I’ve got ton-o’-errands to run tomorrow before I head to Connecticut.

First, I have a 9:00 appointment at Goodyear to get my tires rotated and an oil change. I have a sick feeling in my stomach that I might need new brakes.

Then I need to get a haircut, buy an atlas, go to the bank, go to the pet store and get some litter & cat food, and, uh, actually I think that’s all that I have to do. So, really, not a big deal afterall.

Then when I get home I have to do laundry, run some dishes through the dishwasher, clean the place, pack, and set my alarm to wake me up crack o’ dawn Tuesday morn’. Yep. Fun day it shall be.

This week, House Republicans bent their accountability rules to protect their majority leader from what they feel is a partisan Texas prosecutor. But they hated the whole exercise. They sat in a conference room hour after hour wringing their hands. Only a few members were brave enough to stand up and say they shouldn’t bend the rule. But afterward, many House Republicans came up to those members and said that secretly they agreed with them.

It’s shifted because many House Republicans know that DeLay has been playing close to the ethical edge for years. They’ve noticed the number of scandals - the latest involving lobbying fees for some Indian casinos - that trace back to DeLay cronies. They still remember that delicious feeling of possibility when they arrived in Washington and vowed they would not turn into the corrupt old majority they had come to replace. They know Delay symbolizes their descent from that reformist ideal.

Read the whole thing.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 - House Republican leaders blocked and appeared to kill a bill Saturday that would have enacted the major recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, refusing to allow a vote on the legislation despite last-minute pleas from both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to Republican lawmakers for a compromise before Congress adjourned for the year.

The decision to block a vote on the landmark bill, which would have created the job of a cabinet-level national intelligence director to oversee the C.I.A. and the government’s other spy agencies, came after what lawmakers from both parties described as a near-rebellion by a core of highly conservative House Republicans aligned with the Pentagon who were emboldened to stand up to their leadership and to the White House.

Oh. Great. A bunch of “highly conservative House Republicans” wants to show the American people their balls by putting the American people in DANGER! Wonderful, guys, wonderful! Let us all remember: the Republicans love ALL of us.

Actually, that’s unfair to moderate Republicans who supported the bill, including Susan Collins from Maine.

Remember that Republican civil war everyone’s been talking about? What with this, that whole mess over Specter’s confirmation, and Tom DeLay’s recent “oh, the rules don’t need to apply to me, and if they do, I can change the rules” crap, I think it is safe to say that the war has begun.