The Bush regime has only shown contempt for the normal American checks and balances on the executive branch; Congress and the courts.

And why not? With every outrage they've committed -- whether blatant perjury, ignored subpoenaes, or destroyed or "missing" evidence, our democratic (small 'd') institutions have failed in their responsibilities -- most notably the press, as Glenn has conclusively proved on numerous occasions.

If we've learned nothing yet about the Bush regime, only the credible threat of impeachment hearings would have any meaningful leverage over these outlaws -- and that was preemptively "taken off the table."

Once again, evil triumphs when good men do nothing.

Neocons: They're all Goebbels and no Speer.

Absolutely spot on!

Worry about ideological purity afterwards.

There isn't any -- it's a virtual vacuum of political ineffectiveness.

No apparent policy.

No strategy.

No rhetorical message management.

No party discipline.

When do the House and Senate Dems get to vote on their leaders again? How can these guys tolerate this situation? They're going to have to run on this dismal record.

This is the type of government we get when we have institutionalized and legalized government for sale to the highest bidder -- literally.

Our system of campaign finance is really not so different from that of ancient Rome. Corrupt to the core, it will ultimately have the same result.

Only a constitutional amendment can fix this "money equals free speech" travesty.

"What's the harm?" you ask.

The problem is that nobody outside the Bush regime -- including the Congress -- has any idea of the scope of the domestic surveillance.

Nor, apparently, does Congress even want to know.

Is it really so hard to imagine that these powers, unchecked by judicial or congressional oversight, will be abused?

Even more crucial, considering the sleazy actions of the Bush regime that have been exposed to date, isn't it highly probable to the point of certitude that these powers are being abused?

Even more crucial, considering the sleazy actions of the Bush regime that have been exposed to date, isn't it highly probable to the point of certitude that these powers are being abused?

Excuse me. Sleazy is selling the Lincoln Bedroom, squashing the Barret Report, and insinuating one's opponent in the primaries sold drugs on the street corner. Bush has made mistakes, but they were on behalf of the country not himself. Moreover, your allegation is only that, an allegation. You've been listening too hard to the hysteria.

For defending the indefensible: Always Blame Clinton(s).

..Are just beautiful.

He may be making his horse a senator soon. It may be an improvement over the current incumbants.

For younger readers, John Connally was the former Texas governor (wounded in the Kennedy assassination) with presidential aspirations, that in a case of perhaps the worst political timing in US history, switched to the GOP on the eve of the Watergate scandal.

Holy Joe will suffer the same level of political irrelevance once the Dems have padded their majority in the Senate.

It seems like the biased and trivial horse-race coverage of American politics has to be explained by only a few possible factors:

a) IDIOTS: Our press corps are idiots incapable of original thought and totally dependent on the reinforcement of "conventional stupidity" of the press pack to assess the electoral process.

b) WHORES: Most of the press corps knows better, but due to economic self interest, must mold their coverage to conform to the political orientation of their corporate bosses.

c) IDIOT-WHORES: Some combination of (a) and (b).

At this point, (c) seems most likely.

Nobody gets out of here alive, but so long as I check-out before any of my kids do I'll consider myself a very lucky man.

Not even close. Leaders lead.

Reid and Pelosi both seem to regard power as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end.

The power to blame his responses to the questions on an "overzealous campaign staffer acting without official authorization and whom has now resigned from the Romney campaign to spend more time with his/her family" if the responses start generating enough negative buzz.

It's all just Santa Claus for grownups.

Since WIlliam Kristol has proved to be so reliably wrong about everything he has written for the last seven years, we should take advantage of this phenomenon.

Like George Costanza doing the opposite of all of his natural instincts, we can simply assume the polar opposite of whatever viewpoint Kristol is flogging to be the most correct and safest position to embrace.

This resource can be of great convenience and usefulness to those who know how to use it, but may yield suprising results on issues not considered to be normally affected by neocon ideology.

For instance, should Kristol write that "Wind power should be explored as an alternate form of energy," rest assured that wind power conceals some unforseen danger with catastrophic consequences.

Spooky.

The definition of "bi-partisanship" as practiced during the the last 15 years or so means that Democrats meekly acquiesce to egregious Republican policies and appointees, and Republicans in turn automatically obstruct any Democratic policy initiatives.

Isn't it nice when we can all get along in a friendly Lieberman-esque spirit of bi-partisanship?

Since you don't seem to have considered these problems with torture:

a) Are you 100% sure all who are proclaimed "dirtbags" are indeed "dirtbags"? I've never seen that type of infallibility exhibited by any human institution before.

b) What becomes of the torturers? It can't possibly make them better people.

Since it's generally agreed that torture doesn't yield useful intelligence, and since most people understand (a) and (b), doesn't torture just make us look like stupid barbaric assholes?

It would be interesting to break out the expenditures between salaries for our volunteer force, which would naturally be much higher than for a conscript force, and for hardware (ships, planes, etc.).