Since it's the Friday after month's-end, the new monthly unemployment numbers were released today. Which adds another bar to the "bikini bottom" chart. Now, the measure of how many people know exactly what this means is exactly the measure of how well Democrats are getting the "jobs" message out. Because, as I've said previously, this chart should be front and center in the Democrats' campaigns this year.

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Democrats had a pretty good week last week. As attention shifts away from unpronounceable volcanoes (more on them in a moment) to the struggle in the Senate over Wall Street reform, the two parties almost seem to have changed their normal methods of playing the political game. The Republicans are all over the map on the issue, and extremely worried about the impression by angry voters that they are doing Wall Street's bidding -- as well they should be. Republicans are, one day, loudly denouncing the reform bill, using their standard Big Lie technique... and then, the next day, saying a deal is very close, and even voting for strong reform in committees. Republicans (some of them, at least) are chickening out of the upcoming partisan battle the Republican leadership seems to want over the issue (more on chickens later on, too). Democrats have, so far, managed both to admirably stay on message and showed an amazing amount of backbone in countering specious Republican arguments. And, so far, polls show the voters are solidly on the Democrats' side on this one, and just not buying what Republicans are telling them. As I said, we seem to have entered BackwardsLand, or something.

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I've written here before in defense of Sarah Palin, and since the two just recently shared a campaign rally stage, I thought it'd be timely to write at least a partial defense of Michele Bachmann today. Because a recent comment by the Minnesota Representative has gotten a lot of ridicule from the left side of the blogosphere, but nobody bothers to point out that she's actually right in what she says about the U.S. Census Bureau and Japanese internment during World War II. This is intellectually dishonest, I feel, which is why I have to make the attempt to defend her words.

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Phelps is in the news today because a Maryland family brought a lawsuit against Phelps, seeking damages for Phelps' actions at their son's funeral, and the U.S. Supreme Court has announced it will hear the case's appeal. By doing so, they open up the door to refining what is and what is not acceptable speech allowed under the First Amendment to the Constitution. While the Supreme Court may instead rule much more narrowly (on the case itself, without addressing the free speech issue), the question is worth discussing: should what Phelps does be legal?

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The first privacy issue comes from an interesting story earlier this week about how some states are considering banning the release of recorded 911 emergency calls to the public (or -- more to the point -- to the press). This is an interesting First Amendment hair to split, because a reasonable case can be made both ways.

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But what really worries me about the new rules for corporations and unions is what could happen out of sight of the voting public. I can foresee two ways for such invisible influence to happen, although there may be others I have not thought of as well, I admit.

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Welcome back to my annual outright theft of The McLaughlin Group's awards categories for the past year in politics. What's that? We're sorry, but out lawyers insist we instead use the phrase "my annual legally-allowable constitutionally-protected parody" instead. So sorry. For those of you who missed it, Part 1 of this column ran last week, on Christmas.

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This column is really a second installment to yesterday's ("How To Not Give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed What He Wants"), where I took a look at two of the criticism's against Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to try the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in federal civilian court rather than in a military tribunal.

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Attorney General Eric Holder has caused an uproar in some circles over his announcement that the self-confessed "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be tried in federal court in New York City, mere blocks from where the World Trade Center's twin towers once stood. To be honest, I was surprised this was even controversial, for a number of reasons most people (on either side of the issue) have largely ignored. Today I will examine two of these, and tomorrow I will take on the biggest elephant everyone seems to be missing in this particular room.

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"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party."
Of course, this really should be (in today's inclusive society): "Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party." But what it really should say is something more like: "Now [...]

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