Totally agree -- if all these senators join the executive branch, Congress is going to have to meet in the White House.

However, maybe this says something about how screwed up the balance of power is after 8 years of Bush -- no one wants to be in the legislature anymore. But the legislature is supposed to be the stronger branch -- the more important branch -- in our system. When our best would rather be an assistant to the President than make law themselves, you know we've gone wrong as a country.

People have already made the most obvious point -- that it's hardly respectful of Christianity to sell junk in Jesus's name.

To answer, of course, is that the point isn't to celebrate Christmas -- it's to demand respect for Christians. The goal isn't to uplift Jesus's name -- it's to use His name to browbeat others.

Remember, it isn't just that retailers have to either celebrate Christmas or nothing...if this were about being respectful of Christ, then "nothing" would be an option. Surely Christ wouldn't care if a retailer chose not to celebrate his birth, right? But, no, celebrating nothing during the holiday season (or, worse, celebrating some other religion's holidays) is considered an offense.

Christmas MUST be celebrated...or else. But that's about brow-beating retailers into catering to Christians (to the exclusion of all others), not about Jesus's birth. It's about glorifying Christians, not Christ.

But you already knew that.

O'Reilly makes New York sound so...safe! But when I moved to New York, the first two weeks I was sure that the crowd of homeless men always gathering near my apartment was waiting to knife me.

Five years later, and I realize that they're from the local shelter, and are just in line for 99-cent pizza.

But put a camera crew down there, and you could easily make New York City look like something Kurt Russell would want to escape. Homeless guys gathered under an overpass, loitering, eating pizza...it's like Papa Johns delivered to the apocalypse!

Seriously, though, anything can be demonized, if someone wants to make a partisan point. Big whoop. I look forward to visiting San Francisco -- I'm sure it's both nicer and less fun than it looked in that clip.

It's an old story that girls say they want nice guys, but won't date them. People have been talking about this since at least James Dean, but probably long before that.

Guys trying to be attractive to women by playing to what they think women will like is also an old story -- as old as the peacock. That it's now an industry? Meh, that just says something about our interesting commercial culture -- not about gender roles.

It's a non-story to claim that this has anything to do with feminism or gender role confusion.

This is kind of a sad story. Seven years without romance of any kind, and during your 20's? Whether it's for "God" or because of something very bad that happened to her when she was 20, both of these people missed something beautiful about being a human being in the 21st century (romance, dating, heartbreak, even) -- and there's a sense in which that's very sad.

But there's another sense in which it's not important -- certainly less important than these "abstinence educators" have made it. If they want to live their lives this way, ok. Can't say I'd do the same -- but as long as they live theirs and let me live my (comparatively slutty) life, their choices aren't my concern. It's sad that they actually want to lead others into their lifestyle, but if those other people are down with it...ok.

In Georgia, in most years, the Republicans could run a communist goat for Senator and win -- and they still almost lost this time around. The Repubs had to go to overtime to beat a heavy underdog...and now they're crowing about how good overtime is treating them?

Similarly, in a decidedly red district in Louisiana, a Democrat had no business even being in the race, and the Republican still almost lost.

And we learned that Democratic voters (unlike Alaska Republican voters) will actually vote you out of office for being a crook.

These are the foundations for a Republican comeback?

As a conservative this line of thinking scares me. The first step for building a truly conservative party (one not based on theology or tactics or lies or any of the other non-conservative "neo-con" bullshit of the past 20 years) is to recognize that the party is badly off-track.

Rove's power comes from the lies, theology, tactics -- so he has to say that the party is still on-track. He has to stay the course. Which means, of course, blowing a little sunshine up Republican asses even in the darkest days.

So let him spin. If he fails, the Republican party will remake itself as a true conservative party, founded on intellect and ideas rather than tactics and theology. If he succeeds, the Republican party as we know it will slowly die.