The most impressive thing about this article is the number of responses it gets that are thoughtful about history. Who woulda thunk it? Americans who know and think about the history of the world, of their country and its politics!?! Slackie Onassis, Texas PI Lawyer, et al, make me believe that the media is missing out on a chance to really cash in! People are hungry for history! Oh, I forget myself, the media's owners do not want us to know history. It might make us think. So the Robert Fisks and Chalmers Johnsons and Greg Grandins, etc., etc., don't get air time. Would that the electorate were actually made up of the people who wrote in response to Gary's article. Whoops. I take that back. Who was it who said, "I don't care who the people elect as long as I get to do the nominating?" Might have been Richard Daley of Chicago?

Everytime I write a letter to any part of this administration protesting their trashing of the Constitution, I get a note back saying that they thank me for their support.

Cheney is Lord Voldemort!

Does it matter?

We have lost the possibility of ever again being respected by other nations and/or peoples for our regard for the rule of law. If I hear this hypocritical administration and/or the colluding so-called 'opposition' decrying the actions of other governments and/or peoples again, I will vomit!

It doesn't matter if he's the right guy or the wrong guy! The CIA, the Attorney General's office, the State Department, Congress, ad infinitum, ad nauseau, have caved and America is in the hands of people who take their pages from the notebooks of the Gestapo and the Third Reich in general, while Americans go around saying what a good and great country we are.

Joan, don't let anyone shut you up about waterboarding. We executed Japanese soldiers for doing this to our guys.

As for parenting, go know. But I do remember Gail Sheehy's article from which this is quoted:

"When Barbara Bush took her 13-year-old son and his best friend, Doug Hannah, to play golf at her Houston club, George would start cursing if he didn't tee off well. His mother would tell him to quit it. By the third or fourth hole he would be yelling "Fuck this" until he had ensured that his mother would send him to the car.

'It fit his needs,' says Hannah. 'He couldn't lose.'

Once, after his mother banished him from the golf course, she turned to Hannah and declared, That boy is going to have optical rectosis.'What did that mean? 'She said, "A shitty outlook on life."'"

She should have whacked him upside the head!

And BTW, @virtue01: Guess we won't be seeing you at the truth and reconciliation commission hearings.

but, give me a break. Qatar, unless I'm mistaken, is also home to, and the main supporter of one of the only fair and balanced news programs in the world, AlJazeera.

I know Giuliani is as corrupt and hypocritical as Dick Cheney, but do we have to stoop to terror mongering to get at him?

"The sexual abuse of children is common practice in Afghanistan. The majority of the perpetrators do not understand and do not believe that what they are doing is damaging to their victims. They have no concept of the rights of children and some even believe that children are not likely to remember what is done to them. I presume such an attitude is common to many underdeveloped nations, where the sexual abuse of children is rampant."

The sexual abuse of children is common practice. Period. Not just in underdeveloped nations, but worldwide. The perpetrators rationalize what they do, but basically, as with the rape of women, it's a power trip. Women, children, young men. Victims of people who feel inadequate everywhere. Stop being ostriches, people. It's everyone's problem and the question is, Why don't people rape the powerless? If we find the answer, we'll build it into our educational systems universally.

I'm trying to imagine what a Nuremberg style war crimes tribunal will look like when not only the neo-cons but their so-called opposition party collaborationists are all in the dock together.

It boggles the mind that the country has come to such a pass. 9/11 brought out the worst in our so-called leaders. We're a sorry excuse for a democracy now.

I agree with Glenn that criticism of Huckabee should not be any more valid than criticism of Obama for this campaign tactic. What I really disagree with is religion playing any part whatsoever in American politics. Separation of church and state should be a bedrock and we are a sorrier nation for going the god route at all.

What is really disheartening is the appalling lack of perspective: what's more morally reprehensible and outrageous, Spitzer's hypocrisy or the trashing of the U.S. Constitution by this same justice department?

Give him his helicopter and let him talk to the tribal leaders, President Obama. Maybe he'll become Iraq's president one day. We could do, and have done, ever so much worse.

Can we get her to respond to your article, Glenn?

So I sent a letter to the NPR omsbudsman asking him/her to tell Cokie to stop claiming that she speaks for the American people. She doesn't. Hope they let her know.

I just find it very funny that when Fox went to Allentown, PA, and interviewed 'the man in the street', two of those men said, "Bitter? Sure I'm bitter." So why don't the pundits just go away?