To my readers:  First, Happy New Year, if I haven't said so before.  It does indeed feel like a new year politically, and thank goodness.  And thanks for all your support over the past year-plus of this blog.  I love doing it and am committed to keeping it up.

This week, however, I am a bit under the weather, doped up (not the good kind, either), and unable to work more than in very short stretches.  I have some good pieces in mind for the blog, and I hoped to get them posted this week even through the fog.  But now I see that it's just not going to happen.  Bear with me, read some other great writers, and I hope to be at full strength again next week.