"Cadaver Program Head Indicted in Body Parts Case" (currently on Fox News website front page)

...is the name of the new animated Fox series by Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, featuring voice-work by many AD cast members and recent Saturday Night Live members. Unfortunately, it looks painfully unfunny, though one hopes that is the work of Fox executives dumbing it down for the up-fronts. The dense and brilliant comedy fugue that was Arrested Development couldn't be adequately summed up in 90 seconds, either. On the other hand, a random 75-second clip remains hilarious.

Separately, Fox seems to have hired a batch of manatees for The Cleveland Show, the Family Guy spin-off advertised by a bunch of Family Guy clips.

So what would happen if someone other than Barack Obama called a reporter "sweetie" when condescendingly ignoring her question?

This is in the New York Times, quoting no one but Obama supporters, so no one can say it's "mud slinging by desperate Republicans."

For years, the Obamas had been regular dinner guests at the Hyde Park home of Rashid Khalidi, a Middle East scholar at the University of Chicago and an adviser to the Palestinian delegation to the 1990s peace talks. Mr. Khalidi said the talk would often turn to the Middle East, and he talked with Mr. Obama about issues like living conditions in the occupied territories. In 2000, the Khalidis held a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama during his Congressional campaign. Both Mr. Khalidi and Mr. Abunimah, of the Electronic Intifada, said Mr. Obama had spoken at the fund-raiser and had called for the United States to adopt a more “evenhanded approach” to the Palestinian-Israel conflict.

Still, Mr. Khalidi said ascertaining Mr. Obama’s precise position was often difficult. “You may come away thinking, ‘Wow, he agrees with me,’ ” he said. “But later, when you get home and think about it, you are not sure.” ...

Several days before the primary in 2004, some of his Jewish supporters took offense that Mr. Obama had not taken the opportunity on a campaign questionnaire to denounce Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, or to strongly support Israel’s building of a security fence.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Obama blamed a staff member for the oversight, and expressed the hope that “none of this has raised any questions on your part regarding my fundamental commitment to Israel’s security.” Mr. Abunimah has written of running into the candidate around that time and has said that Mr. Obama told him: “I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping that when things calm down I can be more upfront.”

The Obama camp has denied Mr. Abunimah’s account. Mr. Khalidi, who is now the director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, said, “I’m unhappy about the positions he’s taken, but I can’t say I’m terribly disappointed.”

Obama is a master of taking advantage of the tabula rasa effect; his speeches and public statements deftly ratify sympathetic voters' confirmation bias and permit them to think that he agrees with them. We see this now as Jewish supporters insist that Obama is pro-Israel by virtue of recent statements he has made—which he might be, but the evidence is far from unambiguous, and it's telling that Israel's worst enemies in America and abroad also think Obama supports them. We even see it in far less obvious cases, as when dozens of ATL readers insisted that Obama isn't actually going to raise taxes on law firm associates, though he has essentially promised to. This is a recipe for general election success, but a bad omen when half of your supporters are upset in mid-2009 that they've been sold a bill of goods and discover they've elected James George Michael Dukakis McGovern Carter. One hopes the Republicans have a free-market candidate in 2012 that will be able to point out the connection between the decline in the economy and the disastrous Democratic agenda for the 111th Congress.

An avalanche wiped out Juneau's supply of cheap power for a few months; rates will rise from 11 cents/kwh to 53 cents/kwh while the city uses more expensive diesel power.

What the NY Times story doesn't mention: as Juneau residents suffer greatly and make many sacrifices to cut their electric bills, they have shown that their short-term elasticity for a 382% price increase in power costs, dropped their usage by less than 40%.

Even if this could be duplicated across the nation—and it couldn't, not least because I suspect Juneau doesn't have much in the way of electricity-intensive manufacturing—it would do nothing to prevent or forestall global warming, while imposing thousands of dollars in direct costs and even more in indirect costs to every American family. If something were done to minimize the impact on the poor, we'd lose even more conservation efforts.

136. The Blues Brothers set future Chicagoans up for a major disappointment: since moving here, I have never once seen enormous groups of strangers moved, as if part of a flash mob, to spontaneously burst into elaborately choreographed song-and-dance numbers in iconic locations. Fix that. (via Bonin, who has much more detail)

David Frum dissects: Obama and Israel

It made no economic sense to have a Chevrolet dealer on the corner of Glebe and Wilson in the 21st century, which is why Bob Peck Chevrolet sold the space for $20-$26 million (depending on the press account), but one will miss the Googie architecture, seen here, here (#4), and at 0:04 in this impressively lame 2005 tv ad. The Staples next door, with the world's worst parking lot, appears to be headed a few blocks closer to us on Wilson Boulevard, where the pet store that was never open used to be.