Not to put too fine a point on it, but the current executive group is precisely why I want to be able to own weapons. How can we balance our ability to resist our government (watering the tree of Liberty with the blood of patriots, and all that original founder stuff)with the occasional wacko rampage that is sure to result if we do guarantee it. Does anyone who reads Salon absolutely totally trust the current federal executive to do either the right or the Constitutional thing? Just asking.

No-one wants to play chicken with our troops, but I suspect that once "our troops" are out of there, it will be much easier to find the votes to play chicken with "their mercenaries." Let the Congress negotiate for that part of the loaf that is really important and wuit whining.

Bill Lamb

The Dems won the 2006 election for a variety of reasons, a few of which MAY be related to Rahm Emanuel. Other, probably more important, factors include: (a) the DNC 50-state strategy; (b) a renewed energy and emphasis by campaigners at the precinct level -- there was a huge door knock, telephone, and get out the vote campaign in neighborhoods all over the country; (c) the national Republicans are so incompetent and corrupt that even that majority of citizens who rarely pay attention to politics can smell the stench.

Democrats will not consolidate their gains if the candidates and elected officials don't start reframing the arguments and standing on their own principles instead of reacting to what the Republicans call principles. A majority of the voters wanted the US out of Iraq, and we will hold the Dems accouuntable if that doesn't happen. There is support among actual voters for impeaching Cheney first and then working the impeachment movement both up toward Bush and down toward folks like Gonzales; the Dems need to unleash John COnyers and Dennis Kucinich. Finally, the Dems need to not pat themselves on the back and fall into some newsie fantasy about why they won in 2006.

Bill Lamb

As I understand the Constitution, the Congress can impeach any officer it confirms. That would include Alberto Gonzales. John Conyers is a talented judiciary chair. Give him the funding and he can manage three impeachments simultaneously. Just remember to impeach Cheney before impeaching Bush. Throw in Gonzales as a lagniappe.

Bill Lamb

Start impeachment proceedings forall those who are legitimately impeachable, and investigations leading to indictments for the conspiratorial underlings. It's time to run a river through that manure-filled stable.

Yet another stake to drive into the heart of the Bush administration. Why won't Pelosi let the dogs out to hunt?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are at least two anthropogenically produced gases that absorb infrared and therefore contribute to the "greenhouse" effect part of the global warming mechanism -- carbon dioxide and methane (think land fills, cow farts, and rice paddie.) Carbon dioxide is CO2. Methane is CH4. I know journalists and others have picked up on using "carbon" in lieu of CO2 because they misunderstood what the actual experts were saying, but that doesn't mean the experts were talking about elemental carbon in all its particulate blackness. Experts also talk about "phosphorous" and "nitrogen" in fertilizer without meaning the elemental form of either. So relax.

Bush didn't understand his advisors' explanations because he didn't want to hear them. Is anything new about that?

Thanks for publicly acknowledging that we are as natural as beavers and are not fallen angels. (The latter seems to be an unexamined assumption of liberals and conservatives, greens and browns, alike.) Probably, Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" argument is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of children dying from malaria that would have been forestalled by using cheap DDT to control the mosquitos. However, I think you have misread Jared Diamond, and history. We have continued to thrive in part because there has always been emigration from successful civilizations. Case in point -- go interview Anasazi, Easter Islanders, or Greenland Norse. The point you seem to have missed in extolling 7 billion people as a success is that we seem to have developed a global civilization. Certainly many intellectuals (and wannabes) have been going on and on about globalization in recent years. If we do in fact now have a global civilization, what happens if this global civilization collapses like Easter Island? I am optimistic that humans will muddle through this challenge, but I don't think it will happen if we view exponentially increasing population as a success.

Bill Lamb

What the failing Ottoman Empire did was terrible. But the Turkish Republic is not responsible for it anymore than the England-derived U.S. government is responsible for the crimes of Oliver Cromwell. Americans are responsible for their own very successful genocide, and I'm not so sure that we have officially acknowledged ethnically cleansing the lower 48 of its original inhabitants, a government policy that lasted decades instead of the months of ethnic cleansing practiced by the Ottomans against the Armenians. I may be ignorant of our policies to make things up to the few remaining Amerindians, and will be happy to have readers of this letter educate me in this regard. But unless those policies exist in effective implementation as well as politically correct speech, I would say that the US Congress is the last body that needs to lecture any other government or people about ethnic cleansing and genocide. Once we effectively deal with the remaining Amerindians, and then turn Henry Kissinger and a whole gaggle of Bushies over to the world court for war crimes tribunals, then maybe we will be in a place where our recognition of the sins of others is more than just very rank hypocrisy. Let's clean our own house before we pass along official advice to the neighbors.

Bill Lamb

Great book review. Now if early 21st century composers of "serious" music (the sord "classical" is SO overworked) would write something worth listening to as MUSIC . . .