God, today's column by Maureen McDowd had the most gorgeous metaphor in it (taken from Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic), which I will now quote: "[Obama] is ... not the seed but the flower of the civil rights movement."

Yes. That is it, perfectly. Please be our next president.

In other, digestively upsetting, news, the Justice Department has upended the right of members of the civil service to be chosen without regard to their political affiliation (this being the true face of "political correctness," not what the conservatives complain about when they say their freedom of speech is being crimped, but rather true Orwellian control at the root).

Meanwhile, this article about the "sworn virgins of Albania" really caught my eye - declaring that you are a man when the man of the family has died, and then being treated like one for the rest of your life ... in such a conservative society? Fascinating!