I'm a Chicagoan. I'm very happy that Foster won Hastert's old seat and hope this gives him a platform to win a full term at the next election. And if he sticks to his campaign rhetoric, I will be ecstatic.

But I do have to caution about reading too much into this - his opponent has run for four elections, spending millions of dollars each time, and has never won. The guy is so disliked he probably couldn't get elected to dog catcher.

The country is clamoring for a new direction, but it will be a battle every step of the way to push the nutcases out and get some people of democratic principle and with backbone into office.

Punt.

This makes me sick. Florida deliberately flouts the DNC rules, thinking DNC will blink. DNC doesn't blink. And Florida says, hey, you fix it.

This is just the type of thing that disgusts me about politics.

Nice to know that blatant untruths, like calling Obama a muslim, are "out of bounds" - but only apparently because they have been poll tested and don't work.

Write to your Congress critters. When you get the auto reply about their commitment to other issues, respond that while those initiatives may have value, this is the most important issue of our time - who we are as Americans and what we will permit our elected officials to do in our name. Repeat until the message changes.

Write to your newspaper, your television news outlet, your magazines. Ask them to begin covering the stunning admission that the President personally endorsed the development of a torture regime by his most senior aides and from within the White House.

Tell your friends what you're doing and ask them to do the same.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

How could there not be a single question on the Bush torture relevations? The moderating was shameful and made me wonder - why do television networks get to host these? In the primaries, wouldn't the party be better served by buying television time and having someone from the party ask questions? Or even a host who knows how to ask questions making some weak effort to prove their journalistic bona fides by posing gotcha questions? For god's sake, James Lipton would be better at this then Charlie Gibson.

Every time I hear that accusation - including from Hillary supporters on the stump with her, which I find bizarre - I want to ask the person when they last visited Starbucks. Seriously - how many lattes does Starbucks sell every day? This is elitism?!?

Put David Brooks in some bowling shoes and let's see how he does. If he can break 100, I'll buy a copy of his book.

I burst out laughing when I saw Joan's article - with a link to GG's article about David Brooks featured to the side. Joan used exactly the trick that GG refutes in his column - the unsupported statement that the citizenry agrees with her view. Hysterical. Here's to hoping GG takes on Joan in a column.

I cannot begin to express my disappointment in Obama's statement. The right answer on this - the principled answer - is such a no brainer. That a former constitutional law professor would come out on the issue this way just makes me sick.