COULD ULTRABOOKS put an end to the tablet craze? I like my iPad, but I like my Macbook Air a lot more.

CATO’S ROGER PILON: “All of Obama’s appointments yesterday are illegal under the Constitution. And, in addition, as too little noted by the media, his appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is legally futile. Under the plain language of the Dodd-Frank Act that created the CFPB, Cordray will have no authority whatsoever.”

UPDATE: A lawyer-reader emails: “If Richard Cordray were Sarah Palin, someone would file a qui tam action against him when he gets his first paycheck, and someone in Ohio would file a grievance with the Ohio Supreme Court’s Attorney Disciplinary Counsel seeking sanctions for Cordray’s clearly unconstitutional actions.” Well, not so much if Richard Cordray were Sarah Palin, as if Republicans acted like Democrats. Maybe they should give it a try — the Dems seem to enjoy it. And they did manage to prevent a Palin candidacy through sheer harassment.

ALL ALONG THE WESTERN FRONT, PEOPLE LINE UP TO RECEIVE. But maybe not for long. Congressman & Chevy Dealer Introduces Bill To End EV Tax Credit. “A few days ago, the Washington Post demanded the execution of the $7,500 tax credit for EVs. Republican Congressman Mike Kelly is ready to comply. He introduced H.R. 3768, legislation that would repeal the $7,500 tax credit for plug-in electric drive vehicles. The odd thing is: Kelly is owner of Kelly Chevrolet-Cadillac in Butler, PA. The not so odd thing is: He knows firsthand whether the car is worth tax payer money or not. Kelly does not think so.”

HMM: Mitochondrial Aging Especially Important In Stem Cells?

WHY 2012 IS STARTING TO LOOK LIKE 1984. “Between SOPA, NDAA, telecommunications surveillance, and people’s willingness to share endlessly via social networking, will 2012 mark the year consumers irreversibly surrender their privacy and freedoms?”

Related: US Threatened To Blacklist Spain For Not Implementing Site Blocking Law.

PROF. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The military’s ‘fabrication’? No, Jessica Lynch was WaPo’s story. “It was the Post — alone — that placed the story into the public domain. And none of it was true.” But they keep hoping you’ll forget that part. Plus this: “The newspaper’s unwillingness to set the record straight by identifying the sources that led it awry has given rise to false claims, including those about the military’s ‘fabrication.'”

IF YOU’RE A REPUBLICAN AND YOU’RE UNHAPPY, YOU CAN CHEER YOURSELF UP by reading this “What if Obama loses” symposium in the Washington Monthly. From their PR email:

The Washington Monthly asked a group of distinguished journalists and scholars to think through the likely ramifications of a GOP victory in November. Here’s what they conclude:

David Weigel reports that the Tea Party will control the agenda regardless of which Republican wins the nomination.

Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann predict that there’s a “better-than-even chance” that the Senate filibuster will be destroyed.

David Roberts shows that the GOP won’t eliminate the EPA, but will permanently cripple it.

Harold Pollack disabuses liberals of the hope that health care reform can survive a Republican presidency.

Dahlia Lithwick writes that one more round of judicial appointments by a Republican president will lead to a generation of anti-government rulings no future Democrat can undo.

Plus: Jonathan Bernstein on why campaign promises matter; Michael Konczal on the end of Dodd-Frank; James Traub on the GOP’s “more enemies, fewer friends” doctrine; and Paul Glastris on why, this time, conservative anti-government aspirations will be fulfilled.

You’ll probably feel a lot better. And note that this is largely independent of which Republican Obama loses to, so long as Obama just loses.

Plus, from Walter Russell Mead: After Iowa: Dems Are Playing Defense in 2012. “Via Meadia is not in the soothsaying business; this is not intended as an election forecast. But after months of horse race coverage in Iowa, it makes sense to step back from the day to day headlines and spend a little time thinking about how the big picture is starting to shape up. The playing field is tilting away from the Democrats this year; after running the table in 2008, Democrats face losing it all this time around.”

RICHARD FERNANDEZ WRITES:

My current pamphlet, The Three Conjectures, is now ranked:

#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Ethics
#1 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Ethics
#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Current Events > Arms Control

That is a pretty comical combination of rankings.

There’s nothing comical about being number one.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA: Citing Drug Resistance, U.S. Restricts More Antibiotics for Livestock. “TON — Federal drug regulators announced on Wednesday that farmers and ranchers must restrict their use of a critical class of antibiotics in cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys because such practices may have contributed to the growing threat in people of bacterial infections that are resistant to treatment. . . . The drugs’ use in agriculture has, according to many microbiologists, led to the development of bacteria that are resistant to their effects, a development that many doctors say has cost thousands of lives.”

RON BAILEY ON Postenvironmentalism and Technological Abundance.

Environmentalists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus famously proclaimed The Death of Environmentalism in 2004. Now they’re back with an ambitious new collection of essays titled Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene. Their goal is to dismantle the neo-Malthusian environmentalism of sacrifice and collapse and replace it with a new environmentalism that celebrates human creativity and technological abundance. Hooray!

In their introductory essay, Shellenberger and Nordhaus make the case that technological progress and economic growth is the road to salvation, not the highway to ruin. They acknowledge that global warming may bring worsening disasters and disruptions in rainfall, snowmelts, and agriculture. However, they add, there is little evidence it will end civilization. “Even the most catastrophic United Nations scenarios predict rising economic growth. While wealthy environmentalists claim to be especially worried about the impact of global warming on the poor, it is rapid, not retarded, development that is most likely to protect the poor against natural disasters and agricultural losses.”

As welcome as their conclusion is, it’s not a novel insight.

No, but it bears repeating.

YOU’D NEVER KNOW THE SENATE WAS DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED: Obama Goes On Attack Against Congress. “When Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I can without them.” But if I were a Congressional Democrat, I’d be unhappy. Sure, he’s mostly slagging Republicans. But . . . .

TOM MAGUIRE SHREDS HIS NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION and piles on Paul Krugman. “FWIW, the Times editors completely ignored their own Nobel Laureate in Economics (for his work on international trade!) when opining on the posturing by the Senate Democrats. I suspect they know their columnist.”

UPDATE: Reading Andrew Sullivan, so you don’t have to. But does anyone have to, anymore?

SINCE SOME PEOPLE COULDN’T REACH IT AT THE WSJ WEBSITE, here’s an open version of Edward Jay Epstein’s piece on moles and intelligence agencies.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: President Obama Becomes King Barack. “Not only is Obama trampling precedent that says recess appointments are to be done only after the Senate has been out of session for 10 days or more, he’s also trying to circumvent legislation.”

JOHN PODHORETZ: All these debates were a disaster for the GOP. “The debates were worse than a waste of time. They were a self-destructive exercise.”

But there’s a bright-side: “So the race may be coming down to a one-term Massachusetts governor who can’t close the sale with more than a quarter of Republicans after running nonstop since 2007 and a two-term Pennsylvania senator who lost his last election by 18 points. And you know what? If things are pretty much as they are today come Election Day in November, either one of those guys will beat Obama handily. At least they will have had a lot of debate experience.”

ORIN KERR: Originalism and Civil Damages For Fourth Amendment Violations:

Originalists are often opposed to the exclusionary rule, the rule that evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment cannot be used in court. The exclusionary rule was made up by 19th and 20th century judges, the argument runs. At common law, the remedies for violations of search and seizure law were civil damages against the officers, not exclusion of evidence. Because the Fourth Amendment is widely recognized to have adopted and endorsed those cases, such as Entick v. Carrington (1765), the exclusionary rule must be abolished. It simply is not part of the original Fourth Amendment remedies observed in cases like Entick.

I’m not entirely sure that’s correct, but let’s assume it is. Here’s my question: If you’re an originalist, does that mean that you think the Constitution guarantees the civil remedies that existed at common law for search and seizure violations? Put another way, can modern judges change the civil remedies that were available at common law for constitutional violations? Or is there a civil remedies scheme that must be available under an originalist understanding of the Fourth Amendment?

I ask that in part because I often encounter a very strange disconnect when originalists discuss the exclusionary rule versus civil damages as a means of enforcing the Fourth Amendment. In discussing the exclusionary rule, most originalists contend that the Fourth Amendment can only be enforced as it was at common law. On the other hand, in discussing civil damages, self-described originalists often seem to go all living constitutionalist: Suddenly the scope of civil damages is just a question of policy, not originalism, and often that means inventing new limitations on damages or following Warren Court-era precedents that did so. I’m curious: Is there a genuine way to reconcile these two sets of beliefs?

I believe that official immunity is the worst example of judicial activism extant, with no mooring in the Constitution and little basis in the common law. I actually think that a lot of originalists think that, but perhaps I’m mistaken.

BEARING WITNESS AGAINST ONESELF:

Beyond the log-in screen of Ramona Fricosu’s laptop computer lies what federal prosecutors say could be the key evidence in the bank-fraud case against her.

There’s only one problem: Prosecutors don’t know her password.

Thus, in an extraordinarily rare move, prosecutors in Denver are seeking a court order forcing Fricosu to unlock the computer so that they can obtain files they would use to try to convict her and her ex-husband.

Civil-liberties groups nationwide have taken notice, saying the case tests the strength of rights against self-incrimination in a digital world. Prosecutors, meanwhile, say that allowing criminal defendants to beat search warrants simply by encrypting their computers would make it impossible to obtain evidence in an age when clues are more likely held within a hard drive than a file cabinet.

Or you could follow Hillary’s advice, and say you can’t recall. But read the whole thing. To me, being forced to divulge the password seems like forced testimony, not like turning over a physical key.

FASTER, PLEASE: Shale Gas Revolution Turns Tables On Oil Powers. “Countries that have always depended on imported oil and gas, like Chile, Paraguay, Poland or Ukraine, and especially heavy consumers such as the United States and China, could become self-sufficient in natural gas in the near future and even start exporting it. . . . But the real news from EIA studies is that shale gas is abundant in territories previously regarded as poor in fossil fuels or dependent on imports: China, the United States and Argentina head the list, but large reserves are also found in South Africa, Australia, Poland, France, Chile, Sweden, Paraguay, Pakistan and India.” Quick, Saudis, better fund some “environmental opposition” or all will be lost!

I HOPE THIS IS RIGHT, BUT I’M SKEPTICAL: USDA Says Food Inflation May Have Peaked.

#GREENFAIL: Georgians on the hook for failed ethanol facility. “Range Fuels, the failed wood-to-ethanol factory in southeastern Georgia that cost taxpayers $70 million, was sold Tuesday for pennies on the dollar. Its buyer is a company that is backed by the same man who bankrolled and helped secure government loans for Range Fuels before it went bust last year.” It’s like Georgia’s own Solyndra.

EUROPE: Hungarian Yields Soar, CDS Hits Record As Bill Auction Fails. “Less than a week after a fully failed 3 Year Hungarian bond auction (in which all bids were rejected by the government) sent Hungarian yields surging on December 29, things have gone from bad to worse culminating with today’s 1 Year Bill auction which sold just HUF 35 billion ($140 million) in 1 year bills at a staggering 9.96%, a surge of over 2% compared to the yield for the same maturity debt sold just on December 22. To say that this is unsustainable is an understatement.”

UNDER JIMMY CARTER, GAS LINES. Under Barack Obama, “Gas Lines” for Medications.

ON SALE, TODAY ONLY: Logitech Wireless Anywhere Mouse MX for PC and Mac, $33.99.

ANDREW BOUCHER: Yard Signs Tell the Tale in New Hampshire: Barack Obama is in big trouble next November. “The early returns from the yard sign tallies are in: Voters in New Hampshire want their neighbors to know that they are voting Republican this year.”