The Candidate Who's Always On

"For starters, even if congressional Democrats succumb entirely to self-serving partisan political machinations, they will almost certainly do a better job of reining in the White House than did the Bush-coddling Republicans. As previously noted, this president is too uppity to work well without strict oversight. Fortunately, it is in both the interest of the Democratic Party and the nation as a whole for Pelosi, Reid, et al, to put a hitch in W's swagger, reminding him early and often that his title is not, in fact, Caesar . . .

"In a related vein, the Democratic takeover will hopefully remind everyone around Washington that political power is cyclical. Every time one party gets a tiny toehold on power, the entire city starts babbling about sea changes and political transformations. (Gingrich's Revolutionaries would change everything forever! Rove's permanent GOP majority was on the rise!) Hooey. This is Washington. The folks in power can always be counted on to screw up badly enough, grow complacent enough, and abuse their power egregiously enough eventually to get themselves kicked out."

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

A very different view from National Review Editor Rich Lowry, who sees the Dems playing small ball:

"If Democrats want to be faster than Gingrich, they don't want to be as grandiose. This is shrewd. Gingrich mistakenly thought he could govern the country from the speaker's chair and disastrously overreached as a consequence. Nancy Pelosi's only early overreaching will be exhausting all of her party's popular, largely symbolic measures in a matter of days. What will Democrats do to fill the countless other hours before their term is done?

"Some of the Democrats' internal reforms are worthy, especially curtailing privately funded travel and enhancing the transparency of earmarks. It is telling that the late GOP congressional majority couldn't manage even these relatively tepid reforms, since some members of its leadership would have been practically immobile without a corporate jet. But all rules have their loopholes and the ultimate ethics measure is rigorous self-policing. Watch Pelosi ally Rep. John Murtha. If his friends continue to fatten themselves on federal money steered their way by Murtha and return the favor with campaign contributions, nothing will have changed in Congress except the party affiliation of the self-interested barons running the place. Prediction: They will.

"The Democratic substance is vanishingly thin. They will raise the minimum wage, but 29 states already have a minimum wage that's higher than the federal rate. The effect of the hike basically will be to give a small boost to the wage of teenagers working summers or after school. FDR would yawn."

Of course, 29 states acted because the Republican Congress sat on its hands for nine years.

Salon Editor Joan Walsh declares that the Democrats "are wrong if they don't take leadership in the one area where voters gave them a bigger mandate than the Contract With America ever had: ending the war in Iraq. That's why the Democrats' early timidity on opposing the president's war plans has been discouraging. At a time when only 12 percent of Americans believe we should send more troops to Iraq, far too many Democrats seem ready to acquiesce in what should be called an escalation not a surge. In December, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was open to backing the president's plan for a troop increase under certain conditions; on Wednesday, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin said the same thing. On the House side, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told MSNBC Thursday that he'd back a push for 20,000 new troops, though he added, 'We need to find out specifically what he wants to do with those troops.'

"Pelosi skirted specifics in her jubilant speech after being elected speaker . . .

"Pelosi is right -- it is the president's mess -- but she's wrong if she concludes the Democrats don't have to help clean it up."

She must be doing something right, though: "According to the results of a Rasmussen Reports national phone survey of 800 likely voters, released Friday, Pelosi's approval rating has jumped to 43 percent -- up 19 points from November."

When did the Huffington Post turn into a bulletin board for Democratic members of Congress? The day after the takeover, Arianna posted pieces by Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Jack Murtha, Jane Harman and Tom Harkin, among others. I guess that's why her conservative contributors have mostly vanished.

Arianna dishes on her D.C. party-going, and Norah O'Donnell's pregnancy.

London's Sunday Times has a piece headlined "Revealed: Israel Plans Nuclear Strike on Iran." But Israeli blogger Allison Kaplan Sommer, writing for Pajamas Media, does some debunking:

"Anyone reading the Sunday Times story and is waiting for the nukes to start dropping any moment can take a deep breath and relax. There are several reasons to doubt that such an attack is truly imminent or even imaginable.

First and foremost - one must consider the source of this story. The Sunday Times journalist in question Uzi Mahnaimi, is a controversial figure, who co-authored a book with Bassam Abu Sharif, former senior adviser to Yasser Arafat and PLO press officer.

"While some may believe he has actual military sources in Israel who use him to leak stories that won't make it past censors, others think he is used by foreign agents to push stories that embarrass Israel...

"One thing is clear: Mahnaimi makes a regular habit of reporting that Israel is about to attack Iran. If his reporting was accurate, Iranian nuclear facilities would already be a smoking ruin -- not once, but multiple times."