A RATHER QUIET NEW YEAR’S EVE HERE: We played “Crazy 8s” and I went out and brought back frozen yogurt. Then it was a special holiday edition of Spongebob Squarepants until everyone else went to sleep. I graded exams until about 11:30, then cracked a split of Asti (too sweet) and had a glass while I watched the CNN coverage and read an Honor Harrington novel. That’s life at Stately InstaPundit Manor. If the house is a rockin’, don’t bother knockin’! (Hey, it was wilder than Jeff Jarvis’s New Year’s. Well, maybe. Obviously, both of us needed more explosives to properly ring in the New Year.)

The CNN coverage was interesting, as the tone — at least of the part I saw — was quite unabashedly patriotic. They spent a good deal of time with a young man who was about to go off to Fort Benning, and many flags were in evidence. I noticed that the ceremonies seemed rather patriotic in tone, too, right down to the playing of “Proud to Be An American” just before midnight. You wouldn’t have seen that a few years ago. . . .