from his cat: “She’s actually a very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn’t have to do anything for it, which is why I say this cat’s taught me more about women, than anything my whole life.”

Right-wing talk show host Dennis Prager has raised a firestorm charging that Rep.-elect Kieth Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, must swear in using a Bible. He said that if Ellison swears in with a Quran, it would undermine “American civilization” and be akin to swearing in with a copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

In an interview with USA Today, Prager acknowledged that “trying to ban Ellison from choosing to use a Quran ‘may well be’ unconstitutional.” As various commentators have pointed out, Prager’s demand violates the Constitution’s provision that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

Also, as ThinkProgress noted yesterday, the entire controversy is moot, since the swearing-in ceremony for the House of Representatives never includes a religious book.

Nevertheless, Prager said today “that he’s going to keep pressing the issue,” and that he’ll “be writing and talking about this issue again.” In a show of support, the American Family Association has launched a campaign urging Congress “to pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of representatives and senators.”

for conflict prevention since the International Crisis Group began its CrisisWatch publication over three years ago, the group said today. “Fourteen situations deteriorated in November. … Improvements were noted during November in only three situations, and no new conflict resolution opportunities were identified for the coming month.”

As the incoming Congress is “readying probes into oil companies’ profits and eyeing legislation aimed at curbing global warming, the American Petroleum Institute and its K Street allies are looking to assemble a $100 million war chest to rally policy makers and public opinion to their side,” the National Journal reports. “The image and education effort … will include expensive television, radio, and print ads, tours of oil patch facilities for lawmakers and opinion elites, and financial contributions to sympathetic think tanks and industry-friendly organizations.”

K-Drum:

Via Jonathan Singer, the Economist’s Lexington notes a delicious irony. A few short years ago it was the Democratic Party that was supposedly in danger of shrinking into a merely regional party, but today it’s the GOP that looks to be headed for that fate.

It seems to me that the real lesson of this delicious irony is that we should be guarded against pundits’ habit of over-interpreting election results. After all, back in 1998 the conventional wisdom was that the GOP was in danger of shrinking to become a merely regional party. Then, in late 2004 and early 2005, the Democrats were in danger of shrinking to become a merely regional party. Now in late 2006, the GOP is once again in danger of shrinking to become a merely regional party. Realistically, I think this is all more-or-less hysteria and nobody is going to become merely regional — things will just sort of swing back and forth, with the Democrats maintaining a semi-permanent reservoir of strength in the Urban Archipelago and the GOP having a similar bastion in the South.

has announced he will seek to chair the House Telecom and Internet Subcommittee next year. Art Brodsky says it’s still “no slam dunk that Net Neutrality will be approved by the new Congress. But, the odds got better with Rep. Ed Markey’s decision.”

Josh Marshall on the latest conservative talking point.

Next week, the 109th Congress returns for a final lame-duck session. “In a blend of pique and laziness,” conservatives are choosing to simply ignore their responsibility to complete nine overdue spending bills. Instead, they plan to pass an emergency stop-gap bill — called a “continuing resolution” — that will result in millions in funding cuts to vital programs. CongressDaily explains:

– The Social Security Administration has told congressional staff it might have to furlough every employee.
– HUD funding would not keep pace with demand for low-income housing vouchers, meaning “literally thousands of people would be out in the street,” one source said.
– School breakfast and lunch programs would face a $1 billion shortfall, cutting off 1.2 million participants.
– The Veterans Health Administration would have to absorb the $3 billion increase to meet this year’s requirements.

But while spending bills aren’t on the agenda, a “fetal pain abortion bill” — which has no chance of passing becoming law (it will likely pass in the House) and is described as a “last bid for loyalty” from the “base of social conservatives” — will likely get a vote:

The bill, by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., defines a 20-week-old fetus as a “pain-capable unborn child” a highly controversial threshold among scientists. It also directs the Health and Human Service Department to develop a brochure stating “that there is substantial evidence that the process of being killed in an abortion will cause the unborn child pain.”

A report last year by the Journal of the American Medical Association reviewed nearly 2,000 studies on fetal pain and concluded that “legislative proposals to allow fetal pain relief during abortion are not justified by scientific evidence.”

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