What I found most interesting on Schilling's list was the absence of the Mariners. The Mariners (tied with the Tigers) had the best non-playoff record in the American League. They didn't make the playoffs because of entirely dreadful starting pitching. They play in one of the best pitcher's parks in baseball. I'd like to think Seattle isn't exactly hell to live in either (better than Milwaukee, certainly).

You all have an Uncle Charley. Someone who helped shape your political beliefs. Someone with whom you agree 100%. Someone who is always right when he knocks an idea, and is always right when he finds a candidate lurking in the weeds. Good ol' Uncle Charley.

But you'd never vote for Uncle Charley for President. Uncle Charley would make a lousy President. Uncle Charley never has run anything, or if he did (like that auto parts business back in the 70's), he ran it into the ground. Uncle Charley never has to make tough decisions because he's usually so far outvoted on everything that he can always preserve his perfect record of being right because none of his actual ideas ever get tested by anything. He never has to hire anyone because no one puts him in a position where he has hiring responsibility. And that means of course he never has to fire anybody. Uncle Charley can therefore never be accused of hiring the wrong person or firing the wrong person.

Uncle Charley always seems so perfect.

My Congressman is Jim McDermott, and he's a lot like Uncle Charley (other than that nasty thing with the ethics committee and the lawsuit over those tapes). Dennis Kucinich is a lot like Uncle Charley, too.

I suspect there are a lot of people who though George W. Bush was their Uncle Charley. Nice guy. Has all the right positions (if those are the kinds of positions you like). Only that particular Uncle Charley had to deal with 9/11 and suddenly you saw the flaws in voting for someone just because you like him and you agree with the positions he has on the issues that don't matter (like health care--Dennis Kucinich as President would have as much of a shot at getting his health care proposals passed as Bush did his Social Security proposals, so his position on health care is irrelevant). Because when the chips were down, we had an Uncle Charley who listened to all the wrong guys, made all the wrong decisions and put us into this mess. Nice Dennis, for all his heart being in the right place, is not someone I'd trust in the same circumstances.

One serious constitutional issue we confront right now is the blurring or even crossing over between what should be executive power and what should be legislative power. Rep. Ellison can cry all he wants about these detentions (and I hope he continues to cry for them from his safe Minneapolis seat as long as they're in prison), but he has no power to free them.

Meanwhile, we have Rep. Kucinich, who has the platform of the seemingly endless series of Presidential debates, where they spend most of their time debating health care and other issues that are beyond the President's power. He gets some free time to say what he wants in each debate, and while the freedom of these journalists is something the next President can accomplish at 12:01 pm on January 20, 2009, with the stroke of a pen, why isn't this something he talks about?

Margalis: "There is no reason multiple states can't team up for flood control."

The Constitution (Article II, Section 10, Clause 3: "No state shall, without the consent of Congress, . . . enter into any agreement or compact with another state"

Because I think any Democrat could beat him. The country, W.'s success to the contrary, is not willing to be a Protestant evangelical theocracy. These folks who believe that the purpose of the federal government is to impose their moral sense on the American people don't understand this country in the slightest.

Mugglenet.com, for instance, published books of speculation about what would happen in the last few books before they came out. They relied on a lot of material in the books, but they were essentially the authors' own work. They made it very clear they were unofficial works, they had covers that clearly did not invoke the covers of Rowling's works, and they used their own authors words.

Rowling has been very generous in crediting her fans for their support and their enthusiasm. That doesn't mean that she has to stand by and let anyone exploit her copyrights. That is how she might lose them.