Al Franken is liable to surprise and disappoint a lot of people who expect him to be the cut-up of the Senate Class of 2008.

That applies both to liberals who would like to see him unsheath the rhetorical sledgehammer he often applied to conservative icons such as George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter, and to conservatives who envision Franken reverting to shtick and embarrassing the Democrats in Washington and back in Minnesota.

The clue here is the very sober demeanor that Franken projected virtually throughout his Senate campaign, his first bid for public office after many years of backing liberal causes.

It's always nice to start out the week on a bipartisan note, so I was intrigued by the e-mail press release sent out this morning by Pat Toomey, the staunch conservative who currently has the 2010 Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary field to himself.

The subject line reads, "Toomey Commends Reps. Altmire, Carney, Holden, and Dahlkemper on Cap-and-Trade Vote." Those named are Democrats! Specifically, the four Pennsylvania House Democrats who joined 40 other members of their party Friday in voting against a sweeping bill that would cap industrial emissions link to global warming and mandate increased use of alternative energy sources, among other provisions.

The measure -- described by most Democrats as necessary to prevent environmental catastrophe and put the nation on the road to energy independence, and portrayed by most Republicans as a massive "energy tax" -- squeaked through by a 219-212 vote.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided to end his prospective 2010 bid for governor of California with some flair, revealing his decision in a nationally televised interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. But the opt-out by the Democratic mayor of the nation's second most-populous city -- and California's largest -- raises a question: Why would anybody WANT to govern California at this especially difficult point in its history?

The state's long-booming economy was already slowing when the national recession sent it into a tailspin. This has escalated a massive state budget shortfall, which in turn has pitted the overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature against Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Governator -- as "Terminator" movie star Schwarzenegger once dubbed himself -- has discovered during his relatively short political career that it's lot easier to save the world as a cinematic action hero than it is to break legislative gridlock in Sacramento.

The ongoing stalemate in the closely divided New York state Senate -- with each major party arguing it is in charge -- has been aptly described as a "circus" by a number of Albany watchers. But it ultimately will be just a sideshow to the political carnival that the state will host next year.

We at CQ Politics are preparing our first House race ratings for the 2010 elections, and our early take shows nine of the state's 29 congressional districts have competitive races in store. That figure of nine is matched only by California, which has a total of 53 House seats, or 24 more than New York.

Since the Democrats have built a daunting 26-3 lead over the Republicans in the state's House delegation, it's a no-brainer that most of the seats in play are held by the majority party. And most of those are held by junior members whose takeovers of formerly Republican seats over the past two cycles held the Democrats to their current state of dominance.

So late-night comic David Letterman apologized on air Monday for a crude sexual allusion he aimed at one of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's daughters.

Sure, it took him a week, during which he initially denied that his joke was at all inappropriate. But at least the world might get a reprieve now after Letterman bone-headedly handed conservatives a gift-wrapped opportunity to rail about how Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, was a victim of liberal media bias.

In the aftermath of this dust-up, how about this as a simple rule for comedians: Politicians are fair game. Their kids aren't.

The Republicans who consider themselves possible contenders for their party's 2012 presidential nomination may have their eyes fixed on the political horizon. But they probably should be watching their backs, too.

This was brought to mind by comments that Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu made on national TV about Bobby Jindal -- her home state's governor -- who, at age 38, is widely regarded as one of the Republican Party's rising stars and a possible 2012 prospect.

Landrieu, appearing on C-SPAN's "American Morning", said, "Well, if he would stay home in Louisiana a little more and focus on being governor that would be wonderful."

Peter Schiff is a investor and financial analyst who has gotten plenty of face time on national television, thanks to the fact that he accurately predicted the decline of the nation's financial sector.

During an appearance Tuesday on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to plug his book, "Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse," Schiff revealed that he is "potentially considering" running as a Republican against vulnerable Connecticut Democratic Sen. Christopher J. Dodd -- the Senate Banking Committee chairman whose ties to the financial industry are causing him political headaches as he prepares to run for a sixth Senate term.

But if he were to run, Schiff would be asking Connecticut residents to do something he claims he doesn't make a habit. Namely voting.

It not likely that the Washington Examiner, a D.C. daily tabloid with a strongly conservative editorial page, means any harm to Bob McDonnell, the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia and former state Attorney General.

But one line in its e-mail news alert Tuesday night on the Democratic primary for governor -- won by state Sen. Creigh Deeds -- is one that could raise some eyebrows among the paper's readers in the populous, politically crucial, and increasingly Democratic-leaning northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.

"McDonnell is a conservative with strong ties to religious broadcaster Pat Robertson," wrote the Examiner.

There is nothing at all untrue about this. McDonnell, who grew up in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., received his law degree from Regent University, located in Virginia Beach and initially founded by Robertson as an adjunct of his Christian Broadcasting Network.

If Democrat Terry McAuliffe's weak performance in Virginia's primary for governor proves anything, it's that it is a risk for the chairmen of the parties' national committees to get too carried away with their own importance.

McAuliffe had spent most of his adult life as a major support player in national Democratic politics, a mover, shaker and big-time campaign money-raker. He was best known for his longtime alliance with President Bill Clinton -- at whose behest McAuliffe was installed in 2001 as Democratic National Committee chairman, a position he held for four years - and Hillary Rodham Clinton, now secretary of State, whose campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination was chaired by McAuliffe.

McAuliffe's positions, and his extroverted personality, earned him frequent invitations to appear on television news shows.

But all this, according to nearly complete returns Tuesday night, mattered to fewer than 85,000 Virginians -- or a bit more than 26 percent out of more than 300,000 who participated in the low-turnout, three-candidate primary for governor won by state Sen. Creigh Deeds.

OK, readers, we need your help making heads or tails of this one.

The Minnesota Independent reports that Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, during an appearance at the College Republicans' national convention was reaching for a better metaphor to describe today's Republican Party than "big tent." And what Steele came up with was... a hat.

Yes, a hat.

As the Web site reported (with a link to a YouTube video): "Some people wear a hat frontwards, others cocked to the left, he explained. Some wear it backwards, he added, echoing a past statement, 'because that's how they roll.' But 'the strength of the party is in this: ... the fact that you're willing to put the damn thing on... The problem we've had as a party is: too many of our friends, neighbors, colleagues are taking the hat off, because we've decided we don't like the way they wear it... The GOP is not about how you wear the hat, but the fact that you want to wear the hat.'"

The Republican Study Committee, a conservative coalition made up of most GOP members of the U.S. House, has come up with some twists on ways to help you visualize just how big the latest unemployment numbers are.

The 345,000 Americans who lost their jobs lost in May 2009 is:

• Roughly equal to the entire population of St. Louis, MO.
• Greater than the combined total number of employees at General Motors and Chrysler in 2008.
• About 10,000 jobs for every percentage point of Nancy Pelosi's approval rating. -

A battery of polls about Tuesday's Democratic primary for Virginia governor agree on two crucial matters:

The contest between state Sen. Creigh Deeds, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and former state Rep. Brian Moran is a cliffhanger, with Deeds edging out to a small but uncertain lead. And a whole lot of respondents say they still aren't fixed on a candidate: 17 percent undecided in a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, 22 percent in a Suffolk University poll, and 26 percent in a Public Policy Polling survey (that also showed 44 percent of those who favored a candidate said they could change their minds).

These numbers suggest that the primary outcome will be decided by how all of these undecideds and "soft leaners" swing in Tuesday's voting.

But another set of numbers -- which highlight the dismal history of voter turnout for primaries in Virginia -- suggest something else: that many of those who say they are undecided or aren't strongly committed to a candidate may not bother to vote at all.

Democratic Sen. Christopher J. Dodd is going all high-techie in the discussion of health care reform.

A press release sent out by his office Friday morning announced that Dodd, in his role as a senior member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and chairman of its Subcommittee on Children and Families, "is soliciting feedback from constituents on how best to reform our nation's health care system as part of YouTube's Senator of the Week feature." Dodd "is asking YouTube users from Connecticut and across the country to record their ideas and present them to Congress via the YouTube Senate Hub."

Ah, now, if he had just caught the YouTube bug during his brief, ill-fated campaign for the 2008 presidential campaign. One of the reasons Dodd appears vulnerable in his 2010 re-election campaign is that he spent weeks prior to Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses scouring that state -- and even moved his wife and kids to Des Moines for the duration.

Had he communicated with Iowa voters by You Tube, maybe -- just maybe -- he would have kept everyone's nose in joint back home in Connecticut. And it's hard to imagine the outcome being any different, since Dodd earned one out of about 2,500 delegates to the Iowa state convention, based on the caucus voting.

President Obama certainly has policy grounds that justify his cross-aisle nomination of New York Republican Rep. John M. McHugh to be secretary of the Army. McHugh, whose 23rd Congressional District way upstate includes the Army's vast Fort Drum, is now ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, the culmination of more than 16 years in the House focused heavily on military-related issues.

But it's hard not to notice that this is the latest in a series of personnel moves by the White House that have strengthened the Democrats' prospects in future elections.

Although McHugh maintained his strong popularity at home over nine House elections, his district -- like most of the Northeast -- has trended Democratic for president and gave 52 percent of its 2008 votes to Obama. Democratic strategists say they plan to stage a serious takeover bid in the special election that will occur later this year if McHugh, as expected, is confirmed as Army secretary.

Can a party possibly win too many House seats? That may be tested soon in New York, where the Democrats already hold 26 of the 29 seats -- and soon will be making a bid for one more.

Surely they will make a run at the far northern 23rd District represented by nine-term Republican John M. McHugh, who was nominated by President Obama to be secretary of the Army and will vacate his seat if (as expected) he is confirmed.

McHugh, a mild-mannered and conciliatory conservative, was able to win his House elections by landslide margins. But his district -- like most former Republican strongholds in the Northeast -- has trended Democratic at the top of the ticket, giving Obama 52 percent and a 5-point margin over Republican John McCain. The only state bordering the 23rd District is Vermont, a historical GOP stronghold that has evolved into one of the nation's most liberal- and Democratic-leaning states.

Yet if the Democrats manage to win the special election to replace McHugh and hold the seat in 2010, it could actually complicate the party's ensuing efforts to gain advantage in the congressional redistricting that will precede the 2012 elections.