After suffering through years of futility, New Orleanians were certainly cheering for the success of their team. But their joy wasn't confined to football. They were also celebrating themselves. The Saints have become a symbol of civic unity, a sign of how the city's sense of self has undergone a profound transformation since Hurricane Katrina's devastation. And this hope is mirrored in the optimism many New Orleanians feel about the end of Ray Nagin’s notoriously incompetent reign as mayor — and the chance that City Hall may finally aid in the city’s recovery.

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Bachmann said:

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At an event on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., announced their version of the cap-and-trade legislation.

"We know clean energy is the ticket to strong, sustainable economic growth," Boxer said. Kerry echoed Boxer's optimism about the measure. "Ultimately, this bill is about keeping Americans safe," he said. President Obama lauded the tandem, saying in a prepared statement, "With the draft legislation they are announcing today, we are one step closer to putting America in control of our energy future and making America more energy independent."

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The ad (a teaser is below, while the full version can be watched here) is for Starbucks' new instant coffee Via. It shows a series of groups of people who can't tell the difference between Starbucks' regular coffee and the new version. The ad is attempting to say that all sorts of people, from nurses to Civil War reenactors to people with "yellow belts" will find Via as satisfying as regular Starbucks. The ad then concludes with a man standing up at a town hall meeting and yelling, "I can't taste the difference."

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For instance, this morning, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ripped the public option, saying it would be the first step towards a single-payer healthcare system in which Americans would lose the ability to choose their healthcare providers. This argument clearly got to Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who introduced one of the public option amendments.

Schumer asked Grassley how he could support Medicare, yet oppose a public option. Grassley responded, “Medicare is part of the social fabric of America ... [but] to say that I support it is not to say that it’s the best program that it can be.” Grassley then went on to lament healthcare's fate if government becomes more involved.

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For one thing, the article -- entitled "Reid the Quarterback May Call on Obama to Referee" -- discusses how Reid, never a favorite of liberals due to his governing style of gentle persuasion and his seeming unwillingness to push back aggressively against Republicans, is now the Senate's point man on healthcare reform. The majority leader is now working to reconcile two competing healthcare proposals that have emerged from Senate committees so that the body as a whole can vote on a single measure.

This brings us to the second problem for progressives. The article cites unnamed senior Democratic Senate aides who told the Times that a combined bill will not contain a public option for insurance. Liberals see a government-run insurance option as a key to healthcare reform because it would provide competition for private insurers. Reid is apparently interested in dropping the option in order to appeal to centrist Democrats and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the lone Republican who appears even slightly willing to vote in favor of the Democrats' proposals for overhauling the system.

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Wednesday, Traficant appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball" with Chris Matthews and provided some amazing quotes (video below). Traficant said "I want to get the IRS. Kick them in the crotch real good" and later in the interview apologized to "all the hookers in America" because he once equated members of Congress with prostitutes. He also suggested that President Barack Obama "stimulate this."

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In the clip, Beck does his usual bit denouncing both Republicans and Democrats and the ever-expanding government of President Obama. Then he decides to give his audience a visual example of how Obama's programs are so huge that they're forcing people to fight back -- though it's actually unclear what point Beck is trying to make.  He says, "You know the old saying, if you put a frog into boiling water, he's going to jump right out, because he's scalding hot, but if you place the frog in lukewarm water and gradually raise the temperature, it won't realize what's happening and die?"

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Many of those in the Bush administration, including former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, did little to hide their contempt for the international body and tried to minimize its influence in world politics. But throughout his speech today, Obama reached out to the U.N., encouraging the organization to work proactively to make more of an impact.

"The United States stands ready to begin a new chapter of international cooperation -- one that recognizes the rights and responsibilities of all nations," Obama said to applause at the conclusion of his speech.

Obama sought to differentiate himself from Bush in a number of areas, highlighting policy changes he's made since assuming control of the Oval Office: Obama mentioned his plans to close Guantanamo Bay, as well as his commitment to ending torture and fighting terrorism within the "rule of law" as examples of how "America will live its values, and we will lead by example."

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Or maybe not.

But regardless of your take on the Fox News host, it appears O'Reilly has finally found the perfect person to argue with: himself.

Lately, O'Reilly has made some decidedly confused comments about the public option being debated as part of the healthcare reform plans circulating in Washington. And it seems he's none too happy with himself -- or the liberal media -- about it.

The public option would in essence provide a government-backed insurance option for Americans in an effort to put pressure on private insurers to lower their costs and provide better coverage to consumers. Given O'Reilly's ideological bent, it'd be safe to assume he'd be against government involvement in healthcare. Yet, on his show on September 16, O'Reilly seemed to support the idea of a public option. On that show, he had this exchange with Nina Owcharenko, the deputy director of health policy studies for the conservative Heritage Foundation (video is below):

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Sometimes it doesn't. President Obama knew that Biden had no problem speaking his mind when he picked him to be his running mate: Biden once famously made headlines for all the wrong reasons when he called Obama an "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy" in 2007. Former President George W. Bush reportedly once said of Biden that, "If bull was currency, Joe Biden would be a billionaire."

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Based on the complete lack of self-reflection displayed by his subject, editor David Remnick's new piece on the disgraced former Illinois governor reads like Thurber-esque satire. If Blagojevich's arrogance, alleged attempts to use his office as a personal revenue stream and flirtation with reality TV hadn't convinced the world already that the man known as Blago lives in his own little world, Remnick's piece provides added confirmation.

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Did you somehow miss him? Here's the gist of what he said: 

Obama dwelled on similar themes -- healthcare, the economy, race -- in all the interviews and made a somewhat surprising admission, saying that the healthcare debate had "humbled" him. He conceded that he has had problems "breaking through" and expressing to Americans why healthcare reform is so vital to the country. "I think there have been times where I have said I've got to step up my game in terms of talking to the American people about issues like health care," Obama said on George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week." The president added, however, that he will push forward with healthcare reform, “Because I — I really think it’s the right thing to do for the country.”

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Such sentiments, in the opinion of Dennis Baron, are nostalgic, uninformed hogwash. A professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Baron seeks to provide the historical context that is often missing from debates about the way technology is transforming our lives in his new book, "A Better Pencil." His thesis is clear: Every communication advancement throughout human history, from the pencil to the typewriter to writing itself, has been met with fear, skepticism and a longing for the medium that's been displaced. Far from heralding in a "2001: Space Odyssey" dystopia, Baron believes that social networking sites, blogs and the Internet are actually making us better writers and improving our ability to reach out to our fellow man. "A Better Pencil" is both a defense of the digital revolution and a keen examination of how technology both improves and complicates our lives.

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The subtext of the czar controversy is an attempt by Republicans to link Obama to socialism and Communism -- an illogical connection for many reasons, not least of which is that the czars of Russia weren't Communist -- they were a monarchy -- and they were in fact replaced by the Bolsheviks.

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Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was tapped by the Republican National Committee to give a "pre-buttal" teleconference to Obama's Tuesday address to the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh. Santorum used the opportunity to slam Obama and Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., as well as to discuss his own political ambitions.

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CELEBRITIES

Demi Moore: "Patrick you are loved by so many and your light will forever shine in all of our lives."

Whoopi Goldberg: "Patrick was a really good man, a funny man and one to whom I owe much that I can't ever repay ... I believe in 'Ghost's' message, so he'll always be near."

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On Sunday in the Washington Post, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, wrote a column warning of the number of informal policy "czars" employed by the White House. Hutchison asserted:

A few of them have formal titles, but most are simply known as "czars." They hold unknown levels of power over broad swaths of policy. Under the Obama administration, we have an unprecedented 32 czar posts (a few of which it has yet to fill), including a "car czar," a "pay czar" and an "information czar." There are also czars assigned to some of the broadest and most consequential topics in policy, including health care, terrorism, economics and key geographic regions.

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I guess that includes tennis champion.

Sunday, Kim Clijsters capped off a remarkable comeback by winning the U.S. Open women's title with a 7-5, 6-3 victory over the ninth-ranked Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark. Though this was the 26-year-old Belgian’s second U.S. Open victory, this title was even more impressive than her 2005 triumph. Clijsters became the first unseeded woman to win the U.S. Open and her stunning victory came just 18 months after she gave birth to a daughter. Sunday also marked the first time since 1980 that a mother has won a major tennis tournament.

But Clijsters’ recent motherhood may have actually helped her athletic prowess. While it may seem counter-intuitive at first to think that the dramatic physical changes a woman undergoes while pregnant might have a positive effect on her ability to compete athletically, a growing body of research suggests that the child Clijsters cradled in her arms after the match may have made her a better tennis pro.

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In actuality, ABC News estimated that between 60,000 and 70,000 people were at the rally. Certainly, that's a significant amount of people, but two million it is not. Fox News put the number at "tens of thousands," a figure echoed by the Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.

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