Hope you’re spending it with friends and family, as I am. But if you’re hanging around here, condsider this an open thread. What’s going on in the news today?

Introducing a new feature to this ‘bril’ blog:

The DAILY SNARK

Today’s award goes to an ace reporter who had the patience to sit through an entire press conference with State Department spokesman Robert Wood. This dutifully snarky reporter inquired about the geographical boundaries of Dennis Ross’s new diplomatic post:

QUESTION: Have your ace geographers been able to determine what Southwest Asia is and thereby figure out what exactly Dennis Ross’s mandate is?

MR. WOOD: I’m so shocked that you asked that question. Let me give you my best – our best read of this. From our standpoint, the countries that make up areas of the Gulf and Southwest Asia include Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, and those are the countries

At least Wood snarked right back at him.

We round up some of the most important news and commentary released over the weekend (Jan. 24 and 25).

AMERICAblog: There will not be a recession, flashback to 2006/2007 - Chris from AMERICAblog digs up a compilation of clips from Fox News and CNBC that illustrates how economic commentators who predicted the recession were ridiculed. This is yet another example of how media figures change the costs and benefits of supporting a particular position by creating an artificial consensus. The cable news networks have created an environment where commentators who were wrong about the recession and shouted down the pessimists face no accountability.

Slashdot: Monster.com Data Stolen, Won’t Email Users - Hackers once again breached Monster.com’s user database, stealing personal information such as names, e-mail addresses, and passwords. Even worse, Monster isn’t notifying their users about the breach. As a society we habitually give up our privacy without an understanding of the consequences. Cable companies don’t need our social security numbers, but we give it to them without thinking. There is no system of accountability for companies that lose or abuse this data.

NYT: Republicans Are Resistant to Obama’s Stimulus Plan - Congressional Republicans have no intention of supporting Obama’s stimulus plan as it currently exists. Of course, if the stimulus passes and fails to work, they benefit politically, so they have an incentive to pass a less effective bill. Todd Beeton thinks that the political pressure will be too much for some Congressional Republicans to resist, and Atrios argues that the focus should be on creating the best bill possible regardless of Republican support.

Russ Feingold: Constitutional Amendment Ending Gubernatorial Appointments to Senate Vacancies - The process that governors have employed to fill Senate vacancies has been unquestionably disastrous. Russ Feingold wants to push a constitutional amendment to end this undemocratic practice. A constitutional amendment honestly seems unlikely to pass given the work involved and votes needed, but at least Feingold’s move keeps the flaws of gubernatorial appointments in the spotlight. Will have more commentary on this later in the week.

Larissa MacFarquhar: Ms. Kennedy Regrets - Relatedly, the New Yorker published a sympathetic profile of Caroline Kennedy told largely from the perspective of her friends. It argues that she’s a smart and well-meaning person, but just not cut out for politics. My response would be that although she may have had problems as a candidate, the broader issue is the fundamentally undemocratic process of Governors appointing Senate vacancies. What if she hadn’t realized that she wasn’t prepared to be a Senator and accepted an offer from Patterson? One conclusion from the piece is that elections weed out people who don’t realize they aren’t suited for high-profile politics, not just in terms of talent but also lifestyle change.

Firedoglake: Sunlight is to Lobbyists as Garlic is to Vampires - Banks that benefited from the bailout are using taxpayer money to work against our collective interest. I don’t think all lobbying is bad, but a lot of the collective action problems we face seem to be exacerbated by the lack of transparency in lobbying.

Think Progress: Obama’s Right-Wing Dinner Friends Rip His Stimulus Package: Worst Bill In ‘Galactic History’ - The conservative pundits that Obama embraced and legitimized are already trashing his stimulus plan. Big surprise.

Zack Exley at Revolution in Jesusland explains why “evangelical” Christians are worth taking the effort to understand. The Gaiman quote from “A Game of You” he references encapsulates why the story one of my favorite Sandman arcs. Gaiman took what most readers earlier dismissed as a throwaway character, developed her, and showed us this fascinating and complex fantasy world inside her mind. The story makes a compelling case that everyone is worth understanding regardless of the initial impression they convey, and the principle of equal worth of all people as Exley points out.

Amanda Marcotte at pandagon dissects the most recent episode of Battlestar Galactica, particularly its attempted parallels to U.S. politics, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I’m sure I missed a lot of good stuff — what’ve you been reading?

Nirmal is too busy trying to talk his way into elite villager parties to do his world famous link roundup this weekend, so I’m filling in.

Twinaguration is a neat new site that follows the inauguration in real-time, pulling in content from Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us, Youtube, blogs and more.

Change.org has the ten worst LGBT moments of Bush’s Presidency. My favorite? Comparing unethicial politicians to same sex marriage supporters.

The future of journalism is here and it is very cool. Using storytlr, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo, Almighty link was able to lifestream the “miracle on the Hudson”. Tremayne at OpenLeft attributes the miracle to big city values. The coast guard has now released video footage of the crash.

Speaking of the future of journalism, Glenn Greenwald interviewed Jay Rosen the other day. They talked about how artificial consensus is created among the insulated world of beltway journalists, and what sorts of problems it can cause. Nirmal pointed out how backwards the village is, where people who were wrong about Iraq were rewarded while many who were right are still not taken seriously.

Chris Edelson reminds us that bipartisanship is a bad joke, and Democrats are the butt of it.

Paul Krugman thinks Obama is wrong to let George W. Bush off the hook for his systematic politicization of the federal government. I agree wholeheartedly. If the criminals in the executive branch are not held accountable the rule of law in this country will be forever diminished. Impeaching or holding accountable future Presidents may prove to be impossible due to the embarrassing precedent Obama is about to set with Bush.

Fox News thinks Bush inherited the 9/11 attacks from Clinton. Seriously.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (a public agency), doesn’t want to hear from concerned citizens anymore. TVA was already caught on video ticketing activists who were visiting the spill to take water samples. If the Tennessee Valley Authority wants to be considered a good-faith partner in renewed efforts to regulate and clean up the coal industry, they better start acting like it.

Only in the coal industry: DeSmogBlog got a hold of a lobbyist’s memo bragging about manipulating both Republicans and Democrats. Climate Progress uncovered the industry’s new propaganda campaign for clean coal, which is eerily similar to Joe Camel. I hope they enjoy it while it lasts because their time will soon be up.

Thereisnospoon is right, Olbermann’s eight years in eight minutes review of the Bush administration is phenomenal. Keith even stopped by and left a comment, passing the praise on to his producer, who wrote the segment. Jane Hamsher did eight years in 20 minutes on C-Span.

I’m about to head down to the big concert at the Lincoln Memorial (pictures later). Any other good links this weekend? Leave them in the comments.

We read stuff so you don’t have to.

John Cole: At What Point Will She Shoulder Some Blame? - Sarah Palin refuses to accept responsibility for her unpopularity, and comes off looking even worse than she did before. It’s getting to the point where she’s complaining about how her complaining is portrayed in the media. Very meta.

ABC’s This Week - Following up on our discussion about holding Bush accountable, Obama indicated to George Stephanopoulos that he was hesitant to prosecute the Bush administration for illegal torture and wiretapping. Even though it’s the most popular question on change.gov. Go people power!

NYT: White House Loses Legal Fight on Visitor Logs - Also on the subject of Bush accountability, a federal judge ruled against the Bush administration’s attempt to keep its visitor logs secret. Knowing who visited the White House expands our understanding of improper influence in politics.

Dean Baker: The Washington Post, Which Said the Economy Was Just Fine, Says That We Can’t Fix Health Care - The Washington Post, putting it down for the status quo since 1877, argues that we can’t do much about rising health care expenses. Of course, their op-ed completely ignores that the United States pays more per capita on healthcare than any other Western country, with considerably worse life expectancy.

MyDD: A Drupal-based DailyKos - Shai Sachs argues for the development of a Drupal-based Daily Kos clone that progressive bloggers can adapt when building their sites. Saving SoapBlox is an admirable endeavor, and the service is a key piece of progressive infrastructure. Still, it’s not safe to put so much power in the hands of one individual or even institution, or a proprietary platform that few people use. An open-source solution would be a powerful alternative.

Digby: Fiscal Madness - Remember how CNN unfairly attacked a stimulus proposal from the U.S. Conference of Mayors? They’re at it again. This time, they’re airing propaganda that uses the size of the federal deficit to argue against social investment. Of course the deficit is worrisome, but these stories skew our sense of budget priorities and unfairly undermine the case for a desperately needed stimulus package.

Politico: Sen. Voinovich to announce retirement - This makes four Republican retirement announcements — it’s no fun being in the minority. Barring a massive public shift toward Republicans (which is absolutely within the realm of possibility), the 2010 Senate map looks great for Democrats.

California’s Proposition 8: What Happened, and What Does the Future Hold? - This report dispels some of the myths about black support for Prop 8 in California. It points out that the NEP’s figure for black support conflicted with other post-election surveys, and that much of the difference in support for Prop 8 across race can probably actually be attributed to religiosity. I was going to look at the same thing once the NEP released the actual survey data, but always happy when someone does the work for me.

Firedoglake: LGBT Hosts on SNL - We need more of them. Neil Patrick Harris is hilariously awesome.

Tom Raum: GOP urging restraint in stimulus debate - When Republicans were in power, they started with a surplus and ended with a $1.2 trillion deficit. Now that Obama is President-elect, they’re suddenly urging restraint.

Jay Rosen: Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press - He explains, “Jon Stewart exploits for laughs what I called ‘the difference between making news and making sense.’”

Plus there was an argument between Nate Silver and Greg Mankiw over the stimulus.

The following articles aren’t strictly from this weekend, and I’m going to refrain from commenting on them because of my employment situation, but the labor merger talks are fascinating: NYT broke the story, Harold Meyerson elaborated, and Marc Ambinder has some additional gossip.

Finally, Obama hits up the legendary Ben’s Chili Bowl.

I’m sure I missed a lot of interesting stuff — what have you been reading?

Lot of great articles and op-eds this weekend. Among others:

Chris Hayes: The Pragmatist - Chris Hayes deconstructs the DC press’ portrayal of Obama as a “pragmatist” vs. an “ideologue.” To me, one of the most disappointing features of the Democratic communications strategy over the past four years has been their tendency to characterize Bush administration failures as the result of incompetence rather than fundamental flaws in conservative ideology. For the most part, they didn’t argue that conservative principles themselves caused the botched response to Katrina, the economic crisis, Iraq, and so on. Instead, by asserting that Bush was “incompetent,” they leave room for the press to contrast the difference between Obama and Bush as pragmatism vs. ideology, rather than a triumph of progressive ideas over conservative ones.

Frank Rich: A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits - Frank Rich points out that Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Scooter Libby revealed an offense far worse than Blago’s — aiding the propaganda effort that took us to war with Iraq. I think what Blago did is disgusting, incredibly stupid, and deserves punishment. However, it’s important to put into context — the usual influence trading that occurs in politics unchallenged is only slightly worse. Our political culture is structured to encourage such behavior, Blagojevich just took it to the extreme. Merely taking him down is not going to fix a broken system where activity that normal people would consider corruption is incentivized.

NYT: A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits - Related to the point above: Chuck Schumer, who excels at raising money from the finance industry, pushed for its deregulation and was one of the first proponents of the Wall Street bailout. Shocking.

WSJ: Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web - If true, so much for “don’t be evil.” Google is apparently backtracking on their commitment to net neutrality, in favor of an agreement with ISPs to give priority to Google’s content. Google’s term for their proposed arrangement with the ISPs, “OpenEdge,” is as cynical as Fox News calling themselves “Fair and Balanced” — any arrangement that undermines network neutrality is contrary to the very concept of openness.

Michael Isikoff: The Fed Who Blew the Whistle - Newsweek’s profile of one of the warrantless wiretapping whistleblowers is pretty frightening. This is a must-read.

And of course, an Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at President Bush and Evan Bayh is working to formalize a Senate “Blue Dog” Caucus.

I’m sure I missed a lot of interesting stuff — what have you been reading?