SWALLOWING THE SCRAPS GLADLY: CBS Didn’t Treat Super Dome Blackout Like News; Typical of the Relationship Between Media and Power.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: Here’s What Your $97 Million Drug War in Central America Actually Bought.

A REVOLUTION IN THE WORKS? My USA Today column is up. “If there’s an upside to the increasing unhappiness that most Americans feel toward the political class, it’s that maybe it means people are paying closer attention.”

TRUE THE VOTE IS going to court in the Allen West case.

SEN. ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ) DENIES PROSTITUTION REPORTS.

But, of course, the prostitution bit isn’t the big story — heck, I think prostitution should be legalized — it’s the influence peddling that’s the real story. Menendez actually would rather you focus on the underage-hooker reports, I suspect.

UPDATE: Menendez: Flights to Caribbean ‘Fell Through the Cracks.’ Uh huh. “The plane trips have come under scrutiny because Melgen’s ophthalmology office was raided by the FBI last week. Subsequently, the New York Times reported that Menendez went to great lengths to help Melgen’s business interests in the Dominican Republic, including pressing State Department officials to help force the Dominican government to honor a contract with a port security company associated with Melgen.”

21ST CENTURY BUSINESS: Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Care About Your Petty Shareholder Value.

WELL, TO BE FAIR, THEY’RE ALSO THE BIGGEST THREATS TO OUR PRIVACY: Geeks are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on Valentine’s Day gifts, including up to $50 off on the Kindle Fire HD.

SYMPATHY FOR SARUMAN.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Do We Want To Squeeze Cute Things?

The study’s researchers, led by Rebecca Dyer, a graduate student in psychology at Yale University, dubs the phenomenon “cute aggression.”

“We think it’s about high positive-affect, an approach orientation and almost a sense of lost control,” she said. It’s so adorable, it drives you crazy.

But for the sake of thoroughness, researchers did a second experiment to test whether the aggression was simply verbal, or whether people really did want to act out in response to wide-eyed kittens and cherubic babies. Volunteers were given bubble wrap and told they could pop as much of it as they wanted.

When faced with a slideshow of cute animals, people popped 120 bubbles, whereas people watching the funny and neutral slideshows popped 80 and 100 bubbles respectively.

Hmm.

MICHAEL GRAHAM ON why he’s glad Scott Brown isn’t running.

FOR A WHILE THIS MORNING, people using Google Chrome saw a malware warning here and at a lot of other sites across the Web. It’s resolved now, but here’s the background. The ads weren’t actually bad; it was a problem with the ad service’s corporate servers that triggered a cross-domain warning. More here.

FRAN TARKENTON: Mickelson Was Right About Taxes. “Mickelson was telling the truth. If there’s anything that should upset or insult Americans, it’s just how much of their money the government takes. Mickelson estimates that more than 60% of his earnings are snatched in federal and state taxes (he lives in California). Should a private citizen, no matter how successful, really owe the government more than half of what he or she makes?”

TAGG ROMNEY: No, I’m Not Running For Senate.

WHERE ALL THE “PUBLIC HEALTH” DOLLARS SHOULD BE GOING, INSTEAD OF TRENDY POLITICAL TOPICS: Emergence and Spread of Extensively and Totally Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, South Africa.

POINTS AND FIGURES: We Are All Going To Die From Inflation Says Bill Gross.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases In Blu-Ray.

Also, 60% off on seasons of Archer.

MICKEY KAUS: Zero Means Zero. “The race to control the Presidency is a zero-sum contest, like a football game. One party wins, and one loses. Both can’t win. Immigration amnesty (or gun control, or spending cuts) might help Democrats dominate national politics and lock up the presidency for generations to come (as some believe) or it might help Republicans by allowing them to increase their dismal share of the growing Latino vote. But both sides can’t be right. Even if they both think immigration amnesty will help them, one of them is wrong.”

If the GOP thinks this is going to get them Latino votes, then the GOP is wrong.

SORRY, CHICAGO! SORRY, L.A.! The federal government’s relentless expansion has made Washington, D.C., America’s real Second City. “The Washington, D.C., region has long been considered recession-proof, thanks to the remorseless expansion of the federal government in good times and bad. Yet it’s only now—as D.C. positively booms while most of the country remains in economic doldrums—that the scale of Washington’s prosperity is becoming clear. Over the past decade, the D.C. area has made stunning economic and demographic progress. Meanwhile, America’s current and former Second Cities, population-wise—Los Angeles and Chicago—are battered and fading in significance. . . . Washington’s fortunes and America’s are increasingly at odds. The region is prospering because it’s becoming something that would have horrified the Founders: an imperial capital on the Potomac.”

The Capital City prospers, while the provinces starve.

WHY POLICE OFFICERS LIE UNDER OATH. “In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn’t be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so. That may sound harsh, but numerous law enforcement officials have put the matter more bluntly. . . . Police departments have been rewarded in recent years for the sheer numbers of stops, searches and arrests. In the war on drugs, federal grant programs like the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program have encouraged state and local law enforcement agencies to boost drug arrests in order to compete for millions of dollars in funding. Agencies receive cash rewards for arresting high numbers of people for drug offenses, no matter how minor the offenses or how weak the evidence. Law enforcement has increasingly become a numbers game. And as it has, police officers’ tendency to regard procedural rules as optional and to lie and distort the facts has grown as well. Numerous scandals involving police officers lying or planting drugs — in Tulia, Tex. and Oakland, Calif., for example — have been linked to federally funded drug task forces eager to keep the cash rolling in. . . . In 2010, a New York City police officer named Adil Polanco told a local ABC News reporter that ‘our primary job is not to help anybody, our primary job is not to assist anybody, our primary job is to get those numbers and come back with them.’ He continued: ‘At the end of the night you have to come back with something. You have to write somebody, you have to arrest somebody, even if the crime is not committed, the number’s there. So our choice is to come up with the number.’”

Just another reason for a due process right to record the police. And to cut off that money.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Sex Isn’t A Substitute For Exercise. All depends on how you do it.

A MANUAL FOR THE OBAMA ERA: Enjoy The Decline.

Also: F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way.

COVERING THE IMPORTANT TOPICS: Slideshow: The Year In Sideboob.

IRINA MANTA: The High Cost Of Low Sanctions.