Hmmm, the Subject may be more apropos for a comment on the abominable "Dream Team" option, which has raised its hideous head again today.

Here, it refers to the dismal fact that Common Dreams "disappeared" the following unremarkable comment when I tried to post it to Glenn's article. Three times. No error message, no warning, no clue.

I have serious issues with the incongruously top-down, authoritarian, unilateral, censorious operation of web sites established, in part, to invite discussion. I hinted this in an e-mail to Common Dreams which will go unacknowledged.

This tangent becomes relevant here because of recent discussions about if and how Glenn moderates this site. I trust Glenn to do the right thing, and am actually grateful that he finds time and energy to "babysit" the comments. (I'm ambivalent about this pejorative label, incidentally.) I can't overstate how offensive I find the practice of "disappearing" comments without notice or explanation.

I am grateful that Glenn has not installed automated censoring programs keying on blacklisted words, etc., or employed a squad of pimply interns to sift through the comments.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, herewith my anticlimactic two cents:

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It's worth remembering that Maverick of the Living Dead has no real expertise, wisdom, or intelligence in any area except Furthering His Career By Any Means Necessary-- including making it up as he goes along.

In an enlightened, rational society and culture-- Sweden, maybe?-- where intellect and integrity are valued, and where a politician's success may in fact depend on the strength of such qualities, Maverick would be cooling his toes in his wife's own lagoon, just another obscenely wealthy has-been.

Not in the good old U S of A! Here, as the past decade or more amply proves, intellectual acuity and sterling character renders one "unelectable", and subject to prejudicial rejection by the corporate media infotainwhore class, which has assumed the effective right to "veto" candidates in the court of public opinion, and execute them with the Death of a Thousand Cuts.

Conversely, if this depraved gang of imperialist enablers take a liking to a politician, that politician can do no wrong. When Maverick revved up the fatuously-named "Straight Talk Express" and par-tayed with the (mostly) Boys on the Bus, he knew he'd made an ally for life.

Even though things soured a bit last summer, once Maverick fired up the barbeque and invited the Press Corpse for some good, greasy-fingered eatin', the magic returned.

In short, Maverick will say, and has said, Anything It Takes to fool enough of the people most of the time. And, while the media coverage may in fact report his grosser and more shameful misstatements and contradictions, they'll do so in the context of what a Swell Guy he truly is.

Which, sadly, is really all that too many of We the People need to hear, and are capable of processing.

Yes, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. FDR interned people without trial. Adams signed dictatorial omnibus laws. Wilson suppressed dissent. LBJ waged undeclared war.

Bush, however, did all of the above.

-- Citizen_X

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OK, I am going to blurt out something foolish, as if I didn't grasp the epistemological impossibility of "really" knowing how another thinks and feels, and that in any case one ought not to venture out onto the thin ice of such arrant speculation without rigorously studying the literature, including biographies and manuscripts, of the persons involved.

So: When I scanned that list, I had a half-assed but vivid thought that at least all those earlier presidents appeared to have a consciousness of the culpability and immorality of their actions, in varying degrees.

Again, this may be mere nostalgia and the fruit of imagination, but one has the sense that Lincoln at least knew that it was grievous and perilous to suspend habeas corpus, and genuinely agonized over it regretfully. And so with the others-- I put Wilson last, since his megalomania contaminated his vision.

Beyond their personal feelings and emotions, there was at least the implication that they implemented these problematic ad hoc measures in response to the exigencies of the crisis at hand, but recognized that these were indeed extraordinary actions inimical to the traditional spirit and character of our Constitution and government.

Whereas President Unitard and his minions are actually sociopaths. Unlike the cited group, this criminal madman appears to be incapable of doubt or profound reflection. Think of that flunky-- I disremember his name just now-- who boasted to reporter Ron Suskind about the maladministration "creating reality" for the rest of us to take or leave. That strikes me as a pretty reliable indicator for the overall groupthink within the politico-criminal Executive Branch.

And, to extend the "all of the above" observation, this gang is not tiptoeing around, reluctantly or even shamefully bending a few rules for the nonce for the sake of expediency and success. We lament the apparent "suspension" of habeas corpus, but in reality it is immured permanently inside massive, malignant, and wholly bipartisan legislation like the Patriot Act.

So at present, it's not a question of an Executive Branch veering off the straight and narrow during a national emergency, and maybe having to be dragged back to normal.

This crew has openly, shamelessly, and enthusiastically dismantled as much of the straight and narrow as they've been able to reach-- without significant opposition, and with much courteous assistance-- and even as they sink into the quagmire of history they are replacing the straight and narrow with a wide and crooked that only a Unitary Executive and its cronies could love.