My last “Sunday News Show” review was written on 12/13/09. It is now 2010. Happy New Year.

It isn’t that I didn’t watch the shows. I did. I just didn’t write about them. But I was thinking about it.

Right now the news media is fixated on the failed bomb attempt by the Nigerian young man as an international flight was coming into Detroit airport. They are typically overplaying this, giving Al Quaeda the publicity that it is craving. Of course, Krauthamer says that we shouldn’t have arrested the guy with the civilian judicial system, but should have charged him as a military “enemy combatant,” which to me is code for jailing them with no charges and torturing them. That’s just what Al Quaeda wants.

Of course, Janet Napoletano was roasted, and her legacy branded, by her statement that the system worked just fine in the attempted bombing. Of course, we all know now that this was just dumb, because, as one pundit said, it was “inconceivable” that the guy was allowed to get on the plane. It does seem that is right. Just how much taxpayer money goes into making sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen? It is inconceivable.

There are a couple things that stand out to me. One is Cheney’s comments about Obama being in denial that we are “at war” with Al Quaeda. But I do have to give Krauthamer credit for being the one panelist to point out that it was Bush who actually let the Yemeni’s out of Guantanamo which ended up being freed in Yemen and going back to leadership positions in Al Quaeda. But if you listen to many of the other conservatives, who are trying to tie this failure to Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo, you would swear that Obama is to blame for all of these problems.

When you consider everything, it seems to me that Cheney is being unpatriotic and helping our enemies with his statements, which are simply false to try and harm the commander in chief in his military matters.

I also think that Pat Buchanan’s both repudiation of the causes of global warming, and his incessant touting of Sarah Palin are way beneath what a panelist in that show should be saying. The hacked private emails of a few global warming scientists, while to me shows how science can be manipulated, and I’ve seen plenty of that which I didn’t like, is next to nothing compared to the rest of the body of science about how the planet’s climate is changing.

And Palin? Give me a break. No, give me two breaks.

Health care has been pushed to the back burner. I think the Democrats like that. It means they can work out their differences in the dark and get the bill thru, for better or worse. But reports in the NY Times that the House Dems are going to cave on key provisions doesn’t give me too much hope. The U.S. Senate, an obsolete chamber dating back to the Brits “House of Lords,” or people who get (or got, it’s pretty much gone, like the Senate should be) their political influence by their social status, has too much power. But there will never be a change, because the Senate would have to approve any constitutional changes, and I doubt if they will vote for any reduction in power, let alone their own demise.

And finally, speaking of the Senate, some of the conservative commentators are writing the political obituary for Harry Reid. All I can say is that if Reid goes, my senator Durbin is likely to become majority leader. He will push a more progressive agenda, although I have seen him get a bit more conservative the older he gets and the longer he has been in the Senate.