Jerry Brown urges court to void Prop.  8  —  SAN FRANCISCO — California Attorney General Jerry Brown changed course on the state's new same-sex marriage ban Friday and urged the state Supreme Court to void Proposition 8.  —  In a dramatic reversal, Brown filed a legal brief saying the measure …

Veep-Hunting  —  Looking for the party line on Cheney?  Here it is.  —  Angler  —  The Cheney Vice Presidency  —  by Barton Gellman  —  Penguin, 384 pp., $27.95  —  Anyone still interested in the sorry state of mainstream journalism should have a good, long look at Barton Gellman's blistering portrait of Dick Cheney.

If criminal penalties are removed, what will deter lawbreaking by political officials?  —  (updated below)  —  The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus today perfectly expresses the consensus view of establishment Washington regarding the exemption which political elites should and do enjoy from the rule of law …

Document drop: The story behind Change.gov  —  I've obtained documents sent to a reader in response to his FOIA request regarding the creation of Barack Obama's Change.gov website.  It gives you the rest of the story.  You'll recall last month that I blogged several questions about the propriety …

Rick Warren and the Presidency  —  Barack Obama's invitation to evangelical powerhouse Rick Warren to deliver the inaugural invocation has angered abortion and gay rights advocates.  They are overreacting.  The invitation merely confirms Obama's admirable willingness to reach out across a relatively broad ideological spectrum .

Jihadist Group Trying to ‘Invade’ Facebook Gets Shut Down  —  A quickly growing jihadist group that used Facebook to spread its radical message has been shut down by the popular Web networking site after FOXNews.com alerted the company to the group's activities.

Tech followups on NYTimes.com blockage in China (updated)  —  On December 19, the NYTimes.com site was apparently blocked all across China.  For the sake of completeness, these followups.  —  1) Could the problem be related to a recent physical break in three of the four main internet cables connecting Asia to North America?

24 Officers to Be Freed, Iraqi Says  —  BAGHDAD — Iraq's interior minister said all 24 of his officers who had been arrested in a security crackdown this week would be released.  And in a bold gesture of defiance, he publicly condemned his own government's investigation, calling the accusations false and motivated purely by politics.

THE MEANING OF IRAN'S RHETORIC  —  Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and other officials of the Iranian regime regularly direct blood-curdling rhetoric of hate and extermination toward the state of Israel.  Is this rhetoric to be taken seriously?  Bar-Ilan University senior lecturer Ze'ev Maghen thinks that it is.

Blair Is Steeped in the Ways Intelligence Works  —  After Dennis Blair's assignment as military liaison to the CIA 13 years ago, he groused about all the cloak-and-dagger politics at Langley headquarters.  “You'd go to a meeting and think everyone had agreed” to a particular course of action …

In Private Memo, RNC Chief Concedes That GOP Is Bereft Of Ideas, Vows Change Of Direction  —  In a frank and private memo sent today to Republican National Commitee members, the RNC chairman acknowledges that the GOP has grown too addicted to ideology, places politics before policy …