Let Nancy Pelosi go full speed ahead with her "First 100 Hours" agenda.

Day One: Put new rules in place to "break the link between lobbyists and legislation."

Day Two: Enact all the recommendations made by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Time remaining until 100 hours: Raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, maybe in one step. Cut the interest rate on student loans in half. Allow the government to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for Medicare patients.

Broaden the types of stem cell research allowed with federal funds, "I hope with a veto-proof majority," she added in a subsequent Associated Press interview.

All the days after that: "Pay as you go," meaning no increasing the deficit, whether the issue is middle class tax relief, health care or some other priority.

60-70% of Americans want Federal funding for more types of stem cell research. A bill even passed both Houses earlier this year that would have done that and it would have limited embryonic stem cell research to embryos that were going to be DISCARDED by fertility clinics. Of course, Good King George, for the first and only time since he's been in office, decided to exercise his veto power. Okay, so let's assume he vetoes every one of Pelosi's stated priority agenda items. Even our lame MSM couldn't possibly ignore Bush vetoes and the Republicans will therefore be even more screwed in 2008 than they were in 2006. If, on the other hand, Bush decides (or is persuaded) that vetoing popular legislation would be political suicide for the GOP, then we're ALL winners.

There'll be plenty of time for investigations and subpoenas (and an olive branch right in their eye), but the first priority ought to be legislation that will get this country back on the right track. Take the high ground and prove to the people who voted for you that the vindictive, mean-spirited politics and corruption that have dominated Congress for the last few years were the hallmark of the Republicans, not the Democrats.

Every time this bumpkin is invited on to the Today Show or Good Morning America to present the "Democratic point of view" I just cringe. The man is barely coherent, much less articulate. Compare his appearances to those rare occasions when they'd invite Howard Dean on and the difference was like night and day.

Maybe the fact that the networks seem to have annointed Carville as some kind of official spokesman for the Democratic party has gone to his shiny pointy head. How else to explain where he even gets off bad-mouthing Howard Dean much less making it his mission in life to replace him with Harold Ford. (Maybe Carville's in a snit because Dean consistently made him look like the jerk that he is.) In any event, it's time for Mr. Bumpkin to slink off into the sunset with his lovely wife Cruella DeVille.

The petty part of me thinks it's poetic justice that the Dems are going to give their GOP counterparts a taste of their own medicine but what happens if Bush decides to veto all of those "first 100 hours" pieces of legislation? Gerald Ford, trumpeted by some as a bi-partisan president, vetoed 66 pieces of legislation and darned few of them were overridden. I can see the same thing happening all over again if the Democrats start this new session of Congress by stifling the opposition. They may get a few sound bytes on the evening news but at the end of the day their well-intentioned legislation won't become law.

How predictable that the Republicans in Congress are already whining about how they're not being allowed to debate these agenda items. Call me crazy, but haven't you clowns already "debated" these items more than once in the last 6 years? (Or, to be more accurate, shut down debate on most of these items?)

One or two items, like embryonic stem cell funding, you were actually in favor of, so what's left to debate? Others, like the minimum wage increase, you've fought tooth and nail for years. Unless you've changed your mind about all the things you've been adamantly opposed to for the last six years, we the people would like for you to just shut the hell up and let the Democrats start doing what they promised us they'd do. (And if you decide to vote against these pieces of legislation, may your sorry asses get voted out of office in '08 or '10.)

Thanks to George W. Bush, could we really take the moral high ground on this? Those pictures of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib would, by most definitions, certainly qualify as a "spectacle" and at least there was the pretense of giving Saddam a fair trial. That's more than the Gitmo detainees have gotten and, as far as we know, none of them are guilty of killing even one person, much less hundreds of thousands.