TRENT SEIBERT: Newspapers Broke My Heart. Will Citizen Journalism Heal It?

GOOD QUESTION: Why did Blago give money to Richardson?

HERE’S A STORY ON GINA ELISE’S PIN-UPS FOR VETS campaign, which I’ve mentioned here before.

PORN INDUSTRY asks for a bailout.

THOSE LOW GAS PRICES WON’T LAST: “The oil industry is scaling back on exploration and production because some projects don’t make economic sense when energy prices are low. And crude is already harder to find because more nations that own oil companies are blocking outside access to their oil fields. When the world emerges from the recession and starts to burn more fuel again, and higher demand meets lower supply, prices will almost certainly shoot higher.”

FROM COBRA, a new, improved speed trap detecting radar detector incorporating GPS.

NICE: Top American Islamic Cleric Threatens U.S. on Egyptian TV.

HOPE THIS WORKS OUT BETTER FOR HIM THAN IT DID FOR GEORGE W. BUSH: Obama wants Social Security Reform. “Pointing with concern to ‘red ink as far as the eye can see,’ President-elect Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to tackle out-of-control Social Security and Medicare spending and named a special watchdog to clamp down on other federal programs — even as he campaigned anew to spend the largest pile of taxpayer money in history to revive the sinking economy.”

MICHAEL TOTTEN: Stop Juan Cole.

JOE BIDEN declares war.

A LOOK AT the future of gaming.

GETTING IT GOOD AND HARD: 400 bills on first day of new Congress. Hope and Change!

A BUNCH OF 80s music videos for your, um, delectation.

CONTROLLING THE INDEPENDENT RELEASE OF MULTIPLE DRUGS, with nanotechnology.

WASHINGTON POST: OBAMA: Under fire over Panetta. “The Panetta uproar starts Obama off on the wrong foot with the committee and intelligence professionals and was the latest glitch in what has largely been an unusually smooth and carefully choreographed transition.” How many “glitches” do you need before it’s no longer “unusually smooth and carefully choreographed?”

UPDATE: Reader Nick Foresta writes: “The man is infallible. Any mistakes that are made are by definition not mistakes. We have to remember this simple rule. It’s the one constant in the MSM universe.”

ESQUIRE: Gov. Mark Sanford speaks out against bailouts.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Obama’s promise to eliminate earmarks didn’t come a moment too soon. Consider this example:

A controversial Postville meatpacking plant might have been forced out of business if U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin hadn’t stepped in four years ago to give it a multimillion-dollar boost with federal tax money.

The money, nearly $8 million, came from an environmental program from which Agriprocessors normally would have been disqualified. The grant and loan were used to build a sewage-treatment plant that serves only the meatpacker.

The environmental program, run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is designed to help small towns improve their sewage systems. The new sewage-treatment plant is technically owned by Postville, but it doesn’t serve the town’s residents. Department administrators say that fact usually would have prevented it from receiving money from the program. But Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, used his influence to exempt the project from those rules in 2004.

But now it’s the city that’s in deep doo-doo as the plant has gone bankrupt:

The USDA money included a $3.3 million grant and a $4.5 million, 20-year loan. The loan was made to the city, which agreed to stand as the plant’s owner so the project could qualify for the federal program. In return, Agriprocessors agreed to make $25,000 monthly payments on the loan.

A bankruptcy trustee who is temporarily running Agriprocessors said any new owner would be obligated to make the monthly payments toward the $4 million still owed on the federal loan. If the company goes out of business, however, the city would be on the hook for that amount.

Postville Mayor Robert Penrod said he’s worried about the drag the loan would present to the city. “It would be kind of disastrous,” he said.

Thanks, Tom!

GOOD NEWS: “Energy prices tumbled across the board Wednesday after a government report showed U.S. oil reserves were much greater than expected, suggesting demand continues to fall.” Er, isn’t it?

GAZA AND international law.

BLAGOJEVICH UPDATE: “Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s official calendar shows he met with a top union official in his Chicago office the day before Barack Obama was elected president — just as federal prosecutors say the governor was scheming to trade Obama’s Senate seat, possibly for a cushy union job. The meeting with Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, also was attended by Tom Balanoff, president of the Illinois chapter of the union, which has been Blagojevich’s largest campaign contributor.”

SOME QUESTIONS FOR ERIC HOLDER. Also, “A few questions about the Second Amendment wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”

THE HILL: “Vice President-elect Joseph Biden will join a small group of Senators on a trip to southwest Asia later this week, despite a rule that prohibits lame-duck Senators from traveling on taxpayer-funded trips.” I think there’s an exception in favor of letting Biden leave the country whenever he wants . . . .

DAVID HARSANYI: Get out of the way, you old fogies. “Theoretically, it would be nice to allow citizens to vote for anyone they please, young or old. But since we already have a minimum, constitutionally mandated age limit to serve in place, why not a maximum age? How about at least placing it wherever the average life expectancy falls? Because, right now, Washington looks more like Del Boca Vista than America.”

JANE HAMSHER: I want to play poker with Harry Reid.

ASK, TELL, WHATEVER: Obama era expected to end taboo on gays in US military.