Today is the final day of Nancy Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker of the House. Couldn’t you just feel it in the air? Links…

• The same Republicans bellyaching for the past few years about not being allowed to offer amendments to legislation won’t allow amendments on the health care repeal bill. It’s a two-page bill that basically says “repeal what we did before,” and you can’t really win these hypocrisy arguments, but I would hope that Democrats at least pick up on a Republican gambit from the recent past and put a motion to recommit together. Although I do have to admit that Boehner’s office was at least amusingly pugnacious about the repeal bill.

• Eric Cantor wants to offer a bill a week to show a commitment to cutting spending, but if they’re all as lame as a 5% cut to lawmaker staff budgets, which would save a whopping $35 million out of a budget measured in trillions, then I don’t think many people will give a damn.

• How can you call this a major reshuffling of the White House staff when you acknowledge in the article that “nearly all of [the open positions] are likely to go to officials already at work in the West Wing or to former campaign loyalists”?

• The war on public employees continues, with legislation at the state level to curb the influence of unions. That’s what this is all about, using public unions as a model to silence the organizing hopes of the private sector unions, with the actual culprits of the crisis – Wall Street and their allies – getting off scot-free. Marshall Auerback has more.

• Roger Hickey couldn’t get this op-ed on Obama and Social Security printed in the Washington Post, probably because it criticized two of their op-ed stalwarts. WaPo probably won’t print the correct take on the retirement age, either.

• Actually, we do need a manufacturing policy coordinator in the White House, and Ron Bloom is about as good a choice as can be expected for that position.

• A new round of diplomacy in North Korea, as the mood softens there.

• Texas was held up as a miracle of low taxes and low regulation, but their huge budget deficit – a consequence of last year being an out-year of a two-year budget cycle – shows that they’re just like everyone else in this Great Recession.

• Hilda Solis has a long climb on mining safety.

• Any peace deal in Afghanistan should be seen as good news, but I fear that extremism is growing and not weakening in that part of the world.

• Revolving door watch: Kit Bond moves to K Street, Patrick Murphy at least avoids that but joins a Philly-area law firm to defend white-collar clients “with key interests in regulatory changes.”

• Judy Miller tries desperately to spin her way out of her criticism of Julian Assange. I’m surprised she didn’t close with “We were proved fucking right.”

• Marvin Ammori on Wikileaks is provocative, not always correct in my view, but worth a read.

• This profile of Mitch McConnell should be entered as exhibit A on why we need to change the Senate rules. McConnell has basically turned the Senate into a large exhibition for watching paint dry.

• Is Goldman Sachs avoiding regulatory oversight on their Facebook special purpose vehicle?

• I’m no Michael Gerson fan but he’s dead on about Michael Vick, criminal justice and second chances, IMO.

• Antonin Scalia cannot stand individual rights, that’s the real point here.

• I thought we already knew that the toppling of the Saddam statue in Iraq was a massive psyop, but this week’s New Yorker cements that.

• Turns out the microfinance industry in India has started to lead to mass suicides, as people cannot pay back the loans given out by a new breed of profit-maximizing microlenders. This is the most horrifying story you’ll read all day.

• I heard a plausible explanation for all those blackbirds dying in Arkansas – New Year’s fireworks leading to some negative consequences – but how, then, to explain the 500 more dead birds a few hundred miles away in Louisiana?

• Speaking of birds, Saudi Arabia accused one of being an Israeli Mossad agent.

• I still use RSS almost exclusively, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere in the face of Twitter. As someone says in the comments, Twitter is like the radio, RSS is the backstop that nothing can get through.

• Millions of dollars in homeland security strategy reduced to rubble in fifteen seconds. “Build the danged fence,” indeed.

• Bye Bye RichRod. Whatever else happens, today is a great day. Take Denard with you, by the way.