After eight years of Bush and Congress running amok, and without control of the White House or either house of Congress, the Republican party not only out of ideas but out of anything meaningful to say.

It seems that the only spokespeople the GOP has left are surreal True Believers from the fringe. CPAC and others claiming our President is some kind of foreign Muslim infiltrator... Jindal and his ilk mocking spending money on studying volcanoes or funding the most elemental needs of humanity... the NRO slobbering over a 2012 Palin/Santelli ticket...

I am wishfully thinking that the GOP will implode upon itself and go the way of Lyndon LaRouche, and that after a brief era of one-party Democrat rule the progressives will splinter into a credible second party, and we'll have two left-of-center parties. I don't really believe it will happen, but I can dream.

Specter's campaign cash is the personal property of his campaign, which attaches to him personally. He can't just dip into it for personal purposes, but it's up to him alone what political purposes it goes to support.

If he switched parties, he would lose all the Republican campaign money and PAC support, but then he would probably find that the Democratic party would recognize his seniority and give him coveted committee seats and plenty of dough.

But it is still extremely rare for a Senator to pull off a switch of party loyalty. For the opposite case, look at Lieberman, formerly a Democrat, now an "independent Democrat" who has stabbed his own party in the back in so many ways, but is still allowed to caucus with the Democrats and hasn't gone the whole way and switched teams even though he endorsed McCain and spoke at the RNC. Because at the end of the day, he does support most major Democrat initiatives (if not some of the most important one). The latest example being sponsoring the D.C. voting act.

Ms. Traister, your college Judy Berman already spilled enough electrons on this self-referential media-analysis nonstory over at Broadsheet more than a month ago in a thoroughly adequate blog post.

By the way, I don't mean to be rude, but you're being paid for your writing and this isn't even a blog-post, it's an article, so here's a free tip for your professional development. Click the following Google link:

http://www.google.com/search?q=traister+yucky+site:www.salon.com

"Yucky" is not a word that belongs in a journalist's diction, and it's time for you to quit the habit.

Same goes for (ew!) icky. And that yucky parenthetical (ew!).

Aren't writers expected to have words to describe "things I don't like or disagree with" other than infantile interjections of disgust? ACK!

I think Congress is strikingly mute on abortion, as has been pointed out e.g. with respect to the confirmation overtures of Sebelius for HHS.

Of course Vitter and DeMint will continue to rail against this abortion and Planned Parenthood, they come from the frothy right wing of GOP and have nothing else to offer. In a better year we'd have a plurality of Congress pushing for the bill, not a couple of hardline Senators.

I'll bet these bills never see the pale light of the Senate floor, it would be a complete waste of time for them to make it out of committee.

By "better year" I meant "better year for the GOP" or the likes of DeMint or Vitter, THEY would have a plurality. In a better year for America we finally have some sane people at the tiller.

Nice troll from Brightstar, but I do think this article is doubly-wrongheaded, since the Gates Foundation *does* have a major population initiative that has been very effective and at the same time attacks global warming. Less overpopulation = less pollution and global warming.

This also fills in gaps in government programs in an effective way. Global warming is far too huge of a problem for one man and one budget to tackle. It is awfully small to attack Gates for not directly working on a problem that he has little chance of directly making substantial progress on. It will take government action, regulation, intervention and funding to stop slow global warming, and the Gates Foundation focuses on programs more than lobbying.