Blagojevich snubs Senate, taps Burris for seat  —  Brushing aside charges that he tried to sell Illinois' vacant U.S. Senate seat, Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to the post today in defiance of Senate leaders who said they would not admit anyone he selected.

ZBIG SMACKS DOWN MORNIN' JOE  —  Zbig to Joe: “You have a such stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on it's almost embarrassing to listen to you.”

What YouTube Doesn't Want You to See  —  Yesterday, the IDF did something innovative: it opened a channel on YouTube and posted videos to it that help explain why Israel is fighting Hamas.  The site hosted about a dozen videos showing things like Israeli humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza …

D.C. lobbyist sues Times over McCain affair story  —  Washington lobbyist Vicki L. Iseman has filed a $27 million defamation lawsuit against The New York Times for a February article about Iseman and her relationship with Sen. John McCain.  —  The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond on Tuesday …

Home Prices Fell Sharply in October  —  Home values in 20 large metropolitan areas across the country dropped at a record pace in October as the fallout from the financial collapse reverberated through the housing market, according to data released Tuesday.  —  The price of single-family …

McKinney relief boat rammed by Israeli navy  —  A boat carrying international peace activists, including former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, and medical supplies to the embattled Gaza Strip sailed back into a Lebanese port on Tuesday after being turned back and damaged by the Israeli navy, organizers of the trip said.

Breaking Up Is Harder to Do After Housing Fall  —  When Marci Needle and her husband began to contemplate divorce in June, they thought they had enough money to go their separate ways.  They owned a million-dollar home near Atlanta and another in Jacksonville, Fla., as well as investment properties.

Madoff's Latest Victims: Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick  —  The crap thing about being Kevin Bacon, it turns out, is that sometimes you find yourself six degrees from the wrong kind of guy.  Such as, for instance, Bernie Madoff.  We'd heard that along with Hollywood boldfacers Jeffrey Katzenberg …

How to prevent the Great Depression of 2009  —  The US recession that began in December 2007 resulted in 403,000 lost jobs in September, 320,000 in October and 533,000 jobs in November.  Projections for 2009 are ominous.  —  The global financial system is undergoing a meltdown …

Samuel Huntington's Warning  —  He predicted a ‘clash of civilizations,’ not the illusion of Davos Man.  —  The last of Samuel Huntington's books — “Who Are We?  The Challenges to America's National Identity,” published four years ago — may have been his most passionate work.

2008 Weblog Awards Finalists  —  Here is a complete list of the finalists for The 2008 Weblog Awards.  Finalists badges (hosted by Imageshack) will be available Wednesday.  Voting is scheduled to begin on January 5, 2009.  —  Please note that the names of the Technorati Autority categories have changed …

Trash Talk  —  I want to take issue with Martin Peretz's description of my former colleague Spencer Ackerman's articles as “trash.”  Maybe I am sensitive because Spencer co-authored several with me, including a piece of the Bush administration's deception about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction …

PARSING BARACK THE MAGIC NEGRO.  —  I've been reading defenses of Rush Limbaugh's “Barack, The Magic Negro” on right wing blogs for a while now and I often get the impression that the people defending the song as satire don't actually get the point, and that they've never actually read David …