All due respect to the President-elect and his like-minded Senate colleagues, but there have to be consequences. Whether this is admirable mercy or craven spinelessness, I don't know. What I do know is that we have a senator who has consistently broken his word and gotten away with it. Losing chairmanship of Homeland Security should be the least of it, and should be non-negotiable.

At his first press conference, President-elect Obama (and I DO love typing that, when all is said and done) said he's been talking with living ex-presidents and studying others. I suggest he have a talk with one Bill Don Moyers, and ask Moyers one question: What would LBJ have done? Obama could do worse by emulating that course of action, maybe without also holding meetings in the john or while skinny-dipping.

If I'd voted early in the morning, it would have been Bacon, hands down. Lunch or dinner, perhaps Fries though Bacon is yummy throughout the day.

Mmmmm...bacon.

I'll be looking forward to "Wonderboy" taking over for Incompetent Boob and his kleptocrat cronies. If they don't manage to destroy the works between now and January 20.

They've been rendered irrelevant with this election, they just don't realize it yet. If Penn and Schoen were so brilliant it would have been Hillary Clinton at the head of the Democratic ticket this year; her successes in the primaries this year was in spite of the DLC's help.

The best thing President Obama could do would be to nod politely at any advice the DLC gives him and promptly ignore it.

1. Popular vote margin: Obama by 5

2. Obama EV count: 353

3. Democrats: +25 seats in the House

4. Democrats: +7 in the Senate (CO, NM, NC, MN, AK, NH, OR)

5. Murtha retains seat (barely)

6. Tinklenberg defeats Bachmann

7. Chambliss retains seat

8. Franken defeats Coleman

9. Hagan defeats Dole

TIE BREAKER:

Race called for Obama at 11 pm Eastern, as soon as polls close in CA

Moreover, McCain knows it. Or else he's forgotten all about his and Obama's Senate colleague, Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders is the most liberal member of the Senate, and is, or has been, a self-identified socialist.

Hell, that was one of the reasons I voted for Sanders for Congress three times in the 1990s when I was registered to vote in Vermont.

One of the districts drawn when DeLay's cronies in the Texas Legislature decided to dismember Travis County, it runs from north Austin to the Houston suburbs. Democratic challenger Larry Joe Doherty was down only 4 to incumbent Michael McCaul in a poll published last week.

The wildcard will be Libertarian candidate Matt Finkel. It will be interesting to see if he can siphon off enough support from McCaul to throw the election to Doherty.

I feel no sympathy whatsoever for Sarah Palin. Yes, not-so-veiled comments about her grasp of the issues from within the McCain-Palin campaign are classless, but doesn't it confirm what we see every day from her on the campaign trail?

No, she and McCain are getting what they richly deserve. They are both nasty and contemptuous of people and ideas that do not fit into their picture of what the world should be. Sarah Palin sowed the wind and is reaping the whirlwind.

Yes, very well done. Harlan Ellison had Brokaw's number when he passingly commented, in "The Glass Teat," that Brokaw was one of several lightweight, interchangeable anchors in LA. This was ca. 1969-1970. Brokaw has acquired a veneer of gravitas since then but the lightweight anchor's always been visible underneath to anyone bothering to look.

They can't find a permanent host for MTP soon enough. In a just world they'd give it to Rachel Maddow who is what an anchor should be: Tough but fair (which is not the same as unbiased) and committed to bringing the truth to light. Not preserving "access." People who watch or listen to Rachel will know she tries to let both sides of an argument have their say; when one side refuses the opportunity--as the McCain campaign has done with her with one single exception--then they don't get their side of the story told. Access works both ways after all.

I ask this in the spirit of honest inquiry as someone who's most expensive regularly worn piece of clothing (not worn too regularly) is a blue sport coat I purchased from JC Penney's about 12 years ago for less than $100: Would it be reasonable to expect Governor Palin could be outfitted in clothing and accessories that total $1000 per outfit? The whole shebang, clothes, shoes, etc.?

If the answer is yes, then I don't think a clothing budget of about $25,000 would be unreasonable. She'd get about two dozen outfits at $1000 a pop. $25k is probably more than I'll spend on clothes in a lifetime but as several people mentioned, image matters in politics.

If the answer is no, what would constitute a reasonable budget for someone in Gov. Palin's position to outfit themselves? By reasonable I would mean that something most people would look at and say, "Yeah, that makes sense."

It's not a matter of a smart move, but necessary. It's not a matter of kicking Lieberman out of the Democratic caucus--he did that when he campaigned as and won a seat as an independent. Reid, if he is any kind of leader, will not only strip Lieberman of his chairmanships, he will assign him to the least relevant committee to Connecticut (something involving the prairies would be nice).

As for Obama, I hope he's learned a lesson about choosing his allies more carefully in the future, and I hope that every time he sees Lieberman standing behind McCain or Palin at a campaign rally with at idiot grin, nodding vacantly like some wrinkled bobblehead, it pains him just a little bit.

And for me as an Obama supporter, well, that's just a reminder that the candidate is not perfect and will need his feet held to the fire.