POPULATION CONTROL IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Five-Time Father Ted Turner Calls for One-Child Policy. You know, I had an idea for a Carl Hiaasen-type novel in which ecoterrorists go around visiting poetic-justice punishment on environmental hypocrites. Alas, I don’t have the talent to pull it off, but I keep seeing real-world examples of the sort of hypocrisy that inspired the concept.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS: Here’s the future you’re planning for those people.

DOWN AND OUT on $250,000 a year? “There are a lot of taxes out there. It’s eye-opening to step back and take a look at the whole picture.”

HMM: Report: Mazda mulling addition of plug-in hybrid, electric car.

FASTER, PLEASE: Molecule Stimulates Stem Cells To Repair Myelin.

MALE AND FEMALE PHYSICIANS: A double standard on chaperonage?

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Mr. Lonely.

JUDGE DISMISSES Al-Awlaki Targeted Killing Case. “Judge John Bates has dismissed the case in which the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights sought to bring a case on behalf of Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s father contesting the ability of the President to target an American citizen hiding abroad in Yemen who the government says is a targetable participant in a terrorist group covered by the AUMF.”

IN THE MAIL: The Power of Illusion.

VARIOUS READERS POINT OUT THAT BING is remembering Pearl Harbor, while Google is not. They’re citizens of the world at Google.

UNDERFUNDED / OVER-GENEROUS PUBLIC PENSIONS: Crisis In The States. “That’s the problem with retiree benefits–they can accumulate for quite a while before you notice that, oops, they’re budget killers. Unfortunately for us, as with Medicare and Social Security, now is when these problems have gotten too big to ignore. We have a triple-whammy of rising health care costs, a demographic bulge, and the historical legacy of a major expansion of government. In the early years, as government expanded, generous pensions and retiree benefits were easily expandable; the previous generations of workers were relatively small, while the large new class was relatively young. Now those generations of workers are piling up in the retirement system, and the current group of workers is not big enough to absorb the cost out of their paychecks.”

Plus, from the comments: “If the liberals have been better at controlling theses costs, why are every single one of the big problem states liberal bastions?”

BYRON YORK: In tax defeat, Dems pay the price for old tricks. “Not very long ago, it seemed impossible that Democrats would lose on the issue of tax cuts. Now they have. And as they search for the reasons for their defeat, the first place they should look is in the mirror.”

TALK ABOUT MUDFLAPS, Kathy Griffin’s got ’em. Emphasis on the “flaps.” Stones, glass houses, etc.

ASKING THE TOUGH QUESTIONS: Why is Lady Gaga’s music better protected than our state secrets?

PEJMAN YOUSEFZADEH: “The thing is, a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts will not be enough to stimulate the economy. Per Milton Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis, consumption patterns even in the aftermath of a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts will be tempered by long term expectations that eventually, the tax cuts may be allowed to expire. As a consequence, consumers are more apt to save money that comes from a temporary tax cut, rather than spending it in order to offer the economy any kind of economic stimulus.”

JONAH GOLDBERG: “While we’ve spent so much time comparing Obama to Carter, maybe we’ve left out the other one-term president of recent memory: George H.W. Bush. Bush, let’s recall, had soaring popularity ratings and then plummeted because of a recession that had technically ended long before reelection. And one of his biggest problems is that he was perceived as being too politically passive, unwilling to fight for his core beliefs, to the extent he had them. When he went populist, it seemed phony and calculated. He was undone in large part by his flip-flop on taxes and a primary challenge to his right. Sound familiar?”

I’m still going with Nigel Tufnel.

THE LATEST TREND: Feminist Unibrows.

CHINA BUBBLE UPDATE: The Royal Bank of Scotland has advised clients to take out protection against the risk of a sovereign default by China as one of its top trade trades for 2011. This is a new twist.

DAN MITCHELL: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Of The Tax Deal.

UPDATE: Nick Gillespie: Does Preserving the Bush Tax Rates Doom Us to Massive Deficits? Nope! “In order to balance the budget by 2020, all the feds need to do is cut 3.6 percent of projected budgets in each of the next 10 years. . . . Note that this exercise isn’t utopian from a small-government POV. That is, it gives oodles of money to the government to maintain a status quo that doesn’t work particularly well. But what it does do is show the relative ease of balancing the budget over time without raising government revenue. When you hear folks talking about how the ‘Bush tax cuts’ are starving government coffers, remind them of that 60 percent increase in real spending over the past decade and point them to this chart.”

ABOLISH THE FCC? The Hill: FCC proposal to regulate news draws fire.

CHANGE: “Those who thought Republicans can’t bear to break their addiction to pork should think again. ‘As the House Appropriations Committee stands poised to make a former earmarker its chairman, incoming House speaker John Boehner throws his support to porkbuster Jeff Flake.'”

WHAT’S MISSING from your kitchen arsenal? Something in .338 Lapua — oh, wait, I mean a stand mixer.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: My PJTV in-studio interview with John Ringo, author of The Last Centurion and numerous other works, is now on YouTube.

FROM TAXPROF: A roundup on the Obama / Republican tax deal.

TO SENATOR KERRY: Put Up Or Shut Up. “Since the super rich include you and Teresa (the beneficiary of the Heinz 57 account’s grand success), how about this, Senator: Donate the hefty tax cut you super-rich sorts are likely going to get, again, to the tapped out American taxpayer.”