WHY THEY’D RATHER TALK ABOUT SARAH PALIN AND GLENN BECK (CONT’D): Gallup: January Unemployment Rises to 9.8%.

SO IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? Coming Soon: A 300-Percent Increase in Foreclosures.

MARKDOWNS ON kitchen knives.

CHARLIE MARTIN: The Paper Is Dead, Long Live The News.

TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL: 20% Error Rate in Tax Credits Claimed for Electric and Hybrid Cars. The best bit: “According to TIGTA’s review, approximately 29 prisoners also received $49,926 in vehicle credits even though they were in prison all of Calendar Year 2009.”

The country’s in the very best of hands.

FIELD-TESTING THE Verizon iPhone’s mobile wifi hotspot feature.

ACCOUNTABILITY, LIKE TAXES, IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: SEC CAN’T PASS AUDIT:

If a company’s financial reporting were so bad that its auditor had pointed out significant weaknesses in its accounting for seven years running, the Securities and Exchange Commission would most likely be all over it. But what if the company were the S.E.C. itself?

Since the commission began producing audited statements in 2004, the Government Accountability Office has faulted its reporting almost every year. Last November, the G.A.O. said that the commission’s books were in such disarray that it had failed at some of the agency’s most fundamental tasks: accurately tracking income from fines, filing fees and the return of ill-gotten profits.

We’re running up record deficits for this? The country’s in the very best of hands.

FRUITS AND VEGETABLES LOWER HEART RISK. But increase “fart risk,” which medical science has unaccountably downplayed.

SCIENCE: NASA’S Kepler Telescope Finds 1235 Planets In Four Months. Plus, an interview.

SO I MENTIONED BOB CORKER’S NEW BUDGET CUTTING BILL EARLIER, and I just spent about a half an hour on the phone with him talking about it. Quite a few InstaPundit readers had emailed with questions or comments, so I raised some of those with him. Here are some of the things he said:

Teeth: Some InstaPundit readers thought the bill needed more teeth, but Corker points out that it requires sequestration of funds above the GDP-percentage cap, and that it affects not only discretionary spending but entitlements. Everything is put on-budget. And it takes a 2/3 vote, not a 60% vote, to escape the caps, making it tougher to opt out of than Gramm-Rudman. My suggestion: Add a citizen-suit provision, like environmental statutes have.

Why Not A Balanced Budget Amendment? He says he’s for one of those, too. But he doesn’t think there’s time. He sees a three stage process: (1) Specific spending cuts this spring, but unfortunately those will probably just be in discretionary spending; (2) His bill, which will start to take effect in 2013; and (3) A Balanced Budget Amendment, which will take several years to pass, most likely. He doesn’t think we have time to wait for a constitutional amendment. Plus, the bill adjusts its timetable if a constitutional amendment passes.

Why pick a 20.6% target and not a lower one? Corker says his first choice was 18% of GDP, which is the percentage federal tax revenues have averaged. But he felt that the average of federal spending over the past 40 years was politically achievable, while the 18% number probably wasn’t. “This is about action, not messaging,” he says. He wants to pass something now. Corker thinks our financial position is worse than the Administration does — we’ve benefited short-term from being perceived as a safe haven, he says, but that could evaporate very quickly.

In addition, he notes that this is a lower number than either the Deficit Commission, or the Ryan roadmap (which he calls “great”) will achieve by 2022. The President’s commission would cut about $4 Trillion from the baseline budget; this would cut $7.8 Trillion. The difference, he says, compounds over time. “If we can do more, I’ll be the first to vote for it.”

I should note that the GDP percentage the bill uses is based on an average of the three previous years, which means that — at least so long as the economy is growing at all — the actual percentage in any given year will be smaller than the cap amount. If you average 2009, 2010, and 2011, that number will be lower than 2012’s GDP, so long as the economy is growing. So 20.6% of the average of the previous three years will be somewhat less than 20.6% of the year to which its applied. I think this is a clever way to make the cuts a bit deeper than is obvious.

He says they’ve got momentum, with new cosponsors signing up, and that the bill has already done a lot to get people to look at how much the federal government takes out of the economy. He’s up for more, but “it’s a step forward, and it’s doable.”

He also notes that independents in swing states seem to care strongly about this issue, and that this should help bring Democratic support.

The text of the bill, which is rather short, is here. A one-page summary is here.

A LOOK AT the coming year in science.

MARY KATHARINE HAM: Video: How Four Loko Became Ethanol.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Ethics Report Highlights Thin Wall Between Congress and Campaigns.

THE DEATH OF EARMARKS. At this point I’d say they’re only mostly dead. But — unlike the somewhat-invested author of this piece — I think that’s still great news.

Meanwhile, gifted designer Karl Egenberger — who designed the original PorkBusters logo and who still operates the PorkBusters store — sends this PorkBusters Victory Logo:

But I’m not ready to bring the troops home quite yet. As with some other victories, the follow-through matters.

UPDATE: Bill Allison emails: “Don’t know if you made the connection. Ryan Aasheim, the author of the New Geography piece you linked to, works for a firm that’s benefited (albeit indirectly) from earmarks…” Yeah, that’s what I meant by “somewhat-invested.”

CHANGE: World Food Prices Hit Record High.

FORGET WIKILEAKS: Kaus introduces MikiLeaks.

DISTRACTION: Fred Ray emails that while everyone’s talking about Beck and Palin, “Jihad Jane” pleads guilty.

ANDREW MARCUS LOOKS AT MEDIA MATTERS’ LATEST AND WONDERS if anyone still reads The Washington Post. No one at Media Matters, I guess, but then they tend to write a lot more than they actually read.

IN LIGHT OF YESTERDAY’S POST ON blizzards and blackouts, a good suggestion from reader Tim Ameigh: “I had an electrician put a ‘pigtail’ on my furnace. Basically, he made a socket and a plug for the furnace that I can then unplug and plug into an extension cord, which I then run off my generator. Of course I live in a remote area where power outages can last for many days, but for about $150, it seems well worth it. I am assuming a generator here, I know, safely run outside.” Yeah, though I suppose you could run it for a while on a big UPS. A furnace fan doesn’t draw that much power. And even running the furnace for half an hour and re-warming the house would sure be nice if the alternative was nothing.

UPDATE: Sorry — link above was wrong before. Not sure how I managed that mixup. Fixed now.

HERE’S THE ECONOMIC GOOD NEWS: Gains in Productivity Result in Record Output. The bad news? Look at where the employment curve is in relation to the GDP curve.

DAN MITCHELL OFFERS MORE THOUGHTS ON LEGAL COMPLEXITY, in the context of Ben Barton’s important new book.

MORE OF THAT “NEW CIVILITY” WE WERE PROMISED? Video: Koch protests include calls to lynch Clarence Thomas. Note that this was at an event organized by the supposedly mainstream Common Cause. “Will the Southern Poverty Law Center report on the ‘Rage on the Left’ and label Common Cause a racist hate group?” I eagerly await the statement from the ABA criticizing attempts to intimidate the judiciary.

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “Gosh, it’s like this civility stuff is a sham bullies use when their victims hit back.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Speaking of “intimidating the judiciary,” look who else was there. “About 125 federal judges from across the country, including members of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, met at the same time as the Kochs for a separate conference at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort.” All while people were calling for Clarence Thomas to be lynched.

But that’s okay, the call for lynching was at a protest that featured “local elected Democrats and labor leaders.” So no story here.

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Verizon iPhone Is Pretty Much What We Expected. It’s an iPhone — but it’s from Verizon! Plus, a caveat: “While Verizon’s network may be working really well right now, when there are only a few dozen iPhones pulling data down, we still don’t know how well it’ll perform when there are thousands of them in key markets like San Francisco and New York.” No, but Verizon has been selling plenty of Android smartphones for a while now.

And yeah, that’s two headlines of the day today. Hey, it’s a good day for headlines.

CONDI RICE AND GEORGE SHULTZ want Stanford to bring back ROTC.

IS HIGHER EDUCATION really a public good?