David Brooks offers grades on the first 100 hours of the new congress, including this:

Prescription drugs: D. While they were the opposition, Democrats fulminated that the Republicans were so deep in the pockets of Big Pharma that they wouldn’t even let the government negotiate lower drug prices. But governing is harder than kvetching, and the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the Democratic plan would have a negligible effect on prices for the elderly.

The plan allows the government to negotiate, but doesn’t take the politically difficult step of giving it any leverage to actually lower prices. A symbolic gesture.

I agree with that. But am I to infer from this that Brooks would favor a toothier measure? The de facto price controls the right’s economists have warned us about? I sort of doubt it, but I’d be interested to know.

Jeff Stein, a CQ reporter who used to be an intelligence officer in Vietnam, recounts how back during that war he had a daily routine to see if his spy had new information for him: “I’d drive by a soccer stadium in Danang, the large coastal city where I lived, and I’d look for a particular mark on the wall. If it was there, I’d go to a prearranged place at a set time for a clandestine meeting with a go-between.” Danang wasn’t the capital of South Vietnam, and “The war was raging in the jungles and rice paddies less than 10 miles away, and communist agents were everywhere in the city,” nevertheless “security was good enough that they weren’t likely to risk exposing themselves by kidnapping or killing me.” Even under those conditions, however, the US government never really got a grip on the situation and, of course, the American military effort was doomed to failure.

In Iraq, our intelligence is fantastically worse than that and “according to several well informed intelligence sources, hundreds of CIA operatives have become virtual prisoners in the Green Zone, the sprawling American enclave whose high walls and guards separate the U.S. embassy, military command and related civilian agencies from the raging sectarian violence in Baghdad’s streets.” Stein quotes a former CIA Operations official as saying Agency personnel in Baghdad “spend their days playing cards and watching DVDs” because the insecurity makes it impossible for them to do their jobs. But, obviously, the military can’t provide security without intelligence. Nevertheless, soldiers and spies alike keep being sent to Iraq to, in essence, wander in circles. Except they’re wandering in circles in potentially lethal situations, dying and being gravely injured, inflicting serious wounds on others and destroying their property in attempts to defend themselves — killing and dying for a clearly hopeless mission.

Via Henly who has further remarks.

What better way to follow up a Friday evening birthday celebration than by hosting a Saturday night birthday party for your roommates. Then you wake up the next day to one of the great sports Sundays of the year — Sunday NBA on ABC premieres, followed by Conference Championship games.

Nevertheless, the AFC championship is just hours away and I still don’t know what to do. With Pat Riley “on leave” from the Miami Heat, the Colts and the Patriots are now the two most loathsome teams in professional sports. I desperately want them both to lose. If New England wins, we’ll need to hear once again about how quarterback/superhuman Tom Brady “knows how to win the big games.” If Indianapolis wins, the one strike against Peyton Manning’s career will be lifted and his insufferable face will no doubt be smeared across my television screen even more frequently. I’m hoping for injuries. Many, many injuries.

UPDATE: Let me also note that watching a full week of NFC coverage focusing on how nice it would be for those nice football players from New Orleans to win after their city’s gone through so much what with that flood and all has given me a powerful hatred for the Saints — go Grossman go! The Bears just hit N.O. like a category six football storm: Woo!