• 
  One way to think of it … Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a.k.a. the guy who ticks us off with his useless quips, claims the Massachusetts senate race is a “referendum” on health care. It might just be, but what we’d like to see is a referendum on stalling tactics like Mr. McConnell’s.
• 
  … and another way On the other side of the aisle, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, who we’ve seen thus far as kind of a left-leaning screen chewer in the vein of a Fox News host, said that he’d “try to vote ten times” to keep Scott Brown from winning. Sorry, friends, but this isn’t cool, either. (Hat tip @jessehines)
• 
  Blast from the past For a little perspective on the state of talk show chatter, here’s a clip from Martin Luther King Jr.’s last interview with Meet the Press back in 1967. We’ve devolved far from this sort of televised debate. We’ve gone from this to crap like Ed Schultz’s blabbering. We’ve fallen far.

• “Titanic was a ship. Avatar’s a rocket ship.” That’s how Chris Aronson, Fox’s senior vice-president of domestic distribution, put the success of “Avatar,” which is showing few signs of slowing down weeks after its release. It’s quite possible it could pass Titanic’s $601 million total by the beginning of February. Here are some numbers on the horse race with history:

Worldwide totals so far

• $1.6
  billion already, after just five weeks of release – holy freaking crap!
• $237
  million needed to topple “Titanic” and its $1.8 billion worldwide total

North American stats

• $41.3 million the film’s weekend box office after five weeks of release
• $491.8 million the film’s total box office – it should top $500 million Monday
• 32
  days time it will take “Avatar” to reach that total – it took “Titanic” 98 source

• two seconds the amount of time it takes to send a text message donation to the Red Cross (or other sources)
• three months the amount of time it could take for that donation to reach its destination; WTF? source

• We’re in a megatransition. It hasn’t ever felt like anyone has the answer. My macro feeling is that I’m glad I had this job at this time. It was great working at the paper when it was on dead trees and could pay for itself.
• New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman • Discussing whether he feels new technology has shown a next path for journalism. It’s something his bosses are currently feeling significant pressure about. According to New York Magazine, the plan seems to be a change from free to pay, using a so-called “metered” system that requests payment based on usage. It’s akin to what the Financial Times does – read a few articles, and a pay wall finally comes up. Since we post a lot about the Times, for example, and think it’s a high-quality publication, we’d probably get a subscription. source

• Wyclef tries really hard to defend his charity here, but before you believe every word you read here, we want to note that while the Haitian pop star is definitely sincere, there has been a lot of waste in his organization in the past, as Gawker notes. source

• what? Sanjay Gupta had to spend his Friday night in Haiti helping earthquake survivors after a crew of Belgian doctors left a makeshift hospital to fend for itself overnight. He did a great job.
• why? Even though Gupta and others were told the UN had made the decision to move doctors out overnight, it was in fact the lead Belgian doctor who had made the questionable decision.
• next The UN and Belgian government promise to give the doctors security forces to protect themselves from looters, criminals or anyone else in the wake of the earthquake. source

• Everything about the Supreme Court’s decision to stay the broadcast (and the Proposition 8 camp’s request to black out the trial in the first place) betrays a deep ambivalence about the same humble American voter whose very rights the court purports to be defending.
• Slate writer Dahlia Lithwick • Discussing the Supreme Court’s decision to ban cameras during the Proposition 8 gay marriage trial in California. Lithwick claims the trial itself is somewhat questionable, but the banning of cameras in the courtroom is beyond absurd and is completely disrespectful to the rights of the American public. She further explains: “As it explains in its order: ‘This case, too, involves issues subject to intense debate in our society’ and it ‘is therefore not a good one for a pilot program.’ So, um, we the people are only fit to watch low-profile, boring cases?” source

• SCOTUS will tackle the heavily-debated cop killer case on Tuesday. On December 9, 1981, police officer Daniel Faulkner was murdered. And for nearly 30 years since, Mumia Abu-Jamal has been on death row fighting the conviction. The Supreme Court will release a sentencing-related decision on Abu-Jamal, who was well-known as a radio journalist before the 1982 conviction. The decision will not have any effect on Abu-Jamal’s conviction – but it could lead to a new jury trial on his death sentence. source