dear mr. david lecherman...i mean letterman !!!!!

When we last left our hero, Noah had disembarked from the ship and sacrificed a few clean animals to thank God for not drowning him, his family, and all the animals (except the sacrificed ones). God blessed Noah and his children, and in case they had forgotten, reminded them to be fruitful and multiply.

Commentary: Sometimes, God reminds me of my mother.

God also gave the people permission to eat the animals, though He forbade them from eating live animals.

Would a white male judge have fractured his ankle?  Hmm.....  I have a few questions for you, Rush.

Last week, in response to Deadman's salute to Obama's Cairo speech, I wrote:

In my recent questions column, our own dagblogger Nebton says the biggest risk he ever took was to go to graduate school after 30.

With official unemployment nearing double digits (and the unofficial number much higher), a lot of people looking for something to do are following Nebton's example and going back to school.

By Justin Smith

The California Assembly recently approved AB 155 (Mendoza), a bill that prohibits cities and counties from filing bankruptcy without state approval and is headed to the Senate. The bill requires local governments and counties to get approval from the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission (CDIAC) before filing for bankruptcy.

After forty days, God, sealed the wellsprings of the deep and the floodgates of heaven. Then he created a wind that caused the floodwaters to gradually subside.

Commentary: Where did the floodwaters subside to?

After seven months, the boat ran aground on a mountain. After ten months, the mountain peaks became visible.

Commentary: What exactly did the lions eat for ten months? Just wondering…

God tells Noah to bring the animals again, but this time he specified seven pairs of each clean species and one pair of each unclean species.

Commentary: The Great Rabbi Ezekiel Bezekiel wrote,

“The Lord in his infinite foresight commanded Noah to bring seven pairs of each clean animal so that he might earn the Lord’s blessing by offering the additional pairs as holy sacrifices to His mercy.”

At least they're not using tanks this time...

The “sons of God” thought that human women were hot, so they took the ones that they wanted. The offspring (God’s grandchildren) were mighty giants. Meanwhile, God decided that humans were living too long, so he cut their maximum life spans to 120.

What can you add when one man says everything you're thinking and says it with such clarity and such poetry??

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart or whether we commit ourselves to an effort, a sustained effort to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

This feels like a strange thing to share so publicly, but since I've written about my mom a few times, I also feel compelled to tell you that she has finally passed away.

The end was as fast as the disease was agonizingly slow. I got a call and six hours later she was gone. There were no signs that the end was coming, at least that I would have recognized. Monday she was fine. Tuesday she was gone. It was a very peaceful death. She simply slipped away, with her family around her.

It's been a long time since I've written a Questions column, but now that we have so many new contributors and commenters, I think it's about time we get to know each other a bit better.

Alas, now that online poker has sapped my soul and absconded with my muse to a faraway island, I am forced to look to Cosmo magazine for inspiration.

Our friends over at salon.com have a series called, Ask a Wingnut, in which a former Bush official who wishes to remain nameless (I can only assume it’s Jeff Gannon) answers questions from wacky liberals about why conservatives do and think what they do. He goes by the moniker Glenallen Walken, borrowed from the fictional character of the television show The West Wing. This is fitting since he bases many of his arguments for neocon ideology in a fictional world.

This chapter is just a list of Seth’s descendents and their spirited competition to see who could live the longest. I will spare the reader its boringness except to say that the consensus winner was Methuselah, who died at the ripe age of 969. However, supporters of Methuselah’s father, Enoch, dispute the result. God transported Enoch directly to paradise while he was a still young lad of 365, so technically, he didn’t die. The Great Rabbi Ezekiel Bezekiel exhibits Solomon-like wisdom in his proposed resolution:

I should disclose at the outset that this is not a "How To" piece. If I knew how to find my joy, I'd surely have located it by now. But I've been thinking about happiness since Ross "What Women Want" Douthat declared why women are unhappy in his New York Times column last week.

You've seen a lot less of me on dagblog lately, and while I'd love to put all of the blame for my absence on my Beyonce and the wedding plans which have been set in hot and heavy motion (It's mostly painful, stressful stuff, but registering at Target was hella fun - come to Papa, Wii!!), but there is a much bigger badder beast than Mrs. All-Consuming Wedding at work here - and its name is PokerStars.

Oh, how I love the political drama that arises with the nomination of a new Supreme Court Justice. Such classics like Robert Bork whose nomination was so disastrous that a verb was created to describe it (“borked,”follow the link if you don’t know, it ain’t good), Clarence Thomas who graced America with the only R-Rated hearing discussing squirrel genitals, and G. Harrold Carswell who just so happened to be a white supremacist (whoops) – oh the entertainment.

Once again, Illinois State Senators are calling for our good friend Roland Burris to exit stage left. One imagines a Dem Party master of ceremonies furiously giving the neck slash signal to end dear Roland's dance routine, but he just keeps twirling away and starts to remove items of clothing.

When I read about yesterday's Taliban attack on the provincial headquarters of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), I raised my eyebrows. Why the ISI? It's not an easy target, and in fact the attack was repelled by guards. Nor would a successful attack have been an effective way to create instability. The ISI is not filled with sympathetic targets whose deaths would arouse the nation.