If there was no money to be made from the business of religion, it would be a much more rational world.

The demise of CNN can be traced back to the moment when Ted Turner relinquished conrol to the corporate "suits" at Time Warner. Before then, CNN was indeed "the most trusted name in news."

Now, of course, CNN management is frantically trying to dumb-down "the news" in a futile attempt to capture the Fox News demographics.

I mean, Glenn Beck? C'mon! Truly pathetic.

Yes, we baby boomers must, for the good of our country and the world, suck it up and do our democratic duty -- even though it will mean (gasp!) the president will be younger than we are -- making our status as Old Farts official.

John Hagee as McCain's vice-presidential running mate -- well, rhetorically at least.

Making McCain defend Hagee's kooky statements for the next six months would be highly entertaining.

Why the hell didn't Congress, or at least the security-cleared Intelligence Committees, immediately go into a closed-door session to quiz Comey on just exactly what had spooked all those Bush appointees into threatening a mass resignation?

That nobody in Congress at this late date still has a clue, or even seems to have an interest in the subject, defies belief.

McCain has a real dilemma: He needs the religious right but every time he gets one of those preachers to appear on stage and say nice things about him, he'll spend the next week having to disassociate himself from their kookier comments.

Even the venerated old Billy Graham has a bit of a "Jew problem."

Besides hawking his autobigraphy, that is. Answer: Nowhere to be found. He only comes out every four years like some rare desert bloom.

Nader has made a career of "making the perfect the enemy of the good." While it may be indeed be an ego-boost for him, he's only succeeded in making the Republicans victorious. Since Nader has gotten most of his funding from GOP front groups, this shouldn't be too surprising.

Nader will apparently continue to make these useless presidential runs until he becomes a national Harold Stassen-style joke. Nader, like Stassen, will learn that the glories of boy-wonderhood can never be reclaimed.

We'll know which people to seek warrant applications for, how exactly? You have a crystal ball perhaps? A Ouija board maybe? Please do tell, how do we get enough intel to ask for a warrant on persons in the Afghan mountains, or Syria, or even Gaza for that matter? Hmmmm?

How about when surveillance is required on US citizens or "persons" in America, as the Constitution requires?

Why is that so complicated?

The Bush regime based its program of war and tax cuts on the assumption that it would be able to get out of town before the inexorable financial repercussions would occur. The inevitable need for economic reality and the blame for "tax hikes" would fall on his successor, while Bush could bask in Reaganesque popularity as a "tax cutter."

Unfortunately for Bush, the Republicans and the American people, the catastrophic damage came to a reckoning before Bush could make his getaway. The devaluation of the dollar, the inflationary rise in the cost of commodities and the credit meltdown are combining to create a perfect storm of economic disaster during Bush's final term.

Sadly, the worst victims are those unborn or too young to have voted for the all-too-obvious flimlam offered by Bush and the GOP. As the citizens who will be the ones forced to pay the tax bill for the deficits generated by Republican voodoo economics, they truly will be victims of "taxation without representation."

Deranged neocon "patriots" like our Elephantman love war so long as others are doing the fighting, and so long as they don't have their taxes raised to pay for it.

A war tax? Talk about a cold shower for their obscene war boners.

Admit it Elephantman. Would you happily pay an extra $5000 a year to pay for your beloved Iraq occupation? For all that machismo-by-proxy it should be a small price to pay.

There are a lot of TV talking heads who claim to be able to read Hillary's innermost thoughts -- and it's not confined to TV pundits. The pages of our most prestigious newspapers, news magazines and blogs are filled with similarly gifted psychics.

Apparently these paranormal gifts come at a cost: the inability to remember their own spectacular analytical failures from one day to the next. Reporting actions and events? Leave that to the historians -- it's "infotainment" that apparently gets the face-time.

This sorry state of our so-called "press corps" is what led to our collapsing economy and the bloody quagmire in Iraq. That's what happens when substantive reporting is replaced by cheap carnival acts aimed at the rubes.

1) If unchecked power is vested in government officials, they're going to abuse that power;

(2) If government officials exercise power without real oversight from other branches, they're going to break the law and then lie about it, falsely denying that they're done so, insisting instead that they're only using their powers to Protect Us;

(3) Allowing government officials to engage in surveillance on American citizens with no warrant requirement ensures that surveillance will be used for improper ends, against innocent Americans.

The Founders knew all this and tried to protect against it. It was proved definitively as recently as the Church Committee's findings. Yet our Congress and "press corps" are determined to willfully forget -- no matter how overwhelming the evidence or the cost to our democracy.

I'm looking forward to the day when we have our own Truth & Reconcilliation Commission when these shameless weasels tearfully attempt to justify their actions before begging for forgiveness.