I think we should start drafting David Caruso, Mark Harmon, Dann Florek or any of the other older denziens of the procedural crime dramas to replace Thompson as the Republican candidate of choice.

Oh, those kids with their loud music and their Dan Fogelberg, their Zima, hula hoops and Pac-Man video games, the hippity-hop music and YooToobs on the Interwebs, it's all gonna come crashing down, and when it does, mark my words, you'll be regretting the day you didn't mark my words.

Thanks for playing, Mike, your consolation prizes include Lee Press-On Nails and Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.

Sorry, I think the last seven years belies this statement. Why start following the law now?

The letter "e" is medium gray-green. Always has, always will be. Thought I'd clear that up.

;)

The world is whatever they say it is, lalalalala I can't hear you laalalalalalala.

I need to see Brokaw taking Matthews down in real time.

I've known Bill Kristol was a smarmy, toothy-smiled huckster.

So a national point-of-sale tax would be just about the stupidest way to apply a transaction tax, because it hits only once in the cycle, and basic items are taxed the same as luxury items. A VAT works a little better, because the more processing an item requires, the more tax is built in to the final cost. Thus, fresh vegetables are taxed maybe once or twice, the components that eventually go into creating a Rolls-Royce are taxed multiple times. Since the rich don't necessarily care about the cost of their luxury goods, besides them being priced out of the reach of normal citizens, so much the better. And if fresh food items become substantially cheaper than processed foods, we have a win for the poor.

However, I don't know if the average American taxpayer understands exactly how much money it takes to run our government. Either way, a VAT or a sales tax will add substantially to the prices at the register. You may not see a drain on your paycheck any more, but you'll see a drain on your receipts.

It would be lovely if this administration was brought to heel on this and many other matters, but it looks like the prevailing attitude is to let them slide off into quiet retirement. A job well done for the PNAC.

Remember, any uproar over this would be contrary to the spirit of bipartisanship.

I'm really starting to like the idea of Mike Huckabee as the Republican candidate of choice. The Democrats could even run John Kerry again and win this one.

Anyone who saw "American Gangster" or "Man on Fire" knows that when Washington allows the nice-guy façade to slip, very interesting things happen.

Neither of those movies was perfect, but they made me sit up and take notice. All of the "nice guy" characters Washington gets to play suddenly looked like boring exercises to pay the bills.

Perhaps "angry black man" is a cliché, but when Washington does it, he's just a man, who has a vast inner fire he's trying to control, and his performance flows like water.

When reporters actually asked some interesting questions and followed up on the responses, or lack of response.

Of course, this guy will be canned from the White House press beat tomorrow.

The microscopic gays can 'flagellate' themselves.

That's just cilia.

...and then I saw the previews. God, what dreck! A friend of mine recoiled in horror. "I want the meat and bones, I want Beowulf, I want a good hack-n-slash history movie!" he cried. Oh, would that be true.

Angelina Jolie... gimme a break. When I saw she was in it, and as Grendel's mother, no less, I knew this was going to be a cinematic schlockfest on par with "Alexander".

If you want a decent movie with some gritty realism and nice period costumes, try renting "The 13th Warrior". No, it's not Oscar material, but there's very little CGI, and no Angelina Jolie at all.

I wanna see this in person.

It'd been so long since I heard the simple, plain, unvarnished truth that I got a little teary-eyed reading that. No, I'm not being snarky. I hope those assembled at the hearing were affected as well.

Time to start brushing up on the Suez Crisis or various other examples as the juddering British Empire finally disintegrated in the postwar years.

The next couple decades will be very interesting.

It's just gotten so tedious here lately. Nothing but shouting and BDS gone wild.

Once upon a time there were three billy goats, who were to go up to the hillside to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was "Gruff."

On the way up was a bridge over a cascading stream they had to cross; and under the bridge lived virtue001, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.

You and Bar unleashed this prodigy on the world. I hope those tears are bitter, bitter wormwood.

I guess Hannah Storm thought she was being dynamic and tough, bulldogging the tough answers out of a recalcitrant subject.

His "Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow" was the perfect blend of schlock and dramatic intoning of doom. I saw it in sixth grade and was highly entertained and just a little bit worried. Fortunately, Teddy Kennedy didn't get the nomination for President in 1984, which blew one of the main predictions out of the water. I kept wondering about the "Man in the Blue Turban" though.

If you're wondering why I was watching such things in class, I had an "art" teacher that was a little off. She believed in Nostradamus, that UPC codes were the Mark of the Beast, and if the Equal Rights Amendment were passed we'd all have to have unisex showers and bathrooms. By the end of the year I'd learned a lot, but not about art.