Actually, those aren't bad ideas. Sure would have been nice if the candidate had used them in his campaign.

Since January, everyone's taxes went up by an appreciable amount, spending also increased by an appreciable amount and the GOP was the instrument by which both happened.

Canny? Sure, if their intention is to manage our nation's economic decline and make a nice comfortable nest in the minority for at least a decade. That, essentially, is what they've done because the President and Harry Reid have thrashed them in every fight since the election.

The very best part of that piece is right at the end. "Father Raftis".

Perfect.

You're a lot wrong here, for two big reasons. RGIII isn't some third-round draft pick, or even a high first-rounder. He is three first-rounders and a second-rounder. The Redskins, quite literally, mortgaged their ability to draft star playmakers for next season and the season after in order to get him. RGIII is perhaps the most valuable asset the Redskins have had in 30 years. Shanahan's job, as coach and front-office guy, is to protect that investment within the reasonable bounds of what can happen in a football game.

Second, the Redskins were playing with house money. No one outside of the hard-core fans expected the team do to better than 8-8. Heck, I thought .500 was a reach and I've been a fan all my life. They made the playoffs. Great. Build on it. Shut his down so you can.

If somehow you make it to the ending of The Thin Red Line, you will find the most confusing float-away ending I've ever seen. I literally (in the real sense, not the Joe Biden sense) sat through ten seconds of credits because I was too baffled to stand up.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Buy-back programs spend public money and have no effect on crime rates. They do get guns out of people's hands, but often those guns are 1) legally-owned anyhow, 2) junk guns that couldn't be used in a crime or for any other reason other than display, 3) occasionally guns used in a crime for which the buy-back program is an excellent way for a criminal to dispose of evidence.

Wrong. Taxes were one level, now they are higher, with full Republican approval. That is a tax increase.

Look, I get it makes us feel better if we apply vast quantities to loser talk to make it seem like we didn't get our tails kicked by Barack Obama and Harry Reid again, but that's what happened. The fight for higher taxes started last year during the Debt Ceiling debacle. That's when the House Republicans rolled over while under the delusion that Mitt Romney could wield the threat of tax hikes as an election-year weapon. He didn't and what they set in motion then happened this week.

Here is what happened:

• The Republican Party not only failed to cut spending but, in fact, increased spending.
• The Republican Party raised taxes on people simply because they "made too much" and became the other party of class warfare.
• The Republican Party raised taxes on everyone else, too.

That, by any conservative standard, is an abject failure for which everyone involved should be deeply ashamed.

My crazy Fox News prime-time schedule:

• 6-8 PM: Special Report (extended by an hour to allow for more in-depth reporting and longer feature stories).
• 8 PM: The New Media News Hour with hosts Michelle Malkin and Stephen Kruiser. (Blogs, videos, podcasts. Introduce new people to the rest of the country)
• 9 PM: Sean Hannity
• 10 PM: On the Record with Greta Susterin (wherein Greta goes back to more straight crime reporting and discussion of legal matters)
• 11 PM: The Craig Ferguson 90-Minute Rumpus Show (Okay, it's a working title, but the goal here is to have Ferguson bring his late-night CBS show to Fox as-is).
• 12:30 AM: RedEye (Finally, the show gets a steady gig in a time slot where more people can watch it).

Also, TheSophist, you hit a point I've addressed a couple times on my own. I actually worked out what I could do with a $500K yearly budget and still believe it's a viable plan.

So, so frustrating.

No, Adam. Just no.

Obviously, David Brooks missed the last day of the convention. Nearly every speaker in the early part of the program talked about community and compassion. He must not have heard how Mitt Romney, reached out to members of his community whose children were sick, dying, or missing and showered more compassion on them than any government program ever has.

I'd like to ask Mr. Brooks if compassion only counts if it comes in the form of a government check delivered by an unnamed bureaucrat or if we're allowed to count it when it is delivered by a friend, or a man who would over the course of many days become a friend through shared hardship

The obvious benefit of the Greenwald hire is economic; the Guardian gets 12 or 13 writers for the price of one!

Peter, I think the most interesting thing about Douthat's columns is that he completely believes the Democrats' "Paul Ryan is an ideological extremist" line. You see that he does when he writes that Romney has "chosen to raise the ideological stakes".

I'd ask Douthat, if I could, how Ryan ups those stakes any more than, say, Barack Obama's scurrilous ads or Harry Reid's outrageous lies? Ryan's plan, derided by the Democrats as "extreme" (yes, that's the word they use) takes about 18 years to balance the budget. We don't get spending to a GDP percentage near that of our historic revenue level (18-ish percent) until, I believe, 2050. Does that really constitute a "raise" of the "ideological stakes"? If Douthat honestly believes it does, then he needs to recalibrate his view of both conservative and progressive ideologies.

He chose poorly. Sometimes people have to take decisions quickly, without all the information they need to get the best answer. Lots of smart people said we needed TARP. They were wrong. Paul Ryan was one of them.

We will never have politicians who vote the right way or do the rights things all the time. Paul Ryan, however, has done right far more often that he's done wrong, unlike the men he and Mitt Romney want to replace.

Perhaps I've set my standards too low, but I'd forgo a Washington full of "men and women of virtue and leadership" to get a Washington full of men and women who are simply likeable. My Senators -- Mikulski and Cardin -- look like they've recently bit into a fresh-picked persimmon. I see dozens of whiny, haughty, self-involved, or drama-laden members of Congress pretty much every week. I long for a stand-up guy or a good and genial woman in the bunch, but I don't see many.