Actually, its only real success was as a stimulus for D.C.'s beleaguered Catholic schools -- they, not the students, proved to be the vouchers' biggest beneficiaries.

Shhh... don't tell the Democrats, but that was the whole point!

"School choice" = "tax money for religion" and education be damned. It's a code, and perhaps Dems are wising up to it.

George W. Bush didn't start being responsible for things that happened during his Presidency until 8 months after he entered office.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, is responsible for things that happened two years BEFORE he entered office.

It makes so much sense!

He is everything that's wrong with our system, but he will never, ever, ever be voted out. He's got too much money and too many powerful allies. He's the Don of what is our corrupt political system here in NY.

I wrote to him about the Mukasey nomination. His response was laughable, including the following:

We now have the potential to improve this critical department. There is virtually universal agreement, even from those who opposed Judge Mukasey, that he would do a good job in turning the department around. Indeed, my colleagues who opposed his confirmation have gone out of their way to praise his character and qualifications. More importantly, Judge Mukasey has demonstrated his fidelity to the rule of law, saying that if he believed the president were violating the law he would resign.

Nice, huh? He also justified voting for a torture advocate because he was co-sponsoring S.1943, which would ban torture. Except (and I pointed this out to him in another letter) he and I both knew that letter was going nowhere.

So to recap: When Schumer had the ability to actually do something about torture, he demurred. When he had the opportunity to make a show of caring about torture, he jumped at the chance and lauded that as his anti-torture bonafide.

The guy is scum. Too bad he's got a lifetime appointment.

The very first takedown of CNBC - last Wednesday, was it? - was very funny and extremely well done. Then CNBC responded, and Stewart's response was a little less funny and a little less well-done (and in fact inaccurate, which Stewart acknowledged later).

Then Stewart beat on a crying child for 25 minutes last night, which wasn't fun to watch in the least. Yes, there are fundamental truths here, and yes, a lot of damage has been done. But Cramer is clearly not the person to answer for the misdeeds of the entire financial sector. He was the fall guy, and good on him for taking the fall, but HE CAN'T CHANGE ANYTHING. If he changes Mad Money in the way he promised to, nobody will watch and he'll lose his show. A net gain, until you realize it'll be replaced with a show that's just as bad.

If this interview served to illuminate the truth to all of us proles, that's great. Unfortunate that Cramer had to be the target of our ire, but so be it. The positive effect can come if we all learned something, rather than just wallowing in our Schadenfreude.

if Bush had gone on Leno and said this, there would have been so much venom spewing.

If a confirmed asshole acts like an asshole, we're going to treat him like an asshole. If a nice guy acts like an asshole, we're much more willing to consider it a slip-up and give him the benefit of the doubt. And that's the difference.

That information is unknown to the author, as well. It doesn't matter if they're in the deck or in someone's hand, unseen cards are treated the same for the purposes of calculating the odds.

(Caveat: If you put someone else on the flush draw you can probably consider 2 fewer hearts in the deck. But if that person were also betting the pot odds would get better and better for you, especially since your flush would most likely take the whole pot.)

Don't you feel represented? I mean, you have just as much right as anyone else to "speak." Wait, you mean you don't have any money?

I guess some people are more equal than others.

Can we PLEASE have publicly-funded campaigns? Please?

He's choosing the latter, but in the process he's making sure everyone else loses. To anyone who wanted Specter to be a swing vote, this should be a wake-up call. He's going to vote with the worst of the conservative ideas, just so he can ensure making it to the general (and losing).

Outstanding.

If he remained moderate and had picked a sane VP candidate, he would've had a much better chance.

Read the last paragraph.

Deficits never matter until they come due.

Frankly, the national debt is the biggest security threat to the United States going forward. That said, we need to reset the economy in order to get to a point where we can start worrying about the deficit.

Of course, the problem here is that once the economy is back on track, we'll find some crazy discretionary thing to spend money on, and any idea of paying back what we've spent will fall by the wayside. So it has been, and so it will always be. Until the US collapses under the weight of its own debt.

Read the last paragraph.

Obama's plan is going to somehow ground all those medical helicopters?

Maybe he'll dismantle them for scrap metal to build all the socialism reeducation camps.

Someone get Malkin on the phone!

WAAAAY too much.

She looks just as fake as she speaks and acts.

We do use false names. Just like Adolf Hitler (born Chaim Liebowitz) and Hugo Chavez (born Kotsuke Yamagatchi).

Why will no Democrat run against him?

Somehow the parties are always successful at bullying people into avoiding going against incumbents. For the good of the country? Fuck no! For the good of the party!