This is the kind of thing that happens to a self-destructive party -- it loses its ability to filibuster the Senate when an old respected moderate like Pennsylvania's Arlen Spector decides to switch parties. It was partially an act of political survival, of course, a kind of Joe Lieberman in reverse. Spector is up in 2010 and and there was no way he was going to win a GOP primary.

As Tom Edsall over at the Huffington Post aptly points out, one of the more absurd charges against the Obama administration comes from the right-wing, which accuses him of destroying American business. On the contrary, this president, unfortunately, is the biggest friend the banks and corporate America have ever had -- if giving them hundreds of billions counts for anything. And ti does.

I read your comments in the essay "Man Bites Newspaper."
I just see something different. Here in Wisconsin local newspapers have
been bought out by large media corporations like Gannett which are now
failing. I've seen any number of fair quality papers going to dust
because they have become trivialized rags used to push insert

We've been writing all along about how the financial crisis was going to bite sports and how the Yankees would be fan Target Number 1, at least in the anger department. More confirmation today from Tom Edsall, over at the Huffington Post. The average fan is now completely priced out of attending major league sports. And the backlash is just beginning.

One would think so. Yesterday he seemed to countenance talk of Texas seceding from the union because of the Obama administration's plans for more government involvement in the economy and higher taxes.

One can certainly be a critic of the new administration. But it's this kind of talk that will take the GOP straight down the road to oblivion.

Before Helen Mirren’s portrayal of a stoic, unsentimental Queen detached from the realities of her people in the late 90’s, there was this portrait of an engaged monarch, at age 31, from a 1957 Christmas broadcast (the first to be televised):

“I hope that this new medium [television] will make my Christmas message more personal and direct.