By 30 minutes and several days, Barack Obama is running late. He is supposed to be at his grandmother's in Hawaii -- his wife and daughters already are there -- but the Senate is still voting on some fairly significant legislation. So here he is, stuck in Washington nine days before Christmas. Illinois' junior senator just came from the Senate floor, where he and his fellow Democrats scored big by blocking a Republican drive to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act. He appears at once exhausted and energetic as he carefully places his finely tailored, charcoal-gray suit jacket on the back of a chair and centers his long, lean frame on the sofa beneath a large oil painting of an Illinois cornfield.

Poor Anne Applebaum. She just discovered, after a couple of decades in journalism, that she might be viewed as “a token.” She's the only woman columnist gracing The Washington Post's op-ed page, and she says, with some degree of sarcasm, that she's lonely.

But, apparently, she thinks her loneliness is born of merit. Women shouldn't be hired simply because they're women, she insists. They should be hired -- like she and her friends were -- because they're good at what they do.