Sometimes you just know that human intelligence is tragically complicated and wrong: when neocons run national policy; or when someone says that it is a mystery

"why anyone thought Life on Mars could be anything but a dark satire on Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, Baretta and those other 1970's tough-cop shows. And why anyone thought such a satire should have been on the air longer than the length of a Carol Burnett sketch."

Technically, some Carol Burnett sketches were so great that they became mini-series of their own, like the recurring Tudball character. Value was recognized.

Also, a dark satire on 70s tough-cop shows continues to have relevance in a time when somebody gets tasered a dozen times for doing nothing much, or the most common method of identifying perpetrators, showing victims half a dozen mug shots, turns out to be causing widespread injustice.

But those are just minor considerations, compared to a brilliant cast, including an appealing lead actor with a bright future (if there is any justice left in the casting world), stories that entertain, and a concept that nags at the psyche of anyone over 40: what if I had the chance to do some things differently?

In the real world we know time travel is not possible, though you can play a few tricks near the speed of light. But the urge to pierce that barrier exists, and it lends itself to the suspension of disbelief which all stories require. If the resulting story charms, as "Life on Mars" does, its audience deserves to hear it.

Sometimes it takes a while for word to get around to the audience for gems like LOM. Networks are notoriously impatient about such things. Maybe one of the creative cable channels will pick it up.

There are two stories here. One is the callous, dishonest way we are treating our volunteers who went to war trusting that they would be treated fairly when they got back home. The government is betraying that promise. It is a national disgrace.

The other story is why we are having so many PTSD cases in the first place: The Defense Department, under Rumsfeld, violated rules in place since World War II which limited time in combat zones to six months. Those rules were put in place because the Army discovered that if you stayed in combat areas too long it would do bad things to you. So the current rate of PTSD cases is much higher than that of WWII, the most intense warfare in the history of the planet.

Obama is a busy man with many demands on his attention. He needs to take five minutes to tell someone to FIX THIS.

As others note, it's not about weakening liberal strength in this race at all. To me the interesting question, the really hot story, is whether Torsella was asked to do this by Pennsylvania Democratic dealmakers wanting to make sure Specter gets beat in the primary. It's pretty clear by now that Pennsylvania Democrats have welcomed Specter into the party with approximately the same enthusiasm the British displayed for Benedict Arnold. It would be completely logical for them to stack the deck against him.

As one active in ACLU, I recently was part of a discussion about torture prosecutions in which the concern was expressed that ACLU was not in the business of prosecuting people, it defended them and the constitutional rights of defendants.

My reply to that was that this wasn't just about some people doing criminal things, it was about the highest officials in this land hijacking the Constitution, not just on the torture issue but in massively violating citizens' rights in telecommunications and otherwise, in moving toward a dictatorial "unitary" presidency with its signing statements nullifying or rewriting Acts of Congress, and in doing just about anything else they wanted to do. As Bush unforgettably said during an internal debate about torture, the Constitution is "just a piece of paper" that should not stand in the way of what he wanted to do. It was worse than Watergate by far.

So against that background, supporting prosecutions is just one tool in a general effort to reinstitute and defend the rule of law, that is, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. And ACLU is definitely in that business. If we can advocate for injunctions to protect rights, we can advocate for prosecutions which remove those who are violating rights. Those prosecutions will be object lessons for all future officeholders that there are consequences for treating the Constitution as just a "piece of paper".

I'll be honest -- I hate the health care debate just because it is indeed very complicated and if you are not a certified Beltway wonk you really don't know what you're talking about. But Obama does, and he repeatedly persuaded me of that last night. More importantly, he made several points -- not new, perhaps, but like the issue of his citizenship, easily understandable by pointing to the major facts. He was born in Hawaii, case closed, no further discussion. And if we don't do meaningful healthcare reform, not only is health care going to get worse, so will our economy. Man, that's heavy stuff.

I do think he could have made a stronger point about the public option: since (almost) all agree that the public option would be cheaper than the present commercial conglomeration, what does that say about the efficiency of this market? To me, it just confirms what I have suspected all along: that this oligopoly has gone far beyond "conscious parallelism" in setting prices and has been actively price-fixing for decades, in combination with the health care providers.