Actually, I think that W's lawyers are very concious of the possibility of his leaving a virtual paper trail.

Given the way that this Administration holds onto information the way drowning person holds onto a life ring, the fact that e-mail once sent is virtually impossible to control would make him avoid it like the plague. And that's just for normal, routine stuff. Imagine how tight they'll hold onto any information that might be of interest to a special prosecutor - like a possible e-mail to Dick Cheney with the subject line "Help Kenny Boy Screw California".

Why should this Administration worry about the cost? They're not paying it.

There are no children of senior Administration members in the Iraq or Ahghanistan. They're all following in Dad's footsteps and sitting this one out.

The monetrary costs of Iraq are off-book and are being met by deficit spending. We can't pay for the war and tax cuts for the wealthy, so we're borrowing the money for the war and passing the tax cuts anyway.

So, they've pushed of the costs, both in blood and money to somebody else's kids. Meanwhile, they're pushing to end the Estate Tax, so all those profits get passed on to the kiddies without that nasty little last bite.

Costs? What costs? They just see opportunity.

In my not-so-humble opinion, the states and feds need to get out of the marriage racket altogether. It's just another place where church/state separation is non-existant.

I would much prefer a solution where civil unions and religious marriage are two parallel institutions. The state provide civil unions, in effect a contract, open to all consenting adults who are outside a certain degree of consanguity and the the church provides a religious blessing, with absoluetly no legal standing, on whatever people they please.

Not that I would expect such sanity.

I've always wondered why whenever comic artists need a rude, obnoxious character without two brain cells to rub together they pick a de-pantsed duck. Mallard Fillmore is just another in a long line stretching back to the 1930s.

James Poult has him sussed.

A study from HCD Research and Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion suggests that the Fox ad is pretty effective...

And that's why Rush goes into his clown act. As pointed out earlier, he's not talking to the Left or the Center. I'm not even all that sure that he's trying to increase his exposure (at least not as a primary result), or talk to mainstream, Country Club, Rotarian Republicans. I think what he's trying to do is keep his sheep in the fold in a state where the Dems have a chance of dumping an incumbent Republican senator.

The ad is persuasive because it works at an emotional level; you don't have to think. Most of us can give a well-reasoned argument for why the Democratic candidates are generally superior to the Republicans. I don't want to sound like an arrogant bastard, but not everyone responds to reason. But for some reason, that's the standard Democratic approach. As LBJ said "Let's reason together" (of course at that point, he usually had a death grip on his victim's political gonads - it makes "reasoning" easier).

People who follow authoritarian leaders do so, at least in part, because those leaders are the "Deciders", which frees the follower from needing to think about an issue. They don't call them "Dittoheads" for nothing. Here comes an ad that they Dittoheads don't have to think about; it works on a gut level. Here's Alex Keaton or Marty McFly, obviously suffering and asking for help. Who wouldn't?

This is a very dangerous ad from the Republican point of view.

You can bet that Hillary will never say anything that hasn't been run past umpteen focus groups and her corporate backers.

Yeah, Kerry's comment (botch or not) was stupid. But it was ambiguous; anybody who cares to actually read his words can see that what he said he meant to say was indeed there. Hillary's little foray into Karl Rove's embrace were the result of calculating careerism. They should play well with the crowds that read her pal Rupert's papers.

Of course W's not a body counter. I think that Uncle Dick told him that he'd run out of fingers and toes before he got to 600,000, so he lost interest.

I think that W's supposed lack of interest would be even more disturbing if it were true. What he's basically saying is that he doesn't care how many people that he has to kill to get what he wants. I think that we have a word for people like that - sociopath.

As Poco claims, marriage is not a right. There is also no right to join the military and no right to have children. I wish I had a nickel for every time somebody's trotted one of those cliches out to justify their bigotry. Yes Poco, I'm talking to you, dress it up in religion all you like, you're still a bigot. And no, I don't hate you, I just pity you.

But I'll tell you something that people do have a right to. People do have a right to equal treatment under the law. When you set up one class of people as being beneath the law's protection, you're telling everyone that you can do it to them too. And for some odd reason, I don't care to have anyone tell me that they have the power to declare me subhuman, for whatever reason.

Quotes from the Bible have no more legal weight than quotes from Spike Milligan's war memoirs Poco, and deservedly so.

I heard on NPR this morning that Mr. Whittington will not be accompanying Cheney. Guess he's learned his lesson.