Happy New Year! New Years Day means college football. Here are my picks:

It's absolutely frigid in Denver but more than 100,000 are expected on the mall downtown to watch the fireworks at 9 and midnight. Things look warmer in Times Square.

We wish everyone a happy, healthy, safe and personally rewarding New Year.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

What are your plans for the evening? What are you most excited to say goodbye to?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Over the past three years, Illinois taxpayers have shelled out close to $10 million in workers comp claims to prison guards at one prison in Illinois. The payments are mostly for claims of repetitive carpal tunnel syndrome due to opening and closing manually operated cell doors. 389 guards (more than half of those employed by the prison)have put in claims and collected.

Even the warden put in a claim and got $75,000. How many times a day do you think he personally opens or closes a cell door?

State lawmakers are calling for a fraud investigation.

If you are headed out tonight to celebrate, plan ahead. The cops will be everywhere.

In Denver, if money's an issue, the Frank Sawaya law firm will pick up the tab for your taxi. Just send your receipt with a photocopy of your driver's license to: Holiday Free Cab Ride Home Program, The Sawaya Law Firm, 1600 Ogden St., Denver, CO 80218.

Sawaya says his offer, now in its 4th year, is offered on New Years Eve, July 4th, St. Patricks Day and Halloween. It costs the firm about $20,000. a year.

As 2010 draws to a close, for my final long post of the year, I want to talk about how 2010 was the most boring, ho-hum year of the decade.

In 2008, politics was exciting. In 2009, we were excited as we waited for the hope and change. In 2010, we realized it wasn't coming. The reality is President Obama is not that exciting a personality. He's far too normal. He doesn't fall down and make us laugh like Gerald Ford. He doesn't reek Hollywood like Ronald Reagan, and Mrs. Obama doesn't rely on astrologers and silly slogans like "Just Say No" as did Nancy Reagan to keep us snickering in amusement.

Bush I was boring too. It was like having a caricature of the white Protestant Male from the yacht club for President. But, it was still the 80's, so he doesn't count in this competition. [More...]

While the mountains have been inundated with snow, Denver has been dry as a bone. Today, that's changing. The snow began to fall in the metro area about 10:00 a.m. If you want to watch it fall, click the play button above or go to Fox 31 News Live Snow Stick Camera.

Since the snow will continue until tomorrow, along with frigid temperatures, I'm taking a snow day and working from home. For those of you not working, or planning a New Year's Eve at home, here's some suggestions of things to do:[More...]

The New York Times, which editorialized in favor of The Deal NOW provides this advice to President Obama and the Dems, in light of the Norquist Rules just adopted by the House GOP:

The new Republican rules will gut pay-as-you-go because they require offsets only for entitlement increases, not for tax cuts. [. . .] The new rules mandate that entitlement-spending increases be offset by spending cuts only — and actually bar the House from raising taxes to pay for such spending. Even worse, they direct the leader of the House Budget Committee to ignore several costs when computing the budget [. . .] For example, the cost to make the Bush-era tax cuts permanent would be ignored [. . .] At the same time, the new rules bar the renewal of aid for low-income working families — extended temporarily in the recent tax-cut deal — unless it is fully paid for.

This "shocking" development, after The Deal, leads the New York Times, supporter of The Deal, to counsel:

Karl Rove has an op-ed in the Wall St. Journal taking issue with President Obama's view that one of the reasons Guantanamo should be closed is that it serves as a training ground for terrorists. Rove argues that al Qaeda doesn't view Guantanamo as a significant issue, and that trying detainees in federal court will play into al Qaeda's hands by making them martyrs.

It's the second point, the "martyr" issue, where Rove's argument falls far short of the mark and also weakens his first point.

New York juries in the past have beaten al Qaeda at the martyr game, by rejecting the death penalty and returning verdicts of life in prison. Once the terror defendants are whisked away to Supermax for life, we rarely hear from them again. No martyrdom, just decades of isolation. What have you heard from Zacarias Moussaoui or Richard Reid since they began serving their life sentences? Zip. They have been silenced, except for their occasional pro se court pleadings, which get little if any coverage. Any chance for martyrdom has been effectively eliminated. [More...]

Discussing E.J. Dionne's column today, Booman makes some good points:

Considering that [the column] is supposed to be about [Dems] regaining the initiative, it's pretty weak to lecture the White House about its tendency to defend itself and "the left" about never being satisfied. Those things aren't going to change. We can be critical of that reality, but we ought not offer it up as something to fix so that we can get our mojo back.

In fact it is not something to fix. The White House should tout its accomplishments. They are in the politics business after all. And people dissatisfied with what the White House is doing should say so and work to make them do what they want. That's how it works. But both Booman and Dionne miss the connection between the political problems Dems have and the economic policies of the Obama Administration. More . . .

President Obama named six recess appointments yesterday, including James Cole as Deputy Attorney General.

A few windbag Republicans like Peter King of NY are outraged...."shocked" they say. Why? Cole had the common sense (audacity in their view) to suggest terrorism is a crime that should be tried in our federal courts.

I'm outraged and shocked that someone like Peter King is an elected representative in our government. And good on Obama for giving King and his ilk a little pin prick. One of Cole's duties will be to sign off on the secret FISA wiretaps.

Via Twitter, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is seeking input for the first sentence of his book.

Here's what I came up with.

As the cell door closed behind me and I faced the cold, dank space, I began to contemplate the brunt of the awesome power of government, once it has descended to unleash its wrath.

Guess I better not give up my day job. What are your ideas?