Bill Richardson is experienced, intelligent, charismatic, realistic, and above all...unselfish.

At the recent Democratic Winter Meeting, the speeches of the candidates were mostly about who they were. "I'm Hillary Rodham Clinton, and I'm in it to win it!" Barack Obama, with superlative rhetorical content and delivery, but very little down-to-earthiness. And Tom (thank god he had the sense to withdraw) Vilsak's pity party over his adoptive childhood. John Edwards was a stand-out with his grasp of the problems facing most Americans, and his readiness to support concrete solutions.

The most significant moment, however, was when Bill Richardson took the podium and spent about half of his precious time allotment, not speaking about himself, but promoting the need to elect a Democrat. Pick one. In order to put an end to this reign of terror.

My hat is off to a true gentleman politician who deserves better than to be shoved into the column of ethnic surrogates. Richardson has shown himself to be a leader who is willing to consider the proposition of "what is best for America". And that trumps having a Mexican mother any day of the week. Give the man more credit. His resume, and his character demand it.

George W. and "Al" Gonzalez have gone on record saying what a fabulous job the justice department has done with THIS staff. "Heckuva job, Al". And yet...and yet...they wanted to jettison all 93 members of this well-oiled machine that Gonzalez says has protected us from all manner of child-molesters and other such depraved envoys of the devil. Trash a winning team? That depends on whether you feel they are YOUR team. Bush is all about team ownership.

As Glenn Greenwald points out, Clinton didn't fire the whole staff of prosecutors mid-term. He brought in his own team at the beginning of his presidency. It IS unheard of, and NOT standard practice to kick out your own draft picks in the middle of the game. (to coin another unfortunate sports analogy)

So....they've done a good job, and we want them gone, anyway.

Or...they haven't done a good job, and we're lying about our performance.

And the president didn't have anything to do with their firings.

Or they serve "at the pleasure of the president", who is the one who has the ultimate say in whether they do, or do not serve.

So many lies, so little time. How many "on-the-other-hands" could there possibly be in this rapidly imploding circus of prosecutorial persecution?

The measure calls for the withdrawl of troops:

"except for a limited number that are essential for the following purposes: (1) Protecting United States and coalition personnel and infrastructure; (2) Training and equipping Iraqi forces; (3) Conducting targeted counter-terrorism operations. "

That's what the troops are doing now. More or less.

First it was imposssible to understand why there could be any rational argument for NOT EVEN "debating" the state of our involvement in Iraq. Now we have a measure that more-or-less pretends to do something without actually doing something. The provision leaving a "limited" number of troops for such hugely open-ended purposes is a loophole to leaving that is big enough to drive a platoon of Humvees through. That is, if we had them.

Thanks for nothing, Congress. Let's see some real cards on the table. The chips have been down for five years.

Why is it that senior military only loses "trust and confidence" in one of its own when they have been publicly outed? And then, only in mass media...because this dirty secret of substandard care has been slithering around below the big radar for a long time.

If Major General Weightman was an enlisted man, he would be subjected to courts martial and sent to prison.

Being "relieved" is probably a "relief" for a VIP scapegoat.