Heartfelt Den Mother greetings to all my readers.

I used to be one of them. I was a Democrat. I voted for Democrats. I campaigned for Democrats. I was an activist for various liberal causes (Take Back the Night, Amnesty International, anti-death penalty, etc.) and I protested a fair amount. Granted, some of them looked at me funny because I was also anti-abortion, making me somewhat suspect in the narrowly defined world of liberal orthodoxy. But for the most part, I was with them.

I don't remember them being so reactionary, so irrational, so hypersensitive. Above all, I don't remember them being such idiots.

"We are demanding an end to these immigration raids, where they are targeting brown faces. That is major, major racial profiling, and that cannot be tolerated," said Rosa Rosales, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, at a news conference.

"This unfortunately reminds me of when Hitler began rounding up the Jews for no reason and locking them up," Democratic Party activist Carla Vela said. "Now they're coming for the Latinos, who will they come for next?"

Um, Carla? "They" will "come for" the people who are here illegally. If you're legal, you have nothing to worry about, right? And the illegals they rounded up? They aren't being crammed into cattle cars and brought to the death camps where inhumane medical experience and/or a gaseous demise awaits them. They're being sent back to their own countries, where they should have stayed until they had permission to come to ours, just like generations of immigrants before them did. You've heard of the previous generations of immigrants, haven't you? They're the people who made this country great and strong by doing the right thing and doing things the right way. So get a grip and come back to reality, OK? Honestly, you sound like a fool.

And Rosa? "They" aren't "targeting brown faces" who are here legally. Citizen or legal resident Latinos didn't get arrested in the raid. There is a really good reason why those arrested weren't, say, Bulgarian or Danish or Thai or Zambian immigrants: most of them are here legally. You know that, of course, but you make us all doubt your integrity, not to mention your sanity, by pretending otherwise.

I realize that somewhere along the line, apparently when I wasn't paying attention, liberalism became all about reducing public policy debates to a race to see who could evoke the name of Adolph Hitler first and in the most illogical manner. So by that standard, Carla and Rosa (and Al Sharpton and Howard Dean), you win. But you no longer have my attention. Your lips are moving, but all I hear is, "blah, blah, blah." Actually, "blah, blah, blah" makes more sense than what is coming out of any of your mouths.

The line of applicants hoping to fill jobs vacated by undocumented workers taken away by immigration agents at the Swift & Co. meat-processing plant earlier this week was out the door Thursday.

So begins an article in the Rocky Mountain News about the aftermath of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on the company which had employed a large number of illegal foreign workers, including hundreds in one Colorado plant.

There is nothing glamorous about meat-processing jobs. By the same token, there is nothing demeaning or undignified about honest work. The applicants, whether citizens or legal resident aliens, who are waiting in line to grab the newly available jobs understand that. I'm glad they have an opportunity they wouldn't have had otherwise. They shouldn't have to compete for it against someone who has broken the law to be here.

Whatever doubts you may have had about just how smarmy the major media are can now be discarded. When U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) was hospitalized today for what early reports said may have been a stroke, the good-for-nothing major media jumped at the chance to make it a political story. Unfortunately, their "story" addressed what would happen if Johnson—whose condition was not known—were to die.

Among those at the front of the tacky parade was MSNBC.com, who got straight to what they obviously saw as the heart of the matter at the very beginning of their article:

The Democratic party's newly won majority in the Senate looked to be potentially vulnerable on Wednesday night following the admission into hospital of Tim Johnson, the Democratic Senator for South Dakota, after suffering a "possible stroke".

Also opening their story with the death-speculation angle was Reuters (the same "news" agency that recently came under fire for fabricated/falsified photos):

U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota was hospitalized on Wednesday with a possible stroke, drawing the concern of fellow Democrats preparing to take control next month of a closely divided Senate.

Fox News web site managed to rattle off six whole paragraphs without writing Johnson's premature obituary:

While the extent of his illness isn't known yet, Washington political watchers are already noting that a Johnson replacement in the Senate would be made by Republican Gov. Michael Rounds.

It took CNN.com 12 paragraphs, but they couldn't resist getting in on the action either:

Should Johnson not be able to complete his term, which ends in 2008, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, could appoint his replacement, which could shift the balance of power in the Senate.

We aren't talking about some left-wing whack jobs who joke about assassinating a Republican president or executing administration officials they don't like. We are talking about supposedly responsible news organizations. And they wonder why no one trusts them any more.

First Lady Laura Bush must have thought she had the perfect dress for the annual White House holiday reception. It was so perfect, in fact, that three other women showed up in the same dress.

Bush, of course, was home at the time and was able to pop upstairs and change, then laugh the whole thing off. But at least one person thinks the entire episode could have been avoided.

"They all should have congratulated one another on their good taste and the fact that they could afford the dress," Letitia Baldridge, Jacqueline Kennedy's Chief of Staff and White House social secretary, says. "Jacqueline Kennedy, when she was first lady made sure, and her couturiers made sure that nobody else wore that dress that season."

A common trait of Laura Welch Bush and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, by all accounts, is a strong love of and deep devotion to their husbands and children. The difference, of course, is that Jacqueline Bouvier was a child of privilege, educated in prestigious private schools, and a debutante who married a child of privilege in a lavish affair attended by 800 of the couple's closest friends. The couple lived on their families' wealth. Laura Welch was a child of comfortable but modest means, attended public schools, and worked as a public school teacher and librarian. She was married in a small, simple ceremony to a child of wealthy parents who nonetheless expected their son to earn his way. I doubt it ever occurs to Laura Bush to ensure that nobody else wears her chosen dress that season, and if it does cross her mind, she probably dismisses it as a ridiculous notion.

If Spiderman were gay:

A guy goes in an adult store and asks for an inflatable doll.

The clerk behind the counter asks, "Male or female?"

"Female," the customer replies.

"Black or white?" asks the clerk.

"White."

"Christian or Muslim?"

"What the hell does religion have to do with it?" the customer asks.

"Well," says the clerk, "the Muslim one blows itself up."

A priest and a rabbi were travelling on a plane. After making insignificant small talk, the priest turned to the rabbi and asked, "Is it still a requirement of your faith that you not eat pork?"

"Yes, that is still one of our beliefs," answered the rabbi.

The priest then asked, "Have you ever eaten pork?"

"Yes," the rabbi replied, "on one occasion I did succumb and tasted pork."

The priest nodded in understanding and went back to his reading. After a while, the rabbi asked him, "Father, is it still a requirement of your faith that you remain celibate?"

"Yes, it is," said the priest, "that is still very much a part of our faith."

Then the rabbi asked him, "Father, have you ever fallen to the temptation of the flesh?"

The priest replied, "Yes, rabbi, on one occasion I was weak and broke with my faith."

The rabbi nodded understandingly for an moment and then said, "A lot better than pork, isn't it?"

Q: How do you keep an idiot in suspense?

Q: How many Divsion I-A college football players does it take to change a light bulb?

A: The entire team, but they all get a semester's credit for it.

Q: What is the definition of a consultant?

A: A man who knows how to have sex 50 different ways but doesn't know any women.