She's starting to sound like her boss: short, vacuous sentences that might be offered up by someone many, many years younger:

"We have a big tent. And discussions like this are OK. They're good to have. And that's why the president was very happy to have them at the White House."

It was embarrassing to see a comedian who is letter-perfect and never breaks character completely lose it, though he struggled. That's one side of it. The other is that she should have taken herself back to the other side of the table. She made her point, it was hilarious to start with, and then it turned into dreary performance art, a sad tape loop. I felt embarrassed for both of them, and shame is contagious. You're no prude, and it has nothing to do with prudery--you responded quite naturally to two fabulous performers falling beneath their own standards, one by choice, the other as a sort of victim.

Mitch, try reading British newspapers which will explain the problem: the Iraqi Parliament gets so little done not just because of sectarian divisions but because they don't meet often enough.

Members are afraid of being shot, kidnapped or blown up, and so obtaining a quorum isn't easy. You'd think a Senator could at least have his staff inform him about this.

He forgot to add: "it is our policy not to comment on an ongoing investigation."

That's even more relevant than before, since everything's bound to be investigated now that the quisling republicans don't suppress the truth at every turn.

For 24 fans who thought nothing could ever beat the dismal cougar threatening Jack's daughter, this season has been a smack in the face with a wet and crappy script every week.

I don't ever recall wincing not just at the sentiments expressed, but at the dorky, rough draft lines themselves which are full of weird repetitions like last night's, "Well, that didn't go very well." I have counted at least several on each episode, as if the writers just don't care and aren't bothering to hide their well-paid boredom.

Questions, questions, questions: Was Audrey on life-support? There was a glimpse of a tube and some machine, but why were we spared details? How could jack 1) express love for anyone or anything when he's a killing machine and 2) first want her and then do a 180 and let her go? And why can the ENTIRE Russian defense system be compromised by one missing part, and if the Chinese have it, why do the Russians want to attack the US base? I still don't get any of that.

And going back a few episodes, how the hell could someone break into CTU through a sewer? Are they in the Paris Opera House? Nobody's ever gamed that possibility and planned accordingly?

You know how whenever CTU tracks someone and they go into a tunnel and we all know that a switch will be made, someone will be killed, or something will go wrong, but nobody at CTU ever guesses?

It's time for the show to head into a tunnel.

Was he a naturist?

Was he showing off?

Was he looking to hook up?

Perhaps Andrew Sullivan can dilate on the subject for Salon.

David, given that CM consistently demonstrates that he's an irresponsible, arrogant, ignorant blowhard who is abusing his position and making a small fortune while doing so, tell me why you want to like him. Or are you damning with faint praise?

Listen, anyone could write this sort of "X--it's not so great" dialogue posing as an insightful review. It's hackneyed and lazy.

I was a teen when the album came out and it was astonishing. I studied the cover endlessly and couldn't stop playing the album, the first one I ever really craved to own, as opposed to listening to my brother's extensive collection. The music was fresh, exciting, mysterious, funny, sexy, deep and just plain beautiful. Nobody had ever written anything like it. It was innovative.

Is that so hard to understand?

First of all, what's all this praise for his unique intellect? What on earth does that or most of the other praise have to do with trying to mitigate his sentence?

But secondly, and more importanly, I think they overdid it. Had the judge been wavering, this barrage of fulsome letters would have cinched a harsher sentence. It feels like an administration-backed fusillade.

Bernstein did absolutely nothing to sell his book when he was interviewed on CNN by Wolf Blitzer, who despite his name is one of the dimmest and least exciting interviewers on TV. The quotes flashed on the screen were written in leaden prose ("sprightly written"? Only if your standards for biography are quite low).

More revealingly, Bernstein claimed that Clinton had concealed her "essential self." It's an intriguing charge (though you wonder what politician hasn't done so), but when asked to explain what he meant, he could only blather about Hillary's childhood being far less idyllic than she claimed in her own book, and that there was perhaps physical abuse.

Having done publicity tours across the US and in Europe for my own books, I was surprised that Bernstein didn't seem to have any solid answers that could back up his charge. He could have been a first-time author unprepared for the spotlight. He came across as insipid, insincere, and incapable of analysis or reflection--little better than a talking head breathlessly filling us in on the latest Paris Hilton non-story.

On Salon she's called a meteor, in the Washington post she's called our contemporary Mona Lisa. These writers make me ill.

Paris Hilton typifies the Bowie line, "I looked in her eyes, they were blue but nobody home." There's nothing to say about her, but salon and other news outlets insist on writing about her even when they write about how silly it is to be obsessed with her. Enough already!