CHANGE: Prosecutors Dismiss Xbox Modding Case Mid-Trial. “The announcement came a day after a whirlwind of legal jockeying in the case against defendant Matthew Crippen, a 28-year-old Southern California man. The government charged that Crippen, a hotel car-parking manager, ran a small business from his Anaheim home modifying the firmware on Xbox 360 optical drives to make them capable of running pirated or unauthorized games. It was the nation’s first jury trial to test the anti-circumvention provisions of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act as applied to game consoles. The law makes it a crime to offer a product or service that circumvents a technological measure designed to protect copyright material. Each of the two charges carried a maximum five years.”

If Republicans were smart (note the conditional here) they’d be pushing a DMCA repeal in the next Congress, for a whole lot of reasons.

IMPROVE YOUR MIND: Rand Simberg’s course at LaunchSpace: New Approaches to Human Spaceflight Technology and Policy.

TOM BLUMER: Beyond the Nanny State.

JIM TREACHER: Joe Scarborough keeps things civil.

Related: Son of Coffee Party.

HOW TO BEAT CUSTOMER-SERVICE PHONE TREES and talk to an actual person.

WELL, OBAMA DID PROMISE CHANGE: Republicans now outnumber Democrats.

KIDS, DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME: FYI: What Would Happen If Every Element On The Periodic Table Came Into Contact Simultaneously?

MORE ON DANA MILBANK’S CONSTITUTIONAL IGNORANCE, from Ann Althouse.

ATLAS SHRUGGED: The Making Of A Movie.

IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, PEOPLE WHO PERFORMED THIS BADLY WOULD BE FIRED, IN JAIL, OR SUED INTO BANKRUPTY. OR ALL THREE. A Month After Elections, 200,000 Votes Found. Shockingly, it appears the found votes will help the ACORN-affiliated “Working Families Party.”

RECOMMENDED GIFTS for college students.

OXYTOCIN BOOSTS MEMORIES OF MOM.

WHAT’S HOT on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. “Temperature readings from the Cassini orbiter support the view that warmth is welling up through cracks in the icy surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s most intriguing moons.”

PHIL BOWERMASTER: New Life-Form Discovered. Yes, this is big news.

MARY KATHARINE HAM: Join In All The Lame-Duck Games! “Mary Katharine Ham uses an ’80s classic to solve the BCS system, the lame-duck session, and then makes fun of Julian Assange’s hair, just for good measure.”

IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET, check out Jennifer Rubin’s new blog for the Washington Post.

STEPHEN CARTER: Assange Might Be Guilty, But Prosecuting Him Would Set A Dangerous Precedent.

IN THE MAIL: From Stephen R.C. Hicks, Nietzsche and the Nazis.

FRIENDS AT DOJ: The New Black Panthers.

MARK HEMINGWAY: Will Thomas Friedman just renounce his citizenship and move to China already? He’d lose his value. In China, he’d be just one of many journalists flacking for the regime.

A LONG-DELAYED ISRAELI PRACTICAL JOKE finally bears fruit.

DANA MILBANK THINKS AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION IS A STRANGE WAY TO HONOR THE FOUNDING FATHERS. In doing so, he displays his ignorance. The amendment process, after all, is part of the Constitution. The Framers had no illusions that they were creating perfection, and believed in the sovereignty of the people and in the power of the people to revise the Constitution as needed, through the process they created. The idea that the text of the Constitution should be revised only through judicial reinterpretation is a modern conceit, and one that does no honor to the Framers at all.

UPDATE: Reader Zev Sero is unimpressed with Milbank’s take: “So I suppose he’s against the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. Is that right?” Put him on the SPLC’s “hate list.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Doug Mataconis seems to think that this is “a plan to destroy the Constitution.” See above.

THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT: PUNISH FREE RIDERS. “These studies do bolster the idea that ancestral belief in supernatural entities enhanced group cooperation, enabling believers to out-compete other groups.”

DAVID POST: Copyright Enforcement Tail Wags Internet Dog, Cont’d; or, What the Hell Ever Happened to Due Process?

Congress was bribed to ignore the Constitution, and judges — without even the excuse of a bribe — went along.

GETTING NOSTALGIC FOR the hot Chevy Vega?