I grew up in the forties and fifties and right-wingers then were known as "the lunatic fringe," you know, the ones who thought putting fluoride in drinking water was a communist conspiracy. While we were all out smoking grass and communing with nature they got hold of the keys to the asylum and headed for DC where they are now acting out their delusions of paranoia and grandeur.

It is no "mistake" that McCain and Bush/Cheney continue to refer to the insurgents as "terrorists." They know perfectly well that this description is false. It is absolutely deliberate and the central part of the Iraq war PR campaign. In the minds of most Americans terrorism is 9/11. It is this linkage of 9/11, terrorism and Iraq that allowed Bush to have gotten the war started and to have kept it going for this long. They simply haven't caught on to the fact that the American people aren't buying it anymore.

As long as presidential candidates are looked upon as beauty pageant contestants. Wouldn't you think that when we (the people) vote (hire) someone to the most important job in the country, if not the world, we might want to look at their resume? That, rather than how they part their hair or the color of clothes they wear, we would be interested in whether they can actually do the job they are applying for?

As long as we continue to elect people based on the most shallow and irrelevant attributes (did they roll their eyes, do they appear stiff, do they know the cost of a gallon of milk) instead of their competence and policy ideas, and most important, their past performance, we are going to continue to get more of the same.

Since most Americans get their information about presidential candidates from TV and since it is TV pundits and so-called journalists who frame what is important and what isn't, I don't hold out much hope that we won't continue to see more Nixons, more Reagans, and, god help us, more GWBs.

I've been following this case closely and can find no examples of anyone, no politician or journalist, asking directly and repeatedly why the attorneys were fired. "Yes, Mr. Gonzales, you've said repeatedly that the attorneys weren't fired for improper reasons, but you have yet to say what those reasons are."

It's Rovian whack-a-mole strategy on the part of the administration: when asked a question about the firings don't answer the question but change the subject and pop up somewhere else. They frame the debate, and the national press goes along, to focus on the process of how they were fired in order to keep from explaining why they were fired.

Glenn's second point, that Bush will do the exact opposite of what is demanded of him is a perfect example of development arrested in adolescence, probably due to substance abuse. Like most substance abusers he likely started drinking in his teens which increased during his college years. While many people drink to excess while in college, some, such as the president, continue on through adulthood and either end up in the terminal stages of alcoholism, or recovery through treatment. Most people moderate or end their drinking and continue on with their development into adulthood. People who do not generally don't see, or misinterpret, the societal cues that help them transition into adulthood because they are in an altered state due to alcohol. The president stopped drinking in his forties, cold turkey, without treatment. And, without treatment, he didn't do the necessary work to get caught up with the development he left behind in his youth.

All of the character flaws we see in the president are common attributes of adolescence: defying authority for the sake of defying (the Baker-Hamilton report, Congressional oversight, the will of the people), refusing to take responsibility for one's actions, lying and evading when confronted with facts, blaming others for your own mistakes, taking revenge on those who oppose you, impulsivity and poor judgement (invading Iraq), etc. You could add male, tribal bonding rituals (loyalty pacts, tests of male superiority, etc.).

If only one thing is learned from this failed presidency I hope that it is: Never, ever, elect to high public office an untreated alcoholic.

Maybe he should have let the south go its merry way like they wanted to. With two Americas people would have had a choice of which kind of culture and government they wanted to live with.

They could chose a progressive society based on the greatest good for the greatest number with goals of justice and equality or they could chose one dominated by rich white males that worships authority and war.

But seriously, isn't this kind of behavior the only way that Republicans can win elections since the majority of informed Americans do not support their agenda?

Republicans want a more powerful executive which is in line with their authoritarian impulses. Maybe what we need is a national debate about LIMITING the powers of the president.

It has really never made sense to me why one man or woman could be given such enormous power over the fate of an entire planet. The past six years have demonstrated beyond any doubt the disaster that results when one human being is given such power over life and death.

Checks and balances simply don't do it. The president has the power to do what he damned well feels like doing and the Congress can go to hell. We see that in operation right now.

Maybe it's time to revisit the Constitution, which was written during a time of horse and buggies and muzzle loading rifles, and update it to modern circumstances.

A council of elders is possibly the only thing that would contain an incompetent and possibly mentally unstable individual and prevent him/her from creating a catastrophe such as we are now witnessing.