1: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cleared by Senate Ethics Committee

After carefully reviewing all the evidence, the Ethics Committee determined that Sen. Reid had "inadvertently" failed to report on his financial disclosure statement that he had secretly become a majority stockholder of Caesar's Palace, The Golden Nugget, The Bellagio, The Venetian, Harrah's, the Mirage, MGM Grand and The Hotel at Mandalay Bay. "They were all just friendly, "handshake" deals between me and several new friends of mine," the senator said. The fact that these forgotten deals had increased the Reid family's net assets from $812.37 to $3.7 billion was dismissed as a "technicality, and not probative of the senator's intent" by an Ethics Committee staffer.

The Ethics Committee also dismissed as "a coincidence" the fact that a proposed zoning change pushed by Sen. Reid shortly prior to the eight "handshake deals" would have put each of those hotels out of business.

2. Senate passes Sen. Ned Lamont's bill to withdraw all our forces from the Pentagon and West Point -- leaving a small contingent over the horizon in Utah.

Sens. Ted Kennedy, Chuck Hagel, Lindsey Graham and Jim Webb made the supporting argument that the U.S. military's position in the Pentagon was no longer sustainable now that Democrats (and friends) controlled Congress. "We will cut their budgets, court marshal their officers and indict any congressman who opposes us. We will give them 30 days to vacate the Pentagon premises, after which it will be turned over to the ACLU, as their new world headquarters. With those fine facilities in ACLU hands, we can count on the full vindication of the civil rights of radical Islamist American-killing terrorists. To those poor innocent prisoners at GITMO, we say: "Help is on the way!"

Sen. Clinton argued on the Senate floor that now that she and Gov. Spitzer have won their elections by over 70 percent, the long gray line at West Point will also have to retreat to Utah "before we come in and get them." Ever gracious in victory, Sen. Clinton allowed: "if the West Pointers want to do a little military home schooling in Utah, that will be permissible -- for the time being, and once they are disarmed."

3. Democratic Congress passes $12-trillion-tax increase.

In a carefully crafted tax bill drafted by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles "Vengeance is Sweet" Rangel, and Sen. Charles "Look, Ma, Top of the World" Schumer, tax rates will be raised to confiscatory levels, but only for tax payers, businesses and Christian churches (except for the Episcopalians) residing in, doing business in or praying in congressional districts that went for President Bush by more than 55 percent in the 2004 election.

Chairman Rangel explained, "All those Republicans probably had shares in Halliburton and made millions. If they didn't, then they probably sold Enron stock before the crash. We don't have time for trials, so we're just going to take all their money. They're also chicken hawks. Did you know I served in the military in the 1950s?

Sen. Schumer explained the religious angle to the tax bill: "We're giving the Episcopalian churches a break because most of their congregations believe in the principle of choice in both abortion and sexual orientation. Also, their congregations contribute to the Audubon Society, not the GOP. For the rest of them, all I can do is to quote from the synoptic gospels: "Reddite igitur quae sunt Caesaris Caesari" (Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's).

4. In a switch of positions, all GOP members voted for the endangered species protection act -- adding as an amendment, the inclusion of Republicans in the protected class.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi led the successful fight to defeat the Republican amendment, citing approvingly Herbert Spencer's social Darwinist argument that "Thus by survival of the fittest, the militant type of society becomes characterized by profound confidence in the governing power, joined with a loyalty causing submission to it in all matters whatever."

Thus she approved of Republicans becoming extinct, concluding her floor argument: "Republicans are a repulsive species and don't deserve to live. In those few areas still habitated by Republican congressmen we should import large quantities of snail darters and Democratic Party operatives to hasten the GOP's extermination."

In making this harsh argument that Republicans have no moral right to exist, she disproved, by her action, Herbert Spencer's other argument that, notwithstanding the phenomenon of survival of the fittest, human society maintains an "innate moral sense" -- by which humans come to arrive at certain moral intuitions and from which laws of conduct might be deduced. ("The Principles of Ethics," I [1892], p. 26).