The virtually hallucinatory mind-set of many of the people who call themselves "Conservatives" (or the sub-set "Ditto Heads") is a phenomenon worthy of serious study by social psychologists. I make this observation as much sympathetically as critically

I'm referring of course to the collective, disordered sensorium that permits (or necessitates) the essential incoherence of the quasi-hysterical nationalists and militarists in the US who are apparently oblivious to the dangerous implications for themselves and others of their paranoia and implacable hostility to their "enemies," foreign and domestic.

That a psychological, rather than an argumentative approach is in order is evidenced by the oft-noted futility of attempting to engage them on an evidentiary or even logical basis, as their ability to deal with their percepts, concepts, and feelings (their reality processing) is manifestly impaired.

This accounts for the common observation, as it is again made here by Glenn Greenwald, that one often "honestly doesn't know where to begin" in making response to their fulminations.

When I see the likes of Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer, David Broder, Joe Klein, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, and Nora O'Donnell (to name only a few) framing political discussion on network and cable TV, I'm forced to wonder whether the corporate media have a rule, written or unwritten, similar to that of the New London, Connecticut Police Department which made the news by rejecting an applicant on the basis of his having scored too high on the pre-employment IQ test.

I cannot watch their consistently superficial and uninformed glosses of the issues of the week without

being struck by their manifest lack of general intelligence, i.e., the ability to work with complex concepts logically and coherently, and with their eagerness to assert their personal prejudices and idees fixes with virtually no concern for objective evidence to support those prejudices or banal obsessions.

There are, of course, some honorable exceptions to this state of affairs in the corporate media, but in my experience the exceptions clearly constitute a minority.

Glenn is obviously right when he attributes to the DC "star system" much of the bloviating sychophancy that attempts to pass for journalism in the US, but there is also this other factor which merits serious attention, the egregious intellectual sloth of so many political mavens or the lack in the first place of sufficient mind power with which they *could* be industrious.

Rather than being "snarky" here, I'm honestly reporting my observations of the many rich and famous courtiers in the media who, when it comes to dealing with the coherent integration of concepts and empirical data, are manifestly unready for prime time.

The hybrid intellectual vigor and integrity of so many contributors and contributions to the blogosphere, Glenn Greenwald's being a conspicuous example, stands in sharp relief to the pervasive intellectual torpor of the MSM.

As a result, it can hardly be surprising that the purveyors of pernicious mediocrity such as David Broder and his ilk do not find the blogosphere congenial.

Libertarian at Large

Glenn and Blue Texan referred to Vic Gold's new book, but neither of them spelled out the title: *Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP*.

Here's an excerpt from Doug Bandow's review of the book:

(http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=10907)

"Gold paints a scene on November 4, 2006 that captures the emotions of many on the Right who once had worked "for the Republican party. Writes Gold:

""'There I was on election night 2006, an aging Goldwater conservative who felt not only good but also gratified that all this was unraveling state by state and district by district. A Democratic landslide was sweeping a corrupt, self-aggrandizing Republican congressional majority out of power and, hard as they tried, the disingenuous party hacks spouting the White House line on Fox News couldn't explain it away. What came to mind watching these Beltway blowhards was an old Joe South lyric from the 1970s: 'These are not my people.'"

As Bandow points out, "Few political activists have a stronger Republican pedigree than Gold. A press aide for 1964 presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and later Vice President Spiro Agnew, Gold also was a speech writer and adviser to President H.W. Bush. Gold coauthored the latter's biography.

"He also coauthored a novel with Lynne Cheney, wife of the vice president. He cheered the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 and the presidency in 2000. He was one of those well-connected GOP activists whose loyalty appeared well-nigh absolute. No longer."

Gold is an important exception (among a growing number of them) to Republicans still hag-ridden by the core principle that Glenn characterized as endless and mindless militaristic nationalism.

May Gold's book crystallize much additional opposition in Republican circles to the barbarism of the Bushevics.

It's perfectly understandable that Attorney General Toad would not want Comey or Ashcroft to testify, but what exactly overrode his claim of executive privilege regarding "internal deliberations? How did Comey get to testify?