The Rest Of The Week In Review

Ah, nice to have something approaching a weekend off. Lots of errands, some get-togethers, a night of cooking - mountains of good fun. And now, to blog:

• The quadrennial Newsweek How He Did It report is rolling out, and it's the same old gossip/inside baseball/stories with little or no significance metastasized into supreme significance that we get every four years. It's the political equivalent of a John Grisham novel - total brain candy (Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article is basically the slightly heavier version of that). For some insight into Obama, and how he might govern, there's this old profile from David Sirota in The Nation, which shows Obama the cautious conciliator, and this very interesting piece of writing from Obama himself in the 1980s, showing Obama the passionate organizer and activist.

• Silvio Berlusconi has the same knack for making ignorant comments as his conservative bretheren in this country. What's interesting is the level of protest. Calling a black man "suntanned" could be worse, I suppose, but Italy has basically gone on strike as a result. Don't mess with Obama, I guess.

• I really hope that the lesson learned from this election is that early voting works and every state should have it. In California we had just one early voting station for all of LA County and its 10 million citizens, but that was because Debra Bowen decertified the touch-screen machines and they weren't recertified in time. By 2012, we should absolutely put some investment into early voting across the country. Universal registration would be a good lesson learned as well.

• You won't believe this one, but all those oil companies who were just dying for more offshore oil contracts because they wanted to drill baby drill so we could pay less? Turns out they're not drilling on any of the lands they have right now. I can see the shocked look of your face as you realize that the leases are worth more to them as reserves than turning them into oil.

• The other pretty cool vote on November 4th, one that went largely unnoticed, is that the FCC voted to allow a piece of the radio spectrum known as "white space" for public use as a supercharged Wi-Fi. This could be a real technology breakthrough if it's developed properly. And Bush's FCC approved it over some pretty powerful objections, including broadcasters and entertainers who thought the space might interfere with live mikes.

• Here's some more about the Committee chairmanship comings and goings in the Senate. Dianne Feinstein could end up chairing the Intelligence Committee, which actually might keep her in Washington instead of running for Governor in California.

• My.BarackObama.com is staying in business. Good - harnessing this activist energy is going to be very important to sustaining Democrat's edge in online mobilization.

• There are a lot of rumors about who will get what Cabinet position or White House staff job, and I'm really adopting a wait-and-see approach. But I'll definitely break that to tout Marty Lederman for the supremely important but almost invisible job heading the Office of Legal Counsel, which provided all the justifications for the worst abuses and crimes of the Bush Administration.

• This story about the fall of Iceland is about as heartbreaking as it gets on the news pages of The New York Times. Way to go, global financial system, ruining one of the coolest places on Earth! For the purposes of solidarity, I will ignore the fact that it's pretty much all the fault of Icelandic bankers.

• The big joke after two years of monomania about the Presidential election is that the President is just a cog in the wheel of American government, not nearly as important as advertised, and there is as much to be gained out of repairing the institutions of government as there is to changing Presidents. Not as sexy, but more effective. This is quite a good read.

• If this is right then I might have to renew my New Yorker subscription:

'You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on 20 January [the date of the next president's inauguration],' he says, with relish. '[They say:] "You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then." So that is what I'll do, so long as nothing awful happens before the inauguration.'

• In line for the dumbest column of the year is this one from Jeffrey Scott Shapiro of the Wall Street Journal, who's miffed that everyone's picking on President Bush. We are so classless and should give a group apology to the guy who is responsible for Katrina, the Iraq war and the financial meltdown. Have we no shame. As Krugman said, "Yes, George W. Bush’s status as the most disliked man ever to occupy the White House shows that America was not worthy of him."

• The Obama campaign in Pennsylvania donated all of their leftover office supplies to inner city Philly schools. It'll just be nice to have an Administration in Washington with a heart instead of a pacemaker.

• And Rachel Maddow mentioned this one on her show this week, but I wanted to add that rule one of ship naming ought to be not naming the ship after a former Nazi. It's part of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, I think.