Assassination, as a foreign policy option, is supposed to be completely forbidden to America. That's the theory, at least. But in our post-9/11 world, the once-unthinkable is now increasingly being seen as a viable option. The moral discussion of whether or not America should engage in assassination, though, hasn't even really begun in any noticeable way. Which is a shame, because the country as a whole should consider what its leaders are doing in this respect. Especially while we're bombing Tripoli, once again.

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And then -- you simply can't make this stuff up -- the anchor uttered the worst segue I think I've ever heard, possibly the worst in all of television news history: "We turn from the live feed of the tsunami in Japan to a police raid on Charlie Sheen's house in Los Angeles...."

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Ever since the midterm congressional election last year, Republicans have been repeating the phrase "The American People" as often as they can, as a sort of mantra. This isn't all that unusual, since politicians claiming a popular mandate is par for the course in the political game. But Republicans are exhibiting a rather large amount of overreach when it comes to claiming what "The American People" really want the government to do (and not to do). This is going to be on full display in the coming weeks, as the budget fights heat up (finishing this year's budget, raising the debt ceiling, and tackling next year's budget). Most Republicans, especially those of the Tea Party persuasion, are firmly convinced they've got a sweeping mandate to slash federal spending in all sorts of areas. But they may be surprised by what the public really thinks about these issues, and what they do and do not support. Helpfully, a new poll put out by the Wall Street Journal and NBC shows a clear list of priorities for what the people really want to see cut, and what they don't.

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Everyone knows who "Big Brother" is, of course, because we all had to read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four at some point in our schooling. Big Brother is the fictional benevolent figurehead in Orwell's "negative Utopia" masterpiece, whose beaming visage is a front for a totalitarian police state which spies relentlessly upon its own citizenry. Television sets, in this future world, are both unavoidable and two-way -- broadcasting images of what you are doing in your own home to the government watchers. To some extent, Orwell's dark fantasy has become everyday life in some places (it's almost impossible to avoid being publicly filmed now in cities like London, for instance). But there's been a balancing revolution in surveillance as well -- which is more and more apparent in the recent news. I'm going to call this effect "Little Brother" -- citizens watching, filming, and reporting on governmental activities to a rapt worldwide audience. And we've already seen how powerful a tool this can be in the Middle East.

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The two formerly-individual holidays celebrating Washington's Birthday and Lincoln's Birthday have been merged into a single federal holiday -- a holiday which, while intended to honor both Washington and Lincoln, has now become somewhat "genericized" (in name, at least) into a celebration of all our presidents. But what about the forgotten presidents? [Or, to be scrupulously accurate, "presidents"?]

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Christina Aguilera is -- quite rightly -- getting a lot of grief these days, because she flubbed a line while singing the National Anthem at the start of last weekend's Super Bowl. But while her mangled version of the lyrics was pretty cringe-inducing, to me what was completely indefensible was her mangling of the tune itself. Because this is one song which really shouldn't be open to "interpretation" -- at least not during such a prominent event.

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This doesn't mean blind obedience or unquestioned following of any leader. But it does mean "don't bump his elbow" deference to our elected leader when the country needs to speak with one voice.

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To honor the fallen this week, we're going to refrain from our usual heated political rhetoric here for a change. It's only fitting, really, after such an emotional week for America. So, just to warn everyone up front, we're not going to be heaping our usual amounts of scorn on Republicans this week. Instead, we're going to (briefly) heap some scorn on the mainstream media, and then after a foreshortened awards section, we are going to reprint the text of President Obama's moving speech in Tucson this Wednesday, for those of you who haven't had the chance to view it or read it.

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Both of these urges run deep. It's part of the human condition to try to fit things into a rational framework in our minds, and to reassure ourselves that if we only had done things a little differently, we could have avoided this tragedy. The problem is, neither one of these is any sort of universal truth. Sometimes craziness happens for no reason other than mental imbalance, and sometimes it happens explosively with little warning.

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When a national tragedy happens -- especially one with political relevance -- the country explodes in a paroxysm of commentary about the incident, in what psychologists would probably label a desperate attempt to attach some sort of meaning. Looking around the media universe today, I see that this is now happening from all sides. Snap judgments are made, spin is spun, and everyone tries to fit what happened into their own view of the world, whatever that happens to be. But since everyone else is covering the bases on this front, I thought I'd focus on heroism.

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