[Program Note: This column originally ran three years ago, and every so often I dust it off and run it again, to allow me to do some Christmas shopping and whatnot. What with Part 2 of our "McLaughlin Awards" running tomorrow, there just wasn't time to put together a column today. Don't forget to check back here tomorrow (or over the weekend) for the second part of our year-end roundup, and for today I hope you'll enjoy my "go to" Christmas column. Thanks again to everyone who has donated in our 2010 Holiday Pledge Drive, allowing us to exceed our fundraising goal. And hope you've all got your shopping and wrapping done, too.]

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President Barack Obama gave an afternoon press conference today, and he sounded a lot more confident than he has sounded for quite a while. The reason for this is that the 111th Congress is ending with a bang, and not the expected whimper. After the Democrats' "shellacking" (to use Obama's preferred term) in the midterm elections, few inside-the-Beltway prognosticators figured much of anything would get done in the lame duck session of Congress before the newly-elected Congress is seated in January. As it turned out, this conventional wisdom was wrong. The lame duck Congress produced more weighty legislation than most lame ducks manage -- a fitting end to two years with more significant legislative victories than any Congress since Lyndon B. Johnson (or even Franklin D. Roosevelt, depending on how you score these things). Which is why President Obama had good reason to sound as confident as he did today.

Of course, what the lame duck Congress actually achieved has not pleased everyone. Detractors from the Left and the Right denounced this action or that which Congress achieved in these few short weeks. But most Americans are actually pretty satisfied with the results, if the polls are to be believed.

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In what has become an annual tradition here, one of our first columns of the new year will highlight the yearly "official banished words" list. As always, the intrepid folks at Lake Superior State University are putting the finishing touches on this year's list, but there is still time to get in on the action. Surf over to the L.S.S.U. site (does anybody still use the verb "surf" in this fashion anymore, one wonders...) and submit your nomination for a word or phrase you feel has become so annoying that the only possible answer is banishment. The list is traditionally announced on New Year's Day, so you've got a little over a week to convince them (for reference, check out last year's list on their site).

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Both houses of Congress have now passed the bill which repeals the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (DADT), which did not allow gay Americans to openly serve their country in military uniform. President Obama has scheduled a signing ceremony for the repeal bill this Wednesday. While this is a significant achievement on the civil rights/gay rights front, it is also a significant political achievement. And one man stands out as the driving political force behind the successful effort to repeal this discriminatory federal policy. Which is why, today, I'd like to publicly thank Senator Joe Lieberman.

As the old saying goes: "success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan." This political success is no different, really. Senator Lieberman didn't singlehandedly repeal DADT. He had a lot of help, and a few other Democrats showed both some real leadership and some real political savvy in the last few weeks. In fact, the three most powerful Democrats in Washington all had a hand in this victory -- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and President Barack Obama. They deserve thanks as well, as does every Democrat and Republican member of Congress who voted for this historic step forward.

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My apologies to anyone tuning in who was expecting to see the 150th "Friday Talking Points" column, since it will be pre-empted for two weeks here. But the good news is we're doing so to bring you our annual "McLaughlin Awards," which are even more fun!

I admit we're jumping the gun a bit on the whole "year-end wrapup season," but this is due to the vagaries of the calendar. This is the first of a two-part article, and last year I published these on Christmas Day and New Year's Day -- which interfered with my holiday enjoyment too much. This year, the columns normally would have fallen on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so the decision was made to bump them both up a week.

So welcome to our review of 2010, via our annual homage to the McLaughlin Group television show's award categories. "Homage" sounds ever so much nicer than "blatant ripoff," don't you think?

Ahem.

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No column today, sorry.

But tomorrow should make up for it, as we present the first of our two-part end-of-the-year awards, here. Preparing these columns takes a LOT of time, which is what I've been doing all day (I'm only up to May in reviewing last year...). We're doing the awards columns early this year, because otherwise they would fall on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve -- and last year we did them on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, and that was just too exhausting. So this year, we're moving them up a week for our own sanity's sake. Tune in tomorrow to see the results....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The House of Representatives has just voted overwhelmingly to repeal the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (DADT), which forbids gays from openly serving their country. The vote was an impressive 250 to 175 -- which is sixteen more votes for repeal than the previous tally in the House (when they voted on the issue as part of the Pentagon's yearly budget). What this vote means is that we are now only one Senate floor vote and a presidential signing ceremony away from a historic end to such blatant discrimination being enshrined in federal law. Whether the Senate will pass the measure before the end of the year or not is still uncertain, but even with the down-to-the-wire nature of the lame duck session, this still represents the best chance for DADT's repeal yet -- and also the last chance for what could be a very long time to repeal the policy by legislative means.

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[Program Note: I've got an airport run to take care of today, so I didn't have time to put together a new column. However, a federal judge's ruling has given me the perfect opportunity to re-run the following column, which originally appeared here on 9/21/10. This is a losing issue for President Obama and the Democrats on any number of levels -- the most obvious being that they'd be fighting squarely in the corner of the insurance companies against pretty much everyone else. In any case, as I said, it seemed the perfect column to run today. Regular columns will resume tomorrow.]

Howard Dean is (as he is often wont to do) making all kinds of sense on healthcare reform today. His idea is to jettison the "individual mandate" part of the healthcare reform law passed this year. And he's right, on both political and practical grounds.

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A theme has emerged, in recent years, of America as a nation almost hopelessly divided, politically. This theme is most often reinforced by such superlative declarations (by "journalists" who really should know better) as "America is more politically divided than ever," or "this is the most politically polarized Washington has ever been," or similar such alarmist rhetoric. It has even gotten to the point where many see such statements as truisms -- statements so obviously true that they are seen as irrefutable. This is a gross error, born of the fact that most "journalists" simply have no concept of their own country's history. Because while we are indeed currently politically divided and somewhat polarized, this is actually our normal state as a nation -- and on the polarization scale, we're nowhere near the "most divided" we've ever been. Far from it.

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The holidays are just around the corner, and the preparatory legislative sausage-making on Capitol Hill is in full swing. What a happy, happy time of year!

Well, perhaps not. In fact, almost nobody has been happy with the way the past week shaped up. Except possibly Republicans, but they've been pretty quiet either way, so it's hard to tell.

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