There is almost no substantive policy difference between Perry and Hutchison. So she's more Dallas and he's more east Texas redneck. But I would reckon they completely agree on 95% percent of the issues, and are just degrees of more or less conservative on the issues that divide them. The real question is why there are no talented democrats in Texas who can mount a credible challenge to the GOP Juggernaut.

"Seems that there was more than a little harsh words directed towards Bush."

Gee, and that probably didn't start with the impeachment of Clinton over a sexual act and the whole Florida debacle of 2000. I think the screaming mobs chanting "sore loserman" and outright attacks against democracy in Florida kinda set the tone for the decade. Of course, had it not been for 911, Iraq, Katrina, et al I don't think the vitriol would've been nearly as ugly as it got on the left.

I personally believe in rehabilitation. But as far as I can tell, Chris Brown hasn't done anything that proves he's any sorrier than any other wife beater when the "incident" in question is over. First, he beat this woman unconcsious. Read the police report and look at that photo -- it was a brutal beating by any stretch of the imagination. Then, he cops a plea and is actually praised by the judge in court for telling the truth. Then the story goes away for a news cycle or two until Brown makes a court-ordered (or not?), stepford-like mea culpa that is so generic it could be about anything from stealing a dollar he found in the street to parking in a no loading zone. Look, I'm all for this guy having a life after making a mistake. But shouldn't he have to - once and for all - tell his fans specifically what he did and why he's sorry he did it?

Gluing the locks on a women's clinic is not vandalism. Nor does even resemble the honorable tradition of non-violent protest. Its part of a broad pattern of intimidation of doctors and patients practiced by the "pro life" movement. I personally think that if national pundits like Bill O'Reilly (in transcripts now conveniently scrubbed from the Fox News web site) were not allowed to brand a doctor performing a legal procedure "Tiller the Killer" then perhaps we'd see the "pro life" movement for what it really is: fringe and dangerous.

If we only had a dollar for every writer who's said their idea is wholly original. That they don't watch television or read the work of their peers. That in the age of the Internet, they were not in any way exposed to the genres in which they write. I'm not sure what a 34 year-old writer (who would've been about 24 when Buffy first appeared on the WB) expects that we have been smoking.

But no one really believes Ms. Meyer (and by extension Ms. Hardwicke) has not been exposed to rich literary culture behind horror and vampires. The mythology surrounding vampires is pretty specific in many regards (drinking blood to live, aversion to sunlight, etc.). How does Ms. Meyer even know what a vampire is? Did she look it up on Wikipedia (err, the dictionary)? Or did she invent them herself?

After retaking the house and senate, democrats have been ineffective at building bi-partisan consensus on any issue. And they have failed at circumventing anything on the Bush agenda like a good opposition might want to do. Even if they claimed temporary victories on various pieces of legislation, they have basically given Bush everything he wanted: endless war, spiraling national debt, a worthless dollar. No matter how good Obama might be in six months, he can't save us from the last eight years of unopposed GOP agenda.

to make ShawnWM shut the hell up? It's like watching a monkey masturbate, only more disturbing.

As a child of the 70s, thank goodness I won't be around in a hundred years to read about the issues on which this election was "decided." It doesn't make any sense, even living through it like we are.

Exactly why I look forward to your column, Mr. Smith. Thanks!

who can you trust?

"I'd rather be MC Hammer than Nine Inch Nails." Reznor spent the last month bitching about how badly the Saul Williams experiment went. Now he goes and does it with his band's album? More power to him, but Radiohead could afford to do this since they actually sell albums. NIN hasn't been relevant, much less successful, since the mid-nineties. Unless American music tastes slide back a decade or more pretty quickly, I think a more copies of this will be stolen than paid for.

from this day forth, that all politicians must stop their speeches at point of reference and attribute all borrowed words and phrases to the person who originally spake them (including date and or page number), and by holding their arms aloft move each hand's index and middle fingers up and down and say "quote" when the word or phrase begins and "endquote" when the word or phrase ends, thus heralding a new age in attribution in spoken political discourse.

You must not have been alive very long. DAT was a next-gen format that never caught on beyond deadheads and people who do field recordings. Mini-Disc was next-gen attempt at shrinking the CD. HDCD is a more-or-less failed next-gen format. ADVD is a great format that has mostly been used to re-master old albums into 5.1 surround sound. But it's applications probably don't go very far. Hell, those are just the ones I can think of in two minutes.

If your knowledge of failed next-gen formats ends with 8-Track, you pretty much haven't listened to music or watched a movie since 1978.