DING DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD!….TimesSelect is no more. Krugman, Dowd, and Friedman are once again available to the masses. To celebrate, let’s take a look at Bob Herbert’s Tuesday column:

Like crack addicts confronting the irresistible vial, the evil geniuses of the G.O.P. can’t seem to help themselves. This time — with an eye toward seizing the White House again next year, even if they lose the popular vote — they’re trying to rewrite the rules for the distribution of electoral votes in California.

Hey, not bad for such a boring guy! The rest of the column isn’t quite so zippy, but it’s a start.

Of course, this also means that all the other Times columnists are once again roaming free. Today we have Tom Friedman (I’ve visited a bunch of obscure places lately and they’re all growing really fast), Maureen Dowd (all the people I usually write about should have the good grace to stop making me write about them), and David Brooks (Defense Secretary Robert Gates is such a candid guy that he had either a ready-made cliche or a profound silence instantly available for every question I asked). Enjoy!

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