the guy who worked for Douglas Feith and is BFF's with Richard Perle and Joe "I'm My Own Party" Lieberwar has zero business calling himself a member of the Democratic Party. I'm embarrassed Kos ever trumpeted support for this "fighting Dem" because he's definitely doesn't represent anything I want to see in the Democratic Party. Next one to be targeted is Heath "the 17th biggest flop in sports history" Shuler before he can do any more damage.

Dem Majorities mean shite when there is no principaled difference with members of the Grand Ol' Pantswetting Party. The ship of state will never be righted so long as rich nitwits who could give a damn about the Constitution and who reflexively value the capital/investor/corporate class over labor and individual liberty. There ought to be a law that you can't serve in the national legislative or executive branches without a law degree.

Why in world anyone would want someone making law or enforcing the law without a basic working knowledge of how the law attempts to strike 'just' balances between competing interests is beyond me (ok the law hasn't tried to strike 'just balances' for like 50 years but you get my meaning). Seriously. What does a corporate executive or corporate lawyer know about the law other than how to most cost effectively go up, over, or around it? Oh right I remember. They know how to use their profits to help elect politicians (enabled by their highly professional corporate propoganda machine) who believe business should be unregulated, untaxed, and subject to no law that might encumber profits unless of course it gives them a competitive advantage or a subsidy. My bad. The illusion that we the people have real legal recourse to protect our fundamental rights and liberty is just to keep the plebes and plaintiff-side lawyers from breaking out the pitchforks and torches and burning the mfer down. I think all criminal defense lawyers and plaintiff side lawyers should stage a month long strike in solidarity with our Pakistani brothers. Either that or we forwarding all our personal e-mails and phone calls directly to the House and Senate switchboards and servers with a little note that says "you want it you got it 24/7--I hope you choke on it you quisling vichy bastards."

Sorry too much coffee I got a little carried away there. I'll send $25 post haste.

"I am really astonished -- though I know I shouldn't be -- by how much people enjoy expressing moral outrage over the sexual lives of other people."

I hear you. One very unsurprising underlying pathology among large segments of faux Puritan America is its fascination with sex--sex, being a biologic imperative regardless of orientation, this should be no more surprising to people than becoming thirsty and needing water. But the prurient or salacious quality of the interest and the moral outrage that seems to follow I attribute to misogynistic religious doctrine, male sexual inadequacy or dysfunction, and a misscaled moral barometer that ranks sex as more problematic than the wholesale killing of human beings and the destruction of our biologic lifesblood--the planet. This is learned not innate.

I came to the immutable conclusion a long time ago that 40% (and that may underestimate the actual number) of the American population is not only factually misinformed, they are afflicted by mental illness of one variety or another and have a limited capacity for empathy that stops at the family/tribal level due to acculturation via American mythologies like "bootstrapping/equal opportunity/equality/theocracy of prosperity". People are taught to cognitively disconnect from reality at a young age. These same people rarely become high functioning critical thinking adults but rather remain trapped in a moral and functional state of adolescence.

We've also become a physically and mentally ill society because of the way many are forced to live their lives has them all out of whack. From the way we produce and consume food, to the poisonous materials in the homes we live, to the "medicines" we take, to how our economcy must necessarily structure our work lives and tasks. We've entered a period of neo-feudalism but instead of agrarian based it is technology based.

We are at root elegant biomechanical electrochemical machines illsuited by process of evolution for this particular lifestyle and it's making us sick in myriad ways. Hypersexualiztion is symptomatic of a fundamental imbalance. We don't eat, sleep, exercise, socialize, engage in sexual relationships, or work in ways consistent with biologic imperitives. Just my .02 pop psychology pseudoscience analysis which when combined with $1.73 might buy somone a bus ticket.

and starting to reattach the tattered rule of law one itty bitty piece at a time. I'm pleased to have been wrong. This is an act of Kabuki Kongressional Theatre I've rarely seen: Act VII The Principaled Stand That Didn't Lead To Spontaneous Combustion. I'd like to believe an America is possible where us nattering nabobs of negativity don't have to go ballistic on the phones to get our legislators to do what they've sworn to do--to preserve and defend the Constitution. Hell, people have fought and died in the millions for that simple little principle. Seems the least we should expect of them and the least they could do.

If they can do it again and start toughening the old political carapace maybe they'll take a look at all the other damage done starting with war-profiteering which should be easy pickings. Instead of the reflexive "sternly worded letter" to "colleagues" before drinks at the after session cocktail weenie soiree, maybe they can use this to pick up a little speed and get the old subpeona steamroller moving on Rove and Meiers. I'm seeing the tiniest spark that someday, somebody, somewhere, just might be held accountable for the damage that has been done to America in the last 7 1/2 years (not to mention Iraq). That's Act XXII Not Even The Powerful Are Above The Law (I've never seen it because of the pesky old pardon and commutation power, but I can still dream).