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Without further ado (or waiting til Dec. 31), here are E Pluribus Unum's most-read posts of 2006:

10. Dad Gave Me The Keys (Mark Adams)

Wow, a real blog. How cool is this.

Mark's debut at EPU! Dude -- how cool are you?

9. Ohio Republicans, Offers That Can't Be Refused (Mark Adams)

In France, you can't even get away with taking a Viagra before a silly bike race. If they could prove that the Browns and the Cavaliers were "fixing" point spreads, or the Indians were throwing games, there'd be riots on Euclid Avenue. Push some inconvenient voters in the wrong direction, undermine our very democracy, and it's just business as usual.

8. Movie trailer mash-ups
Where else are you going to see the movie trailer for Brokeback To Future? OK, besides YouTube.com and every other blog and website on the Internets. All I can say is: God bless Google.

7. Marbury vs. Madison
I posted this in April, 2005 and it is still one of the most widely-read things I've ever written. It has bounced around in the top 50 sites (out of 175 thousand) at Google for the eponymous keyword phrase -- and it made a star out of our buddy Wince from Kansas:

Some would say God's Law is most high. Perhaps it is, as defined (for example) in the Bible. But we are not a nation that is governed by the church or the temple. Even if we were, all you have to do is look at the Talmud to understand that there is always more than one opinion about everything.

No, we are not a government ruled by the church. We are a government of the people, for the people and by the people. We follow a document that WE wrote.

Some would hope that God guided us in that ongoing endeavor. But if that is the case, it is also certainly true that God helps those who helps themselves.

It's hard to make your way through the difficult questions Wince, I know. But we all agreed, long ago, that this was a job for the people to do. We don't wait for God to judge these difficult cases for us.

6. What does leadership mean?

I think it was Chris Matthews who said voters respond most favorably to the candidate who can best articulate the following simple message: "Follow me!"

Bush did it better than Kerry and he won. The End.

5. Intelligent Design: “The sky is blue because God wants it that way.”
The title (and the post) is borrowed from Nobel Prize winner Eric Cornell. What more is there to add?

4. Commerce Committee to Vote on Net Neutrality Wednesday
This post contained the names and numbers of the everyone on the Senate Commerce Committee and I urged you to call them and tell them to support the Snowe/Dorgan amendment. Net Neutrality survived -- for now. Stay tuned.

3. Top Ten Chuck Norris Facts
Jeez, I didn't even write it. And/But this post ranks #9 out of 480 thousand sites listed on Google. I'm baffled...but endlessly amused (along with, apparently, the rest of the Internets):

A blind man once stepped on Chuck Norris' shoe. Chuck replied, "Don't you know who I am? I'm Chuck Norris!" The mere mention of his name cured this man blindness. Sadly, the first, last, and only thing this man ever saw was a fatal roundhouse kick delivered by Chuck Norris.

2. Foley Scandal: What's up with Rep. Rodney Alexander?
Major hat tip to Miss Julie, who asked the title question thereby inspiring this post, early in the Foley scandal.

And the #1 most widely-read post of the year...

1. Bush-Cheney Escape War Crimes Prosecution
Go ahead, click the link -- you'll notice that this post was "dugg" 854 times so far (and viewed nearly 4 thousand times at Google Video -- with a strange spike in traffic on the day after Christmas). It's Jack Cafferty breathing fire:

Under the War Crimes Act, violations of the Geneva Conventions are felonies, in some cases punishable by death. When the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Convention applied to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, President Bush and his boys were suddenly in big trouble.

I'll say. Senator Bill Frist, Congressman Dennis Hastert and their Republican stooges passed the Military Commission Act of 2006, destroying habeas corpus -- and allowing Bush-Cheney to get away without a scratch. This is a story that historians will be telling for decades to come.

P.S. Sometime soon, I promise to post E Pluribus Unum's Top 10 most widely viewed videos -- including the one of Stephen Colbert showing (and dissing) my ad for congressional candidate, Carol Gay.

"Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about."

----- Cory Doctorow

So...seen any good movies lately?

Karen Breitweiser responds to Ann Coulter.

(HT to John Amato)

They handed out the 2006 Webby Awards the other night. One of the rules is that your acceptance speech must be 5 words (or less?) in length.

Here are some of the winners and their speeches:

"Discover digital objects and handles."
-- Dr. Robert Kahn, who received a special lifetime achievement award for co-developing the TCP/IP computer networking protocol that is the basis of the entire Internet.

"Jewish American Princesses ... Smokin'.'"
-- JDate.com is a dating service that caters to Jewish singles looking for kosher love. The site, designed by Sparks Network, won the Webby award for best social-networking site.

"Sports? Pornography? Sports? Pornography? Sports!"
-- ESPN.com won the Webby Awards for best sports site under the entertainment category. The awards show also featured several members of the cast of Avenue Q, a Broadway show consisting of puppets, who performed a scene about how the Internet's main function is really to host pornography.

"Everything you think is true."
-- Prince was awarded a lifetime-achievement award for his Web site NPGMusicslub.com, on which he has released seven full-length albums that are not available anywhere else.

"Two crackers, fighting racism, yo,"
-- RememberSegregation.org is a site constructed to recreate the era of racial segregation. Visitors first encounter a screen with two different areas to click on: one for "White Visitors" and the other for "Colored Visitors." Viewers then get to the site's main page, which features information on the history of segregation and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I have a big ... pencil."
-- Big Ideas Come From Big Pencils.

"Darlings, make blogs, not war."
-- Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post.

"More than just bare breasts."
-- Genographic Project, National Geographic.

"Liberals have mojo ... we win!"
-- Mother Jones. After this win was announced, host Rob Corddry asked the crowd if there were any conservatives in the audience at all. One person applauded.

"Make UNICEF obsolete ... help kids."
-- State of the World's Children 2006, UNICEF

You can view a list of all the Webby Award winners here (complete with links to the winning web sites).

Bruce Reed makes a great observation:

What do you get when you mix a Bush 41 speechwriter with a Sunday celebrity from Fox? Well, if Peggy Noonan and Terry Bradshaw had a grown son together, he might sound a lot like Tony Snow. To paraphrase Stevie Wonder, baloney and irony go together in perfect harmony.

But wait, folks, he's just warming up...

It's too early to predict whether these talents will combine for greatness or disaster. But so far, the results look promising. Asked by Cox News whether he would be frank with the president, Snow delivered this gem:

"They want people to express their opinions. You're not coming here to drink the Kool-Aid. You're coming here to serve the president. And at this particular juncture I think what you want is as much honest counsel as you can get."

In just four sentences, Snow managed to refer to himself in the first, second, and third person – even switching back and forth in the same sentence. When he said, "I think what you want is as much honest counsel as you can get," he referred to the president in the second person and himself in the first person and (implicitly) the third.

Um, yep, he's absolutely right. Please note that I had to diagram Snow's sentence on a whiteboard to confirm what Reed knew right from the start.

But here's the clincher!

Even Yogi Berra couldn't go from first to third on a single quote.

Stop, Bruce, you're killing me! As they say on the Internets -- ROTFLMAO!

YouTube.com (at C-Span's request) has taken down the videos linked below. But Crooks and Liars still has their link up.

C-Span also has the show on their site. Google Video also has it.

1. Click the "play" button to view the first part of Colbert's presentation:

"Democracy is our greatest export. At least until China finds a way to stamp it out of plastic for 3 cents a unit."

2. Here's the second part of Colbert's presentation:

"This President has a very forward thinking energy policy. Why do think this President is down on the ranch cutting that brush all the time? He's trying to create an alternative energy source. By 2008 we will have a mesquite-powered car."

3. Here's the third and final part of Colbert's presentation:

(Colbert as WH Press Secretary): "I have a brief statement. The press is destroying America."

Kinky Friedman's got some new campaign videos.

Bill Maher interviews Sen. Russ Feingold.

Watch the video -- it's a great shot of adrenaline and straight talk from a Democrat who calls it the way he sees it.

Click the image (left) to watch the video -- it's around 8 minutes long and well worth your time, especially if you think there are no Democrats speaking up against the "Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight," Feingold's apt label for the Bush-Cheney gang.

“Her journey was long and only briefly with a hand to hold, but now she leans on everlasting arms. In all her years, Coretta Scott King proved that a person of conviction and strength could also be a beautiful soul.”

Jimmy Carter, speaking at Coretta Scott King's funeral in Atlanta.

Delivering the eulogy fell to Kings’ youngest child, Bernice.

(Click thumbnails for larger images.)

"President Bush is urging all nations to cut off aid to Hamas, including $234 million dollars we were going to send them. In fact, to make sure the money doesn't get there, he's putting FEMA in charge of it."
---Jay Leno

"The Justice Department has subpoenaed Google. They're demanding to see records that will tell them how often people search for porn on the Internet ... First they tap our phones, now they want our Google searches. When did the government turn into our jealous girlfriend?"
---Jimmy Kimmel

"Earlier tonight, President Bush delivered his State of the Union address. The president gave the speech at 9 p.m., which means he had to wear his pajamas under his suit."
---Conan O'Brien

"Yesterday at a press conference President Bush said he had not seen 'Brokeback Mountain.' However, he did express an interest in drilling for oil there"
---David Letterman

"A comet is, of course, frozen bodies of ice and dust formed over 4.6 billion years ago---or created 6,000 years ago, depending on whether or not you're wrong."
---Jon Stewart

(HT to Bill in Portland Maine)