Three cheers for the power of the people!    HarperCollins heard the outrage over O.J. Simpson's planned book and pulled the plug.   It was absolutely the correct thing to do and they should be commended for it.

Furthermore, all of us who objected should be comforted   We can make a difference.  We can sign petitions, call radio shows, write letters, express outrage, and once in awhile, ever so often, the "powers-that-be" will take notice.

That's precisely what happened with this disgusting example of gross opportunism.  The people complained, the company pulled the plug.  Thank God for some common sense.

This story reminds me of what a joy it is to come to work each and every day, where i can host a national radio show, appear on Fox News Channel, and write for Townhall.com and help facilitate the kind of positive outcome that happened with this book.

News Corp's decision to cancel this entire project should motivate all of us to continue to speak out, to write letters, make phone calls, and let our voices be heard.  Remember how Wal-Mart tried to replace "Christmas" with "holiday" last year?  The people spoke (objected) and this year, "Christmas" is back in full glory at Wal-Marts all over the country.  A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said they heard the people and they fixed it.

Do you hear the people sing?

Some thoughts while shaving:    so Emmitt Smith and his partner win "Dancing with the Stars" on ABC-TV last night.   Oh brother.  I wonder if Emmitt will replace his Superbowl trophy with his "Dancing with the Stars" one?   In our household, we're huge Emmitt Smith fans.  As a legendary football player, not a guy wiggling his hips and sashaying across the stage.  Every time I saw Emmitt on a commercial or a news show dancing his fanny off, I just cringed.   I absolutely refused to watch him shake his groove thing.  Every time he danced, a piece of me, the Dallas Cowboys season ticketholder, died.  How embarrassing.  My wife,  meantime, absolutely loved it and was rooting for Emmitt all the way.   It must be a guy thing.   No man wants to watch his football hero looking like he's in a touring company production of  "Peter Pan"....Emmitt, what have you done???

A weird set of circumstances had me going through 5 different airport security checkpoints over 3 or 4 days this week.  What a nightmare.  Frequent fliers are slowly but surely getting disgusted with the security screening procedures.  Shoes off, ziploc bags, 3 ounces of liquid, no gels, but some gels...c'mon, let's face it:  the TSA guidelines are a total joke.  For instance, for 4 of the 5 trips through security hell, my Mennen Speed Stick deodorant was absolutely fine in my carry-on.  I just sailed through.  During one screening, in Tampa's airport, I suddenly because Abdul the Terrible.  You'd have thought I had robbed a bank because I didn't have the offending 3 ounce anti-perspirant in a ziploc bag.  Since it was in a shaving kit, not a plastic baggie, it was confiscated as if it were crack cocaine.  The TSA screener calmly explained to me that the speed stick really isn't a stick, it's a gel that is CALLED a stick and needed to be in the ever-wonderful ziploc baggie.  No baggie, in the trash.  Wonderful.   Meantime, we continue to refuse to implement measures that include profiling passengers because we're so terrified of what the ACLU might say.

Anna Quindlen of Newsweek happened to have a terrific article on the problem this week in Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15562940/site/newsweek/  

She's right.  Let's wake up and stop spending billions strip-searching little old ladies in our nation's airports.  Enough is enough.

Settling in to watch a TV show the other night, I was disgusted to see a department store TV commercial that was a full-blown Christmas spot.  I mean, we're talking snow, Christmas tree, the familiar carol music, the whole works.  The date?  October 29th.

Can we just knock it off?  Christmas is coming earlier and earlier every year.  The charming little town square where I live now all all it's Christmas lights up -- and running.  It's only the first week of November, for cryin' out loud.

Over the past few years, conservatives have mounted a successful rally against the secularization of Christmas.  Fox News Channel's John Gibson even wrote a book last year about "the war on Christmas."

I'm all for that battle and let's keep fighting.  But let's include the lousy trend of force-feeding this special time of year down our throats earlier and earlier.

Celebrating Christmas from October until January completely ruins the sprit of the season.

I just returned from the Fox News studios where I did an early morning exchange with Democrat strategist Bob Beckel.  Like my wife, Bob's just politically misguided, but he's a good guy.  He takes his party's line that this election today should be about Iraq.

I hope he's right.  Americans are smart enough to recognize that Democrats have absolutely no alternative to what we're currently doing in Iraq, other than to come home.  Coming home is precisely what Osama bin Laden wants.  How awful it will be if Democrats are in charge and we concede this war.  Americans are smarter than that and more importantly, we don't like to lose.

So in addition to record-low unemployment numbers, a healthy Dow, and a thriving economy overall, let's hope Americans think about Iraq when they pull the lever today.

If they do, maybe we'll catch a break and keep the grown-ups in charge.

I had been suffering from an NFL hangover.  You know the feeling, the team you root for blows it and winds up losing a game they should have won.  In my case, the Dallas Cowboys snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by handing a bizarre victory to the error-prone Washington Redskins.  Yesterday, somehow, the Cowboys managed a "Bad News Bears" performance that allowed the 'Skins to look like geniuses.  An easy Cowboys field goal with :06 seconds on the clock which would have sealed the Dallas win wound up being blocked and then run back by the Redskins.  Thanks to a terrible officiating mistake (a 5 yard facemask penalty was somehow turned into 15), it gave Washington one last play, with no time remaining, and their awful kicker managed to squeeze it through the uprights from 49 yards out.  Ugh.  I hate football.

So trudging into work this morning, I had those NFL blues.  I was jolted into reality by a Townhall.com reader who wrote me an email reminded me to keep my chin up because, as he put it, "let the Democrats be all gloom and doom -- we're the optimists!"  

How right he is.

Despite scandal after scandal being thrown our way, I'm reminded that we need to keep our chins up and stay positive.  It's no coincidence that scandals from the pages of the National Enquirer are all  happening in the hours before the election.  Heck, the male prostitute who outed Rev. Ted Haggard admitted he waited to time the revelation until a few days before the mid-term election in order to maximize the damage to conservatives.

We'll find out tomorrow night if it worked. 

There's no question that a lot of damage has been inflicted.  Between a difficult war, a number of Republican scandals, and a general feeling of unrest in the country, perhaps the Democrats were right to have been measuring for drapes in the Congressional office buildings.

But another scenario is possible:  voters are going to wake up and go to the polls in huge numbers tomorrow.  Enough of us will see through the deliberately timed tactics, the overwhelming effort by the mainstream press to assist Democrats, and have the ability to ask ourselves a simple question:  do Democrats really offer a better solution to ANYTHING?  Since the Democratic Party has made President Bush and the war the centerpiece of their campaigns, it's a pretty simple task to ask if they offer anything whatsoever that makes more sense than our current goal of defeating our enemy.

Naturally, the answer is a resounding no.

Republicans aren't perfect.  There are bad apples in the Democratic bunch just like there are bad apples in the GOP's.  

But maybe, just maybe, enough people will realize that we're better off with Republicans in control than the Democrats.  And that they'll show up tomorrow to say so.

So I'm keeping my chin up and staying positive.  Besides, surely my Cowboys won't figure out a way to let Arizona beat us next Sunday....

I can hear it now:  poor John Kerry, in exploring another (failed) presidential bid, stands before a roomful of people and announces, "I actually DID apologize for calling our troops stupid after refusing to apologize."

Remember the Mel Brooks' movie, "The Producers", turned into a smash Broadway hit with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick?  There's a scene where one of the characters, facing complete ruination and scandal, is curled up on the floor in a fetal position clutching a baby blanket and repeating, "No way out....no way out....no way out...."

Can't you just see poor, pitiful John Kerry curled up on an Oriental rug in his Beacon Hill townhouse saying the same thing?

Man, I've seen politicians self-destruct before, but not quite to the extent of this particular meltdown.  I'm not sure what's more offensive:  Kerry's arrogant tirade or his wimpy little five-sentence statement on his website that purports to be an apology.

Do you think there's any single American, Democrat or Republican, who believes he's sorry?

Voters should go to the polls next week with the image of John Kerry emblazoned in their minds.  Or, better still, consider what liberal/Democrat investigative reporter Seymour Hersch had to say this week about our brave men and women fighting the good fight:  "There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq."  This is the same Seymour Hersch who had the big "scoop" about American soldiers putting panty hose on the heads of some prisoners at Abu Ghraib.  Think this guy might have an agenda?  "Violent and murderous?"  And you can be certain this clown isn't a registered Republican.

It's simple, these folks simply despise our troops.  They "loathe the military" (remember who said THAT?  It wasn't a Republican...) and want America to lose.  I know it sounds hard to believe, but how else would you describe it?

Liberals are screeching and howling and wailing and thrashing.  Check out that lunatic Keith "I-think-I'm-Edward-R.-Murrow" Olbermann on MSNBC. 

I hate to dare to dream, but could Democrats realize that their supposedly guaranteed victory isn't such a foregone conclusion after all? 

So Sen. John Kerry was kidding?   He called his ugly, mean-spirited attack on every single American who has ever served or is serving in the military a "botched joke" about the President?

As Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies would say:  "Riiiiiiight."

The junior Senator from Massachusetts looks out at a group of college kids and tells them that if they do their homework and study hard, they won't wind up being "stuck in Iraq."  After the stuff hits the fan, he marches up to another podium and insists he was just "joking" about President Bush and his "broken policies."   And refuses to apologize to anyone.

Nice try, Senator.  Classy.  Bright.  Insightful.  And boy, are you funny.  There's nothing like joking about our troops and their commander-in-chief during a time of war where our soldiers are fighting and dying that can bring down the house.

Please remember to tip your waitress.

But since humor is the order of the day, I think I can just join the crowd:

Did you hear the one about the junior Senator from Massachusetts who likes to wear women's lingerie?

Oh, never mind - that was just a botched joke about the economic policy of France.

In the scheme of things, I wonder what voters will consider a more important "scandal":  a disgraced Republican Congressman who was immediately drummed out of his job after it was revealed that he sent nasty e-mails to pages or a sitting U.S. Senator who claims that our troops are lazy, ignorant and uneducated?

I hear that John Kerry beats his wife so often that her nickname is "Black-and-blue Teresa."

Oops, another botched joke, I meant to address the climate conditions of Brazil.

Kerry's angry press conference yesterday was really a classic.  This is a guy who has practically topped Al Gore or Howard Dean in falling apart at the seams.  "Doughy Rush Limbaugh?"  "Stuffed shirt Tony Snow?"  But most importantly, he's a man who doesn't even have enough honor or courage to apologize for his ridiculous slur.  He spends so much time bragging about what a "war hero" he was that he doesn't even have the decency to say he's sorry to the family members of slain American soldiers, or the heroic, SMART men and women at Walter Reed who have lost their limbs but not their spirit.

John Kerry pulls the wings off flies, kicks his dog, and is an internet porn addict.

There I go again, just another "botched joke."  What a riot, eh?

The other gutless Democrat in this whole debacle is the unnamed Democratic congressman who told ABC News, "He blew it for us in 2004, what's he trying to do, blow it for us in 2006, too?"  If only that Democrat would have been willing to go on the record and identify him/herself, Americans might be able to have one shred of hope for this shameful political party.  So far, not a single Democrat has had the sense or decency to denounce Kerry for what he said.  That's pretty typical for them.  Compare that to all the Republicans who had no trouble throwing Mark Foley out to the curb, where he belongs.

John Kerry is a national disgrace who will never again hold any other political office than the one he has and has forced a number of decent people to vote for Republicans next week.

And that is no joke.