Each day of delay brings us closer to reopening a dangerous intelligence gap that we closed last summer.

The only intelligence gap I see is the one between the widening awareness of the American electorate and the numbing stupidity of the people that employ the likes of Tony Fratto. That's a gap I can get behind.

Congratulations on a great accomplishment!

Seriously, is there anyone who can explain why it is that, in Harry Reid's Senate, Tom Coburn's holds possess impenetrable omnipotence while Chris Dodd's (and other Democrats') are treated like mosquitos to be swatted away?

Surely this isn't hard to explain. Reid is a conservative Democrat from a conservative state. Giving this guy an anti-gun control position to take a stand on is like giving him candy.

But there's a larger question going begging here, and who am I to shy away from answering? The question is, who is Harry Reid listening to? Surely it's not the Republican party — the precipitous collapse in Reid's popularity among Republicans coincides with his coming squarely into the crosshairs of the White House spin machine. They have it in for him, and not in a "let's pretend we hate him to fool the liberals" kind of way. As the numbers stand now, Republican hostility will cost Reid his job.

And surely it isn't the telecommunications industry — or at least not just. If it were, why on Earth wouldn't Reid have forced a vote through anyway? Who cares what Dodd thinks? Dodd doesn't pay the bills.

I have a radical alternative. Reid is listening to us.

He and the Democratic establishment have been listening to us, in fact, for a generation and for most of that time (sorry, it's true) we haven't been saying anything more audible than a whisper. Having grown accustomed to that silence, they've gotten into the habit of not paying attention — anyone truly worth listening to has a lobbyist.

Now, abruptly, a "done deal" in Washington has come up against last-minute, unscheduled popular resistance. Not just Reid but Democrats across the country got the message, got their heads together, and decided that while this is all very perplexing and will probably blow over in a few months, maybe it would be best to let things cool down before taking action. Let the spotlights wander off a bit and get back to business.

The thing to understand is that for these guys a little sound and fury doesn't mean anything if it doesn't translate into the political hard currency of any democratic republic — votes. The interweb, the tube collection, the blogvolution, whatever it's called will only matter to them when they see

When we choose to speak we have a loud voice. Right now we've cleared our throats, and Congress has fallen silent. They're waiting to see if we were just making noise, or if we actually have something to say that they need to listen to.

What will it be?

From the article Andrew Leonard cites:

[Gross] was highly critical of the complicated financial instruments that have exacerbated the credit squeeze, saying the trend of over-leverage was a "dying concept" that would "lead to an implosion at the edges . . . of this new financial marketplace".

Hasn't over-leverage of some sort or another given us virtually every financial meltdown of the past century? Bill Gross doesn't seem like a dumb guy, so it's reasonable to assume that he means something here other than the obvious no-brainer interpretation that the article is representing.

Assuming that it's the nature of investment managers to do whatever they can get away with, what seems to fluctuate over time is how willing we are to impose oversight on their industry. It may be that what's dying is the concept that "anything goes" is a good way to run an economy — but I'm sure it will rise again on the next full moon.

Anyone who raised their children to get their core sexual values from television celebrities has already gone way down the wrong path, and can only hope that they've all along been somehow instilling better sense in them subliminally.

There's a certain respectability in the opinions of members of Spears' own cohort — they have a lot to lose from getting pregnant at their age and if they're vocal in their disapproval of her having made a mistake then more power to them. (It's interesting that none of the young women in the Times article have issues with Spears' sex life — their problem, projecting their own fears, is that she wasn't careful enough. It's the accidental part, not the pregnancy part.)

It's this whole business about conflating her character with her that's really disturbing. Actors are not their parts. Real lives are not necessarily the same as the myths that inspire us. Why does Spears' personal life have any bearing whatsoever on the legitimacy of a particular character she plays? Part of being a teenager is that you start to make adult decisions — sooner or later the disconnect between her own life and that of her character was going to become apparent.

If she wants to have a baby, more power to her. Maybe she was careless. Maybe she has her sister's self-destructive streak. Regardless, I'm glad Nickelodeon is hewing to the "no there there" line. Hopefully the rest of the world will take the hint.

You forgot Sarah Hepola and her recent article on absinthe-only education.

Safe travels.