I can see why many Democrats have possibly been reluctant to investigate Republican election fraud, attacks on civil liberties , pigs-at-the-trough mentality in Congress, the bogus run-up to the equally bogus Iraq war, the looting of the Treasury, doctoring of science, the cronyism, incompetence, outing of a covert C.I.A. operative, etc, etc, etc, etc. of the Bush administration and its attendant Congress. Given the lack of critical media coverage of this administration, the dominance of the airwaves by the right-wing and establishment type blowholes and the fact that the real story is truly that fantastic it may seem that absent a credible smoking gun, critics of the administration are easily depicted as whacked-out UFO believing paranoids. This has to be the smoking gun and Congress must act. When Goldsmith goes before Congress I intend to nag my Representative and Senators to to insanity to move on this. We need to lean on newspapers to cover this and bolg the story to death.

Watching John Bolton squirming under some genuinely tough questioning made my week in a big way. What would have made it better would have been Paxman asking him "By 'we should have done things differently' don't you mean 'We screwed up'?"

Actually, Stengel's quote should read "Can't anybody play this here game?".

That the far right would conduct such an amazingly well organized, intense and baseless smear campaign on young Graeme Frost and his family doesn't surprise me at all. Their driving philosophies have been thoroughly discredited by history: Supply side economics have led to the greatest wealth disparity this country has seen since 1929 and the shakiest economic ground perhaps ever, unfettered flow of capital around the world has created wage slavery world wide, unfettered economic growth without regard to consequences has resulted in the world's first ecological crisis and their simplistic, Big-Stick-Without-The-Soft-Walk foreign policy worldview blundered into a mess in the Middle East that will take generations to fix. convincingly.

The fact that they have nothing resembling substance to present leaves them nothing but attacks. They've attacked Michael Schiavo, Dick Durbin, Orrin Hatch (when he strayed from the party line), Joe and Valerie Wilson, every Democratic presidential candidate, John McCain (in early 2000),John Murtha, Wesley Clark, The Dixie Chicks, Sean Penn,Al Gore and on and on and on and on..., generally from their insulated perches in right-wing blogs, magazines and Fox News. It's all they have left and we shouldn't expect anything else from them.

Three things strike me as true. First, as soon as Al Gore enters the race it's over. The man is equal parts statesman (not politician), visionary and world wide media hero as big as any rock star out there. He has more positives and fewer negatives that any Democrat (or Republican) currently in the race. His coattails will be long and keep in mind that the Chihuahua jackals (I mean no disrespect to either Chihuahuas or jackals) of the right have already done their worst. All they have left is personal attacks and they shot that bolt seven years ago.

Second, Gore is the best person for the job. He has true gravitas without being ponderous (he has shed his pre-2000 image), experience, knowledge and that "vision thing" that exists in short supply among the Democratic candidates and not at all among the Republicans. He knows what has to be done and how to lead. He has the deep respect respect of the rest of the world. He might actually get them to like us again. With an adequately progressive Congress he might be the best President we've had in a very long time.

Finally, Al Gore owes it to us who voted for him in 2000. He won that election and in my opinion didn't fight nearly hard enough for his supporters then. Personally, I think he should reclaim what was his. He owes that much to us.

I'd like to make three points here.

1) Anything that pisses O'Reilly off id fine by me.

2) That's five left, Carlin ( I've heard "tits" snuck past

the censors twice

3) When I finally ran the interview down and heard it, the

offending "cunt" reference almost slipped past me

unnoticed.

What's the big deal?

I probably ought to read the book first before I write this but I see a basic hurdle that has to be cleared before any meaningful relationship between evangelicals and liberals can occur. When you remove abortion, gay marriage, faith based initiatives, public displays of religion and all the other issues that separate us you find two views that could preclude cooperation. Many of them view us as smarty-pants intellectuals doomed to an eternity in the Lake Of Fire because we reject revealed truth and many of us see them as a bunch of intellectual flyweights clinging to their 7th Century worldview despite the advances in learning that have since occurred. Maybe if we can get past that we can learn to be friends.

I;m nothing but thrilled to have heard of Foster's win but I believe one must realize that his opponent, Jim Oberweis,, brought up the rear in the 2004 Republican Senate primary and faired poorly in the Republican primary for governor in '06. This is a guy who, despite his name recognition as a dairy owner and the very well produced ads for his self funded campaigns, can't even get Republicans to vote for him. That Foster's anti-amnesty and anti-war message seemed to resonate with the voters on Hastert's district is a good sign and I remain hopeful.

For a moment, remove the teen pregnancy issue here. I think it's great that a group of adolescents shows enough maturity and wisdom to take charge of their lives in the event of a life changing incident. What could possible be wrong with agreeing to share responsibilities, pool resources and provide emotional support for each other. Sounds like what a society should be.