Today's articles from Maria, and a couple of others
Maria sent four links from Townhall.com: Ban Torture? Not on the Silver Screen

Politically, the entertainment community is fairly two-dimensional in its liberalism. But artistically - and to its credit - Hollywood seems to grasp that life can be morally complicated. After all, tactics that qualify as torture for the "anti" crowd show up in film and television every day.

Certainly Jack from 24 never misses a chance to light up the wattage (especially when it involved his girlfriend's ex-husband). Ross Mackenzie has a few Staggering stats and brief comments on this and that

Tax Foundation notes that since 1977, Big Oil "profiteering" has run to less than half of what state and federal governments have collected in gasoline taxes - $600 billion in oil company profits vs. $1.34 trillion in state and federal taxes on gasoline.

Iraq: Dems have boxed themselves in, says Rush's brother David, and he's correct. Jeff Jacoby finds Misplaced sympathy for killers and asks "Why doesn't the media's round-number fetish extend to the victims of homicide as well as the perpetrators?"

A couple of interesting headlines from the Beeb:
Climate talks go down to the wire, if they can find the wire buried under all the snow we're getting.
Dummies 'reduce cot death risk'. Not these dummies, apacifier.
Oopsie: Shares in J-Com fell to below their issue price after the broker at Mizuho Securities tried to sell 610,000 shares at 1 yen (0.47 pence; 0.8 cents) each. They had meant to sell one share for 610,000 yen (£2,893; $5,065)

Update Dan Riehl's on the couch at Sigmund, Carl and Alfred