There is, of course, one sure way to make certain that the person stepping up to the table to get a ballot is the person whose name and address are on the rolls: have him or her show a valid photo identification card, such as a driver's license or passport. These days store clerks often ask for one when presented with a credit card. We show them at airports. Despite cries by some that requiring voters to show IDs is an invasion of privacy, there is no valid reason for not doing so. Unless, that is, one wants to encourage fraud.

September: The View host Rosie O’Donnell compares conservative Christians to Islamo-fascists: “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state.” In response, roving bands of Presbyterians attack the New York subway system, Methodists issue a blistering fatwa, and Episcopalians blow themselves up in a nearby shopping mall after consuming their last Starbucks frappaccinos.

October: John Kerry: “If you make the most of (education), you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” Sen. Kerry claims he botched the sentence and meant to say that if you do your homework and make an effort to marry wealthy women, you can do well in life.

November: Nancy Pelosi claims, “The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America’s children.” Her “clarification” muddies the water even more, “I don’t mean to imply my male colleagues will have any less integrity ... but I don’t know that a man can say that as easily as a woman can.” Victim groups want to cry foul, but women, men, and “the children” disagree on whom she insulted most.

December: Rosie O’Donnell, after accusing Kelly Ripa of being insensitive to homosexuals in November, characterizes Chinese television broadcasters’ speech as “ching chong chong chong chong.” When asked about it on her blog, the “Queen of Nice” responds, “go f—k urself.”

Even in the United States, most people did not have a telephone or a refrigerator as late as 1930. Today, most Americans living below the official poverty level have not only these things but also color television, air-conditioning, a microwave oven, and a motor vehicle.

Even as they define deviancy downward, many of the progressive intelligentsia define poverty upward, so that people with amenities that even the middle class could only strive for, two generations ago, are still called “the poor” or the “have-nots.”

Except for people who can’t work or won’t work, there is very little real poverty in the United States today, except among people who come from poverty-stricken countries and bring their poverty with them.

SCENE TWO: Ford is a student-athlete at the University of Michigan. His sophomore and junior years, Ford is a second-string centre, and the team goes undefeated and wins national championships. In 1934, his senior season, Ford becomes the starting centre and is voted the team's most valuable player -- quite a distinction for someone playing such an unglamorous position -- but the team loses every game but one. The most memorable game that year is against Georgia Tech. Tech refuses to play if Michigan fields its star -- and Ford's close friend -- Willis Ward, who is black. Over protests from more enlightened students and faculty, Michigan's coaches bench Ward. Ford has considered refusing to play if Ward was kept out of the game; but at Ward's urging, Ford suits up and helps lead the team to its only victory of the year.

"...every President since Nixon has skated away from office after having committed overt and covert crimes, we have on our hands, here, a situation that I am forced now to call: "Bloody George."

Bloody George definitely has a valid reason for believing that he is above the law, because no president in our history has had to pay for any crimes that they have committed. Wars keep occurring because the ones who entangle our citizens in these bloodbaths for profit leave their office and go on to lead comfortably splendid lives surrounded by people who love them.

Tens of thousands of young people who had plans for their futures and loving families who wanted them around until they were 93 (at least) were sentenced to early graves by politicians who receive no sentences for their earthy transgressions."

...note that "tens of thousands of young people" were killed because of these politicians who "skated." That can only be a reference to Vietnam. But, as one of the Buzzflash commenters points out, this ruins Sheehan's theory that it's Gerald Ford's fault:

”JFK started our involvement in Vietnam, and this involvement was accelerated by LBJ, Richard Nixon was in office when he inherited our involvement in Vietnam, JFK and LBJ are your war criminals."

On Christmas day, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report which indicates Iranian oil production is about to plunge.  Iran currently earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. Oil profits account for about 65 percent of Iranian government revenues.  But Iranian oil exports could decline by half within five years, and virtually disappear within ten, said Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The effect on Iran would be catastrophic. Thanks to mismanagement by the mullahs, and corruption on a scale so vast as to make even an Iraqi blush, Iran's economy is already a basket case. According to the CIA World Factbook, more than 40 percent of Iran's people live in poverty; the unemployment rate is 11 percent (more than double that for people under 30), and the rate of inflation tops 13 percent. Oil exports are just about Iran's only source of foreign exchange.

Impending fiscal catastrophe could make the Iranians more tractable, Prof. Stern thinks. If the U.S. can "hold its breath" for a few years, it might find Iran to be a much more conciliatory country, he told Barry Schweid, the AP's diplomatic writer, in an interview.

But one of the big reasons why oil production in Iran is declining does not suggest a happy outcome. Iran is spending so much on its nuclear program that next to nothing is being invested in modernizing oil production. Though the West has made it clear it will assist in developing nuclear energy if Iran will forswear its nuclear weapons programs, Iran would rather have the nukes than the carrots the West is offering.

So rather than come begging with his hat in his hand, it's more likely Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will seek a Saddamite solution. When Saddam Hussein invaded Khuzestan in 1980, he didn't say he was doing it for the oil. He was asserting Iraq's historic territorial claims to the region, and acting to protect the Arabs in the province from Persian oppression. Or so he said.

And if Iran should take aggressive action against its oil rich neighbors, it will, ostensibly, be to protect Shia minorities from oppression by Sunni overlords. Or so Mr. Ahmadinejad will say.

In all the Gulf countries, there are Shia Muslim minorities who perform the kind of scut work blacks used to do in the segregated South of half a century ago. In Kuwait, Shias account for 25 percent of the population. In Saudi Arabia, Shias are just 15 percent -- but a majority in the coastal province where most of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves are located.

Religion and national pride fuel Iran's aggressive foreign policy. Islamic extremists think Islam should rule the world, and that their particular sect should dominate Islam. Persians think Arabs are inferior, and ought to pay them proper respect.

But it is impending economic catastrophe that could trigger regional war. If you think Allah is on your side, and that your race is inherently superior, you can afford to wait. But if you think economic doom is just around the corner, maybe you can't.

There is a part of me, as a linguist, that does see something sad in the death of so many languages. It is happening faster than ever: It has been said that a hundred years from now 90% of the current 6,000 languages will be gone.

Each extinction means that a fascinating way of putting words together is no longer alive. In, for example, Inuktitut Eskimo, which, by the way, is not dying, "I should try not to become an alcoholic" is one word: Iminngernaveersaartunngortussaavunga.