They made me do it.

OK, I have a policy against making the kind of argument I'm about to make. But I've been pushed over the edge by hearing, yet again, a Republican trumpeting Alberto Gonzales's "Horatio Alger" pulled-himself-up-by-his-own-bootstraps biography, as if it somehow automatically qualified him for Attorney General. I apologize in advance.

History provides us with another inspirational tale of a young man from a disadvantaged background who worked hard and pulled himself up through government service and promoting the ideologies of those he worked for. Eventually, that justifiably-proud young man went on to lead one of the most powerful countries in the industrialized world. He was named Adolf Hitler.

OK. I just had to get that out of my system.

(Sure is a disappointment to hear that Harry Reid is saying no filibuster, though.)