This is what is known as damning with faint praise.

I won't be by the machine non-stop. But I'll check in periodically and answer as many questions as I can. I'm assuming a number of people are becalmed today.

I didn't get a newspaper. Understandable, given my street. If you're in the same boat, here's what it looked like.

Thanks to Norma for calling my attention to a nice piece of work by numbers cruncher Nate Silver. About the despised "Obama agenda." Drilling down on issue after issue you find the American voter is far more nuanced than the lockstepping baggers. On many important issues, the majority support the Democratic administration's point of view.

Taxing the rich; the outrageous campaign finance ruling; fair pay legislation; financial regulation; gays in the military; cap-and-trade; more. The numbers speak. Check it out. Health care still not so good.

Let's start polling Paul Ryan's demolition of Social Security and Medicare. And let's have a vote on it, Republicans. Voters, ask your favorite Republican where he or she stands.

Leslie Peacock's art blog has the scoop on an architectural project to build a trendy modular home  at 1519 Commerce in the Quapaw Quarter environs.

Check it out.

Why not. Not much to be happening in Ark. today. Democrat Chad Causey announces to succeed his former boss, Rep. Marion Berry.

So my prevailing thought while watching U.S. Rep. John Boozman on Saturday as he announced his Republican candidacy for the U.S. Senate is that I dread his debates with Blanche Lincoln.

He stands a chance to make her look good. No, allow me to amend. He stands a chance to make her look not that bad.

And she’ll return him the favor.

That assumes, of course, that both get that far, as I suspect they will. Their race would be an epic one, most likely. But it would not be a rhetorically resplendent one.

For what it's worth count me as one who 1) believes Lincoln will be the Democratic nominee and 2) is not ready to declare Boozman the automatic nominee in a fractured field before an unpredictable electorate.

But, please. Could someone ask Tim Griffin, Scott Wallace and the Elite Eight in the race for Senate what they think of Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to reduce and privatize Social Security and Medicare? Up or down. Yea or nay. The Republican campaign apparatus insisted that reporters ask up-or-down questions of Democratic candidates on health legislation. (Republicans had cameras at the ready when their planted question was asked of Robbie Wills.) Turnabout fair play, Democrats suggest. End Social Security as we know it? Or not?

I am solidly iced in on my hill, however. State offices in the capital are closed.

I notice that LR School Board member Jody Carreiro wrote other Board members yesterday to suggest -- as snow days pile up -- to consider converting days not currently scheduled for classes to makeup days. He mentioned a teacher training day next week and the Friday before spring break. Class time is important in advance of testing, he noted.

It says that the injection protocol "does not subject inmates to a substantial risk of serious harm." Unless you count death, of course.

More seriously, the case summary says the court finds that the protocol, among others, "contains sufficient safeguards to ensure inmate is fully unconscious before pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride are administered. and any risk that the procedure will not work as designated is merely a risk of accident."

Dick Cheney would call it an advanced enhanced educational technique.