And the late Mr. Rabin (killed by a right-wing extremist for whom even Likud was too nice) called the AIPAC/Likud (now AIPAC/Likud/Kadima) clowns "scumbags". Is someone going to call Rabin a self-hating Jew?

I like how none of the anonymous right-wing LGF readers trolling these pages dare comment on the fact that the author of this piece, Gregory Levey, used to work as a speechwriter for Israeli politicians. It's not as if they can credibly accuse him of not knowing his subject.

And thanks to the non-anonymous letter writer who pointed out that Israel is not all AIPAC or all Likud/Kadima. That needs to be mentioned every so often.

They'll do anything to cover up their conjoined-twin connection to the Republicans' corporate wing.

They want to pretend that the 1998 elections showed that "all impeachments are bad", when in fact what they really showed was that "parties that push FRIVOLOUS impeachments for purely partisan reasons will get their asses kicked." (Note that impeaching Nixon in 1974 didn't exactly hurt the Democrats that year -- or in 1976, for that matter. Yet the GOP/Media crowd has been pushing that myth big-time.)

You, sir, are amazing. You marshal facts in context and wield them with exquisite and deadly accuracy, yet so elegantly that your targets don't realize they've been disemboweled until they look down and see their innards on the floor. Well done!

You don't see very many Episcopalians or Unitarians or straight Lutherans among them.

But you do see lots of Southern Baptists and Pentecostalists and other churches that have their roots in racism or were steeplejacked a few decades back by the extremely racist "Dominionist" movement.

Their true values involve keeping down blacks, Jews, and women, to name but a few groups. Everything else is pure window dressing.

And it is their alliance with the GOP's corporate wing -- an alliance forged in the 1960s with the Republicans' repudiation of Lincoln (aka "the Southern Strategy") -- that gave the Republicans the lockstep control of the nation and its institutions that they've enjoyed for most of the past few decades.

Fusion's always been "just around the corner" for the past sixty years, according to its fan club. Yet like all good mirages, it doesn't get any nearer when it's approached. Meanwhile, thin-film solar technology not only is about to break the $1-per-watt threshhold (important to make solar a viable option in the developing world), but Octillion has recently invented a way to use thin-film technology to make solar cells out of standard windows, without impairing transparency. (Think of an SUV that charged its own batteries from its windows -- and had thin-film solar strips on the dashboard as well, to help keep those batteries charged. With this technology, it's possible.)

I can see a combination of solar, wind (especially wind turbines with solar cells on them: again, with thin-film technology it's eminently do-able) and celluosic ethanol taking care of our energy needs. The biggest problem with ethanol is the water use: Rural Minnesota's already noticed a drop in its aquifer levels (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/09/07/ethanolnow/), a drop that's been linked to ethanol production. (Perhaps the ethanol makers can be made to use hog manure -- which is largely liquid -- instead? That would keep the hog poop out of the groundwater and keep the aquifer levels high.)

The interview was too short for my tastes -- I'd really like to have heard him explain just what he means by "clean coal", as I seriously doubt such a beast exists, or is even possible. Maybe that could be in a followup interview?

It's just that we shouldn't be burning them.

Look at Venezuela. It's sitting on top of enough oil-like substance to fuel the entire world at present consumption rates for the next two centuries. There's a small problem (besides the whole throwing-carbon-into-the-air thing) in that this stuff is the consistency of peanut butter, meaning that oil prices must stay over $30 a barrel (preferably $50 a barrel) to make it economically attractive to refine, but nobody figures we'll ever see $30 a barrel oil again, so China and India are investing heavily in Venezuelan refineries, even as George W. Bush and his oil-man cronies hurl invective at Hugo Chavez for the sin of actually caring about his people, as opposed to more conventional strong men like Bush's good buddy Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan.

Hybrid cars and even the eeeevil SUVs are just fine, if people see them for what they are: Transitional devices meant to ease us from oil and onto solar/wind/geothermal/celluosic ethanol/etc. Slap on some thin-film solar cell nanosheeting on the windows and the dashboard, and they can come even closer to not needing the oil to run. (They could probably be designed to run just on the energy gathered from the windows and dashboard, but charging times would be an issue, as would their usability in the far north or south during their respective winters. Better in those cases to plug the vehicles into a socket at night for the next day's travel.)

As for SUVs, the reason that US carmakers love them is that they're cheap to make: They're essentially pickups with a one-piece shell over the cargo bed as well as the engine; no real design talent's needed to do that. I'm glad to see that the Big Three are finally starting to expend some thought (and dollars) into rethinking the SUV, because very little thought went into creating it. (Station wagons are much more practical, especially for the vast majority of us who don't regularly drive dirt paths. But of course those vehicles are -- gasp! -- associated with women. Oh, no!)

SubHead: "If they're accusing someone of something illegal, immoral, or "unmanly", it's a lead-pipe cinch they're doing it themselves. And usually at least ten times as much."

They're working at state and local (and now national) levels to slash the role money (and thus corporations) plays in politics.

Back candidates who back them.