ERIC SCHEIE: “A lot of people are hoping to start a war between social conservatives and libertarians in the Tea Party, and I think that represents wishful thinking on their part.”

YOU JUST KEEP ON PUSHING MY LAW over the borderline.

A WONDER DRUG: Aspirin Helps in Reducing Cancer Deaths, a Study Finds.

DAILY CALLER: Meet the FCC commissioner who wants to control the news. “Copps has a long history of advocating for government control of media.” As Scot Powe has documented, the FCC’s historical role has tended toward the thuggish.

ADVICE TO TENNESSEE’S NEWLY ELECTED GOVERNOR, BILL HASLAM, from Ben Cunningham.

AARON SORKIN: “I am a little girly-man.” Or something like that.

UPDATE: Hollywood Screenwriter Famous For Enjoying Drugs Angry at Palin for Enjoying the Hunt. But drugs are cool, man. Moose hunting is doubleplusuncool.

A PROJECT TO create and test a molecule-sized processor chip.

OBAMA HAS LOST KEITH OLBERMANN.

UPDATE: Liberals Try to Prevent Pelosi From Bringing Tax Bill to the Floor.

ANOTHER UPDATE: White House: Failure to Pass Tax Cut Compromise Bill Would “Significantly Increase” Risk of Double-Dip Recession. Some Democrats don’t care who goes broke, so long as they get to stick it to “the rich.”

Related: “If Glenn Beck had ever gone after Obama this hard, he would have been denounced for committing a hate-crime.” Plus this: “Elsewhere, I’ve described this resentful class-warfare mentality — the politics of envy – as ‘Murthanomics.’ It is the exact opposite of sound economics, and is the sentiment that elects to office demagogues. To watch Olbermann indignantly lecturing the President of the United States in this manner is a delightful smorgasbord of schadenfreude.”

CHRYSLER PLANNING A Ram 1500 Diesel Hybrid?

HEH: “Gore effect” strikes Cancun Climate Conference 3 days in a row. “New record low temperatures set in Cancun for three straight days, and more new low temperature records are possible this week.”

AN IMPENDING WORLD ENERGY MESS? Well, the same gang of idiots who have been planning our economy have been managing our energy policy. On the other hand, there’s this.

I WANT FLYING CARS, I get “the electric bus of the future.” The future ain’t what it used to be.

STUDENTS ORGANIZING TEA PARTY MOVEMENTS ON CAMPUS.

SPACEX’S FALCON 9 reaches orbit after a perfect launch.

A WHILE BACK I wrote a Popular Mechanics column on the HondaJet and air-taxi models. Jet Suites, operating only west of the Mississippi at the moment and flying the Embraer Phenom VLJ, isn’t quite what I was thinking of, but it’s getting closer.

UPDATE: Reader Dale Stimson writes: “A big plus of the air taxi model is avoiding the TSA.” Oh, yeah. The TSA problems are almost like a government subsidy for alternative transport . . . .

CHANGE: Gallup poll shows Americans want spending cuts, not stimulus spending. Okay, actually I think that’s how Americans have felt from day one.

IN THE MAIL: From Lois McMaster Bujold, Cryoburn. I read it. It’s good, as are all the books in the Vorkosigan series.

NORTH AMERICA: The New Energy Kingdom? “With rising production from shale fields, the U.S. surpassed Russia last year to become the world’s largest supplier of natural gas. Shale now accounts for 10 per cent of the country’s natural gas production – up from 2 per cent in 1990. Chesapeake’s production from its next Texas project, expected by the end of 2012, will by itself supply the energy equivalent of 500,000 barrels of oil a day. For new oil, the U.S. has the huge Green River play that overlaps Colorado and Utah, one of the largest shale oil fields in the world. The EIA reports that the country’s proven reserves of crude rose last year by 9 per cent to 22.3 billion barrels. . . . Within a decade or so, North America will almost certainly emerge as the world’s biggest supplier – and exporter – of reasonably cheap energy.”

PROFESSOR JACOBSON: Obama Opens The Door To Raid Social Security. “FICA increasingly is being treated as just another tax, and social security benefits as just another government entitlement, to be toyed with as political necessity requires.”

FCC’S PAY-AS-YOU-GO INTERNET PLAN COULD KILL ONLINE VIDEO. A cynic would see this as a payback to the Big Media folks who backed Obama so . . . intensively in 2008.

UPDATE: An Army of Weasels?

ON SALE, TODAY ONLY: Arrested Development: The Complete Series.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS UPDATE: A free downloadable guide to surviving radiological disasters.

RICH KARLGAARD: 7 Reasons For Economic Optimism.

BOMBSHELL STUDY: Old Men Want More Sex Than They’re Getting. So do young men, a lot of the time . . . .

Related: Married men are nicer, and here’s why. Somehow this takes me back to last year’s “maintenance sex” discussion.

STANDING UP in defense of the Chevrolet Vega.