarding terrorist suspects and who was involved in approving the decision to allow it.

Yeah. Right. Like that’s gonna happen.

I’d be surprised. Plus this: Obama Taps CIA Veteran As Adviser On Terror. To a position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation. “The president-elect’s decision comes only six weeks after Brennan was forced to pull out of contention for the directorship of the CIA because of fears that his statements supporting some controversial interrogation techniques would have complicated his confirmation.” Meet the new boss, yada yada.

MORE: TalkLeft: “This reminds me of Bush’s tendency towards recess appointments to get around Senate confirmation.”

JOHN CONYERS: Michael Moore’s catspaw?

CAN CALIFORNIANS GET THRIFTY? “With a $40 billion deficit looming, conspicuous consumption is going to have to go out of style in the land of swimming pools and movie stars.”

WORRIES ABOUT CENSUS FRAUD IN 2010. Are they justified? I dunno.

FROM MACWORLD, a look at the new iWork and iLife releases.

UPDATE: Also, a report on new features in iPhoto ’09. And, from CES, a bunch of new camera and video products, though it’s kind of weirdly set up since you mostly can’t actually buy them yet, but it looks like you ought to be able to.

NICK GILLESPIE: The secret life of the American teenager is boring as hell.

OVER AT POPULAR MECHANICS, I opine on the Oregon GPS mileage tax proposal.

MICHAEL YON: Don’t be dissing the British/American relationship: “What I can say, is that the significant combat I saw with British soldiers made me respect them more with each battle. Yes, it’s true their gear needs serious upgrading. The British government needs to spend billions to upgrade the hardware. But when it comes to the soldier, British soldiers are extremely well-trained, courageous and ready for a big firefight at the drop of a hat. Our brothers and sisters are vastly outnumbered at Helmand Province in Afghanistan. I think about them several times a day and am concerned that they might take serious losses this year. . . . There is no real complaint against the British other than they need to field their military with better gear. The British fight very well, but they need better gear.”

HEH: Somali Pirates Receive Ransom, Hilarity Ensues.

THE SUPREME COURT WILL HEAR an important affirmative-action case.

TENNESSEE’S VERSION of the Madoff affair? Nice house.

THUMBS UP FOR GRAN TORINO: “Driving home, I was thinking: Clint Eastwood is the best Hollywood guy ever.”

Plus this: “This is a good movie for people who like cars and guns and tools.”

And, from the comments: “It says something about America that the toughest guy in the movies is 78 years old.”

Vaguely related item here.

UPDATE: Randy Barnett liked Gran Torino too.

DANIEL DREZNER on the known unknowns of the economic crisis.

FABIUS MAXIMUS: New reports about Mexico, the failing state on our border.

ATLAS SHRUGGED: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years.

5,4,3,2,1 MILLION: The incredible shrinking inauguration crowd. “Maybe Obama is just another run-of-the-mill Democrat president. After all, Lyndon B. Johnson had 1.2 million people show up for his inauguration in 1965, and that was 44 years ago.” But nobody’ll be counting, so the narrative won’t suffer too much. Related item here.

UPDATE: Inaugural Rentals Begging for Takers. “”I’m blown away by how little demand there is . . . Initially, we were flooded with calls from people looking for [inaugural] housing. For about four or five days, the phone would not stop ringing. . . . But now we have apartments as low as $150 a night that we can’t get rid of.” When I was in DC, I talked to a cabbie who said he would take off a couple of days around the inauguration, because with all the crowds, traffic and blocked streets he wouldn’t make any money. I wonder if Adrian Fenty’s overoptimistic predictions might actually encourage people who would otherwise have gone to stay home, rather than face the kind of gridlock that 5 million people would have produced. The WaPo article suggests that this is the case.