The ceremonial "pardoning" of a Thanksgiving turkey is an old tradition. So by now, most people have learned that it's best to stage that kind of photo op in a nice, picturesque setting, away from the reality of what's happening to the birds that weren't spared.

Apparently, Sarah Palin's press people haven't quite figured that one out yet. As you can see in the video below, when Palin spoke to reporters after pardoning one turkey, a farmer was working in the background, slaughtering its less-fortunate compatriots.

President-elect Barack Obama appears close to selecting James L. Jones, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, to be his national security advisor. Jones is the former Supreme Allied Commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe. Politico reports that Jim Steinberg, who served as Bill Clinton's deputy national security advisor, and Marine General Anthony Zinni are also under consideration for the role.

Additionally, according to ABC News' Jake Tapper and Martha Raddatz, Democratic sources have said that retired four-star Navy Admiral Dennis C. Blair, the former commander-in-chief of U.S. Pacific Command, seems to be Obama's top choice for director of national intelligence.

Obama has not officially offered the jobs to either of the front-runners.

Tapper and Raddatz also report that many of Obama's advisors want Steinberg to become the national security advisor, while Obama is adamantly in favor of Jones. Jones was an outspoken critic of the Bush Administration's policies in the Iraq War.

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) still leads in his race against Al Franken, but with the recount almost halfway done after two days, that lead is shrinking.

Before the recount began, the two men were separated by 215 votes. At the end of the day Wednesday, it was 174 votes. By the end of counting Thursday, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Coleman led Franken by just 136 votes.

Over at Minnesota Public Radio, they've put together an interesting feature -- a game that lets you see examples of challenged ballots and give your opinion as to the voter's intention. It's clear that all of this is art, not science.

Multiple outlets are now reporting that Hillary Clinton's nomination to be secretary of state is all but assured, and that there will be an official announcement shortly after Thanksgiving.

This, of course, assumes that nothing unexpected happens to block the nomination, and that Clinton herself wants the job. But the Associated Press' Nedra Pickler writes:

Transition aides said the two camps have worked out financial disclosure issues involving Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, and the complicated international funding of his foundation that operates in more than 40 countries. The aides said Obama and Hillary Clinton have had substantive conversations about the secretary of state job.

Clinton has been mulling the post for several days, but the comments from the transition aides suggested that Obama's team does not feel she is inclined to turn it down.

Similarly, Politico's Mike Allen says two unnamed "senior Obama aides" told him "they expect her to accept."

Separately, the New York Times reports that "Democratic leaders in the Senate are prepared to give Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton a still-undefined leadership role there if she does not become Barack Obama’s secretary of state... The discussions about an enhanced position for Mrs. Clinton are factoring into her deliberations over joining the cabinet."

President-elect Barack Obama may already be in the process of alienating the dovish elements of his coalition for change.  According to a story in Thursday's Los Angeles Times, some of the names being discussed as potential Cabinent members in the Obama administration -- current Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Sen. Hillary Clinton, for example -- have antiwar groups worried about the new president's foreign policy.

"There's so much Obama hero worship, we're having to walk this line where we can't directly criticize him," Kevin Martin, the executive director of Peace Action, told the Times. "But we are expressing concern."

Kelly Dougherty, of Iraq Veterans Against the War, agreed, saying, "Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning."

It seems that the antiwar groups might have gotten ahead of themselves, and started expecting too much from Obama. During the campaign, he'd made it clear that his plan to withdraw from Iraq over the course of his first 16 months in office would be subject to change if the situation on the ground changed. "I've always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed," he said in July. And a former Obama foreign policy advisor told the BBC in March that her boss' plan is a "best-case scenario." 

Besides, while Cabinet appointments clearly affect policy, there's not necessarily a perfect correlation between the two. In some ways, Obama's decisions on these appointments could help him successfully implement a more liberal foreign policy. Writing for CNN.com on Wednesday, Steve Clemons argued this point, saying:

If Obama wants to change the strategic game on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Syria, Cuba, Russia and other challenges, he will need partners who are perceived as tough, smart, shrewd and even skeptical of the deals he wants to do. Clinton is all of these.

Clinton may be the bad cop to Obama's good cop. Because she is trusted by Pentagon-hugging national security conservatives, she may legitimize his desire to respond to this pivot point in American history with bold strokes rather than incremental ones.

Bill O'Reilly has competition for his reputation as the most dedicated soldier fighting against the "War on Christmas." In a column in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger, the deputy editor of the paper's editorial page, put himself on the front lines. Henniger argues that our inability to say "Merry Christmas" was a main factor leading to our current economic crisis. Henniger writes (h/t ThinkProgress):

This year we celebrate the desacralized "holidays" amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin -- fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man's theory: A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy...

Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees. Each must be learned, taught, passed down. And so we come back to the disappearance of "Merry Christmas."

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines.

If you thought the threat of subversive, depraved hedonism was contained to San Francisco, the American Family Association wants you to think again.

“They’re Coming to Your Town” is the title of a DVD the AFA is selling for suggested donations of $14.95 a pop. “They’re Coming” sounds the usual alarms, warning: “The Eureka Springs they knew is gone. It is now a national hub for homosexuals. Eureka Springs is becoming the San Francisco of Arkansas.”

The apparent cause for concern is the city council’s unanimous passage of a domestic partnership registry for gay couples. “They’ve come out of the closet,” shudders one fellow in the DVD trailer.

AFA calls the city council “homosexual controlled,” and claims that “a handful of homosexual activists infiltrated the Eureka Springs, Arkansas government,” as if gay residents of the town were an espionage cell. And the group doesn't exactly add to its credibility with the desperate-sounding sales pitch at the end of the trailer: "Learn the strategies used by gay activists, and don't let this happen to your city. This DVD is a must teaching tool. Watch, and learn, how to fight a well-organized gay agenda to take over the cities of America, one city at a time. 'If it's not happening in your town, get ready, because it is going to happen.' Show it at home, in Sunday schools, bible studies, or community groups. Purchase your copy, or a five-pack to share with others today! And spread the news -- they're coming to your town."

Of course, this is the organization that's selling this as a Christmas decoration. Hey, I guess it only looks like a burning cross.

(Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.)

Shortly after Democrats retook Congress in 2006, conservatives began sounding the warning bell -- the left was salivating over the prospect of bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, and its restoration was surely imminent. And if the democrats had their way, conservative talk radio as we know it would soon be a thing of the past.

But, as I wrote in an article way back in April of 2007, there's a distinct lack of evidence to support the right's concerns. At the time, when I contacted spokesmen for two Democratic members of Congress who'd have to play a key role in any restoration of the Fairness Doctrine, weren't even really sure what I was talking about. "I'm not aware that there's any kind of debate about the Fairness Doctrine," Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said. "To be honest, I barely even know what it is ... [Sen. Reid] is not contemplating anything like that. It truly is not on his radar screen." (For the record, the Fairness Doctrine is an old FCC rule that said broadcasters had to provide balance in any opinion broadcasting; it was scrapped during the Reagan administration.)

With the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, the chorus of fear has only grown louder. But The New Republic's Marin Cogan showed, in an article published Wednesday, that there's still no reason to believe Democrats are really planning to "Hush Rush."

Cogan writes:

I looked at Obama's position--and it turns out that he doesn't want the policy reinstated. Then I called the array of Democratic congressmen who had been tagged by conservatives as doctrine proponents. But they all denied any intention to push for its reinstatement... Responses from the offices of most of the Democrats who have been pegged as fairness-doctrine proponents--[Chuck] Schumer, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, and others--have ranged from a firm denial that the issue is a priority at all to disbelief at finding themselves at the center of a manufactured controversy.

Thursday morning, House Democrats voted 137-122 to make California Rep. Henry Waxman chair of the House Energy and Commerce committee, replacing longtime Chairman John Dingell of Michigan.

The vote wasn't just mundane political infighting -- it could have major implications on energy and environmental policies. Dingell represents a state that depends on the auto industry; if he were chair of the committee, he likely would have posed a major obstacle to the Obama administration's goals on both fronts.

As Salon's Andrew Leonard wrote in a post over at How the World Works on Wednesday, "Many activists consider Dingell to have been a steadfast opponent of tougher fuel economy standards. His 2007 proposal to tax carbon emissions was widely viewed as a sneaky political maneuver aimed at equating climate change action with big new taxes. Waxman, on the other hand, favors an aggressive approach to tackling climate change and other environmental issues."

Opponents of Proposition 8 may not have won at the ballot box, but they will get their day in court.

The proposition, which California voters approved on Election Day, overturned an earlier state supreme court decision and banned same-sex marriage. Now, the court will consider lawsuits brought by proponents of same-sex marriage who are asking that the initiative be invalidated. According to the Los Angeles Times, California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has said he thinks the court will rule for the plaintiffs, and he supports that result.

The court's seven justices voted against a stay of the initiative, meaning that same-sex marriages can not continue while the case is considered. A hearing may be held as soon as March.