This may all be true, but I think it completely misses the point. It's not that Americans don't understand Palin as a religious zealot. I think most Americans feel (subconsciously, at least) that Christianity was attacked on 911, just as our response is interpreted by Muslims as a war against Islam. We haven't had a really good religious war in a few hundred years, so people are eager for another one (although only the true nut cases come right out and say so). We have already demonstrated our willingness to give up the Fourth Amendment to feel a bit safer, and it's only a matter of time for the other nine. Palin, Warrior Princess - she's exactly what we barbarians want.

Michael, while you're certainly correct that the Bush Administration is willfully incompetent, you're a bit late to the party. It was clear in 2004 that the Bush Administration had lost any interest in catching bin Laden, so why were you still cheerleading at that time? It was just as clear that the reason we didn't get bin Laden at Tora Bora in 2001 was that Donald Rumsfeld didn't want anyone else to get the credit, and George Bush was busy cutting brush on his ranch.

If we had concentrated on just getting bin Laden, even the Muslim world would have lined up with us or at least stood aside. There would have been no Pakistani border guards willing to shoot it out with SEALs to protect him. Once we declared war on Islam (at least in their perception) that opportunity was gone.

This was all as true in 2004 as it is today. Why are you only figuring it out now?

I thought by far the most interesting anecdote was Bush's private meeting with James Comey, after Comey said he would resign. Bush expressed that he was unaware of the issues, as this had all come up at the "last minute", and asked for another 45-day extension during which the problems could be fixed. He seemed shaken by one thing Comey told him: that FBI Director Mueller would resign also. The Post's Gellman infers from these facts that Bush had been "shielded" from knowing about the controversy.

Let me suggest a darker scenario: Bush knew about the controversy, but expected Comey to give him the benefit of the doubt, and the extension. Bush, Cheney, et al, would have used the extra time to quietly rid themselves of Comey, one way or another, and keep the program in effect. That should have been fairly simple, since Comey was only the acting AG anyway; but suddenly needing to dump the FBI chief at the same time made the plan much more complicated.

"How do you compare illegally obtained private information held by the NSA or FBI, with private information posted on public web sites?"

That's easy. When the hackers publish info, you are embarrassed. When the brownshirts get info (and perhaps misunderstand it), you disappear to Guantanamo, or maybe Damascus.

Just asking the question demonstrates how far down the rabbit-hole you've gone. The NSA and FBI have illegally-obtained information. They broke the law to get it. They are supposed to help enforce the law. You don't have a problem with that?

"What innocent US citizen was illegally surveilled, and sent to Gauntanamo or Damascus?"

We don't know who is in Guantanamo or why they are there, do we? But we know that Maher Arar, an innocent Canadian citizen, was sent for a year of torture in Damascus due to mistaken US-surveillance-based intelligence.

"You have nothing to fear if you didn't commit a crime" is the standard refrain of every totalitarian regime. There are no exceptions to that rule. What does that say about our current order of government?

Our system of government is completely, totally nuts. TV-driven news has finally turned the presidential election into a popularity contest unworthy of a middle school prom committee. "Let's vote for Palin because she's hot." "I believe McCain and Palin are reformers, except that McCain is part of the old-boy network; but meanwhile, Palin is hot."

It strikes me that in parliamentary democracies in other countries, people vote for a party and its policies, rather than for a Great Leader who somehow will make everything all better for us - due entirely, of course, to their being totally hot.

As the alien bug says in Men In Black: your proposal is acceptable.

There is nothing wrong with reducing corporate taxes, as long as that's compensated by increased taxation on all the ways you can take money out of the corporation. That should make us more competitive internationally, without raiding the Treasury even further.

Whether it makes sense to try moving your socks to a different drawer while the house is burning down is another matter.

"Contrary to U.S. propaganda, the Iranians aren't insane. Why would they attack a country that could retaliate in kind?"

Are you perhaps forgetting the comments from the Iranian leadership about how Iran can survive a nuclear exchange with Israel relatively intact, while Israel would be exterminated?

Prof. Roubini: "even Congressional Democrats have fallen for this Treasury scam that does little to resolve the debt burden of millions of distressed home owners"

I, too, thought that a better solution would have been to take over troubled assets at the individual mortgage level. The government could pay down part of a homeowner's mortgage principal balance, reducing their monthly payments, and receive a portion of the proceeds on the eventual sale of the property. That sounds great, and would do a better job of keeping people in their homes.

But how do you do it? The above idea would require millions of title searches, and the creation of millions of liens. The cost of the legal work to do the bailout would approximate the cost of the bailout itself.