Just kidding. I have the best mother-in-law in the world and she is quite enthusiastic about having "grandbabies," as she calls them.

No news on that front, though. I simply think one should call a spade a spade. And what Congress and the President are doing right now is, quite simply, spending my (unborn) kids' money -- and Austin and Camille's, Nancy. That, I find, sticks in one's mind a lot better than the vague concept of "running up a trillion-dollar deficit." A trillion is hard to wrap your mind around. But your kids getting stuck with a tab they didn't run up? A bit easier.

Kids?

Do you have news you'd like to share? Honestly, it would explain your absence.

Also, for those of you who are snow-bound, movies are a great cure for cabin fever. SixSeeds has this week's DVD releases. When you are at the video store, they help you choose wisely.

I know those of you who can't see your car because it's covered in ice aren't happy about it. But I'm hoping against hope that Tennessee gets enough snow that my kids get out tomorrow.

We'll see.

Now I'm back, just in time to see U.S. Senator Scott Brown (oh, how sweet the sound!) sworn in on Capitol Hill. May I say a few words about that?

First, as has been discussed here already, Gov. Romney played an integral, behind-the-scenes role in getting Sen. Brown into the race and raising money for him when no one outside of Wrentham knew his name. It seems to me he deserves credit not just for helping, but for keeping his mouth shut in the best interests of his team -- not something at which most politicians excel.

That, however, should not have been an immense surprise, at least to those of us who have followed Gov. Romney for years. Let me tell you something that did surprise me, then: the way the conservative grassroots embraced Sen. Brown.

Why? Because it stood in stark contrast to the kind of junk we saw in the 2008 presidential race, namely the never-ending search for a "conservative messiah." We've inveighed against this at length here, and I'll spare you a regurgitation of our brilliant arguments, because that's not the point. The point is: The grassroots embraced Sen. Brown because he was the man for the moment, not because they deluded themselves into thinking he was perfect.

And let it be said, he's not perfect. He's pro-abortion, for one thing. Yes, he's less pro-abortion than the mind-boggling Massachusetts left. But he is unequivocally in favor of Roe v. Wade. Also, while he has stalwartly stood against ObamaCare, he's made clear that he will not be a down-the-line fiscal conservative. ("I'm a Scott Brown Republican," he says.)

I supported him anyway, of course, and based on his fabulous money bomb, I wasn't the only one.

Why does this matter so much?

Because in the Massachusetts special election, national conservatives essentially had three options:

1. Support a good candidate who had a chance and was right on the two major issues where an extra Republican senator could make a difference (ObamaCare and terrorism), pretty good on many more (tax cuts come to mind), and bad on some that are presently out of reach (most notably abortion).

2. Try to find a perfect conservative candidate, in Massachusetts of all places.

3. Sit on our hands in the absence of such a candidate.

In the 2008 presidential race, many (most?) conservatives embraced an odd mind meld of options 2 and 3. The result? Republican nominee John McCain, President Barack Obama, and a government takeover (or near-miss, as with health care) of huge and important parts of our economy. Had we done so in the Massachusetts special, surely the result would have been Sen. Martha Coakley and the passage of ObamaCare, along with who knows what else. How gratifying that conservatives chose the wiser option. Can we do the same in 2012?

By the way, I don't mean by the rationale above that conservatives should accept all Republican candidates. There are some who are simply not worth supporting, and are even worth vocally opposing. One of these was my home-state Sen. Arlen Specter, who until recently called himself a Republican. Conservatives rightly opposed his renomination in 2004, when he was challenged by then-Rep. Pat Toomey, and I for one found Sen. Specter so objectionable -- and so, in fact, inferior to having a real Democrat in office, who would at least not do harm to the reputation of the party that is most often home to conservatives -- that I supported the Democrat in the general election. There are other examples, such as former senator Lincoln Chafee (who won his primary in Rhode Island but lost the general and is now an independent) and former Alaska governor Frank Murkowski, who was toppled in a primary by a little lady you may have heard of on account of his corrupt dealings.

But opposing liberal Republicans who are doing damage and could reasonably be replaced with a better candidate is a far cry from endlessly lusting after a perfect candidate (or, as he is usually called, "true conservative"). The truth is, there are no perfect candidates, because there are no perfect people. That, incidentally, is a lesson some conservatives in my native land seem to need to learn this year, especially after Massachusetts. Some have decided that Pat Toomey -- who was the conservative alternative in 2004, spent the next few years taking out liberal Republicans as head of the Club for Growth, and is now the odds-on favorite for the Republican nomination for Senate, is not a "true conservative," mainly because he said he would have voted to confirm Justice Sotomayor.

There in 2010 and nationally in 2012, conservatives need to do what we did in Massachusetts: back a sound candidate who is right for the moment and concede that he is not and never will be perfect. And you'll forgive me if I am getting more and more convinced that the right man for a moment with ten percent unemployment and rampant government overspending that threatens my kids' prosperity is the economic guru and turnaround artist who also happens to have a wonderful family life and the right values.

When I say that I've seen God's had at work in our efforts here at EFM, I'm actually talking about our relationships with our LDS readers. We stuck our necks out just a tiny bit to declare unequivocally not just our support for Mitt but also our respect for his faith, and the LDS community responded with what is best described as a tidal wave of love in response. This moved me before I left for Iraq, but it turns out that I'd only experienced half the story. The rest -- and the mysterious ways of our God -- follow.

When I landed in Iraq, I landed in a remote Forward Operating Base near the Iranian border. There we slightly less than 800 of us in our unit, and we were put in the middle of a hornet's nest. Al Qaeda controlled the countryside, and Thanksgiving morning, 2007, marked the beginning of a nearly year-long battle to drive them out. We lost many good men, including good friends. It was the hardest year of my life.

As you might imagine, there weren't many LDS Soldiers in our unit. In fact, there were exactly two active LDS members, plus one who describes himself as Mormon-Catholic-Agnostic (he grew up LDS).

How do I know this? Because two of them were my roommates, and one of them was my paralegal. What were the odds? I didn't choose my roommates, and I didn't choose my paralegal, but there they were -- assigned to me -- after I'd spent the better part of the last year working hand in hand with our dear LDS readers, getting to know a dear LDS family (the extended Romney family), and enduring the occasional slings and arrows from those who opposed our efforts. In fact, one of my roommates had even heard of Evangelicals for Mitt and read some of my posts.

It's strange, but the instant I learned they were LDS, I knew that we would be brothers -- and we were. I like to think that maybe when they learned who I was and what I'd been doing with EFM, they knew they had a friend. And I know they loved me and supported me in a way that's difficult to describe.

God's ways are mysterious, but they are good. And even if this EFM effort isn't politically successful, it has blessed my life.

One final note. When I was gone, my wife organized -- working thorugh SixSeeds, a Boston-based charity -- Operation Send-a-Box which supplied my entire unit (and everywhere else on our base) with a care package that contained clean sheets, towels, reading material, new DVDs, and other "necessities" to help make our remote base a bit more hospitable. When it was all said and done, 2,500 packages arrived. They came from across the country and even from abroad, but where did the largest shipments come from? Tennessee (where I live), Massachusetts (the home of SixSeeds), and . . . Utah.

So before the political wars heat up again, I wanted to pause for a moment and say thank you. Thank you for enriching our lives. And thank God for the blessing of these relationships.

And now, back to regularly scheduled programming.

In an interview recorded Saturday and broadcast on "FOX News Sunday," Palin said she would run "if I believed that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family."

"I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country," Palin said, later adding: "I won't close the door that perhaps could be open for me in the future."

The best point? When Colbert says that gay marriage is not permissible according to "the guy who wrote the Bible."

A Deseret News blogger asks the question.

Republicans eyeing the 2012 presidential nomination are off to a similar pace as that of the super-charged 2008 cycle, according to a comparison of last year's political action committee fundraising figures with those from the parallel year last cycle, 2005.

The $2.9 million Mitt Romney raised for his Free and Strong America PAC exceeds (even adjusted for inflation) the total of the top 2005 fundraiser, John McCain. Sarah Palin's 2009 total of $2.1 million is more than any '05 candidate other than McCain. And Tim Pawlenty's $1.3 million matches Hillary Clinton's 2005 sum.

The bottom line is that 2008 cycle had a deeper, bipartisan field, but the '12 frontrunners -- Romney, Palin, and Pawlenty -- are raising serious dough.

As the good folks at the Competent Conservative note, the good news is that Charles Krauthammer and Kristen Powers both say that Mitt Romney has the best chance to beat Obama in 2012. The bad news is that Kristen Powers believes that Mitt Romney will have a tough time getting out of the primaries "because of the evangelicals."

I'm not going to be some kind of Pollyanna and say that Kristen is completely wrong. As 2008 proved, the evangelical vote can block the Governor in key states (Iowa, South Carolina, etc.), but it's absolutely critical to understand that evangelical opposition to Governor Romney is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It happened largely in 2008 because one candidate decided to play the religion card early and often to court his natural constituency. Even worse, that candidate seemed to have a special disdain for Mitt.

As I see the 2012 race breaking down, two candidates will have equally strong appeal for evangelicals: Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. With Governor Palin in the race, Huckabee won't be able to essentially corner the market on the evangelical constituency, and he has already proven that his appeal outside his base is quite limited. After all, he won only 8% of the non-evangelical vote in 2008.

At the same time, Mitt will continue to get a substantial minority of evangelical voters (he won 25% in 2008) and the lion's share of former McCain voters.

But of course, all of this is idle speculation (though enjoyable). After all, who knows what the political landscape will look like in two years? In the meantime, all we can do is try to convince Mitt that he's got grassroots support out there. So, if you live anywhere close to New Orleans, and you support Mitt, email Nancy.

Do it.

Mitt Romney's PAC just announced that he'd raised $2.9 million last year -- and also brags that he spent more than $120,000 helping Republican candidates.

That spending, as much as the raising, is a mark of how much farther along the organizational curve toward a presidential bid than are his likely rivals.

Read it all here.