Colbert's performance was about as courageous as you can get without risk of actual bodily harm, similar to Murrow's "the fault, dear Brutus" broadcast or the stories in Profiles in Courage (whoever wrote it). He took an immense professional risk. He could have gone the way of Bill Maher and the Dixie Chicks. But he had his say, and it was a turning point in the sorry saga of Bush's media coverage.

For someone to echo Colbert this year, when Bush is down and sinking lower and only the Note supports him with the strange silences and specious logic that had been so popular since about 1999, would only undermine Colbert's "dear Brutus" moment. In fact, hiring the bland Rich Little underscores Colbert's triumph, by showing how desperately the White House Press Corpse is wants to avoid any trouble this year.

Look forward to glowing reviews of Rich Little by Broder, Cohen, and the gang. He'll serve up what they want to hear.

First of all, it's fairly common here in Illinois for a homebuyer, even a couple, to set up a trust as the buyer, with themselves as trustees. I've had the reason explained to me, but my incomplete recollection makes no sense. In any event, I've bought two houses here and been asked by my lawyer if I wanted to go the trust route each time.

I suspect that it has something to do with keeping the house out of probate, should the occasion arise.

Anyway, if Edwards sold the house to his sworn enemies working through a dummy LLC, isn't Edwards the victim, if anything? If there is not a good real-estate reason for the LLC, then the first notion that comes to mind is that it was meant to mask the real buyers, with whom Edwards may not have wished to do business. Perhaps even to set up this "gotcha" in an attempt to derail his campaign.

You might say, well, Edwards is a lawyer and he should have known better. Maybe. But, hey, lawyers make legal mistakes, too. William Rehnquist bought his summer house not noticing that the deed was "restricted," meaning "Jews go away." (When that fact came to his attention, he took immediate steps to correct it.) Chief Justice Burger's will was apparently a hodge podge of blunders that would flunk a law student. So, not much traction there for the Mighty Wurlitzer.

Joe plans to throw the weight of all seventeen of his hard-core supporters behind a Republican candidate in 2008. Who'd a thunk it?

Rush Limbaugh is mocking people who can't button their shirts? Irony lives.

The Snickers ad would have been a lot better if it ended as the guys recoiled as their lips touched. To that point, it was mocking homophobia and kinda cute. Snickers would have saved a few megabucks, too.

Aside: If they're going to post the ads at a web site, then all those people who tolerate the Super Bowl and populate the Super Bowl Parties just to see the ads have been set free on Super Bowl Sunday Afternoon. This is probably a good thing, but I can see where the network might disagree.

In the very pages of Salon: http://dir.salon.com/story/politics/feature/2002/03/19/dissent/index.html

"As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur."

-- Senator Robert Taft, 19 December 1941 (12 days after Pearl Harbor!)

Gary, don't chill that champagne just yet. According to the unitary executive theory, the president is free to ignore anything in the Constitution, the Bible, or in the law of civilized peoples if as Commander-in-Chief he thinks he must do so for the good of the nation. It seems to me that this includes assuming he has the power to postpone, cancel or ignore national elections, or to refuse to yield the White House to a duly elected successor.

After all, suppose the new president is elected on a "Bush has done everything wrong in Iraq/Iran" platform. If, during and after the election, Bush continues to believe in his own war policies, isn't he logically almost compelled to view the successor as very, very wrong, and that permitting his successor to take office would be a catastrophe for the nation?

This way of thinking is not only a plot device in "Seven Days in May." It's also usually the stated rationale of military coups in Africa and Latin America. Even here, Rudy Giuliani used a variant in an effort to hang on to power in New York City after 9/11.

Add to this Bush's obvious and understandable reluctance to expose the records of the Reagan/Bush I/Bush-Cheney regimes to public scrutiny. (Don't forget -- Bush's first official act as President was to misinterpret the law so as to provent historians from seeing the Reagan-Bush I papers.)

We all hope that it won't come to this. But it might.

-- be sure to tell him you're planning to sue on a date certain if something doesn't change. And, if necessary, on that date go ahead and file suit. I'm not sure you have a winning case, but it doesn't matter. It's the threat of the legal bills that'll get the landlord's attention.