The crisis in the housing market is spilling over into other sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, consumers, who are up to their necks in debt, didn’t bail out the economy over Christmas with more spending. And gas prices remain high. Bush may lose a few percentage points in the polls. The wealthiest Americans might not make much money in the stock market. But millions of other Americans will lose their homes, their jobs, and their health insurance. Just as the benefits of a growing economy are unequally distributed, so too are the costs.

I'm sorry, but it so far past time for Detroit to start seriously focusing American ingenuity on producing the next generation of fuel-efficient vehicles. Discovering a way to slash not just this nation's but the entire world's dependence on oil would be a feat worthy of several dozen Nobel Prizes.

Many departures from "traditional" marriage have been for the good. But the same changes that have made marriages fairer and potentially more rewarding for both partners have made marriage more optional, requiring partners to negotiate more than in the past. The multiplication of new options, combined with the rapidity of changes in gender roles and social values has had destabilizing and sometimes troubling results for the organization of interpersonal obligations. Trying to revert to antiquated and unfair traditions is not the answer.

If this presidential race is anything like the 2004 contest, candidates will spend more than 66 percent of their ad money and campaign visits in just five "battleground" states, and 99 percent in 16 states. According to organizations like FairVote and Common Cause, the reason for this gross incongruity is our much-maligned electoral process, by which a candidate needs only 270 electoral votes to become president. It is this process that led Al Gore to lose in 2000, even though he won the popular vote by some 450,000 votes. And if the last two elections were any indication, next year's race could maddeningly boil down to the electoral votes of one key state, just as it did for Gore in Florida and John Kerry in Ohio.

Iowa gave Americans a populist moment, a "change" moment. And that is a healthy development in our politics. The status quo will now fight back. Power does not concede anything without a fight. So Clinton's campaign on the Democratic side will turn ugly, as will Mitt Romney's campaign on the Republican side.
We can only hope – for the sake of the country, and the world beyond – that this "change" moment will continue.

Paul's supporters lay most of their claim to a place in the debate on his mammoth fundraising numbers. To me, the bigger issue is that Paul is consistently outpolling Fred Thompson, who is being allowed into the debate.
Paul's out because he's not a Fox News Bush-clone. Say whatever you want about the guy, Fox News shouldn't be able to silence him because they don't like his views.

Just about any nuclear program can be negotiated away.
Iraq gave up its nuclear program (as well as its other WMD programs) years before the U.S. invasion of 2003. Libya began steps to give up its nascent program as early as 2001, and completed them in 2003. Iran suspended its program in 2003, and North Korea, after years of diplomatic ineptitude on both sides, decided to give up its program (if not necessarily all of its weapons) earlier this year.
The lesson seems to be that states considering nuclear proliferation also consider those programs to be negotiable.

The contrast between the two parties was stark. Mitt Romney spoke often about the future, but his core message was about the past: that he was the candidate who could reassemble Ronald Reagan's alliance of social, economic and foreign policy conservatives. Moreover, the emergence of Huckabee and the reemergence of John McCain as a powerful contender in New Hampshire forced Romney to turn early to a negative campaign aimed almost entirely at keeping his party's conservative base away from his opponents. He has appealed to yesterday's coalition in the name of old orthodoxies.