THERE’S A JOHN GALT UNDERGROUND.

ABC NEWS: Another Top Treasury Pick Withdraws From Consideration.

Plus this: “Obama is not Jesus. Jesus could actually build a cabinet.”

A TINY, TALKING 4 GB iPod Shuffle.

HARTFORD COURANT: Dodd Seen As Vulnerable in 2010 Race: “U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, already reeling from questions about his role in the Countrywide mortgage scandal and singed by the collapse of the nation’s banking industry, is being seen as increasingly vulnerable in the 2010 election.”

Plus, more questions about Dodd’s Irish “cottage:”

Mr. Dodd is busy these days blaming everyone else for the real-estate bubble and financial meltdown. But he owes his constituents and the Senate an honest accounting of his Galway property over the past 15 years. If its value grew with the rest of the area, he needs to explain why Mr. Kessinger handed it over for a song, why that isn’t an unreported gift under Senate rules, and what role Mr. Downe might have played as a middleman.

More broadly, Connecticut voters might want to know why their senior Senator has hung around for years with Mr. Downe, the kind of financial scoundrel Mr. Dodd spends so much time denouncing.

Indeed.

SAVING NASA: An Astronaut’s Letter to President Obama: Six Space Policy Musts.

BUSTING THE BRADY CAMPAIGN for firearms dishonesty. Of course, the alternative explanation — complete ignorance of what they’ve been banning — is even more damning.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: OBAMA TAKES A DIVE ON EARMARKS:

President Obama has vowed to curb the number of earmarks, also known as pork, in future spending bills. A commendable promise, had his number been zero. Unfortunately, the president wants to deal with an unsavory dish by cutting the portion size. Earmarks are pet projects that lawmakers stuff into spending bills. There are 9,000 earmarks in the omnibus appropriations bill about which Obama gave his pork talk on Wednesday. . . .

But earmark spending is not only about money. It is about enabling fundamentally corrupt practices in the budgeting process. Too often the following happens:

Member of Congress obtains pork for a group or business. The recipient returns some of it in the form of campaign cash or, in at least one case, antiques for the home. Former Rep. Randy Cunningham, a California Republican, was famously brought down by a bribe-for-earmark scandal including Persian rugs.

The FBI is now investigating PMA Group on suspicions of making phony campaign donations to select representatives. Rep. John Murtha has received generous contributions from the employees of PMA, a lobbying firm whose clients have enjoyed earmarks, courtesy of the Pennsylvania Democrat.

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid likes the status quo on pork. Waving the flag of American security, a spokesman for the Nevada Democrat recently told The Washington Post that defense-related earmarks “improve critical national defense programs.”

No, they don’t. Every defense-related earmark goes to something the Defense Department didn’t ask for — and is usually directed to some contractor back in the district. That money could have gone to actually enhancing national security.

Read the whole thing.

BECAUSE FLYING COULDN’T GET ANY WORSE: Should we pay to pee on flights?

The plethora of nuisance charges being added to air travel just means that when you shop ticket price, you’re shopping a deceptive number. Airlines push that down as far as they can, then try to make the money back with other items they hope you won’t really notice. This proposal just illustrates the more general problem.

JOHN HAWKINS INTERVIEWS ADAM SHEPARD, author of Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and The Search For The American Dream.

HOW TO stop Google from following you.

BOB OWENS LOOKS AT why the U.S. is facing an ammunition shortage.

HMM: Artificial Life Could Be Created Within Five Years.

WHY PEOPLE ARE DRIVING LESS: It’s not high gas prices, but general economic worry.

IN THE MAIL: Jeffrey Norrell’s Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington. They’re discussing it over at TPM Book Club, and they invited me to join, but my copy didn’t come until yesterday, and it’s a bit much to digest before the end of the week. But you should check out what the folks who have read it have to say.

HMM: Obama: Troop move to Mexican border under consideration. Plus, at the end, a hint that Mexico’s troubles may be used as a pretext for gun control in America.

POLITICO: FBI Raids Office of Obama Tech Appointee.

IS IT A BUDGET? Or a “revenge tragedy?” “Our prince has come. The dragon, Wealth, has been put to the sword, and everyone is gathered downstage to await the finale. It turns out, though, that many who bought tickets thought this entertainment was a species of Romance or Comedy that had a happy ending. Others of us knew that wasn’t what was advertised and said so.”

DODD VULNERABLE IN CONNECTICUT:

Sen. Chris Dodd has never been more politically vunerable than he is today, and he knows it.

A Democrat and the state’s senior senator, Dodd has been busy trying to repair his damaged image. My inbox has been flooded with announcements from his office. The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs he chairs has conducted hearings of late on improving “transit systems” in the country and examining the regulatory gaps that contributed to the financial crisis. Today the senator condemned the recent violence in North Ireland. . . . The problem for Dodd is that little is likely to happen before the next election cycle that can repair the damage he has suffered. Dodd was chairman of the banking committee when banks were melting down. He downplayed the troubles at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, making him look out of touch when the federal government later had to bail out the two government-backed mortgage behemoths.

Making things look worse, Dodd was the biggest recipient of donations flowing from Fannie and Freddie employees and political actions committees, according to OpenSecrets.org . . . Then, of course, there was the “VIP” treatment Dodd received on two mortgages from Countrywide. Dodd has said that had nothing to do with his being a senator or the contributions he received from Countrywide. At the very least, Dodd should have known it was a bad idea to do business with the mortgage giant.

And there’s that whole Irish “cottage” thing.

DOES VOTING MATTER ANYMORE? “Our elected leaders act more and more like kings, not representatives of the people.”

SERVING ON THE SUPREME COURT: A sort of annual intellectual lobotomy?

DAN RIEHL SAYS THAT Obama isn’t doing as badly on appointments overall as those high-profile failures make it seem. Megan McArdle notes that some sectors are doing better than others: “That’s in the defense/foreign policy area, which is comparatively well-advanced in finding staff compared to Treasury. At least in those areas, a powerful government position is the apotheosis of the field, which means that people are often willing to put up with the hassles. In areas where there are more lucrative options with near-equal prestige–i.e., nearly all the rest of them–it’s getting harder and harder.”

She denounces “This new tradition of bulldogging every appointee in the hope of embarrassing the president.” On the other hand, a number of these candidates — Chas Freeman, or Bill Richardson, for example — have faced something more than a nanny problem.

OBAMA ON the future of NASA.

WILLIAM HASELTINE: Why big pharma mergers magnify failures.

SOME CHEERFUL ECONOMIC PREDICTIONS from Nouriel Roubini.

ON PJTV, Michelle Malkin and I talk about Tea Parties, the Obama Administration’s appointments problems, and my invitation to Chuck Norris to come to Tennessee and kick my ass. Plus, progress in closing the giant-puppet gap!