Larry King was right not to have changed his style just for the VP. Why should he?

Cheney has not earned any respect from anyone except Bush and Gonzales while he has been in office. He has destroyed whatever respect should be given to the office of the VP single-handedly.

For those who worship Bush and Cheney, go pray to your little statues and hope they're not listening in on you, or that you will be targeted for prosecution or death for not having the "right" religion or position, preferably kneeling.

Lots of money helps, too.

There are millions of Americans who voted for Bush on the basis of his religious faith-a true believer, like themselves.

They believed he was one of them, and voted for whatever consequences that vote would bring.

They also cheered wildly when he invaded Iraq, not conscious of the misleading basis of that invasion.

They believed that he had an "ok from God" to do this, and believed that he was right.

How many of them are left today? I wouldn't want to guess, but there are some, and you can read them on the letters to the editor pages of any newspaper, defending to the death their leader and his insanity.

Faith is blind, and the ultimate gamble. Bush didn't have loaded dice, that's for sure.

WB Yeats poem "The Second Coming" says it all:

"...Things fall apart;the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned..."

The story that data mining was the real reason behind the imminent resignation of top officials does not stand up to light of day.

They'd been doing it for a while, they were comfortable with it, and there had been no reason to not continue it-until the funding got cut off.

That means there had to be a really bad thing going on that triggered the threats of almost simultaneous resignations from the DOJ-something I don't even want to know about, really.

Perhaps we will never know, from the looks of the reporting that is being done. The Washington press corps is totally corrupted and they don't even care. They shouldn't even call themselves journalists for this craven sell-out to the administration.

As for the real scenario of what could have been going on? Perhaps mass arrests and internment of innocent civilians because they had gotten enough "evidence" from data mining to start a concentration camp-something that we did once before; The Japanese-Americans can tell you something about that.

Don't tell me it isn't a realistic scenario-given that the administration has been strenuously defending the wiretapping program and now wants to "expand" the FISA limits-to absolutely everything goes.

As for Gonzales, he lied under oath. He is impeachable, and should be removed for not only this but for the way he has completely decimated the DOJ into a political arm of the WH.

It's totally rotten to the core. Watergate was never this bad, and Bush isn't even bright enough to figure out that he's an accomplice to "high crimes and misdeamnors" in this.

If Salon reads their posters notes ( what a bad play on words!) they will realize that perhaps once in a while Digby could stand in for Tim or Glenn when need arises.

It is like being a doctor or a pharmacist-a really good writer is hard to come by, and you don't let them go easily.

I think Salon will think of ways to have Digby contribute once in a while.

She might not like a full-time gig, but I'm sure she's got time for all of us Salonistas and our verbosity.

As a frequent poster, I try to limit myself to one or perhaps two posts in any one topic. Anything more is overwriting, and pointless.

Unless someone has a valid and timely point on a topic, they should be limited to three posts per subject, and then ejected for excessive posting. "Shooter", "Tiberius" and others come to mind when this area comes up; "Anonymous" should be a one time use only if the poster fears that others might heckle him/her online or through email (which is not available for public consumption anyway, from registration).

There are very few really good posters here-but I will mention that "be-bop-o" should be made the literary editor and advisor to Salon-he (or is that she?) has a wonderful way with words and knows how to turn a phrase without denigrating other people.

I immensely dislike the trolling that goes on here-with the ad hominem attacks and written slanders that happen to populate certain topics.

If one has an opinion, that's one thing-but to abuse in writing others' opinions just because they don't agree with yours is just plain childish and shows the level of ignorance that seems to be rampant in some groups.

Sometimes it just feels like the teenagers have invaded the room and taken it over, with no adult supervision.

It makes sense to have a little control over the content you publish, too. Try it sometime-it will make Salon Letters a better place to post.

Dick Cheney will not run for President in the next election, mostly because he's living on borrowed time as it is; he has a pacemaker, he's had two heart attacks so far, and I don't think Mrs. Cheney will stand for it.

He just can't afford to run. Let's see if he makes it out of the VP's office without getting impeached and removed first before casting him as a presidential hopeful.

I sincerely doubt that the Republicans are quite that stupid, too; to have the most hated man in the United States run for elected office is the dumbest thing that could ever happen.