Okay — the only good thing about this sorry event (aside from the fact that a major Republican has just put his foot in it) is that it's bringing all of Salon's French-speaking readers out of the woodwork. Any of you guys spend time in Montreal? My husband and I bought property up there two years ago because we're convinced that Quebec, the bluest state in North America despite its French Catholic heritage, will be a safer place to retire to than Evangelistan. But I digress.

I couldn't agree more with Sick of It. God, these Republicans are ugly, ugly people. There's an election coming up in November. Can we please, please, PLEASE vote them out?

Does anybody think George Allen "looks French"?

Ya know, the Gops can pooh-pooh this "macaca" incident all they want, but there's such a thing as luck in politics, and right now the Republicans seem to be fresh out of it. George Allen accidentally blurting out what he feels in his heart is just one recent example. You also could add, for instance, Conrad Burns berating firefighters in public and referring to his gardener as a "nice little Guatemalan man." Were ugly, revealing incidents like this bound to surface sooner or later? Sure. But did they have to happen in a year in which American voters are sick of Iraq, unforgiving about Katrina, mad as hell about gas prices, worried about the value of their homes, wondering how they're going to retire, and concerned that their government will barge into their personal lives either in the name of national security or Terri Schiavo? Did they have to happen in a year in which the Democrats are actually recruiting great candidates and raising lots of money? No, they didn't. It's all just one, big, wonderful tsunami of bad, bad, BAD luck. But since it's happening to bad, bad, BAD people... I couldn't be happier.

Folks, I am here to tell you: The Bushies have bamboozled America in the wake of Sept. 11. Even if the immediate threat of terrorist attacks passes, they are laying the groundwork for judicial systems that will favor the strong executive (without the right to counsel, the right to be charged, the right to face one's accusers),,, our country will be lost if we do not understand and fight for the great truths that, ironically, Hollywood presented to us in the thirties and forties. It's simply this: In spite of great movies like "Inherit the Wind," most Americans do not understand the rule of law and the rights of the accused and how precious those rights are. We need to become outraged that a movie like "The Path to 9/11" — on a BROADCAST NETWORK — has become possible. The government has co-opted the airwaves and we need to fight back as the passengers on flight 93 fought back on Sept. 11. HERE'S TO THE HEROES OF FLIGHT 93, AND TO ALL AMERICANS WHO DON'T BELIEVE WHAT THEY'VE BEEN TOLD — AND WHO ARE WILLING TO DIE FOR IT. I can't fight this battle, physically, on an airplane. But I feel no less passionately about it.... my battle, and Flight 93's battle, is about the same thing: BEING AN AMERICAN. In short, to determine one's own destiny, without a "higher power' telling me what to think. Therefore, in memory of the passengers of Flight 93, should I blindly follow what the Bush Administration says? I think not.

FIGHT BACK. FIGHT BACK against the lies of the Bush Administration,

I'm so grateful to him, because he's helping to bring America back to me. I haven't been able to fully mourn September 11, 2001 — because by September 14, 2001, it was turned into a Bush/Cheney commercial. That was the day that I took my flag off my house in Shaker Heights, Ohio, because I heard what Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said: that tolerance for gays and abortion brought the terrorist attacks upon us. And nobody repudiated them. I figured that if they weren't contradicted, that wasn't an America I wanted to promote or believe in.

Ever since that day, one of the worst days in my country's history has been a recruitment poster for the Republican Party — a party that has, in the last five years, called me, my husband, and everybody I care about, un-American. How can I possibly describe how devastating that's been — particularly when the media have gone along and endorsed the Bush point of view? There was nobody — NOBODY — speaking for me.

My reaction? Get the hell out of here. And so, two years ago, my husband and I bought property in Montreal, Quebec.

Quebec — the bluest state in North America. A place settled by French Catholics, and now so comfortably secular that anyone can feel at home there. We are gladly leaving. We'll retire to a place that understands us better than the Bush nightmare America has become.

But then, commentaries like Olbermann's pull me back — make me think that the United States, at least the United States that existed in the mind of Edward R. Murrow, is still possible. Is it?

Or is it just an illusion — a rejuvenating hope, born from an ingenious system of government that the Founders devised over 200 years ago, that our best instincts could somehow take shape and govern us in a civilized manner? Is it just a dream that springs from an irrational faith — that no matter how tightly the boundaries of democracy and the separation of powers are stretched, they somehow will always snap back?

I don't know the answer to that, yet. But in the meantime, five years after one of the momentous days America has experienced, I'm left to find hope in the commentary of a former sportscaster who is staking out a lonely place on cable TV.

How sad.