Realistically, what does he expect the soldiers to say when they meet him? "Can I go home now? Please?!" That's just not going to happen. These are trained professionals, and he's the President. Even if I met Bush, despite my almost unexpressably low opinion of him, I'd be cordial, say "thank you, Mr. President", and probably keep my mouth shut. That's also exactly why he remains in a bubble.

Stop talking about George Allen's grandmother like that. Here resemblance to an armed troop transport has nothing to do with her stint as Grand Wizard and is completely inappropriate to this discussion! I know that for a fact because my wife is Asian.

Most people are just a little bit sick of this.

If my stocks hadn't soared in the early- to mid-90's, they wouldn't have fallen so far during the Bush administration. It's Clinton's fault for filling me with false hope.

During this entire fiasco, I haven't heard a single GOP official, strategist, or even blogger suggest that Foley's account/screen-name could have been forged. Now, AOL keeps pretty good records and has demonstrated it's total willingness to provide those records to our government, but you'd think someone, given all of the various defenses levied, would've thrown that out there.

I can only think of two plausible explanations: (1) it just never occured to them (our Congressmen, after all, include people who get their "internets" through "tubes"), or (2) they already know for a fact the messages are legitimate, so they won't even bother to go that route.

Discounting the motives, the problem isn't whether this move is reasonable. The problem is that it's a special adjustment made for a special case at the last minute, and those exceptions are counter to the whole point of having election rules. Fairness only exists in a system as large as a statewide or national election if the rules are applied dispassionately and evenly. Once exceptions start to be made, even if they sound reasonable, the system loses credibility.

"Baseless" to the GOP means anything not said by their base (i.e. anything they don't want to hear).

It's time to put our money where our mouths are. I'm tired of reading blogs all days and obsessing; I voted early last week, and I just signed up to volunteer for Tammy Duckworth's campaign.

As depressing as all of the news of voting irregularities can be, it's good to remember that most of this is news because we're finally being vigilant about protecting the process and noticing when things go wrong. Democracy has to be exercised, and our indifference for too long has allowed cheating, intimidation, and plain-old incompetence to slowly have their way. In the sense that America is finally paying attention, all of these stories amount to good news.

In Bush's speech today, we'll get two minutes of feigned conciliatory tone, followed by a lecture on why the Democrats in the House need to do everything he says. I don't even think it occurs to him, after too much time in total control, that the Democrats will now be able to actually introduce legislation, and not just vote against it.

I'm not sure it has much to do with being out of touch. Staying forever is the only way that their buddies in the Military-Industrial Complex can keep lining their pockets with gold. My biggest fear is that they know exactly what they're doing.

Before being Chief of Staff, Andy Card was GM's Vice President of Government Relations, and he strong-armed the California government into dropping their ambitious alternative fuel laws. Prior to that, he was CEO of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, essentially a high-paid lobbyist for the Big Boys in Detroit.

Now, if someone would just kneel down behind him so that I could push him over like in Junior High. A pirate ship and a plank would also do.

It's been over 50 years since the Korean war, and we still have almost 40,000 troops in South Korea. Our actions have guaranteed that we'll be stuck in Iraq, in one way, shape or form, for decades.

Monica Goodling is exactly the kind of wide-eyed neocon ideologue that we should all be very afraid of. She was bred for loyalty and educated at an anti-intellectual pseudo-university. The sad thing is that, she's probably a perfectly nice young woman on the surface. Unfortunately, she has no idea that she's played a role in subverting the most fundamental found principles of our nation.

So, she went to law school, but she can't answer a question about whether or not something directly relevant to her own job is legal? That's either incredibly tragic or she's a liar.

Tim, your "declassify" link is malformed (it's just going back to the post).

About Fitzgerald, but you don't have to look at his judicial record much to see that he's about as far from being partisan as you can get in the current political climate. He's devoted a lot of time and energy to fighting corruption on both sides of the aisle.

Of course, by the "peach man", George probably means the CEO of Monsanto.

He had gone Christian and repented his sins, but was still having an affair? I'm thinking he missed the point.