As for having Pete to thank for inventing power chords, I think Ray Davies might take exception to that statement were he not to be the modest man that he is.

And as for the previous anonymous poster, who's to say that you can't be an artist and sell your songs for profit in various forms. The two are not, nor should they be, mutually exclusive.

As for detaching Texas, there are a few counties in northeast Texas that need to stay in the U.S. We're still somewhat Democratic and populist here, so please remember to cleave us off before you go to redrawing the boundaries.

By the way, count yourselves lucky that Texas only has two senators. When Texas joined the Union, there was a provision that allowed Texas to subdivide into up to five states. The historical reasons for this are tied up in the Missouri Compromise and the need for the south to add extra states when more northern states joined the union in the pacific northwest. But can you imagine what a creative "redistricting" of Texas could do to it's Senate delegation if we got ten senators? (Of course, if you let me wield the pencil, Democrats might actually be pleased with the results, although some of the new States might be small or strangely shaped.)

Carville has a point. Six million dollars could have done a lot of good in a lot of races, although 50 seats seems to be a bit of a stretch. But $500,000 per race would have made a big impact in a dozen races. Party building activities need to be done, but not at the expense of going to candidates who are in viable races in a very favorable year.

Yes, I think Bush's plan -- to the extent that he can be said to plan at all -- is to muddle along long enough to drop this problem in the lap of a Democratic President so that the Republicans can blame someone else for their failure.

But the level of denial that this administration is in is remarkable. And to see John McCain to be as deluded is striking, too. It become more clear with each passing day that the Iraqi government and the Shiite majority has no real interest in internal stability in Iraq. They are playing out the string waiting for the day that the U.S. will finally leave so that they can impose their grizzly will on the Sunni minority. But the administration and McCain keep talking as if it's only a matter of more time and more trained Iraqi security forces. Why is no one talking about the absence of desire for stability on the part of the government (and probably even a significant percentage of the Shiite majority of the population)? Absent that desire, all the kings horses and all the kings men cannot put Iraq back together again.

I haven't seriously studied Friedman since I was an undergrad at SMU where I majored in economics and I have no personal knowledge what, if anything, he wrote on the subject. The SUM economics department was heavily laced with Chicago school profs, however, so I can perhaps make an educated guess on how you can reconcile a Chicago school belief with a moral view on global warming.

Those who pollute and cause global warming are imposing external costs on the rest of society. I think it is consistent with at least some brands of free market economics to acknowledge that one of the legitimate roles of government is to internalize external costs. The Coase theorem (named after Ronald Coase who certainly fits in the Chicago mold) suggests that absent transaction costs, it makes not difference who we place the burden on to pay the external costs, that the parties will nevertheless negotiate the most efficient outcome. Of course, in the real world there are transactions costs, so you cannot ignore them. Therefore an enlightened Chicago school disciple who believes that the government should internalize external costs would look and see which party has the lowest transactions costs to fix the problems. Here that is the party creating the pollution. Therefore, one would adopt regulations having that person mitigate the deleterious effects of their polluting activity.

However, I do suspect that rather than mandating a specific method of mitigation, a Chicago school solution would allow the polluter to choose from a range of mitigation options (e.g. quit polluting, install pollution reducing equipment, buy out another polluting firm, plant a million trees, buy a rain forest and protect it from being cut down, etc.).

An interesting issue that you raise, and one that has, I suspect, been written on more thoroughly and more thoughtfully that I have done here. But quite interesting.