JIM TREACHER IS taking your questions.

CLIMATEGATE: Follow the money.

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

POLITZOID PRESENTS Obamafeld.

And here’s a link to the PolitZoid website.

MARK TAPSCOTT IS test-driving the Lexus PriusHS250.

THE POWER OF NARRATIVE and the destruction of western civilization.

7 WAYS TO ENSURE condom safety.

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Obama Administration Encouraged By Steady Unemployment Rate.

CHANGE: Democrats Pull Bill Firing 678 Congressional Staff Tax Deadbeats; ‘Just Because You’re Fighting with the IRS Doesn’t Mean You’re Wrong’.

UPDATE: The Hill: CBO: Deficits to average $1 trillion per year over the next decade.

ANOTHER ONE: Massa will resign, his office confirms. “The pending resignation will feed a developing narrative in D.C., amid this and the Charlie Rangel mess: That Dems, after taking power in 2006 by running against GOP corruption, are sinking into the same ethics swamp they had vowed to drain.”

UPDATE: Reader Jed Skillman speculates:

Just as we are wondering if that Utah Democratic congressman’s brother was given a lifetime federal judgeship in consideration of support for the healthcare bill, what are the odds that Democratic Congressman Massa’s sexual tendencies were made public to punish him for voting “no”? Barney Frank has done worse and he’s a committee chairman. Could this be the kind of persuasion the White House or Congressional leadership is using?

You’re a lawyer, Glenn. What is the legal term for using a threat of public exposure to extort something?

Could there be a pattern of this sort of thing emerging?

I don’t know. Perhaps some investigative journalists will look into it.

A THREAT FROM AN EVIL mad scientist. Or is it a promise?

HOW TO MAKE extra fancy award-show popcorn.

WELCOME TO POST-RACIAL NEW YORK: Black leaders’ support may buy time for Paterson. Of course, after the Harold Ford defenestration, and the Rangel resignation, it is starting to look as if a black man can’t get a break from New York Democrats.

GOOD GRIEF: Another symptom of the problem: Detroit school board President Otis Mathis can’t write (seriously!)

ED MORRISSEY: E-mails from National Academy of Sciences plot attacks on AGW skeptics. “Perhaps the scientists should concentrate more on science than advocacy. In fact, that was the conclusion of several people in the e-mail chain, warning against getting into a big public-relations battle when the supposedly ‘settled science’ of the IPCC has all but utterly collapsed. Even if one is inclined to the most paranoid possible perspective on the meltdown, a $50,000 back-page ad in the New York Times will hardly offset all of the negative publicity that AGW scientists have managed to create on their own.”

EXAMINER: Why Wait For A Spending Limit?

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Of course, there’s no explicit quid pro quo! How do you think successful corrupt individuals perform corrupt acts? . . . You know damned well that if Bush were still President, needed a vote from a congressman, and nominated that congressman’s brother, Think Progress and its ilk would be screaming for an investigation.”

But that’s because Think Progress is a bunch of Democratic Party flacks who write whatever Jennifer Palmieri tells them to. Keep rockin’!

READER REX MCCOY PROPOSES PAY CAPS FOR CELEBRITIES:

I have a proposal on pay caps. No sports nor TV/Movie star or director/producer may earn more in one year than 1000 times a military E-1’s basic monthly salary.

That’s $1447 x 1000 = $1,447,000. Good pay. Won’t miss any meals on that. And it’s patriotic too. Let’s see who goes for it. Pass this on to the pay tsar.

I’m guessing it won’t fly.

MORAL CRUSADING A FRONT FOR anti-competitive strategies. Hardly a shock.

COUNTER-REVOLUTION: Eleven men believed Bart, not Barack.

SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Another casualty of the housing collapse. “Just three years after buying her Los Angeles home, Johansson is selling it for $2 million less than she paid.” (Via American Bind).

FROM JOAN HEMINWAY: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: Securities Regulation Scholarship and Teaching in the Global Financial Crisis.

SO HE WAS AN ANTI-BUSH TRUTHER, but the Christian Science Monitor’s Patrick Grier has decided that he’s really a “right wing extremist.” Not much in the way of actual evidence is presented, though SPLC/DNC talking points are recycled.

Meanwhile Joe Conason tries to connect Chilean earthquake deaths to the Tea Party. It just gets more pathetic, as they get more desperate.

UPDATE: Reader Lee Cerling writes:

Re the Joe Conason argument—you might note that perhaps Joe is unaware that Chile was considered by Milton Friedman to be “the Chilean miracle” due to its success in implementing Tea Party-style economic reforms. I’m sure he just overlooked that small point. Here’s the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Chile.

Conason tends to miss stuff like this. Obviously, he needs to read InstaPundit more often.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire emails: “Of course the Pentagon shooter is a Tea Partier – he had a run-in with the law in 2006 about his illegal marijuana cultivation, and everyone knows that marijuana is a gateway drug to libertarianism.”

NEW MUSTANG V-6 ACHIEVES THE 300/30 MILESTONE: “Ford officials say their 2011 Mustang powered by the all-new 3.7 liter V-6 has achieved something no other vehicle has ever before done – compiling an official 31 mpg highway rating from the EPA with a powerplant producing at least 300 horsepower.”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Here’s Your Earmark. On a Completely Unrelated Matter…