Republicans in Congress are going to be interesting to watch for the next two years, as they try to cope with the influx of the Tea Party Republicans who have just been elected to office. Some of these skirmishes are happening already, as both parties prepare to hold their official party caucus meetings this week, where they will vote on their leadership positions and on their policies for the next Congress. The Tea Party Republicans failed to elevate Representative Michele Bachmann to the lowest rung of the House leadership positions, causing her to withdraw her candidacy last week. But just today, the Tea Partiers seem to have won a policy battle over in the Senate, as the establishment Republican leader Mitch McConnell just announced that he has seen the light on banning earmarks -- a dramatic reversal of his position up to this point.

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But for anyone who thinks that American voters just elected a bunch of clowns to represent them in Washington, I humbly draw your attention to Brazil, where they just elected a real clown to their Congress.

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An interesting article caught my eye last week, but what with all the election hoopla, I haven't had a chance to write about it before now. But even if it went mostly unnoticed by the public at large, it was an important and downright scathing indictment of the Democrats' complete inability to get their message out, so it certainly fits in with our theme here on Fridays. Some may feel, perhaps, that the word "indictment" is too strong to use here. I disagree. In fact, I'll make the statement even stronger: this article is an absolute epitaph -- which should be carved into the gravestone laid on top of the corpse of the Democrats' efforts to communicate their virtues to the voters in the 2010 midterm elections.

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We now find ourselves in such a "day after the revolution" situation, to some degree or another, in American politics. The question of whether or not folks will be fooled again is going to grow larger throughout the next two years, over on the Right. The question is inherently impossible to answer at this point, but it hasn't stopped the song from running through my head as we survey the post-revolutionary political scene. And, so far, this "parting on the right" is already causing some headaches for the Republicans in Washington. I speak, of course, of the Tea Partiers.

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Proposition 25, as I said, will likely have no national implications (as 19 and 23 do). But that doesn't mean it isn't important. What Proposition 25 will do, if it passes, is to change our state laws regarding how budgets are voted on in our legislature. Already, I can feel readers' eyelids drooping, as it sounds like a pretty wonky subject, for which I apologize.

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It's that time of year again... the time when we pre-empt our usual Friday Talking Points column here and instead gather 'round the virtual campfire and shove a metaphorical flashlight under our chin, and proceed to tell two tales of horror guaranteed to make your blood run like ice water in the veins, no matter which side of the political divide you hail from.

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I hate to say it, but we all might have to get used to saying "Speaker Boehner" pretty soon. But what is this going to mean -- for Republicans, for Democrats, for President Barack Obama, and for the country at large? At this point, these questions are worth examination, because while Democrats may yet avert disaster in the midterms, denying the real possibility of a Republican House next year is now little better than wishful thinking, or (even worse) intentionally burying our collective heads in the sand.

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I'm going to (mostly) resist the urge to take advantage of this column's volume number in order to write a really gross column. Numerically, and inventory-wise, a "gross" is (of course) one dozen dozen. Twelve squared.

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The folks in the Tea Parties across America should be prepared to be disappointed after this year's election returns are in. That sounds like a sweeping and Democratically-optimistic election prediction, but it's not. I'm actually assuming here that many Tea Party candidates will indeed win at the polls. Instead, what I'm talking about is what happens afterwards. Because while it's a whole lot of fun to wave signs at a rally, actually governing is a whole different story.

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Of course, there was a bold way Obama could have acted on the issue, but looking at his past record, it would have been nothing short of downright astonishing if he had taken it. This would have been to perform what I would call (keeping in mind I am no lawyer, and realizing there already may be a term for this, which is unknown to me): "prosecutorial nullification." In other words, the government agency (in this case, the Attorney General) could have decided: "The judge is right, this is unconstitutional, therefore we will no longer defend this law in the courts, and let the ruling stand."

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