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For those who live outside the Northeast Corridor, the stories attracting attention and heavy comment streams are about a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that says Republicans are gaining political ground on Democrats as President Obama tries the personal approach to bridge the partisan divide.

For those of us who live right here in Washington the only subject that really matters is the snow, which just keeps on falling. The regular updates and explanations from washingtonpost.com's Capital Weather Gang get a lot of comments along with updates from around the region.

There is strong reader response to commentary by my good friend Jo-Ann Armao, now an editorial writer and formerly the Metropolitan Editor, who has made a second career out of belittling the rest of us for complaining when it snows, because she is from Buffalo, where it really snows. Meanwhile those 4-foot-high snow berms sitting in the middle and on the sides of Duke Street in Alexandria where I live and the ice dam that fell off a bank building and crashed onto the sidewalk yesterday just after I passed under it suggest that this storm is not a figment of the Washington Metro area imagination. blizzard

The story that's getting the most reader comments today is about President Obama's proposal for a televised summit with Republicans on health-care reform. Some think it's a good idea and some think it stinks and I'm going to ignore them and worry about the snow that has buried us right here in River City.

Our readers are worried about it too. Some wonder where the snowplows are. Some say things are okay where they live and praise the removal efforts. Some argue about whether this is proof of global warming. But only one reader blames Obama, and that with tongue in cheek. In case you missed it, we have at least two feet of snow on the ground, a prediction for more coming tomorrow, a shuttered federal government, an embattled Metro transit system and many unplowed streets, especially in the suburbs.

Our Readers Who Comment are engaged in a somewhat uncivilized and occasionally fact-starved mud-slinging contest over whether the Obama Administration's reading of rights and providing counsel to the Christmas Day underwear bomber proves that it is soft on terrorism and national security.

Many praise the Bush Administration's use of Guantanamo Bay and military tribunals as the appropriate response. Others applaud the approach taken by Attorney General Eric Holder and Obama. But the heat of the conversation underlines the point that Scott Wilson and Anne E. Kornblut make in writing that national security policy is "likely to be a major issue throughout the midterm election year. "

Readers have filed more than 700 comments on the story as of this writing. Democrat-sounding posters attack the Bush Administration for its record and defend Obama for his. Republican-sounding posters see great weakness in the White House. A couple of self-identified Independents try to see both sides.

Our readers have filed more than 1,000 comments about the secretary of the defense and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff telling Congress it's time to end the military's don't ask, don't tell (DADT) position on whether gays and lesbians can serve.

Reader views on that story alone seem evenly divided between supporters and opponents of the current system. But the comments on a sidebar about Sen. John McCain's apparent shift on the subject have generated strong support for the administration proposal and significant criticism of McCain, who is facing a tough Republican primary challenge in Arizona. McCain once said when military leaders tell him it's time to dump DADT, "then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it."

The arguments readers make on the substance follow the familiar pattern that openly gay people would disrupt military discipline, threaten heterosexuals with unwanted advances, etc. etc., despite the fact many gays have served in the military with distinction, and many of their colleagues have known they were gay, were not propositioned, and didn't tell.

Our Readers Who Comment are still all fired up about Justice Samuel Alito's murmured "not true" response to President Obama's pointed criticism of a Supreme Court decision in his State of the Union message. Readers this morning are arguing about E.J. Dionne's column saying the Court "is now dominated by a highly politicized conservative majority intent on working its will, even if that means ignoring precedents and the wishes of the elected branches of government."

Commenters were strong on both sides of the discussion, some praising and others damning the court's decision. The ruling ended decades of restrictions on corporations being able to use their profits to finance campaigns for and against candidates and, among other things, raised fears that foreign-owned corporations could significantly influence U.S. elections.

President Obama used the word jobs 23 times in his State of the Union address last night, and that term is also getting overworked by our Readers Who Comment this morning as they either praise or villify the president for his speech and his leadership of the country.

Our regulars have been arguing about the pluses and minuses of Obama since well before the election that put him in office and that sometimes uncivilized discussion continued after the president's speech. There is praise from those who see forthrightness and vision and vilification from those who see dishonesty and incompetence. Health care is on the minds of some readers, as are energy policy and the budget deficit. Interestingly there were relatively few comments about terrorism and war.

As Anne E. Kornblut and Michael D. Shear write, "Obama did not use the occasion to build momentum for far-reaching new policies, instead calling for Congress to complete the tasks already at hand, including 'another look' at health-care reform, funding more education programs, imposing stiffer regulations on Wall Street and pursuing a more ambitious energy policy."

Our Readers Who Comment are snarling at each other today about a Post report that United States forces and Yemeni troops have killed some top al-Qaeda leaders and scores of people in a clandestine operation approved by President Obama.

Some readers cheer, saying this is exactly what we should be doing. Others decry another war in yet another country. Several blast the Post for revealing the information. Some ask how are we going to pay for all this and, oh by the way, why can't we get health care reform? And several exchange barrages about the relative merits or demerits of Obama leadership as balanced against former Vice President Cheney's criticism of the way this administration is handling the terrorism issue.

As Dana Priest reports, "The collaboration with Yemen provides the starkest illustration to date of the Obama administration's efforts to ramp up counterterrorism operations, including in areas outside the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones."

One subject guaranteed to generate huge numbers of angry and often racist comments from our readers is any suggestion that some foreigners -- in this case Haitians -- should be permitted legal entry into the United States. We have that situation today with the news that there is growing debate in Washington over whether the government should let in more Haitians as that country struggles to recover from the earthquake.

Almost 300 comments have been filed on that story at the hour this is written, and the vast majority of them are negative to even the suggestion. Many see this as adding to the problem of inadequately protected U.S. borders. Many note that millions of dollars have been texted or donated in other ways to help Haiti recover. Many assert that Haitians would arrive without skills or education, etc., etc.

As Amy Goldstein and Peter Whoriskey write, "a growing number of Haitians -- and their relatives in the United States -- are starting to chafe under the Obama administration's edict to resist as Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has put it, 'an impulse to leave the island and to come here.' "

The biggest loser in the special election for a new senator from Massachusetts was health-care reform, and our Readers Who Comment are all over the question of whether or how legislation can or should be passed with a wary House and a filibuster-enabled Senate.

Some feel that the plan is dead. Others have suggestions on how to move forward. If the House just passes the Senate bill, the deal would be done, but that plan may not gain traction, as Shailagh Murray writes. A few die-hard liberal readers still carry the banner for a single-payer system, an idea that died early in the process despite the fact that it works pretty well for Medicare. There is a bit of stone-throwing by both Republicans and Democrats and ridicule for suggestions that bipartisanship might find supporters.

But as Dan Balz and Paul Kane write, "splintered Democrats pledged to refocus their attention on jobs and the economy, and to draw sharper contrasts with Republicans, as they scramble to find a strategy to quell the populist anger that threatens the party's standing in the November elections."

Everybody knows that the Democrats lost the Kennedy Senate seat in Massachusetts last night and our readers have filed more than 2,000 comments on the many Post articles about the election, what it means for the presidency of Barrack Obama and the future of health-care reform.

There are few who agree with columnist Steven Pearlstein, who says it is "faulty logic" to declare health-care reform dead because the Democrats lost their ability to block a Republican filibuster in the Senate with the victory of Republican Scott Brown. Pearlstein notes that the country has its mind on many things, and we certainly hear about some of them from the readers, but mostly we hear a Republican victory celebration while Democrats struggle to find talking points.

The same is true in comments on political analyst Dan Balz's take. Balz writes that "Gloomy Democrats were left to wonder whether they and Obama have an answer to that anger that can head off potentially devastating losses in the November midterm election."

Unhappiness about several themes runs through the comments. Health-care reform is one of them, but there is also anger expressed at big banks, the economy in general, and, of course, the capability of President Obama, who has both detractors and defenders.