CHANGE: Voters leaving Republican, Democratic parties in droves.

CHRIS PETERSON ON the current state and future potential of nanotechnology.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, we’d have a President who used “signing statements” to evade laws passed by Congress. And they were right! Obama says he’s not bound by Guantanamo, gun-control provisions. “After he signed the omnibus into law Friday, the White House released a concurrent signing statement saying Obama will object to portions of the legislation on constitutional grounds. Signing statements are highly controversial, and their legality is disputed.”

Well, mostly when there’s a Republican in the White House.

HOW’S THAT BAILOUT WORKIN’ FOR YOU? “The EPA and the Department of Transportation predict stagnation for General Motors, with only 3% sales growth by 2025. Fiat/Chrysler is expected to shrivel by more than half. As Truth About Cars says.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “He Got Us Both Pregnant At The Same Time.”

PHYLLIS CHESLER: Naked Breasts vs. Fundamentialist Islam. “In the last year, three Muslim women have posed nude or nearly nude in the media.” Shockingly they’re all still alive.

Chesler, however, falls into the lame bikini-burka equivalence trap that has snared many Western feminists. When writing “I am wondering whether she has escaped one noose only to find herself about to be hung in another way,” it is important to remember that one noose is literal, and the other is only figurative.

In that regard, I refer back to these comments from Jim Henley: “1) This would be a shade closer to true if western women who ever tried to wear something other than bikinis – like, say, a business suit – GOT THE SHIT KICKED OUT OF THEM FOR DOING SO. But there’s more: 2) We may feel very ambivalent about it, but women’s sexual power is real. In a REAL patriarchy, as opposed to a half-assed one, it’s practically the only power women have available. Afghanistan is a real patriarchy for sure, and the burkha robs women of their sexual power by design. That is its function. But we’re still not done. 3) A bikini-clad woman has a face. Men can see when she is happy, when she is sad, when she is cogitating, when she is pissed off and, especially, when she suffers. There are some sick bastards who get off on visible evidence of female suffering. But even most squishy sexists are as squeamish as the rest of us about seeing torment play across the face of another human being. This too is what the burkha takes away by design. There is simply no comparison that is not invidious.”

More on that here. Note this from Megan McArdle: “What Aziz is arguing for is, in my opinion, a well meaning but futile attempt to take sex out of male-female relations.” This seems to be Chesler’s problem, too.

FROM STEPHEN GREEN, IT’S the Week In Blogs.

STILL CRAZED IN WISCONSIN: “What is extraordinary is not just that a business owner would put up a sign that is a) obscene and b) political, but one that would infuriate roughly half of the potential customers who see it. Such is the level of craziness to which Wisconsin’s liberals have descended.”

JENNIFER RUBIN: OBAMA’S WORST ERROR: “President Obama missed the boat on tax reform. He put politics above entitlement reform. He worsened already-tense relations with Israel. But the worst error, in large part because it was both avoidable and is not reversible, was to pull all troops out of Iraq.”

OOPS: Michelle Obama’s MyPlate food guide a spectacular failure.

YOUR TAX CUT PASSED. ENJOY YOUR NEW “RECAPTURE” TAX. IRS to Implement New 2% ‘Recapture Tax’ in Two-Month Payroll Tax Cut Extension.

#OCCUPYHOLLYWOOD:

In Iraq this year I asked an Iraqi military officer doing joint training at an American base what was the big thing he’d come to believe about Americans in the years they’d been there. He thought. “You are a better people than your movies say.” He had judged us by our exports. He had seen the low slag heap of our culture and assumed it was a true expression of who we are.

And so he’d assumed we were disgusting.

A good argument against SOPA.

I HOPE THE DEATH IS PAINFUL AND PROTRACTED: Copyright troll Righthaven in its death throes, domain going up for auction. And I hope the principals wind up broke and in jail.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: Schumer Admits That Ashcroft Was Right About Instant-Checks and Guns. “Last week, Dave Kopel and I explained why Ashcroft is right and Schumer is wrong about the legality of using gun-check records to find out if terrorists bought guns. Now, in a tacit admission that this is the case, Sen. Charles Schumer has introduced a bill to change the law to permit this. But Brock Meeks says that Schumer is a power-hungry idiot in this take-no-prisoners oped.” Well, some things never change.

UPDATE: Reader Jody Green writes: “Love your 10-year flashbacks. How wonderful a vilified ‘By the book’ Ashcroft was compared to a protected ‘Corrupt leftist’ Holder. 10 years is a long time and I am afraid we are not progressing.” Even some lefties have shown signs of Ashcroft-nostalgia now and then.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals in groceries and personal care.

HOPE: Ray LaHood sticks up for hands-free devices for drivers. “Score one for freedom. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday checked the zeal of the National Transportation Safety Board, which last week called for a nationwide ban on hands-free cell phone devices for drivers.”

Nice to see someone listening to reason.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON on the absence of an Obama Derangement Syndrome comparable to Bush Derangement Syndrome.

CHANGE: GoDaddy: “We’ve listened to our customers. Go Daddy is no longer supporting the SOPA legislation.”

UPDATE: Who’ll be next?

AT AMAZON, 10% off all Rosetta Stone downloads.

THE SWISS ARMY KNIFE GOES DIGITAL.