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 …

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.

Obama's Super-Bubble  —  A couple of days ago, Politico posted a piece about how the closing of the presidential bubble was already beginning to chafe Barack Obama.  All I could think was: Better make peace with it quickly, my man, because things are about to get so much worse.

Home Prices Fell at Their Sharpest Pace in October  —  How bad has the housing market gotten?  With home values dropping by faster rates each month, a real estate agent near Detroit said that if houses weren't priced as low as foreclosures, they simply would not sell.

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.

Consumers Union to Buy a Blog From Gawker  —  Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, planned to announce Wednesday that it had acquired Consumerist.com, a popular blog formerly owned by Gawker Media.  —  Consumerist is one of several sites Gawker has sold this year …

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 …

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.

Obama goes to Washington: School's in  —  Fresh from his Hawaiian vacation, President-elect Barack Obama will leave behind his home and transition office in Chicago and make his move to Washington, D.C., this weekend.  —  But he won't be staying put for long.

Coming Soon: The 21st Century  —  Social and political epochs rarely end precisely on schedules provided by calendars.  Many historians date the end of Europe's 19th century to 1914 and the outbreak of World War I. What we call “The Sixties” in the United States, with its ethos of reform and protest …

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 …