The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are barely three years away, so for your year-end enjoyment I am going to give you my rankings of the Top 25 Most Likely 2012 Republican Presidential Nominees.

Mind you, there are big question marks clouding the crystal ball. Most importantly, we simply don't know how good or bad the country and the Obama Presidency will look in a couple of years.

--Felix G. Arroyo is running for at-large city council in the 1st person plural.

--If you're having trouble getting ahold of the chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, it's because he has recently discovered Facebook, and is making friends by the dozens.

--While you're looking him up, feel free to friend me!

In a contribution-soliciting email from Sam Yoon to supporters this afternoon, the city councilor taps directly into the notion that he might run for mayor in '09. This is a good ploy whether you're running or not, but if you get this direct and then don't run, donors might feel duped. Here's the pitch:

A lot has been written about next year’s mayor’s race.

Last year, Tom Menino raised $1,171,133 in campaign contributions -- a fairly impressive sum when you remember that the maximum individual donation in a calendar year is $500.

He's a little behing that this year. Menino's report for mid-December puts him at $828,647 for the year through 12/15, according to my math. He had already hit the million-dollar mark by that point in 2007; he then added another $146k in the final two weeks of Happy Holiday fun.

Congressional Quarterly's latest roll-call vote analysis confirms yet again what we already know -- that Maine's Republican Senators are out of step with their party.

In fact, they are the most out of step, and are the only two to vote against their party more than they vote with it. Olympia Snowe voted with the majority of Republican senators just 39% of the time, and Susan Collins just 46%.

I agree with Dan that David Gregory's debut as Meet the Press host was inauspicious. Gregory did seem to go easy on Condi Rice. He also continued the Russert prediliction -- in both the interview and the roundtable -- of spending an awful lot of time reading quotes and showing clips in the process of getting around to asking a question.

Jim Ogonowski's bid for US Senate ended in embarrassment when he failed to get enough signatures to qualify for the Republican primary ballot. Today comes news that he's facing an FEC complaint and lawsuit over unpaid bills.

Roll Call reports that Jamestown Associates, a Republican consulting firm in DC, claims that Ogo owes them roughly $27,000 for an ad buy order back in May.

You probably know that Eric Holdren of Harvard's Kennedy School has been picked to be Barack Obama's top science advisor. Today Obama named a few more members of his "science and technology team," and guess what smarty-pants campus they all have some connection to?

Jane Lubchenco, nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, got her PhD in marine ecology from Harvard.

It is Friday afternoon heading into Christmas week, as the first flakes of a massive snowstorm start falling, so for all you Massachusetts pols out there: this is the perfect time to release controversial news that you don't want anyone to pay any attention to.

Oh, hey -- look what just showed up in my email inbox:

Moving forward in his efforts to reform the state’s transportation system, Governor Deval Patrick today announced the appointment of James A.

Some ten months after Deval Patrick took office as Massachusetts Governor -- in large part due to the hard work of grassroots progressives -- I wrote an article called The Left, Left Out?, reporting on how those very progressives felt like they were losing steam, and influence, as a movement.

Will something similar happen on a national scale with Barack Obama? My Portland colleagues Jeff and Deirdre do not intend to sit around quietly and then engage in woeful retrospection.

AG Martha Coakley has scheduled a 2:30 press conference to announce "the indictment of Richard Vitale on lobbying and campaign finance violations in connection with work on behalf of ticket brokers’ organization."

This can't be good news for Speaker Sal, at least in the short term. In the longer term, if he's got truly clean hands then this could be the best path to a full airing of the facts.

In the new issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print tomorrow, online now -- I have a feature story looking at some of the many, many reasons that George W. Bush has been, and continues to be, bad for the environment. I call it "20 Reasons The Earth Will Be Glad To See Bush Go," and I invite you to check it out.

I also encourage you to read the accompanying article by my colleague Mike Milliard, in which he analyzes the key environmental appointments that President-elect Obama has announced this week -- what Milliard calls Obama's Green Dream Team.

I've generally give short shrift thus far to the 2009 at-large city council campaign of Douglas Bennett, a young, enthusiastic Republican who works at the Suffolk County Criminal Clerk's office. Unfortunately, that will continue tonight, as I am unable to get to his Campaign Christmas Bash in Southie.

So, I want to encourage you all to go to the event for yourselves.

I whacked Sam Yoon around in last week's issue of the Phoenix -- not that I'm apologizing mind you -- so I'm glad to have a reason to speak well of the councilor and potential possible might-be mayoral candidate.

It also helps that in doing so I get to make fun of state lawmakers who are probably all dead by now.

Anyway, to the tale: You may have noticed that an awful lot of pols around town are putting themselves on record in favor of ethics reform these days -- and then skulking back inside their offices hoping that their newfound proactive public stance against corruption will help them, in case their names should turn up in any depositions or documents today.

I've been away on a little vacation to Mexico, where the pols had me yearning for some real action back home to write about. (There's some Solons Gone Wild to keep Herald scribes busy!)

Of course, back home our pols are mostly keeping prosecutors busy. Subpoenas, get your subpoenas here! The Globe reports that the COGNOS investigation has now reached the grand jury stage, so we can officially add that to the pile.