A look at the newly unveiled tallest building in the world:

(On a related note, I second MSNBC’s David Shuster on this: “Breaks my heart as I think about what might have been…in rebuilding ground zero.”)

Jon Stewart, on the underwear bomber: “If the bomb works, there’s gonna be 72 very disappointed virgins.”

Normally, you’d need to be a Florida politics junky to care that the Chairman of the Florida GOP, Jim Greer, is resigning his office today. But this is an ominous sign for Charlie Crist in the Florida senate primary and another sign of right-wing power in the nationwide GOP battle between moderates and the Tea Party/Club for Growth right. We’ll have more background shortly. This one’s a big deal.

Late Update: Here’s more on the story.

The new Rasmussen poll has Dem candidate Martha Coakley with a 50% to 41% margin over Republican Scott Brown. Figure in that Massachusetts is a heavily Democratic state and that Rasmussen’s polls tend to have a slight GOP lean and you can probably figure she’s going to win on January 19th.

But in a low-turnout special election, you never know. And there’s little question that the most enthusiastic voters are leaning Republican in this cycle.

And here’s the thing to keep in mind. If Scott Brown were to pull off an upset that would end Health Care Reform, pulling Dems back to 59 seats and preventing final passage of the bill.

Not saying this is a likely scenario. But the stakes are staggering.

Late Update: Several point out that there would be one way to still pass Reform. If the House agreed to pass the identical bill the senate passed, with literally no changes whatsoever, then that could go to the president’s desk and be signed. I thought of this last night. But it was not clear to me whether there would be some parliamentary impediment to doing this. Does anyone know?

We sort through the Olbermann and Maddow segments last night featuring Richard Wolffe and try to suss out what Wolffe was really saying about the Flight 253 fallout — and how much of that really came from the White House.

CQ downgrades the Colorado Senate seat held by Democrat Michael Bennet from “Leans Democrat” to “Tossup.” That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

The Sheriff can be a frightening figure in a small, rural county. (This one was in southern Illinois and I can say that since that’s where a lot of my family comes from.) But this is a case where when law men go bad, sometimes they go really bad. First Sheriff Raymond Martin was dealing pot out of his police SUV, which was pretty bold. He also bragged about being able to set up anyone he wanted to on ginned up charges. But over the weekend, already in jail for the pot dealing and now with the help of his wife and son, Martin upped the ante to murder-for-hire.

Contra Cheney: Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) says there’s more to keeping us safe from terrorism than lobbing missiles and tossing off belligerent statements.

For those of you missed it, this is one of our articles today that I really got a kick out of. Why has Michele Bachmann suddenly gone mum on bashing the census and telling people not to participate? It turns out that Minnesota is right on the cusp of losing one of its House seats. And the most logical outcome of an undercount of state residents would be to eliminate Bachmann’s seat in Congress.

Self-interest, all-powerful, can even defeat the Crazy …

A rash of letters with suspicious white powder were sent to politicians in Alabama today. Initial tests showed it was not anthrax and apparently not anything harmful.

And then a bit before 9 PM we heard from TPM Reader DH told us he witnessed a similar incident at UC Irvine just south of Los Angeles. We’ve now found confirmation in reports from the OC Register and another local paper.