Last week my son Ben had two gigantic milestones in his life–release of his eagerly anticipated record album “Glad” and marriage to the wonderful and gorgeous Barbara Kosny, whom we affectionately call “Basia.” This is indeed a glad time, not only for Ben and his new bride but also for our respective families and Ben’s many fans, who waitied patiently for release of the new record. (In case you haven’t figured it out, Ben is a rock star in his church, and I do believe that his songs are going to start spreading through the Christian music communinity now that his record is out.) So congratulations, Ben, on what surely must have been the best week of your life so far; thank you for bringing Basia into our lives; and happy holidays to all of our friends, family, and colleagues. I wish you all a magically exciting and prosperous new year.

I had a lot of fun on my 59th birthday helping USAID kick off its anual charity drive, part of a much larger government-wide effort known as the Combined Federal Campaign. Here I am in my birthday suit playing a song I wrote for the CFC years ago, “It All Comes Back to You.” Since there was extra time, I performed two additional songs from my second CD “Please Don’t Send Me To Zaire,” including the title track and a song about about an adventure-filled trip to Cameroon back in the eighties called “Yaounde Bound.” Here’s a picture of my colleagues enjoying the show. Since it began in the early seventies, CFC has raised over $6 billion from federal employees for a myriad of good causes. Check them out, and remember: everything you give comes back to you one way or another.

I’ve been thinking about the very lopsided balance of power in America, specifically the outsized power held by a few small or sparsly-populated states. Did you know that 16 percent of the U.S. population controls 50 percent of the votes cast each year in the U.S. Senate? I understand that the authors of the Constitution wanted to establish a regional counterweight to the population-based House of Represenatatives, but that was in the mid 1700s when we were comprised of 13 separate and very different entities trying to live in a loose framework of association. There was a logical need to protect the smaller states from the over-reaching tendencies of the large ones.

But that was before the Civil War established once and for all our identity as a single nation–a house undivided, as it were. The notion of states’ rights lives on in both our national conscience and our legal structure, but pretty much every U.S. citizen now sees him or herself as an American first and a “Virginian” or a “South Dakotan” second.

We’re not the same country we were in 1776. We are a nation of 300 million people who are not equally represented. We need to fix that, so let’s dump the Senate. Just erase it from the Constitution. It would not only make our democracy more representative but would also greatly reduce legislative gridlock in Washington. Two birds with one stone. No brainer. Let’s do it. Seriously.

When Obama came into office the nation’s financial system was in free-fall. Working with the outgoing Republican administration, he put a program of action into place that saved us from economic disaster.

The Obama Administration saved thousands of jobs and potential collapse of the American automotive industry by taking a partial ownership position in GM and assisting in its restructure.

When Obama took office, roughly 180,000 Americans were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of this year, that number will be cut in half, and it will continue to decline. Adherence to the Geneva Conventions has been a hallmark of this administration, including a ban on all forms of torture. Obama’s policies have greatly improved our standing in the world.

President Obama has worked tirelessly to find common ground with a recalcitrant opposition to reduce the federal deficit in a way that everyone pays a fair share; essential social services are protected; and the economy is not further dragged down through capricious and draconian budget cuts.

Oh yeah, and he got that son-of-a-bitch Osama Bin Laden.