Eliot Spitzer was one of my political heroes. He was a hard-charging do-gooder prosecutor who tried to inject the law into the Wild Wild West of Wall Street. His political hero was Teddy Roosevelt, and he spoke eloquently about ethics, responsibility, and the public trust.

He was also a complete fraud.

As a Democrat it wasn't that difficult to forgive Bill Clinton for his indiscretion with Monica Lewinsky. It said nothing good about Clinton's private character, but it was fundamentally not about his ability to govern. To be frank, we knew he was a philanderer when we elected him. Bill Clinton never went on any sanctimonious tirades about sex scandals, never wagged that finger in condemnation of anybody else's private failings, and himself broke no laws whatsoever until he was improperly forced to answer unethical questions in a private civil suit.

There have been a lot of political presidential endorsements going around lately. I thought I'd add my own. I'm not going to rip up any other candidates in the process. I have deep respect for the Clintons and for John Edwards, and think either of them would make a fine President. Moreover, since all the candidates from the Democratic side have almost identical political platforms, there's no issue that pushes me more firmly into one camp than the other.

But I'll be throwing my political weight, small that it is, behind Barack Obama.

There are a number of reservations I have about Obama. I'm not a starry eyed Obama fangirl. He's not as politically pure as his supporters contend. But at the end of the day, he's got one thing that matters most: the unique opportunity to take this juncture in history and turn it into a transformative political moment.

Sometimes inspiration slips in where you don't expect it, and sometimes you can find faith from circumstances most mundane. That's the best way I can describe why I enjoy going to small local party club meetings in Maryland, because suffering through the uncomfortable chairs, the boring minutia and the oddball characters often banishes my cynicism.

Last night, the first meeting of the Northwest Baltimore County Democratic Club was short, uninspired, and anti-climactic. But that didn't matter. It was a sunny little reflection of the idea that by and large, people go into politics to make positive change.

Our 11th district delegation came to speak about their policy initiatives now that our state legislature is in session.

Of particular note this morning is Gloria Steinem's Op Ed piece entitled "Women Are Never Frontrunners" which is thought-provoking and dead on.

I do not take the position that women should vote for Hillary, and certainly not "just because" she is a woman. She has not been my first choice, certainly.

But we should all give special scrutiny to the way the press and her rivals have handled her candidacy, because it speaks volumes about whether or not we will ever have a female President in our country, and what we can expect for the next viable female candidate.

President Clinton told Democrats that the Primaries are when you get to fall in love, but afterwards, you have to fall in line. Well, I've finally got a candidate in the primary to fall in love with.

Stephen Colbert is running for President, and I don't care that I don't live in South Carolina.

I love the fact that he's polling better than Richardson, Kucinich or Gravel. Does that mean they'll let him in the debates?

Hillary, Obama, Edwards, Dodd or even Biden would probably be a better President, but none of them would be as funny. And since the current President has done all he can to bring about the Rapture and the End of Days... we're going to need the humor.

Earlier this week, Chris Cevasco, the editor of Paradox Magazine, informed me that my story, "Somewhere, Sometime on the Nile" received an honorable mention in the just-released 20th annual Year's Best Fantasy & Horror collection (eds. Datlow, Link, Grant), which is devoted to short fiction published in 2006.

Today, I was shopping for groceries. I wanted to make a spinach salad. I actually hesitated in choosing my produce. Sure, the chances of E. coli infecting my spinach leaves aren't large, but they may be larger than my chances of getting blown up by a terrorist, and we've gone to war over that. Yet lately, my government can't seem to protect me from contaminated produce, lead paint, or even poisoned pet food.

And it wasn't always this way. I feel as if I'm too young to be waxing nostalgic about how things were "back in my day" but back in my day, regulatory agencies actually regulated things. And if a company was willfully negligent when it came to say, keeping contaminants out of food, they could expect to be sued big.

Let me state up front that I don't agree with MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on most things. His theory of government and mine do not match. Sometimes, I even think he's nuts. During the Terry Schiavo fiasco, he seemed to become completely unhinged.

But in an era in which political beliefs have become so polarized that it's hard to even credit the other side with basic humanity at times, I think it's important to recognize a basically honorable opponent when you find one.

I think Joe Scarborough might be that.

I first got an inkling that Scarborough might be the real deal during the Hurricane Katrina debacle. While O'Reilly and other conservatives shilled for the administration, race-baited, and embarrassed an enraged nation, Scarborough actually went to the site--not just to report, but as a religious charity worker.

Global dimming is a new scientific theory that will warm every gas guzzling, toxin dumping, and smog-eating heart in America; in short, some climatologists now believe that pollution is saving our lives.

It's become part of the ritualistic liberal gnashing of teeth to reflect with frustration and outrage upon all that we've done to ourselves, and to the world, in the wake of September 11th. We can point to all the hundreds of mistakes we've made, all the disgusting discoveries we've made about the wickedness of the people in charge and the frailty of our system of government in the face of September 11th propaganda. But I save all that for September 12th.

On September 11th, I remember the last day my country was recognizable to me. The last time I remember being unreservedly proud. That day brought out the best in Americans, even if all the days after it would bring out our worst.

September 11th was a day in which Americans helped one another, felt compassion for one another, and some of us were even heroes. We were still innocent then, and our grief untainted. We were a great nation that day, and that's what I remember.

If you've been to the movies lately and watched the previews, you'll notice that Hollywood is right on schedule. It takes about three years to make a movie. That the Iraq War and much of our "War on Terror" has become a fiasco started to become clear about three years ago, and now the movies are coming in droves. (I'm particularly interested to see "Rendition" with Reese Witherspoon.)

But there's something in Hollywood that you're not likely to see for a while: Gratuitous torture flicks. This horror sub-genre has been declared dead and Gitmo is to blame.

My fingers are crossed here, but it seems as if Jousting for Justice has been restored to its more festive appearance. I've also installed some safety features that should prevent spammers and make commenting easier on everyone.

Many thanks to my guru, Rachel Blackman, for all her help and dedication in helping me put things back together.

Before I launch into an analysis of O'Malley's move to make Tom Perez (of all people!) his point-man on the slots debate in Maryland, let me get a disclaimer out of the way:

Two years ago, I wrote a letter to then-mayor O'Malley encouraging him to offer limited support for state sponsored slot machines in the state of Maryland. I'm sure my letter had nothing to do with his ultimate choice to do just that, but then, as now, I knew my position put me out of step with some Maryland progressives like the estimable Peter Franchot.

Rachel over at Tinkerty Tonk has assembled a fine collection of Maryland blog posts. It makes for a really neat snapshot of what's going on in the state.

And since I'm an unabashed fan of Maryland's Governor, Martin O'Malley, I have to take a small moment of amusement that the first post I submitted to the Carnival is one taking him to task.

I'm a big proponent of volunteering, getting out there and meeting actual people in the community instead of focusing all our political attention in the blogosphere. As such, I noticed this article by Christie Bowers that outlines five opportunities to volunteer in Maryland this year.

I thought you might like to check it out.