ROGER SIMON: Climategate: The Shaming of Scientific American.

RAND SIMBERG: End Of The Shuttle Era: 24 Years after Challenger. “The Shuttle is and was a magnificent technological achievement, but it is not, and in retrospect, never was the key to opening up space, despite the hopes and hype of the seventies. If it makes it into next year, it will have flown for almost three decades, and for a quarter of a century, since early 1986, with the knowledge that it had failed the promises of cheap, safe access that had been made when the program was initiated almost four decades earlier. It will be the end of an era for NASA, from a naive assumption that there is a single government-operated solution to space transportation, to a more mature and robust future of a variety of space transports, for humans and cargo, in a thriving commercial sector. That is a future that will finally fulfill the failed promise of the Shuttle.”

MORE ALITO FALLOUT: Sessions: Obama Was Wrong To Assail Supreme Court.

UPDATE: “Obama chose to call out the only 9 guys in the room that did their homework in law school. And the rest who ended up settling for politics stood and and cheer[ed] it. That’s the embarrassment.”

FRANK WOLF IS CALLING FOR A CONGRESSIONAL PROBE into the dismissal of the New Black Panther case.

QUESTION: Why Is Senator Kirk Still Voting On Legislation?

CYNTHIA YOCKEY: Why Ridicule is Obama’s Kryptonite. With help from Eric Hoffer.

THE LAST OF HIS KIND: Remembering Louis Auchincloss.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Glenn Greenwald flails absurdly in a lame effort to take down Justice Alito.

Shaking one’s head and mouthing 2 or 3 words is “flamboyant”? Alito was sitting in his seat and he evinced a subtle reaction to a severe political attack. That doesn’t make what he did “highly politicized.” If anyone was “highly politicized,” it was Obama. Alito’s response was more of a reflex, and it was, I would assume, grounded in a belief that the Court does what it is supposed to do — decide cases according to the law. . . .

But shouldn’t Obama have shown some respect for the members of the third branch of government who honored him with their presence? What is the “acceptable political rhetoric” when one person has the microphone for over an hour and everyone else is supposed to listen respectfully? Really, if it were known in advance that Obama wanted to use the occasion this way, the Supreme Court Justices should have stayed home. Or send over 1 or 2 that do opinions that the big man likes.

There’s much more. Also, Professor Bainbridge weighs in. Also Adam Winkler and Gordon Smith.

STOP THE CAR, LARRY. I want to get out. “While the folks at Cato would respond to special-interest lobbying by reducing the size and scope of government so less of life is politicized and there is less to lobby about, Lessig would respond by amending the Constitution to restrict freedom of speech.”

MAJOR CLIMBDOWN: White House orders Justice Department to look for other places to hold 9/11 terror trial. “Estimates put the cost of a multiyear terror trial in lower Manhattan at about $200 million a year. Leaders have suggested other venues for the trial, such as the Military Academy at West Point or Stewart Air National Guard Base in upstate Newburgh.”

A NEW AD FOR TEA-PARTY-BACKED ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI:

A FRONT-ROW SEAT at the iPad media circus.

FORBES: College Endowments In Jeopardy. “College and university endowments in the United States and Canada collectively lost $93 billion during the 2009 fiscal year, according to a study jointly released Thursday by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and the Commonfund, which manages investments for nonprofit institutions. In a sign of how deeply the pain was felt throughout higher education, the study found that the average institution lost 18.7% after fees. The report’s findings were the grimmest since 1974, when the average college lost 11.4% of its endowment.” Okay, actually they were a lot grimmer than 1974 then, and you’d probably have to look back to the Depression for similar bad news.

THE MAVERICK OF MOJAVE: an interview with Burt Rutan.

MARKDOWNS ON home audio and home theater stuff.

OBAMA’S GLASS JAW: “That’s his greatest weakness. Republicans should just start laughing at him and making jokes.” It won’t just be Republicans. There’s plenty of material to work with.

CORRECTION OF THE DAY:

The Jan. 25 article “Is the President Panicking” originally stated that Fox News led the charge against Bill Clinton in the ’94 midterm elections. Fox News did not come into being until 1996. The story has been corrected. [Correction made 1/27/10]

Heh.

RON RADOSH ON Howard Zinn’s history.

UPDATE: Also dead today: J.D. Salinger and Louis Auchincloss.

HMM: Young Blood Reverses Signs of Aging in Old Mice. “The antiaging power of blood might not be just the stuff of vampire stories. According to new research from Harvard University, an unspecified factor in the blood of young mice can reverse signs of aging in the circulatory system of older ones. It’s not yet clear how these changes affect the animals’ overall health or longevity. But the research provides hope that some aspects of aging, such as the age-related decline in the ability to fight infection, might be avoidable.”

ANDREW BREITBART: How David Shuster Lied to Get Me to Appear on MSNBC. Shoulda stuck with PJTV. Probably more viewers anyway. . . .

And note Andrew’s success in getting retractions from Big Media organizations over the many glaring errors in their gleeful coverage of the O’Keefe story. Be aggressive.

GLOBAL WARMING, GLOBAL COOLING — either way, climate engineering research is a good idea.

OOPS: Antioxidants aren’t always good for you and can impair muscle function, study shows.

TEN MOVIES ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST. I highly recommend Uprising, which has an interesting right-to-arms angle, too, emphasizing the relationship between firearms and freedom.

REASON TV: Obama’s jobs program success.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Justice Alito overshadows Obama on the day after the President’s address. “Isn’t it fascinating that the lengthy, amplified, magnified speech of the most powerful man in the world with his big captive audience — in the magnificent room and in smaller rooms all over the country — is outweighed by one man’s headshake and silent mouthing of 2 or 3 words? And isn’t it ironic that, right when we saw the judge’s minimalist expression that overwhelmed the President’s torrent of words, Obama was railing about the ‘powerful interests’ and that would use their great wealth to speak far too much during election campaigns?”

Related: Obama’s Defense Of SCOTUS Remark Doesn’t Wash.