Let's take a step back for a moment and look at the larger context, by which I mean the perspective of a human life lived. How does someone like Scott McClellan live with himself? How does he justify his deliberate actions to mislead and lie? How do people like him manage to lose sight of their own mortality and decide it is OK to lie in support of their masters? Is he so caught up in the power and wealth that his position brings, that he loses sight of how history will judge him? If he is a Christian in more than name only, does he not believe there will be a final judgement on the blackness of his soul? Even if he can distract himself from these questions most of the time (apparently by eating), doesn't he ever have a dark night of his soul when he awakens at 3 AM and can't fall back to sleep thinking about what he has done?

If none of these questions ever trouble him and other members of the Bush administration, they are beyond any hope of divine or even ordinary human redemption, which, to my mind, is a good definition for evil.

I'm not sure whether this pertains to the Florida case against Abramoff, but if I recall correctly, the judge originally indicated that the sort of sentence Abramoff would get would be a function of how well he cooperated with the prosecutor. Since he got the minimum sentence, can we assume he really did spill the beans in this case AND that this might be an indication of how much he is going to tell to the federal prosecutor?

Bully for Russ Feingold and his push for censure. There is no question in my mind that Bush is deserving of far more than mere censure (impeachment, conviction and removal from office would more nearly balance the lies and illegal activity), but in this era of political timidity and nearly zero accountability for the executive -- thanks to Republican expediency and a docile press and public -- I must cheer a man like Feingold for attempting to hold Bush accountable for his actions. We need to get in the streets like folks did about immigration reform to show him and the world that we support his efforts and do not approve of what our country has become under the Bush administration.

"Anger can be power. You know that you can use it."

If the Congress doesn't push back against this insane administration for this clear violation of our civil liberties and the Constitution, the time has come to take back our government. We must demand action either through the Congress or by taking our grievances to the street.

I do not say this lightly. In spite of all the outrages of the Bush administration and our Republican Congress's unwillingness to hold them to account, I have held onto the hope that this can be settled by getting a new Congress that is not Republican controlled. But now things have gone too far and my patience is exhausted. Can we get a nationwide protests started quickly now that it is clear that Bush's imperial presidency is undermining on a grand scale the very reasons we value our society and Constitution? Can we put together a sustained series of protests that cannot be ignored? I believe we must.

the moment he was foolish enough to fall for the Bush administration's claims that toppling Sadaam would lead to a remaking of the Arab/Muslim Middle East on a Western model of democracy. I have distinct memories of reading his columns in the New York Times attempting to convince the world that the Bush administration was gutsy and doing the right thing by invading Iraq. At the time I thought to myself, "This guy has gone off the deep end if he thinks that any Western country, especially the United States, is going to be welcomed as a liberator of an Arab nation." Add to that anybody with a few neurons could see that Iraq's history of ethnic divisions and conflicts made it a terrible place to try Bush's experiment, and it was evident that his wishful thinking about the Middle East overwhelmed his common sense (or that he was a garden variety fool (or that he was a tool like Armstrong Williams)).

"He's just hoping against hope that the Iraqis themselves would see sense and move their country in the direction of democracy. Apparently, he's one of those people out there who is silly enough to believe that democracy is possible in the Middle East and that it's actually a good government. "

-FreeProton-

Like I said, this is just letting your hope overwhelm your common sense (about history and human nature). Would I like to see a stable and democratic set of Arab/Muslim countries in the Middle East? Sure. How could I not (assuming they didn't turn out to be theocratic democracies that want to get rid of Western culture and societies; there is that little problem)?

But really, even though you, Friedman, I and I'm sure a host of others would like to hope this could come about, be serious for a minute. Under what circumstances did you think that the festering emnity of the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis would just melt away because we toppled Saddam? What made you think all three groups would welcome us as liberators and just settle down and play nice with each other? This is not the norm for historically hostile ethnic groups, and we have the recent history of the Balkans to serve as a ready example.

Hope against hope? In your and my private thoughts, but not as a matter of foreign policy when American men and women are being asked to make the ultimate sacrifice. I just can't accept that.