“CLIMATEGATE?” Well, stay tuned and we’ll see. It does look bad, though.

And it’s made The New York Times: Hacked E-Mails Fuel Climate Change Skeptics. “Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.”

TALKING ABOUT TIM GEITHNER’S FUTURE, OR LACK THEREOF, over at The Hill.

THE GREG CRAIG “Debacle?”

AT AMAZON, it’s the Friday Sale.

BIG GOVERNMENT: Whistleblower Video Reveals SEIU Ballot Fraud.

TOM BLUMER: Big, Bigger, Biggest: Three Examples of Government-Induced Failure.

CAMERA TECHNOLOGY IS NICE but you still need talent. Dang. Can’t I just get an app for that?

CLIMATE RESEARCH DATA UNIT HACKED, embarrassing data leak out.

UPDATE: Tim Blair: “If true . . . the phrase ‘hide the decline’ may mark something of a turning point.”

A LITTLE ANXIETY MAY BE GOOD FOR YOU.

FOR THE FIRST TIME, Obama drops below 50% on Gallup.

CANDIDATE ENTERS RACE FOR NEW HAMPSHIRE’S FICTIONAL 00TH DISTRICT: “Even a fake district needs real leadership.” Heh. Press conference video at the link.

CAR LUST: Remembering the 1968-1974 Chevy Nova. I had a ‘76 Nova when I practiced law in Washington; it was a hand-me-down from my grandparents. Living in DuPont Circle and walking to work, I didn’t need a car much, but it was nice to have something, and my apartment came with underground parking. The Nova was reliable, and held a lot of people, groceries, or Ikea furniture. It didn’t impress women who thought that a lawyer at a big-name firm should be driving something fancier, but for the most part I regarded that as a feature, not a bug.

SO IF YOU’RE IN L.A. TONIGHT, you can go see The Smart Set at the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood. I interviewed Rick Torres and Brandi Emma of The Smart Set here.

POPULAR SCIENCE: So Do Prosthetic Limbs Give Sprinters An Advantage Or Not?

THE SOLAR SYSTEM ain’t what it used to be. Personally, I miss the one where Venus had steamy jungles inhabited by lightly-clad barbarian princesses.

MEMOREX’S NEW HD POCKET CAMCORDER GETS A BAD REVIEW: “a shameless Flip wannabe that does nothing to surpass — let alone keep up with — the competition.” Ouch. They prefer the Kodak Zi8. I’ve got one of those, and I like it.

JOHN SCALZI: Education Is Not the Answer for Star Trek’s Bad Science.

MICKEY KAUS: Does Harry Reid’s Health Care Bill Create a “Fed” for Medicare?

MORE GOOD NEWS. “Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, a major study suggests. The Spanish research involving more than 15,500 men and 26,000 women found large quantities of alcohol could be even more beneficial for men.”

IN THE MAIL: From Victor Davis Hanson, How The Obama Administration Threatens Our National Security.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Limbaugh And Coulter And Beck: Oh My!

UH OH: Congressional Report: Rhee did ‘damage control’ after sex charges against fiance Kevin Johnson. “A congressional investigation of the volunteer organization AmeriCorps contains charges that D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee handled ‘damage control’ after allegations of sexual misconduct against her now fiance, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former NBA star and a prominent ally of President Obama, The Washington Examiner has learned.”

KEITH HENNESSEY: Breaking the no middle class tax increase pledge (again). With helpful-reminder video.

ADVICE TO MEGAN FOX: Trashing Your Audience Is A Bad Idea.

TIM CAVANAUGH ON HOLLYWOOD’S STIMULUS: Why $23 million creates just 21 jobs.

JAMES TARANTO: TAKE COMFORT. A president who knew what he was doing could do lots more damage.

TOBY YOUNG ON STATUS ANXIETY. “No, the only people who take offence if you Anglicise foreign words are upper-middle-class Caucasian Americans. They imagine that other, less fortunate people will be insulted by your ‘imperialist’ attitude and they get offended on their behalf. In fact, to imagine that non-English-speakers are a poor, victimised group, requiring the protection of the American elite, is far more condescending than mispronouncing non-English words.”

CONGRESS TO INVESTIGATE FAKE DISTRICTS.

AMBUSHED BY Norah O’Donnell.

JOHN DICKERSON: Does it matter that Obama is behind schedule on most of his major plans?

I’M GETTING KINDA TIRED OF VAMPIRE STUFF. Besides, Fred Saberhagen’s Dracula could take ‘em all.

UPDATE: John Lunde emails: “Too true. What male reader of Ann Rice hasn’t exclaimed at some point, ‘Damnit, man, shut up and bite someone!’” Ann Rice has male readers?

BLOGGINGHEADS TV: Ann Althouse and Michelle Goldberg on Sarah Palin.

TIM GEITHNER: Everything’s peachy. Really.

BETTER DO WHAT HE SAYS, ERIC: Breitbart to AG Holder: Investigate ACORN or We’ll Release More Tapes Just Before 2010 Election.

Meanwhile, there’s more out from L.A. And it’s already snared L.A. Times columnist James Rainey.

INTERESTING unemployment data.

ABC NEWS: Did The Chinese Government Crack Down On An Obama Interview?

CATHY YOUNG ON MEN’S RIGHTS: Feminism should be about equality–for males too.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER on the KSM trial. “Everyone knows that whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free. He will spend the rest of his natural life in U.S. custody. Which makes the proceedings a farcical show trial from the very beginning. . . . In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain.”

PITTSBURGH wants to tax tuition.

MORE PRESSURE ON TIM GEITHNER to resign? Actually, I think the GOP should want him to stay on until the election. . . .

MOE LANE: “It is no doubt rude of me to point out that this outbreak video represents two years’ worth of a Democratic-controlled Congress, and one year’s worth of a Democratic-controlled government.”

MORE ON THE NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY INNOCENCE PROJECT STORY.

BUYING MARY LANDRIEU’S VOTE for $100 million. Hey, why should they care what it costs — it’s your money, not theirs. . . .

HMM: St. Louis County Counselor Redington: Gladney Beating ‘Has Not Been Swept Under the Rug’.

MARKDOWNS ON DVDs and Blu-Ray.

MOE LANE: Sen. Schumer’s (D, NY) unsurprising tribunal reversal.

IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER BLOOD DONATION POST, a reader emails:

As a career blood banker I wanted to write to thank you not just for the donation but for the publicity. The average donor is getting older and a lot of younger people can’t donate because they have tattoos or piercings.

You aren’t seeing things, the questionnaire IS getting longer. We are also looking at more testing (they are considering mandating a test for Babesiosis) and if that wasn’t enough, Obama’s tax on medical devices will add $2.50 to the cost of producing a unit of blood. That cost is passed on to the patient and at 15 million units of blood each year you can do the math. He’s going to kill a vital part of the health care industry for the sake of his ideology.

Okay, that’s a new one. And, yeah, the tattoo/piercing thing is obviously an issue, as are lots of other exclusions.

TENNESSEE’S DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR PHIL BREDESEN: Every member of Congress should have to sit through state budget hearings to appreciate how much extra expense they will be adding to State Budgets because of Congress’s healthcare “reform” proposals.

NOW THIS IS JUST SAD.

UPDATE: Reader Dave Ivers writes: “Honestly. She just drives them insane, doesn’t she? Not a rational thought in the bunch. I’m not that wild about Palin, but I wonder what effect a couple of more years of this idiocy will have.”

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: When Andrew Attacks.

PATTERICO: L.A. Times Columnist Uncritically Quoted Star of Latest ACORN Video. “In September, L.A. Times columnist James Rainey wrote a column in which he uncritically quoted ACORN worker Lavelle Stewart suggesting that she had turned Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe out of her office . . . It’s too bad Rainey never received that warning. Because guess who is the star of Giles and O’Keefe’s latest ACORN video? . . . I now publicly ask the question Rainey would not answer privately: having written a misleading column that falsely suggested that ACORN in L.A. was clean — and that Giles and O’Keefe were dishonest — is James Rainey now going to write a new column and correct the record?”

It’s amazing how Breitbart mousetraps them again and again.

POLLS: Obama’s approval among independents down to … 34/51; Support for ObamaCare down to 40/52.

Message to Dems: That makes ObamaCare considerably less popular than Sarah Palin.

UH OH: Sarah Palin approval 47, Barack Obama approval 46.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Memo to CBS and Katie Couric: Release the unedited Palin video. “Sarah Palin criticizes CBS for editing long interviews into the most damaging soundbites and making her look stupid and irritable. There’s an easy solution: Release the unedited video. There is a lot of material in the book making assertions about all sorts of trenchant comments Palin supposedly made. Palin says she was asked the same questions over and over in an effort to elicit a bad answer. She says that some of her answers were clipped after some simple beginning and before she delved into details that would have made her look smart and knowledgeable. It would be very easy to check if we had all the video. Put it up on line.”

This is why Sarah should have brought her own camera.

THE INSTA-DAUGHTER ON WATCHING PALIN: “Sarah Palin’s got to stop blaming the media soon. It’s like Obama blaming George W. Bush for everything. It works for a while and then it gets old.”

L.A. STORY: Another ACORN video from Big Government. And some people thought this had ended . . . .

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Andy Stern Should Back This Cause.

JOE PAPPALARDO: Hopes Stirring at NASA for Ares I Vindication.

SHAHNAZ HABIB REVIEWS Richard Bernstein’s The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters.

VIDEO: Meet Dr. Megavolt.

HANDS-ON TEST of Monster’s power line networking technology.

FOLIC ACID boosts cancer risk?

VIDEO: County-by-county job loss since 2007.

TUNKU VARADARAJAN: Reliving Mumbai’s 9/11.

BUMMER: Officially official: Aptera production pushed back to 2010.

TAX COURT LACKS JURISDICTION to order IRS to apologize to taxpayer. Hmm. Has it no inherent equitable power? And the claim that an apology would violate sovereign immunity strikes me as dubious.

FASTER, PLEASE: Self-Cleaning, Super-Absorbant Solar Cells.

DONATED BLOOD AGAIN for the Blue/Orange blood drive. The questions just seem to get longer, but the crowd was good today — and, somewhat unusually, almost all male. Usually it seems to lean the other way.

I don’t know if Tennessee will beat Kentucky again, but either way it’s a win. And yeah, this is a recycled photo from a past donation, but it always looks about the same. And hey, it seems like everybody’s recycling imagery these days anyway. . . .

“SMART GRID” A THREAT TO PRIVACY? “According to the study, examples of information that utilities and partner companies might be able to glean from more granular power consumption data include whether and how often exercise equipment is used; whether a house has an alarm system and how often it is activated; when occupants usually shower, and how often they wash their clothes.” And even more fine-grained information when combined with other data.

REID BILL’S TRUE COST: More than twice what’s advertised?

MICROSOFT OFFICE 2010 BETA: First Impressions.

IN THE MAIL: From Nick Schulz and Arnold Kling, From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and The Lasting Triumph over Scarcity.

ERIC POSNER: Why Has Holder Decided to Try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a Civilian Court? The answer is not “the rule of law.”

BYRON YORK: Did Holder stiff Senate on Justice Dept. lawyers who defended jihadis? “Some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were taken aback Wednesday by Attorney General Eric Holder’s refusal to reveal conflicts of interest involving Justice Department lawyers who, before joining the Obama administration, worked on behalf of Guatanamo detainees. One reason it has taken so long to deal with the Guantanamo cases is the number of legal challenges lodged by lawyers for the detainees, some of whom are now working on detainee matters in the Obama Justice Department.”

I BLAME THE FAILED POLICIES OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION: Kellogg Co. warns of nationwide Eggo shortage.

DOES NANCY PELOSI KNOW ABOUT THIS? Dems To Tax Cosmetic Surgery.

ERIC SCHEIE: Where Were You When Wood Became A Felony?

DAVID HARSANYI ON SARAH PALIN: “All you haters out there force me to root for her.” “The widely read blogger and purveyor of all truth, Andrew Sullivan, was impelled to blog 17 times on the subject of Palin on the same day Americans learned that the Obama administration awarded $6.7 billion in stimulus money to non-existent congressional districts — which did not merit a single mention. To see what is in front of one’s nose demands a constant struggle, I guess.”

Related, from Megan McArdle: “Y’all well know that I really don’t like Sarah Palin. In fact, more than one of you has yelled at me about this. And I find the whole schtick about how the media is just a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her really grating. That’s why I really wish the media wouldn’t act like, well, a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her.” Or, in some cases, crazed conspiracy theorists.

Plus, Kenneth Widmerpool?

And the unforgettable classic, Dial M for Maternity. It just gets more timely. . . .

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Terrorists “Saved or Created.”

ANDREW BREITBART ON SARAH PALIN AS A “RED-STATE OPRAH.”

I said something similar the other day in The Hill: “Whatever else Sarah Palin has done, she is positioned to be the kingmaker — or, more accurately, the kingbreaker — in the Republican 2012 contest. Even if she doesn’t run, she commands enough loyalty and support from the most committed voters and activists to ensure that any candidate she comes out against will be dead in the water for the GOP nomination. And, should she choose a third party run, she can doom the chances of anyone the GOP nominates. Expect to see a lot of GOP candidates sucking up to her in coming months and years. The GOP establishment treated her badly, and payback will be forthcoming, I suspect.”

Related: Hillbuzz: Sarah Palin supporters need to make sure every nursing home, hospital, and private school in Iowa gets a free copy of Going Rogue. Who’s right?

GLAD I’M NOT FLYING TODAY: FAA: Flights Delayed Across Country Because of Computer Problems.

“CRUSHING.” “Holder imagines that he can hide inside that ‘thoughtful’ routine that Obama so often relies on, but it is utterly pathetic here. Either he knows damned well what he’s doing and he’s lying or he’s outrageously unqualified for his job. His evasive style is so similar to Obama’s that he makes Obama look worse.”

What’s really amazing is that Holder doesn’t even have a good bullshit answer prepared. Lame. As noted on NPR: “The exchange started with Graham stumping Holder with a question one would have thought the attorney general would have been prepared for.” You’d think.

REPORTING ON THE National Book Award winners.

KRISTINA RASMUSSEN: Surprise: Recovery.gov Has A Credibility Problem.

Related: Recovery Chief: Yeah, I Can’t Back Up Those Numbers.

ANALYST: Stock Market Makes No Sense Now. “I haven’t been this bearish in a year … I look at the board and every single stock from Tiffany to Bank of America to Caterpillar is up. But there is no fundamental rooting as to why these names are up — particularly in the consumer space.”

OUR BILL IS BETTER THAN THE HOUSE BILL. IT’S LONGER THAN THE HOUSE BILL! Senate bill weighs in at 2,074 pages.

UPDATE: Keith Hennessey: Major Tax Increases In The Reid Health Bill.

WOULD WE BE BETTER OFF WITH A finders-keepers approach to antiquities?

TOM MAGUIRE: If You’ve Lost The Dean Of the Harvard Medical School…

UH OH: Former Red Cross chief: Feds’ new mammography policy is “a shocking thing”.

PHANTOM STIMULUS: As nonexistent Congressional districts are removed, stimulus money to New Hampshire shrinks. So, uh, what did happen to that money? . . . . Apparently it was spent somewhere else.

ABUSE: ChildLine says calls from boys abused by women have doubled in a year.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” American Buffoon.

INDEED: Didn’t Palin also “suck the oxygen out of the room” for Obama’s Far East tour? Or did that do him a favor?

JEFFREY JENA: Dithering On Afghanistan.

MARKDOWNS ON down comforters.

INSTAVISION: Meet The Smart Set. I talk with Rick Torres, founding member of The Supreme Beings of Leisure and Bitter:Sweet, about his new band The Smart Set, joined by Smart Set singer Brandi Emma. Their new album “Mixing With The Smart Set,” which I really like, is at CDBaby and iTunes. They’ll be playing the Hotel Cafe in Hollywood on Friday, if you’re in L.A.

DANA LOESCH: Pity The Palin Haters.

SEBELIUS AND RATIONING: Sebelius says Ignore Mammogram Rec. “HHS Secretary Sebelius did her best to ride the wave of incredulous opposition to the new government-sponsored guidelines advising women to hold off on regular mammograms til age 50. Perhaps anticipating that opponents of the President’s health reform efforts will argue that this is a glimpse of the future under Obamacare.”

POST-RACIAL AMERICA: “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

STIMULUS GOES TO THE DOGS: Another broken promise.

UPDATE: Some back-and-forth in the comments as to whether the money is for the dog park or street-resurfacing or both.