My Plan for Bad Bank Assets  —  The private sector will set prices.  Taxpayers will share in any upside.  —  The American economy and much of the world now face extraordinary challenges, and confronting these challenges will continue to require extraordinary actions.

Man of the Hour  —  With Steve Kroft as Lead Correspondent, ‘60 Minutes’ Is Ticking Right Along  —  On the night of the Emmys last fall, when one of his stories was up for an award and his tuxedo-clad colleagues were leaving for the ceremony, Steve Kroft stayed at the office until 1 a.m. …

Obama Upsets Sarkozy With Letter to Jacques Chirac  —  In his latest faux pas Obama managed to pi$$ off France...  President Obama wrote Jacques Chirac saying he was looking forward to working with the former French president in the coming four years(?)  —  Monsters and Critics reported:

500 miles later, I'm back in Madison.  —  Did you understand the previous post?  If not, the answer — along with much congratulations and debate — appears in the comments, notably here.  Let there be no doubt about it: A blogger — Althouse — is engaged to be married to a man who began …

GOV PLOTS SECRET TAX HIKE ON RICH  —  GOV. PATERSON and legislative Democrats have secretly agreed on an $8 billion, two- year tax hike on individuals making more than $500,000 a year that will “sunset” around the time he plans to run for election in 2010, legislative sources told The Post.

Matthews inks four-year deal  —  Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition  —  Memo to conservatives: Expect to see both Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews on MSNBC through the 2012 race.  —  Olbermann already re-upped in November, and the NY Times reports that Matthews has just signed a four-year deal.

WOW, I NEEDED THAT  —  As part of their efforts to make the scale and scope of Bernie Madoff's crimes clear to Judge Denny Chin in deciding the terms of his plea, confinement and eventual sentencing, the folks at the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York submitted emails …

Tea Parties, Going Galt, Iraq, and Delicious Irony  —  I've been following the growing “Tea Party” and “Going Galt” movements with no small amount of amusement, in part because there is really just too much sweet, delicious irony surrounding both of these groups of people (who, I might add, are largely the same people).

Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath's son commits suicide  —  The son of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has taken his own life, 46 years after his mother gassed herself while he slept.  —  Nicholas Hughes hanged himself at his home in Alaska after battling against depression for some time, his sister Frieda said yesterday.

Obama links budget to environment  —  Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition  —  WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's aides say the administration will work with Congress on his budget proposal, but energy independence is not subject to wheeling and dealing.

Texas School Board Set to Vote on Challenge to Evolution  —  The Texas Board of Education will vote this week on a new science curriculum designed to challenge the guiding principle of evolution, a step that could influence what is taught in biology classes across the nation.

Various matters  —  (updated below)  —  (1) The New York Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, has a column today on a topic I've written about more times than I can count: that the NYT routinely grants anonymity without any justification whatsoever and, more notably, does so in flagrant violation of its own policy on anonymous sources.