He may be a crook, but he’s our crook:

Moving to protect Majority Leader Tom DeLay, House Republicans want to change party rules to ensure that DeLay retains his post if a Texas grand jury indicts him as it did with three of his political associates.

An indictment is not a conviction. Tom DeLay hasn’t even been indicted yet. But current Republicans seem awfully willing to change the rules to get whatever they want, whenever they want it. Ultimately, that’s the problem with Alberto Gonzales and his torture memos. Tailoring the law to suit current convenience is no law.

Still trying to understand the election. Still trying to come to grips with an America so completely different from the one I thought I lived in.

A few more maps to try to shed some light. The population-adjusted cartogram in shades of purple is really interesting—why, there’s hardly any red at all!

Tom Negrino on Condoleezza Rice:

Rice was arguably the most feckless, ineffectual, and powerless National Security Advisor in modern history. Under her watch, America suffered the worst terrorist attack in our history. Did she work to find out why, root out the problem, and make sure that it never happened again? She did not.

Rice is an extraordinarily gifted person, but we all have our weaknesses. It’s uncanny that all her weaknesses seem to be in the area of her job.

Personally, I don’t think she is the problem. It’s hard to do good work providing advice to a man who doesn’t take advice.