The "Best-And-The-Brightest" strategy theorists in Washington, DC, are really a bunch of bloomin' idiots when it comes to combating terrorism. That is, unless you think, as I do, that the continual threat of terrorist attack is a major instrument for the financial elite's struggle to retain political, economic, and military control of the planet.

I mean, c'mon, if you want someone to be permanent angry with Uncle Sam, just have American drones drop a few bombs on someone's domicile and, along with the targeted enemies of freedom, you happen to collaterally eliminate someone's spouse, kids, parents, siblings, etc. If Afghans came over here and stared slaughtering my family, friends, and neighbors from the sky, I'd get a Kalashnikov and head for the hills, too.

In the last election cycle, I only remember Ron Paul as having enough insight and moxie to make total military withdrawl from Iraq a major platform position, but I am sure that Cynthia McKinney agreed, as did the other three "minor party" candidates. I personally will not support or vote for any candidate at the national level who does not express a definite policy of getting U.S. troops and corporations out of Middle easer countries.

After learning that he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, Cal Tech Professor Richard Feynman (1918-1988), who didn't want the award, suggested that potential winners be alerted to the fact in advance, so they could decline their candidacy without raising a ruckus. Feynman accepted the prize reluctantly after he concluded that rejecting it would gain him even more unwelcome notoriety.

Feynman's sensible proposal would have given President Obama a change to gracefully decline the prize pending some substantial contribution he could make for peace. It would have been the honorable thing to do and would have allowed the award to go to someone who had already earned it.

Obama's acceptance of the prize with no substantive achievement to be so recognized is both dishonorable and hypocritical.

Yes, friends, let's get busy now and find some suitable acreage for each of the world's religions. The Catholic Church claims a membership of approximately one billion people, so, if we scale the countries devoted to the other sects at 44 hectares (Vatican City's area) per billion, or 4.4 square centimeters per member, we can see that some of them will be extreme microstates. For instance, Methodists should be able to claim 3.08 hectares (7.7 acres) on behalf of their 70,000,000 members. You could raise a goat herd or maybe some pigs on that property! Quakers would be in trouble, though. With only about half a million members worldwide, Quaker City would only have an area of just 0.022 hectares (0.055 acres), maybe enough for a small vegetable garden. But the Quakers would save a lot of money by not having a standing army!

Every sect, no matter how small, should have equal representation at the United Nations! It should also develop its own postal service, currency, etc. Revenues could be raised by registering shipping in them and exploiting their sovereignty for money laundering operations, etc.

The locations of these religious states should be based on their history, so Germany would have to surrender some of its area for the establishment of Lutheran City.

So, let's get started. Where in Connecticut should Baptistville be founded?

We've got God on our side. I even heard Bob Dylan singing about it once. So, not to worry...

Last week it was a new format for the letters, which appeared to be highly unpopular. Thanks for changing it back to its much more user-friendly original form.

Now this is the second article I've looked at on Salon this morning in which the text is sprawled wantonly across the page. If you have a wide-screen monitor like I do, visually picking up next line of text on the left after reading the previous line ending on the right is more effort than I really want to put into doing anything at 5 AM. To complicate matters, the first letter or two of the words in the lines beginning on the left are cut off at the edge of the screen, necessitating contextual interpolation skills to be activated in my semi-somnelent cerebral cortex.

The solution is easy. As before, go back to the tried and true article format that we've all learned to endure. And stop imposing new formats on your readership without privately testing them.

But in the other big town, the one on an island, not Mt. Vernon. I left when he must have been about 2 or 3, so never had the "pleasure" of his acquaintance. I wonder if he worked in the strawberry harvest on the Skagit Flats alongside the migrant Mexican workers like I did. If you wanted to see someone who knew how to work HARD and never really be rewarded for it, you had to see those families of men, women, and children picking like mad as they crawled down the rows of berries plants in the heat of the July sun, before returning to the hovels the farmers had provided for them.

I think it's really a shame that someone could grow up in what I always have regarded as a kid's paradise of farms, river, ocean, mountains, and forests, and still be such a tight-ass.

Other former residents of Mt. Vernon include Jesus Christ (oops, I mean James Caviezel, who played J.C. in the Mel Gibson Passion movie) and Demi Moore, who apparently attended junior high there. Demi's only a couple of years older than Glenn, though I doubt if they knew each other.