Alan Alda for President!

On NBC's The West Wing, it appears that rather cancelling the show after the Bartlett presidency leaves after its second term, the cast will be repaced by a more topical Republican administration lead by Alan Alda as Arnold Vinick.

The Vinick character is being positioned as a moderate Republican from California who seems to offer honesty and integrety despite being a Republican. Josh Lyman seems to be impressed by him, and it looks like he may switch sides and stay in the cast as an aid in the Vinick administration.

Switching The West Wing to a cast of Republican characters led by a moderate and likeable character may make the show more topical to current events, and allow discussion of issues the Republicans debate amonmg themselves. I'm looking forward to shows discussing issues like flag burning (addressed in last night's episode), teaching creationism in public schools, and other goofy positions taken by some Republicans.

Also: Penn & Teller did NOT burn a flag at Zoe's birthday party. We didn't actually see flames rising off the flag, nor did any ashes fall to the floor. Magicians are always inserting objects into other objects which then turn out not to be where you throught they were. This is slight-of-hand and proabably more than 70 percent of professional magicians' tricks are variations of this. You'd think someone who saw the trick would have explained that to the media.