This scenario is right out of an O'Henry story. No, not that it's simply LIKE an O'Henry story, I mean O'Henry actually WROTE the quintessential story of two working women, best friends, competing for millionaires.

It's called "The Trimmed Lamp"--well worth tracking down. I wonder if the current scenario will end the same.

Looking for self respect? Than forget about trying to be a hero and concentrate on trying to be a mensch.

I’d hate to be judged by my library only, since I keep a shelf of “Bunk, Bull, Deceit, and Obfuscation” titles just for kicks. I define a dealbreaker book as one which contains ideas that no one I would ever respect would espouse. Ayn Rand is the quintessential dealbreaker author, but I’d include any books attempting to prove NASA conspiracies, intelligent design, pyramid power, or the real existence of angelic interventions.

Taking pride of place on my shelf is Von Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods” (about purported ancient astronauts), and right next to it is “Crash Go the Chariots” which is a fundamentalist Christian refutation of Von Daniken.

That said, my favorite “deal-maker” book is “The Joys of Yiddish.” If you love this, you’re 99 and 44/100s of the way into my admittedly goyish heart.

News accounts of this have been somewhat vague about which is actually bigger, a colossal squid or a giant squid.

From what I understand, colossal squid are "squat" and heavy, while giant squid are comparatively more slender, but much longer, with full lengths around 60 feet.

It's hard to compare the average size of the two species in any event, since so few intact samples of either have been measured.

I like big squids . . .

The Federalist Society, where I went to law school, was pretty much the functional equivalent of Slytherin at Hogwarts.

Today's ruling is grand, but it should have 9-0, not 5-4.

Wickedly funny, and I've already ordered the book from Amazon (my last purchase was Sedaris' latest, wouldn't you know).

If you like this kind of humor, find a copy of Paul Fussell's "Class: A Guide through the American Status System," which skewers (with unsettling accuracy) the gamut of American classes, not just the (generally white) upper middle class. Like the book being reviewed here, Fussell's tends to infuriate people who just don't get the joke.

Fussell's book came out in 1983, but substitute Dubya for Reagan and angels for unicorns (in his discussion of prole decorating motifs) and it's as fresh as Steve Jobs introducing the latest iPod. His take on politicians who wear American flags on their lapels is prescient.

My kids and I love Kiki almost as much as Totoro. A great list, and I'm enjoying reading the new suggestions.

A few more ideas:

The Blues Brothers. Great music from an era before "urban" always meant rap, and before "musical" connoted "High School Musical";

One, Two, Three. The rapid-fire early Sixties comedy starring Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive in a recovering Berlin, and a fine way to introduce your offspring to Billy Wilder's films.

"Country First" as the convention theme? C'mon!

I'll bet you a nickel they were going to go with "America First" until someone told them it had already been used. Surely McCain is old enough to remember these things?

My first thought on reading about Todd's phony story was not that it was a "fake hate crime," but that it was an updated version of something much older and darker in American history, that reached a crescendo and thankfully began to fade before the Civil Rights era.

Between 1889 and 1932, there were over 2900 lynchings of African-American men in the United States. Many of them originated in circumstances very similar to what we see here today: dubious accusations of assault (sexual and otherwise) made by a white woman of limited credibility and perhaps marginal social stature against "threatening" (e.g., 6'4") black men for reasons that on examination appear to be both psychologically and politically pathological.

Sometimes the woman had been genuinely assaulted, sometimes not. In many cases, though, once incited with racial passion, mobs were not particular about which black men they lynched. In these lynchings, the accusations and the result often served political purposes and the accusers were perfectly aware of, if not counting on, the explosive racial consequences of their accusations.

Do I think Ms. Todd's story had its roots in some sort of attention-seeking mental illness? Probably. Does this give her a pass on what she tried to do (i.e. to help the Republican candidate by inciting racial tension against his opponent)? Absolutely not.

It is encouraging that the current generation of police investigators and the media approached Todd's claims with the appropriate skepticism. It certainly wasn't always the case not too many generations ago.

(For those interested, there's a classic study of all 20 lynchings that took place in 1930 that investigates how each incident came about: Arthur Raper, "The Tragedy of Lynching," published in 1933, but available as a reprint from Dover.)