The real stupidity shown by Democrats since taking over Congress is their basic failure to read the polictical situation correctly. They had two years after the last election to destroy the Republican Party--and I think they could have done it--but they had to realize that was the job.

To begin to undo the damage done to this Country by the Republican Party since 1980 is going to require Democratic control of the White House and 60 votes in the Senate. Achieving that level of political control should have been the only serious objective.

Instead they are recreating the image of an incompetent party by attempting reforms and failing.

The votes on funding of the Iraq war are the prime example. What Democrats should have done--maybe after one attempt to pass a bill with a withdrawl date--was to fund the war exactly as George Bush asked and then hold a press conference. The message should have been simple: we counted the votes and since all Republicans are supporting the President, we could not override a veto. We, therefore, could not stop funding the war without putting our military at risk. If you want to stop the war, stop voting for Republicans.

As is, Democrats have taken partial ownership of this disaster which was almost entirely a Republican problem. (The gutless votes to authorize the use of force against Iraq before the 2002 election will continue to dog this generation of Democrats for the rest of their careers.) The current goal of the Republican Party is not to end the war, but to spread the blame. Democrats have played into their hands.

It is surprising to me that Joe Conason of all people did not say more about Jeff Gerth's lack of credibility to say anything about the Clintons.

Gerth's original Whitewater story that in many ways started us down the road to impeachment was bogus. James McDougal, the source of the story, suffered from a bipolar disorder and was delusional much of the time. Gerth literally put the ravings of a psychotic person of the front page of the NY Times, and then spent the next years trying to cover his ass by proving that one or both of the Clintons were crooks.

I don't know about his co-author, but I would have thought that Gerth would have wanted people to forget about his reporting on the Clintons.

Kamiya points out the ways in which we are different from the Romans. In particular, he notes that the Romans had no middle class, had slaves,...valorized inherited wealth, etc.

He does not point out that particularly since 1980, our middle class has been shrinking, we have illegal immigrants who work for slave wages, we have cut taxes on wealth and are trying to eliminate them completely, social mobility has slowed, etc.

We may look even more like the Romans 20 years from now than we do today, and I suspect it will hasten our demise.

I am a psychologist. Within in day or two of the first reports on prisoner abuse in Iraq, I wrote a letter to the NY Times stating that psychologists or psychiatrists had been involved in planning the techniques reported and that, therefore, responsibility went up the chain of command to the highest levels. The Times choose not to publish my letter.

I think my intuitions have been proven correct. I wonder why it took so long for "responsible" journalists to come to a conclusion that was obvious from the beginning. It is also disturbing that the military has been so successful in limiting accountability to the lowest levels of the organization. So much for honor.

While one can certainly question the wisdom and appropriateness of other presidents' pardons, the only presidents I can find who have used the power to pardon or commute for people who could implicate them in a crime have been named Bush.

War reporting is not the only area in which the NYTs got it wrong and then doubled the bets to cover its corporate ass.

The Times spent over eight years trying to prove that one or both of the Clintons were crooks. It started with Jeff Gerth's original Whitewater "report" and continued in both the news and on the the editorial page until after President Clinton left office.

While it is hard to proved that anyone died as the result of the Times' dishonest reporting, it was certainly a major component of the poisoned climate that led to impeachment and eventually the election (?) of George W. Bush. That's real damage.

While the Times has publicly reviewed some it its reporting and , more or less, apologized for some of it, the Times has never questioned its reporting on the Clintons. They should.

The only way that the United States can possibly get out of Iraq and leave anything short of a complete disaster is to reconstruct a Sunni based dictatorship.

Hopefully, the people or person in charge will not be as crazy as Saddam and will be willing to leave the Kurds alone, but it is going to take Sunnis suppressing Shiites to make Iraq work from our point of view.

The sooner we get on with the job, the sooner we can leave.