TIMING: Poll finds voters not impressed with Republicans’ House takeover that hasn’t happened yet.

VOYAGER 1 will soon exit the Solar System.

A few months back, I reviewed (for the WSJ) Stephen Pyne’s book, Voyager: Seeking Newer Worlds In The Third Great Age Of Discovery. I was lukewarm on Pyne’s book, but he does do a good job of spelling out why the Voyager probes are such a huge accomplishment.

RICH GALEN: The good, the bad, and the ugly of the tax deal.

BILL KRISTOL: HR1 — RESCIND THE EARMARKS. “I can’t believe the Democratic Congress will be foolish and hubristic enough to go ahead and jam though the omnibus appropriations bill with its 6,488 earmarks totaling nearly $8.3 billion. But if they do: Shouldn’t the Republican House leadership commit to making H.R. 1 in the next Congress a bill rescinding all the earmarks and the whole $8.3 billion?”

CELEBRATING Festivus in prison. The feats of strength and airing of grievances should fit right in.

MEGAN MCARDLE:

I have been reading a lot of well-meaning liberals who are befuddled by the notion that conservatives are going after the mandate, when that runs the risk of bringing on single payer. Personally, I kind of doubt that, but this is completely beside the point. On a reading of the commerce clause that allows the government to force you to buy insurance from a private company, what can’t the government force you to do?

This doesn’t seem to be a question that interests progressives; they just aren’t very excited about economic liberty beyond maybe the freedom to operate a food truck. And so they seem genuinely bewildered by a reading of the commerce clause that narrows its scope, or an attempt to overturn the mandate even though this might lead us into a single payer system.

When unconstitutional is a synonym for things I don’t like, it seems preposterous that something you do like could ever be unconstitutional . . . .

WHEN IT’S BAD THAT CIVIL RIGHTS GROUPS have influence. “The thing that really, really, really scared the Democrats was Al Gore losing his home state, and the reason was the gun issue. They all know it.”

Related: WaPo Reprises the “90% Lie”, Whines for Selective, Ineffective BATF. “The Washington Post rehashed the infamous and oft-debunked Mexican Gun Canard again this morning in a story they laughably call an ‘exclusive.’ . . . The Post can’t even get through their accompanying photo gallery without exposing their dishonesty; this FN MAG machine gun certainly didn’t come from a U.S. gun store. . . . You simply cannot get the machine guns and grenades the cartels favor in the United States. They come from corruption in Mexico and the same pipeline that brings in drugs from overseas.”

UPDATE: Reader Scott Draeker writes:

The better question is why all these foreign machine guns and other exotic weapons aren’t showing up in US collections. They are banned here, but freely available for cash—and no background checks—just over the border. Could it be that this story is really one of just how law abiding US gun owners are?

Don’t expect the WaPo to stress that angle.

SENATE SPENDING BILL CONTAINS THOUSANDS OF EARMARKS.

HORSE, BARN DOOR: Air Force blocking newspaper websites that post WikiLeaks. They told me if I voted Republican we’d see the federal government engaging in dumb-yet-futile acts of censorship. And they were right!

UPDATE: A reader emails:

The governmnt maintains separate systems for Classified and Unclassified material. Desktops connected to the internet are Unclassified systems. It is a security violation to have any Classified material on an Unclassified system, no matter where it comes from or who else has it. The AF is protecting its people from accidental contamination of their desktops and associated headaches/prosecution.

Interesting.

WHEN “HATE” IS A SYNONYM FOR “DISAGREEMENT.”

JUST CALL THEM “COLUMBIA EAST:” Switzerland is considering repealing its incest laws because they are “obsolete”.

It’s not like they’re laws requiring health insurance.

UPDATE: Switzerland is also kicking out Mormon missionaries.

LOOKING BEHIND the textbooks.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on bestselling knives and hand tools.

SILENCING VOICES of Internet Dissent.

JOURNALISM: Amazing: WaPo Fails to Publish Own Poll on ObamaCare’s Lowest Popularity Ever.

UPDATE: Reader Alex Knepper writes: “Hide the decline.” That does seem to be the theme lately . . . .

WHY ANONYMOUS CAN’T TAKE DOWN AMAZON.COM: “Amazon, which has built one of the world’s most invincible websites, is almost impossible to crash.”

YUVAL LEVIN: “The proposed Senate omnibus bill makes for truly amazing reading. It’s like the Democrats have decided to wear proudly the mantle forced on them by Republicans in the last election—the mantle of pork, waste, and Obamacare. It makes it perfectly clear that the chatter surrounding the deficit commission and the sudden interest in fiscal restraint among some Democrats in Congress since November has been just idle talk, and that what the Democrats really want is more reckless spending.”

IT’S A QUAGMIRE: Cathy Young on Obama’s Obesity War. “There are several reasons behind the backlash. One is that campaigns to promote healthy behavior have a way of escalating from friendly persuasion to ham-fisted propaganda and prohibitionism. The war on tobacco is an obvious example (though the case for harsh anti-smoking laws was based on claims about the harm of second-hand smoke). Anti-drug zealotry in schools has caused teens to get in trouble for such crimes as sharing an aspirin with a friend who had a headache. It’s not completely unreasonable to ask if cookie witch-hunts are next.”

ASSANGE’S EXTREMIST EMPLOYEES: Why is WikiLeaks employing a well-known Holocaust denier and his disgraced son?

CHANGE: Rahm Emanuel Filed 2009 Tax Return as Non-Resident; After He Decided to Run for Mayor, He Filed Amended Return as Resident.

GOP IN REVOLT over massive new $1.1 Trillion spending bill.

Related: Boehner to Obama: If you’re serious about earmarks, veto the new spending bill. Here’s an online copy of the bill, so you can scan for pork yourself. McCain is tweeting pork highlights.

UPDATE: Spending bill tests discipline of both parties. “So will the White House, which is straining to get to the political center, go along with this? Potentially putting its newly minted moderate image, repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and ratification of the START Treaty at risk? And will Democrats who survived the tsunami of 2010 really want to continue with the spend-a-thon that enraged voters? Stay tuned.”

IN PRAISE OF EARLY ADOPTERS: My new Popular Mechanics column is up! (Bumped).

ARE WE FACING ANOTHER EXTREME WINTER? “The atmospheric dynamics are still somewhat of a mystery. . . . ‘Given our level of ignorance about what’s going on, we don’t want to compound that with a level of arrogance by saying we know what’s going to happen in a month.'”

NATURAL GAS: The hard facts about fracking. “There’s a wealth of natural gas trapped underground—but what depths do we have to plumb to extract it? More and more, oil and gas companies are opting for fracking, or hydraulic fracturing: injecting a mixture of sand, water and chemicals into dense rock layers and shale, creating cracks that allow natural gas trapped inside to flow to the earth’s surface. Once an also-ran in fossil-fuel prospecting, fracking now figures heavily into the future of U.S. energy production.”

TOP TEN deals in Electronics.