"Schadenfreude ist die schönste aller Freuden."

Oh, I think overt mirth is definitely in order.

I wouldn't say that. About the only thing which has been keeping government spending slightly in line was the partisan bickering between Daschle and Bush. Fewer things got done. Now all that's going to end, and Bush will have the power to push any kind of pork he wants through congress (and Bush has plenty of pork to push).

NPR reported that the republicans "retook" congress. It seems our state-run media is slighly less biased when it comes to American politics than is your state-run media.

Mirth. Mirth is good.

We will fight them in the debates, we will fight them on the campaign trail, we will never surrender!

Jeb Bush is a good Governor. As for the rest of the elections - too mixed to write about here (see my own blog).

Paul Marks.

Make mine Mirth.

Dismay, here. I had been hoping that the Democrats would retain control of the Senate, because then there would be no forward motion on the so-called Homeland Security Act. It had been stalled as Democrats and Republicans squabbled over the civil-service rules the HSA would operate under. Gridlock was preventing the Feds from establishing a giant new internal surveillance apparatus -- but now it is gone....

I agree with Neel (as I said earlier) that the democrats were providing some resistance to the borrow-and-spend republicans, and the republicans were providing some resistance to the tax-and-spend democrats. Now it's all republican, all the time.

On the other hand, the homeland security bill would have eventually passed even if the democrats had won. Their central opposition to it was never the massive intrusion on civil liberties that it would cause nor the fact that it was totally unneeded. Rather they thought that it should have unionized employees, and the republicans disagreed. One side would have caved eventually, and we would still have that terrible department to contend with.

again, i think your problem here is that you've not grown up with BBC News. "Parliament falls to" is standard, they use it at every bloody election where there's a change of power. Certainly, in 1997 "Parliament falls to New Labour" was in very common usage. Likewise, it's the same usage for individual constituiences which change hands - rooted in the concept of there being a battle.