Something labeled "Subject: Fwd: Some Differences Between Hamas and the Nazi Party" showed up in my inbox Monday night. The forwarded e-mail came from a loved one who'd skimmed its contents and thought it might prove useful if I decided to write about Israel's offensive in Gaza.

"Some Differences...

This blog post, if it happened at all, was not supposed to come this soon.

Thanks to a series of happy flukes, I have just started in on two books: Boggs: A Comedy of Values by Lawrence Weschler and The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson....

The question is right there in my title, but I'm going to repeat it: What would Obama do if Obama was mad at Obama about Rick Warren?

Warren is the anti-gay-marriage pastor who Obama picked to lead a prayer at the presidential inauguration. People are pissed. People I know....

Monday's Washington Times offers a little taste of the brain poison we'd be forced to choke down every day from every newspaper if the government actually did control the media.

Here, if you can believe it, are the opening paragraphs of a story headlined "Bush, Cheney comforted troops privately":

My wife and I just left a movie theater where we saw Sean Penn's vital, vulnerable, brave, complicated performance as Harvey Milk.

For those who haven't seen the movie, a taste ...

Rather than use...

I cannot be bought. Not for less than 20 bucks.

So there's no need to worry that my judgment has been tainted by the fact that a publisher sent me a free review copy of a $16.95 book. Trust me when I say that you should consider giving

The very first reader of my previous HuffPost piece interpreted some quotes I used so differently than I'd intended that I worried I'd been criminally clumsy in the way I'd framed another person's words.

Three facts made my worry more sickening:

1) The person I'd quoted is a writer...

Barack Obama, who saved his presidential campaign by talking to us like grownups about race relations, could fortify America immeasurably by talking to us like grownups about terrorism.

This is something to do now. Or very soon. As a former senior official in the Department of Homeland Security

Can we at least aim before we throw more money at the economic crisis?

It seems a small thing to ask. But, as I made clear in my previous "Bailout Brainstorm," I have no economics credentials whatsoever. So maybe there's some fancy, Ph.D.-level reason why the future of the...

INTERVIEWER: Do you agree with the Clouseau doctrine?

MCCAIN STRATEGIST: In what respect, Charlie?

INTERVIEWER: The Clouseau -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?

MCCAIN STRATEGIST: His world view?

INTERVIEWER: Well, yes, in a way. The Clouseau doctrine, enunciated December 1976, in the Peter...

The second-best news I heard during these last few historic days didn't make tears stream like the moment Obama soared above 270, didn't cause me to go slack on the couch with some pride-relief hybrid like when the president-elect's victory speech reached out to "those who are huddled around radios...

No group in America would have more trouble adjusting to an Obama presidency than the Bush Liberals.

With the president's approval rating so deep in the tank, you might question whether there really is such a thing as a Bush Liberal. Let me explain.

This isn't about ideology or policy....

Happy Halloween. Nice costume, buddy.

Now take the damn thing off. You don't get to pick your own costume.

Nobody does. Except John McCain. He gets to pick for all of us.

Ask Rashid Khalidi.

Khalidi is a big-time professor. Which is to say that, until quite recently, he was...

Like a washed-up boxer who forgets to punch his opponent in the testicles or a figure skater who misses a chance to bludgeon her rival's kneecap, there's something so disillusioning about Sarah Palin's failure to accuse Barack Obama of hating the U.S. Constitution.

I still think it will happen....

A Republican almost made me burst into tears. In a good way.

The Republican in question is former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, who chaired the 9/11 Commission. Here's part of what Kean said:

"When we talk about the balance between civil liberties and our preparations to keep ourselves...

You are sitting in Mass when your phone rings.

Vibrates, actually. Thank goodness. Because this cell-phones-in-church business is a pet peeve of yours. "That better be God calling," you always think to yourself when this happens to someone else.

Your own phone ordinarily spends Sunday mornings in the car. But...

Reading The Dark Side, as I just have, forces a stomach-turning, jaw-clenching reckoning with Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, CIA kidnappings, secret prisons, waterboarding, and a shameful list of other soul-shattering abuses legalized by John Yoo, David Addington, and the rest of the Bush-Cheney lawyers who forcibly sodomized our Constitution after...

Senator McCain has suspended his presidential campaign. Perhaps for good. Instead of campaigning, he seems now to be traveling the country trying to make sure that no movie version of President Obama's life will ever win an Oscar.

A generation from now you can imagine the taunts from the movie...

Exciting news: Sarah Palin will break the glass ceiling.

And the glass floor. The glass walls, too. Same with the glass roof. Every brittle bit of the gigantic glass house she calls home.

Because Palin's throwing stones now. Big stones. Nasty, spurious stones. The exact kind of stones that

BOB COSTAS: And we are back. More coverage of the decathlon coming up in just minutes here. But first we're going to quickly send you out to a place they used to call Nowhere, the tiny Alaskan island of Gravina where the gold medal in the men's floor exercise...