It's tough to know where McCain actually stands on a particular issue. Before his 2008 campaign began in earnest (i.e., the 2004 election cycle where he enthusiastically embraced George W. Bush) he actually was something of a "maverick."

But he's now repudiated so many of the "straight talk" positions that made him popular with the press that they think he's simply lying to get the support of the Republican base -- and that's apparently okay with our national press corps.

The other possibility is that he's showing signs of senility.

A lying panderer or senile old fool (that's what makes for a GOP "centrist" today)? If elected, we don't know which we'll be getting.

Glenn's diagnosis is spot-on: America's body politic is sick -- maybe terminal. We've been bleating about these things for years. So what's the cure?

Street action? General strikes? Kneecappings?

When political culture becomes as morally and intellectually diseased as ours, conventional therapy may no longer be efficacious.

The creators have succeeded in making a silk purse from a sow's ear -- a remarkable achievment.

The writing, acting and effects are among the best ever on TV.

As perhaps the only way to prevent an unprovoked attack on Iran during the waning days of the Bush regime, wouldn't it be prudent to begin researching ways to invalidate the blanket pardons for war crimes that will surely be issued by Bush on his (hopefully) way out?

One avenue to approach this would be to revisit the apparent theft of the 2004 election (Ohio's results were almost certainly manipulated), which could void Bush's entire second term and any pardons issued therein.

Another possibility is to challenge the dubious legality of pardoning oneself.

If Bush and Cheney knew they ran the personal risk of winding-up in the Hague -- or Tehran -- for war crimes, the possibility of an unjustified attack would be reduced to zero.

Hamilton's non-response to GG's inquiry is no surprise. His function throughout as co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission has been to conceal, rather than to reveal.

For an answer to Glenn's perfectly reasonable question, we will have to wait until Congress calls Mukasey to testify under oath about the matter. When pressed, the AG will probably stammer out some variation of "I mis-spoke," in the proud tradition of his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.

I attended a fundamentalist "bible camp" as a boy. Overall, it was fun, although even as an 11-year-old kid I was suspicious of the theology.

At one of the services, the preacher produced a bottle of whiskey. "Of the devil!," he thundered. Okay.

Then it was a deck of cards. "Of the devil!" Well, maybe.

Finally, he produced a Superman comic book: "Of the devil!"

At that point I knew those people were insane.

We Democrats seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory -- as epitomized by Rhodes' vicious verbal jihad against the Clintons.

Rhodes and other Obama partisans (of which I am one) should remember that those Clinton supporters are loyal Democrats too -- and will be needed in November if we are going to rescue our country from a sure-to-be-disastrous presidency of John W. (Bomb-Bomb) McCain.

With just a hair's breadth of policy difference between Clinton and Obama, this intra-party civil war is nothing short of insane. For Christ's sake, save those partisan daggers for the Republicans.

In the morally topsy-turvy Bush regime, people of honor and integrity are punished while the lunatics, liars and sycophants are promoted and otherwise rewarded.

Meanwhile, our corporate media still acts as if it's "business as ususal."

Since the corporate media has shamefully abdicated its responsibility in this regard, Stewart and Colbert serve the vitally important function of exposing the blatant lies and idiotic nonsense our politicians attempt to hoist upon us.

Bill Maher is the single solitary voice with a national platform that dares to proclaim that religion is not only silly superstition, but actually damaging to our society.

I would include Al Franken in this list, but he's currently running for the US Senate in Minnesota.

I'm personally torn between two possibilities about the dismal state of our media's political "journalism."

One possibility is that we're seeing the corporate version of a Soviet-style press apparatus; media consciously scripted to serve the interests of the State. The vast majority of our electronic media news programming would support this thesis, but there are exceptions -- such as Olbermann -- that one would never find in a truly State-controlled press.

A more likely explanation is that there exists an undiagnosed developmental condition rampant in our society that amounts to a form of "political retardation."

Political retardation can be characterized as a condition where those affected can be intelligent and fully functional in other cognitive activities, yet utterly incapable of discerning the meaning of political concepts or projecting the results of particular policy proposals. Furthermore, the politically retarded are incapable of recognizing self-contradictory or irrational political rhetoric.

The politically retarded are incapable of gauging the relative political importance of unrelated events, hence: John Yoo's justification for the abolition of the 4th Amendment becomes less important than Obama's bowling score and Mukasey's lies about 9/11 pale in comparison to the minutae of Hillary's tax return.

Remember, these people aren't stupid. It's just that the part of their brains that process political information is damaged or undeveloped. While the politically retarded may have our sympathy, they sure as hell shouldn't be driving our political discourse -- as they do now.

Did Lara Jakes Jordan get paid by the AP or the White House for this PR fluffery?