An early version. What's your favorite verse? I've got two:

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes Benz
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

and

'Relax,' said the night man,
'We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!'

And I do have one serious post up today, over at Huffington Post, This Thanksgiving, Most of All. A snippet:

What I'm most thankful for is that I'm not in jail eating processed turkey on a plastic plate.

I'm thinking about the children of the incarcerated. There are more than 2.4 million kids with parents languishing in our jails and prisons due to legislators who insist on being tough rather than smart on crime.

America, Prison Nation, has been a costly and harmful failure.

Glenn Greenwald explains:

For the sake of its own credibility, Time Magazine needs immediately to prohibit Joe Klein from uttering another word about the eavesdropping and FISA controversy. He simply doesn't know what he's talking about and he publishes demonstrably false statements.

And he has for quite a while on this issue:

Joe Klein has been getting a lot of attention of late for his rip of Dems’ criticism of Bush’s NSA domestic surveillance program. It makes you wonder if Klein understands how untruthfully and how shamelessly the Bush Administration will do anything it can get away with. He certainly seems to know nothing about the Constitution, or to value it in any event. But his contempt for the Constitution and the law did not start with the FISA Scandal. And apparently he assumes we are as lazy and clueless as he is. But we are not. . . .

What's the going speaker's rate for a disgraced Bush Administration official? For former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, his talk at the University of Florida yesterday cost the school $40,000.

It probably made the boos and jeers easier to swallow:

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales endured screams of "criminal" and "liar" during a speech at the University of Florida on Monday evening.....Early in his speech, two people climbed on the stage in hoods. Gonzales stopped talking for a few minutes as police led them away without incident, though there were several outbursts from the crowd.

The hooded demonstrators were charged with interruption of a public event, said Steve Orlando, a university spokesman. Several other people were ejected for yelling, and more than a dozen people stood for most of Gonzales' hour-long speech with their backs toward him.

Gonzales must really be hurting for legal fees.

CBS news writers may be the next to strike. Today, they authorized the Writers Guild to call a strike on their behalf.

CBS news writers, graphic artists and other staffers who work for the network's television and radio news operations voted by a wide margin to authorize a strike against their employer, the Writers Guild of America announced today.

Of the 300 employees who cast ballots in last week's special election, 81% backed a labor stoppage to protest working for more than 2 1/2 years without a contract.

Radio would be hit big time:

If a labor stoppage were to occur, all-news radio stations such as Los Angeles' KNX-AM (1070) and KFWB-AM (980), Chicago's WBBM-AM and New York's 1010 WINS and WCBS-AM probably would be the hardest hit, as they would lose the staff that pens their news and headlines.

The tv writers' strike and the Broadway stagehands strike continues.

Sunday night is usually my favorite tv night. Not tonight. The American Music Awards pre-empted the good shows and the only other thing on was football.

I tried, I really did, to get into the Music Awards show -- if not for the music, for the dresses. Both were pretty dismal. The best of the music was Sugarland doing a song with Beyonce.

It made me long for the old days, when singers had personality and belted out their songs while having fun onstage. Here's Janis, and a live version of "Piece of My Heart" -- performed in Germany in 1970 1969. Watch how she invites the audience onto the stage and how much fun she's having.

Frank Rich has a terrific column today in the New York Times on what Judith Regan could tell about Rudy Giuliani. It's also a succinct recap of the various elements of the story to date, from Bernie and Judith to Bernie and Rudy to Fox and Rudy.

Whether Ms. Regan’s charge about that unnamed Murdoch “senior executive” is true or not — her lawyers have yet to reveal the evidence — her overall message is plain. She knows a lot about Mr. Kerik, Mr. Giuliani and the Murdoch empire. And she could talk.

More...

Our friend at the Hotline Blogometer, Conn Carroll (full disclosure, my team pummelled Conn's team in our fantasy football league last week, so I am feeling charitable), has posted his last unsubstantiated smear insightful column last week. Good luck in your future endeavors Conn. And good last column, the BCS is a joke.:

Today marks the last day of our tenure as Blogometer. So instead of inflicting someone's elses thoughts on you for the 3000th time, we'd like to share our thoughts on the most crucial issue this nation faces: the travesty that is the Bowl Championship Series. We could harp on how all of the university presidents in the major conferences are thieves and liars for propping up this sham, but instead we want to offer a solution, so here goes. The Sun Belt and Conference USA would merge into a mega conference. On Christmas Day the WAC champ would play the Mountain West champ in Las Vegas and the MAC champ would play the ConferenceUSA/SunBelt champ in Orlando. On New Years the Pac 10 and Big Ten champs would play in the Rose Bowl, the Big 12 and ACC champs would play in the Orange Bowl, the SEC and Big East champs would play in the Sugar Bowl, and the winners of the Christmas Day games would square off in the Fiesta Bowl. The following would week would feature two semi-final games and the next week would be the national champion.

Of course the upshot of all this would be an SEC national champion almost every year, but that would be fine with me. Go Gators!

For Larisa Alexandrovna and Alan Dershowitz.

You gotta love a good blog fight and there's a big one tonight about torture between Alan Dershowitz and Larisa Alexandrovna on Huffington Post. Even Huffpo weighs in, at the bottom of Dershowitz's post.

Here's Larisa's post that started it all, criticizing Dershowitz's op-ed in the Wall St. Journal on waterboarding and torture.

Throw in (on Dershowitz's part) a little "ticking time bomb theory," the assertion that Nazi torture was sometimes effective, a little praise for Rudy and some bashing of the Dems, liberals and (some) blogs -- and from Larisa, some thoughts on torture, morality, Israel, the Holocaust and Jews.

The gloves are off, let's see where you weigh in. As for me, with all due respect to Professor Dershowitz, I'm with Larisa.

Newsweek has selected Karl Rove to be the counterpoint to Markos of Daily Kos as a political contributor for the 2008 elections.

Their new columns are up now:

Markos: Make the Bush Record the Issue

Rove: How to Beat Hillary (Next November)

In the debate the other night, Campbell Brown seemed to not know what Hillary Clinton was referring to when she referred to "a boys club". Maybe thsde reactions from her male Media colleagues might help Mrs. Dan Senor understand what Hillary is talking about.

Roger Simon:

Politico chief political columnist Roger Simon began his November 16 column by asserting, "The (rhymes with rich) is back."

Mike Allen:

ALLEN: All right. But what Republican voter hasn't thought that? What voter in general hasn't thought that? And what people like about McCain is his straight talk, his candor, and if he had folded or buckled under that question, that would have looked ridiculous...But Kiran, this was just a funny moment on the campaign trail. CHETRY: Well, it's only funny unless you're offended by somebody calling a woman the b-word.

Dana Milbank:

The other night, talking with my man Olbermann, greasily hiding behind what was the living definition of a s**t-eating grin, Milbank explained his take on the "How do we beat the bitch?" controversy currently plaguing John McCain, who is not, Milbank was quick to point out, running for "knighthood in some order of chivalry." He further explained that McCain was smart enough to realize that it would "be suicide to quarrel with this phraseology." So now it is not only politically permissible -- but the very essence of shrewd politics -- to go along with calling Senator Hillary Clinton almost anything. Why stop here? Why not just call her a "c**t"? . . .

And this is the "sophisticated" part of the Beltway. You can just imagine how overt misogynists like Tweet Matthews and Tucker Carlson, not to mention Faux News, reacted. Maybe Campbell gets it a little more now. Probably not.

A light at the end of the tunnel?

In a joint statement, the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said both sides had agreed to return to formal negotiations. The statement said no other details would be released.