The liberal blog community just had the limits of its power defined. I expect the argument about whether the Alito cloture vote represents an improvement over the Scalia vote or an embarrassment (original) will continue for some time. Either way, a lot of it was about the 2006 and 2008 elections. Meanwhile, over on the other side of the aisle, the conservative blog community has decided to set up their own power-defining moment. The Republican members of the House vote for their floor leader on Thursday; it’s a three way race between Roy Blunt, John Boehner, and John Shadegg. Shadegg is the reformer. RedState wants Shadegg (original), Glenn Reynolds is making non-endorsement endorsements, and so on. ...

Everyone and their cousin is gonna be linking to this, but here’s the Newsweek article (original) on the internal struggle over presidential powers in the Bush administration. It’s a blatantly biased article. Illustrating an investigation of internal debates with a picture of an Iraqi being tortured? It’s my bias, though, and I find the article strokes the pleasure centers of my political brain.

The Brattle Line (original) is the Brattle Theater’s new web board. I’ll be poking around there.

This morning I recorded the first chapter of The Man of Bronze (original) onto MP3. Audacity is perfectly functional and perfectly free. My USB headphones worked fine too. So I guess that means I can podcast, huh? I want to get a couple of chapters ahead, but then I’ll start weekly Doc Savage podcasts, a chapter at a time.

Kip Manley (he’s back!) notes that Tove Jansson’s comic book work will be coming into print in the United States soon. … why, the Moomins, of course.

A History of Violence is nearly simplistic. This is the American fable of the vigilante. A man’s family is threatened. He takes action, reluctantly. The villains suffer. They refuse to repent. Perhaps the man is tortured. He wins out, and his family is safe. Or: he wins out, but his family is already dead. “I’m Batman.” “I’m the Punisher.” “I’m Mad Max.” The alternate is perhaps the easy out from a narrative standpoint. It’s cleaner, not having to manage both a vigilante life and a family life. It’s just as easy to imagine a scenario in which a man’s family is threatened, but not killed; it’s simple to imagine a threat of sufficient magnitude as to generate this sort of violent revenge. We’re heartless crafters of fiction. Kill one member of the family, and leave the rest alive. ...

You can do worse than the lurid fantasy worlds of Games Workshop when it comes to novels. I blame it on Britain; like 2000 AD comics, Games Workshop’s Black Library seems happy to allow authors to indulge their hallucinogenic whimseys as long as the canon is consistent. And the canon is a fever-dream to start with, so you’ve got a rather fertile base for excess. What more can one ask of RPG novels? ...

Speaking of sports — actually, first, a note on my previous. When your favorite athlete thanks God for the win? That’s probably not a casual reflex. Read this piece on sports as an avenue of proselytization. Anyway. Dr. Z writes a column for Sports Illustrated on the NFL. Fun, breezy writer; well respected, he’s been around forever. Here’s a throwaway comment from him this week: “Come in Mike H. from Wellington, New Zealand, do you read me, over? No, he doesn’t read me because I’m speaking to a piece of paper with writing on it, which shows how much I’m slipping. One more word, before I get to his question. Can you exert any influence to get the Flaming Redhead and me citizenship papers, plus help in opening an account at the Bank of NZ? If they ask what I can do, tell them I can cover rugby and do a really snappy column about the great NZ wines. Last I heard, New Zealand is a country where they don’t torture people, right?” ...

Pat Robertson said that God was punishing Sharon (original) by sending him a stroke. We are, of course, horrified. What a cruel thing to say! Then again, it’s in the same logical category as something that’s said every day, broadcast on TV regularly, and so on. “… and I thank God for helping us win this game.” Which is equivalent to “I thank God for making sure my opponents lost the game.” Which means God’s making choices about who wins and who loses. He’s gotta choose sides there. ...

My lovely sweetheart is going to be in Boston from January 20th to January 30th or so; the first weekend we’ll be mostly down on the Cape, but other than that we’re free. I’m still gonna be working that week, which means offers of daytime company would certainly be appreciated. Also we probably oughta do a dinner Monday night or something like that. Who’s in?