Now is the time to act. Not acting because of fear of political fallout is craven and foolish. It reminds me of the football coach who goes to the locker room with time-outs in his pocket, an opportunity left wanting on the field because time ran out.

Here are some good reasons for the Democrats to stop financing the war:

• The American electorate desires it.
• Iraq is already in chaos. We simply do not know that things will get worse if we leave. The presence of our troops there gives the militias the pretex they need for their very existence, as well as a potent recruiting tool. We do know the damage our presence is causing.
• It is the moral thing to do. We, and any other country, have no business invading sovereign countries. I though the Nuremberg trials settled that long ago.
• And for those who engange in political calculus, it is still a long way to the next election. Plenty of time to repair any political damage the Democrats would sustain.

There simply is no reason to maintain a Democratic majority in Congress if this majority will cave in on every presidential demand. I hear that they are ready to hand Bush more "free-trade" fast track power, another thing the electorate does not want them to do. Damn them. Let them commit political suicide for all the good they are (not) doing.

"Ouch. To me, it was a little over the top."

No, not at all. How is this over the top, even a little? We have a situation here where the elected representatives of the people utterly fail to respond to the desires of said people. The craven, disgusting political calculations that entered into the decision of the Democrats to give this president exactly what he wanted all along are worthy only of our most profound contempt.

Political cartoonist Don Wright of the Palm Beach Post had it right all along. Go to http://cagle.msnbc.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/donwright.asp, and fetch the 9/28/05 cartoon.

The Democrats have two very good choices, none of which requires a "veto-proof" majority:

• Keep sending these bills with timelines. Make Bush veto them. Make it clear who is making this war go on.
• Do nothing. It is Bush who needs the money. If the Democrats don't send him a bill, what exactly is he going to veto? This would effectively defund the war, or force Bush to put the requisitions in the regular budget request, where it belongs anyway. (The fiction of "supplemental emergency appropriations" allow him to understate the deficit.)

Both of these choices are eminently feasible, even though they would require some fortitude on the part of Democrats (and there's the rub). It is Bush who needs something from the Democrats, not the other way around. But no, they have the spine of a wet noodle, and Bush, whose approval ratings lie far below the number of people who believe in UFOs, gets his way. To call this a "betrayal" is, if anything, an understatement.

Glenn Greenwald, absolutely right on, as usual

"Springy", all you have to do is read what the neo-cons have written and said since before 9/11. A war with Iran and Syria is exactly what they want. Read the voluminous output of Bill Kristol's and Robert Kagan's Project for a New American Century; Remember the "you're next" saber-rattling that occurred just after "Mission Accomplished." Look at all the provocation that is occurring as we speak: yet another carrier group sent to the Gulf. Why? Do the insurgents have a navy or an air force? When people mass military force in your backyard it is because they want to provoke you. Bush is provoking Iran. The scary thought is that the only reason we are not currently at war with Iran is because of Iranian restraint. This is an amazingly unstable state of affairs.

Paul may be referring to TSA screeners, but I think this quote more aptly applies to the creepy Republican field of presidential hopefuls. Here we are in the third century of the existence of our beloved country—whose birth was the inspiration of so much hope for the downtrodden and oppressed—beholding the spectacle of a bunch of wanna-be authoritarians trying to out-do each other in demonstrating their enthusiasm for torturing their fellow man (with the honorable exception of Paul and McCain). How un-American can you get? They even look creepy.

...For when you stand further to the right than Genghis Khan, just about everyone looks like a liberal.

We can talk about Paris Hilton all we want, but that's not the real issue here. This episode is relevant because it proves that in this country the Law is for the poor. It was as predictable as the sunrise that Ms. Hilton would not serve her time, but it is useful to have reality confirm the prediction for the next time some rich elite fool lectures us on the Rule Of Law.

"By saying that your laptop is in some way more valuable than intellectual property, aren't you making some pretty sweeping assumptions about the value of human knowledge?"

This is about the most clueless statement I've seen in a while. The "value of human knowledge" is necessarily a collective thing. Knowledge made inaccessible by copyright holders is pretty much worthless and might as well not exist.

This is one reason I would like to see copyright restricted solely to the author of the IP. No inheritance of copyright, no selling of copyright. Once the author has reaped the benefit of her/his work society gets its due.