What a blowout. Usually, even among true believers, you expect a party to rally around its presumptive nominee. But Kansas Republicans weren't buying, and they weren't content just to show a pro forma lack of enthusiasm. They crushed McCain like a bug, voting for Huckabee 60%-24%. Hell, "other" almost beat McCain.

There's no point in making too much of this. McCain is going to win the nomination and the party faithful will support him. But it's going to be a fight for McCain to win their love, and that fight might well keep him from broadening his appeal to the middle. Come November, liberals might not be the only ones asking What's the Matter With Kansas?

Are TV viewers' habits changing because of the writers' strike? Many reporters who cover entertainment — some at this very periodical — think they are, and that if the strike doesn't end soon, the changes will accelerate. One change they've noted is the ever larger number of TV watchers who are tuning in to coverage of the campaign (which already feels four centuries old). The switch is partly because scripted TV episodes are in increasingly short supply, but it's also because...damn, people are just interested.

The framework of religion and politics in 2008 will be dramatically different than in 2004. There are two things. First, what Time magazine called the leveling of the praying field. ... Democrats have been doing much more faith outreach than they ever have before, and even more than Republicans are.

But if the agenda of faith communities haven't changed, that wouldn't be of importance. The agenda has changed dramatically. Survey data show that of white evangelicals, half are conservative, solidly. So half is in play this time. They're not automatically liberal Democrats by any stretch. But whichever candidate speaks a moral language, addresses these issues, is going to have a resonance.

Even Bill Clinton knows he went a bit too far.

His L.A. church tour this week, coupled with the general feeling that an invisible leash has been put around the former president's neck, come as clear indicators of a big "whoops" revelation the weekend before Super Tuesday.

In the coming months, Bill will likely regain (almost) all the respect he lost over the last few weeks from Democratic voters who remember a very different, exponentially more affable man from the 1990s. He deserves that opportunity; his contribution to U.S. policy and his abilities as a statesman were too great during his presidency to burn him at the stake for getting too enthusiastic about his wife's candidacy.