I found the excerpts from the article included in the Salon.com write-up, more telling than the photo. She sounded like a jerk in the story; the cover photo was just the icing on the cake.

Glenn wrote:

Do you think that those who want the CIA to retain "robust" interrogation and who want the federal surveillance state maintained, or want a hard-line towards Iran and a continuation of our Middle East policies, or who want to maintain corporate-lobbyist-domination of Washington, are sitting back saying: "it's not right to pressure Obama too much right now; give him some time"?

That's the best point I've seen made on the need to remain continuously vocal. There are lobbyists getting paid a lot of money to live in Washington DC and do this 24/7. They will do it behind the scenes... they will do it in the editorial pages of newspapers, and television news. They will get "weasel words" put into AP news stories to convey their messages to the people. They aren't going to let up, so why should anyone else?

The price of decent government is eternal vigilance by the people it serves. It is otherwise TOO EASY for politicians to skew policy in favor of those who pay to play.

"efficiency through privatisation" has to be the biggest, THE BIGGEST, scam ever perpetrated on the American citizen.

Even the most wooden-headed "conservative" should be able to acknowledge that more money for less services is not better simply because the "private sector" is involved.

Ugh...

It's also becoming more and more clear that the decisions the Bush Administration & military brass have made in this "war on terror" have nothing to do with ending it and ensuring long term security, and everything to do with keeping defense appropriations pumping for as long as possible.

If you could've travelled back in time and told the American public "NO... bin Laden will not be brought to justice "Dead or Alive," he will still be broadcasting messages in 2009... (the fact that he's still out there is good for BUSINESS) and, NO the Iraq War will not be over in 3 months, and unoccupied in 1 year... and NO it will not cost a mere $50 Billion." ... what would they say?

For some reason, I saw "beck criticizes lack of Bible at swearing in" and I thought "BECK? The musician??? Why would he care?"

OH... THAT Beck. Got it.

I'm disappointed to see they left off Stephen Colbert. Granted, Stewart's work on the Daily Show is impeccable, but Colbert doesn't get nearly enough credit for his satirical take on partisan media. He's got an arguably harder job playing a caricature of Bill O'Reilly and his ilk.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Colbert's SATIRE goes right over the head of anyone who works for Forbes (right on up to Steve), and they consider him a loyal member of the conservative, "unbiased" media. I mean, we're not exactly dealing with the brain trust here.

...local governments discovered a long time ago that middle class people will pay anything to stay out of jail. So local government taxes and fines the hell out of them in lieu of prison. Between court costs, diversion programs, drug screening, probation, fees, fines and so on, a lesser possession charge, up to a low grade felony, will cost the offender 10's of thousands of dollars that go to the city and county. ... .

I'm not so sure it's fair to say that. In fact the opposite could be true: the administrative costs involved in running those courts, paying for prosecutors, police, jails, etc. to administer said "justice" just to extract another pound of flesh from the citizenry FAR OUTWEIGHS any potential revenue received in the form of fines.

Do you have any figures to support your claims? I don't. But I do know that in jurisdictions (Ontario, Canada & California) that have de-criminalized petty drug possession, the reduction in the cost of enforcement was cited as a huge incentive to doing so.

Also, I believe one of the New England state (either Conn. or Rhode Island) just announced they are no longer going to bear the cost of prosecuting misdemeanor drug possession.

Wonder why not?

How come the "blockquote" function had to go and let me down there?

Interesting point, Rebeccah.

Here's a link to a summary of his "incident":

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1146487050585

Looks like he walked because he could afford the legal costs of challenging every bit of evidence against him, and copped a deal to pay the county for the $30K costs of the investigation

against him.

Not clear if his status as a celebrated Republican blowhard helped grease the wheels here, or if it just boiled down to having the cold hard cash.

The way Gingrey kow-towed here is telling. However, at this juncture, it looks like the brains behind the GOP operations have gotten their math wrong. There are just not as many dumb voters out there as they thought.

Then again, they are certainly not going to give up their position as the defender of the top of the pyramid in the class-warfare struggle, and adopt a more measured tone in their social policies. While their voting base consists of the bottom of the pyramid, the financial (political) power comes from the top.

Remember Lincoln's adage about fooling all the people some of the time? They're just waiting for their moment again.

AlecsMom wrote: The GOP clearly hasn't learned its lesson. Keep relying on Rush Limbaugh and you'll remain way out in Siberia with your influence growing ever fainter.

We can only hope.