TO MARS? Another possible casualty of Tom DeLay's fall: The Bush administration's baroque moon-then-Mars space exploration program. The mission to Mars, of course, became a fast joke after George W. Bush first unveiled it weeks prior to the 2004 State of the Union address and then failed to mention it in the actual speech, but contrary to most people's assumptions the program has been proceeding full speed ahead, cannibalizing the rest of NASA's budget in the process.

INCOMPETENCE ATOP INCOMPETENCE. Kate Steadman has a good catch today, finding that even when the Bush administration tries to fix Medicare Part D's problems, they still misdiagnose the ailment and prescribe a useless cure. The occasion is the first official fix to one of Part D's structural issues: the overabundance of "choice" in drug plans, which has led to scores of confused seniors unwilling or unable to sift through dozens of complex drug formularies to find the one that may work for them. It's been widely understood, on the left and the right, that the market required some pruning; choice was fine, but offering so much was crippling the program.

ABRAMOFF AND SUDAN.

And the hits just keep on coming. In the L.A. Times today, Tom Hamburger and Ken Silverstein reveal that Jack Abramoff approached the government of Sudan to offer his, er, services. While the rest of the world worried about al Qaeda, Abramoff took the ambassador of a country that once harbored bin Laden to a Redskins game in 2001 to make his pitch.

AND KEEP ALL HANDS IN THE HUMVEE. Fred Kaplan on the Democrats' clich�-filled, but nevertheless sound, "Real Security" strategy:

The list may seem obvious, like those "Do not use in water" tags that come with electrical appliances�except that Bush & Co. have been spinning fan blades in bathtubs around the world the past four years. This is the advantage that the Democrats hold at the starting gate: The Republican administration has violated so many precepts of International Relations 101 that clich�s take on the air of wisdom. It may be that the Dems don't need to put forth their own agenda; promising to pull the plug out of the socket might be sufficient.

DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH. Say what you will about Tom DeLay, I don't think you can get around the fact that there's something honorable about the way -- contrary to almost every relevant aspect of the American tradition and the basic structure of our political institutions -- he built an effective, disciplined legislative caucus. Of course, at the end of the day the effective caucus he built was twisted and evil, but that's another matter. Future progressive legislative leaders still have some lessons to learn from his successes.

THAT'S A FIRST. Not to pick on Matt Stoller, but as TNR's Michael Crowley notes in response to Stoller's MyDD denunciation of Chuck Schumer as "the most extreme version of a Reagan Democrat" and a "center-right Beltway" type: "Man, tough crowd!"

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW. For months, I�ve been assuming that The West Wing would conclude with Arnold Vinick, the moderate GOP California senator played by Alan Alda, taking the presidency over Jimmy Smits� Matt Santos, a Democratic Congressman from Houston. It has seemed to me all season (and, out of step with my fellow countrypersons, I didn�t even watch the show regularly until this season) as if the writers, a couple of whom I know a bit -- both had high-level Democratic jobs in Washington -- had filled the Vinick character with more elan and a more appealing story line: A pro-choice Republican from California wins the presidency and reels his party back in from winguttia and into the land of reasonable, Howard Baker conservatism.