Rep. Pelosi is making a political judgement call - one that, once again, trades in a kind of realpolitik. I say, let's take her up on this. Let talk of impeachment subside for the coming months.

Then, in a fit of realism, let's ensure that some other Democrat becomes Speaker of the House. Since Rep. Pelosi will have remained true to her word, she can enjoy her integrity, and the Democrat voters who have shown up at the polls to ensure a Democrat majority can work their own will on the issue of impeachment. They deserve to be represented just as much as anyone else.

That's just fighting realism with realism.

Your premonitions of consumerist collapse could be validated relatively soon. As we all know, the value of a home is whatever a buyer will pay in a free and open marketplace. So, home values can suddenly disappear, without leaving a trace of equity, virtually over night.

The real problem is one of perception. If people believe that their homes are valuable, in great enough numbers, then they are. But if that valuation becomes unstable, if a neighbor panics and sells for $100k below asking, then assumptions about equity can begin to accelerate toward the bottom.

Imagine what could happen. People with good jobs, who are perfectly capable of continuing to pay off that jumbo, might begin to worry, when the house next door sells for less than their own mortgage. The natural instinct will be to pull back. Stop making improvements. Stop taking risks. Stop buying that new car, just because they're tired of the old one. Add a year or two onto the length of time that people hold on to homes, autos, computers, cellphones and iPods, and the whole economy begins to seize.

It's irrational, but consumerism is inherently irrational.

At last! I now understand why women generally find (real) pornography so distasteful. They have mistaken goldigging for doctors, neurotic pensiveness, furtive romance in obscure locales, and much lip-smacking and thigh pressing for really hot sex. These things have nothing to do with pornography. Pornography is the art (yes, I said ART) of fetishising sexual acts. All the rest is filler.

It is also now clear to me why I've never been able to make it through a single episode of 'Grey's Anatomy.' It was just too soapy, too 'General Hospital' for people who work, too, yechy! The characters are all self-obsessed, over-privileged whiners, who can't get laid without causing someone else to get used, hurt, or die on the operating table. It all smacks of lechery and purile dime-store novels, with pictures of big breasted nurses staring salaciously at the young, firebrand doctor across the cover.

Ah, well, it's too late for the writers to have an "E.R." moment and drop an airplane on the whole bunch of them! But a guy can wish!

For all of my life, the Middle East has been in crisis (always, ALWAYS, a CRISIS!). The issues are always argued (in America, at least) from the point of view of the poor Israelis, who have sought refuge in their own country, only to be assaulted from all sides by the hateful, vindictive, and terrorist Arabs that somehow came to surround them. The Jewish State, the promised land, was given to the Jewish people by G-d, himself, as bounty for the obliteration of the Canaanites, millenia ago, and a few hundred years of settlement and autonomy by a bunch of Arabs weren't going to get in Israel's way of perfect security and quasi-theocratic domination.

This argument will never justify anything to anyone but the Israelis and the fundamentalist Christians who are heaven-bent on fostering the "end times." As they have sown, so shall they reap.

It is impossible to have a justified defense of Israel that occurs only in the present moment, that fails to take into account the thousands of dead, wounded, and dispossessed Palestinians and Lebanese.

Israel has bought itself nothing but fear for another generation.

I've just been responding to a lot of people over on the TNR site about my rather bland view that Israel cannot long survive if it aggressively invades every country surrounding it, when the people of those countries get upset with being aggressively invaded. Aggression is hardly a winning strategy, when you are in a country the size of Connecticut and you represent a distinctly minority interest. Inevitably, this very simple, factual argument is met with the trump card of responses: anti-semitism.

I cannot defend myself against the charge of anti-semitism -- despite my knowing my own convictions prevent such a feeling, without exception -- without somehow legitimizing the accusation. It's a classic witch-baiting argument. Any denial of the charge somehow is taken as proof of the charge.

The charge, as far as I can deduce its ineluctable confines, consists of the following argument: Israel is a Jewish state; therefore, anyone who takes issue with any policy of Israel must wish Israel did not exist; furthermore, anyone who wishes Israel did not exist, must wish Jews did not exist; thus, anyone who takes issue with Israel, must wish Jews did not exist.

This is a consistent syllogism, though its thesis is fallacious. Nevertheless, it effectively silences those of us who take pride in our liberal inclinations and are, thus, wounded by attacks on our humanism.

In short, it is a Rovism. It obscures the truth of an argument by slandering the person making the argument in such a way that any denial can be construed as confirmation of the slander.