I distinctly recall the cable spinners, including especially Matthews, going hysterical with the Clinton 'perjury' and 'obstruction'. Well, there was none, when you really got down to brass tacks. No convictions whatsoever. The obstruction count was especially rich, because it required a retroactive conspiracy to get a job for Monica at a time that she already had a job.

And there was, in this case, a question of "no underlying crime," after all. Having oral sex with a woman not your wife is immoral, but it's not a crime, White House or no. But any time you raised that in that awful time, you were yelled at.

Now, you have a secret agent being exposed for political revenge. Ms. Plame is, in fact, a covered agent according to the act. So there was an underlying felony, in all likelihood committed by the Vice President, and covered up by Libby's lies.

What world do these morons like Klein and Carville live in?

Joe's a FOX Democrat, and I know his ideological patter: "I WAS a Democrat," says Joe, "until they went crazy." Same as about 2/3 of the "Democrats" exhibited on FOX. Be it "until they went crazy on civil rights," or "until they became Socialists!" or "until they let the women go wild." None of it true.

There's only one reason why Joe can be speaking like this: Joe's loyalties are obvious, and they're to Israeli right, which makes him a natural ally of the Jesus freaks. It's only his past that's stopping him. Why, he marched with Dr. King! Don't we know how liberal he is? And ban video games! And get off my lawn, you kids!"

It's revolting what DC is accepting as "centrist" these days. "He believes in Work Camps and Strength Through Joy, not Death Camps. He's not crazy!"

Not tragedy. The only tragic consequence of any consequence is this: we're spending an unbelievable amount of time worrried about the emotional life of an annoying, unattractive multimillionaire heiress.

The tragedy is our society, hooked on the trashy musings of unscrupulous press giants about how hot celebrities are, but how evil they become, and how we have to treat them as the Greek gods treated humanity.

I hope she can come to emotional maturity and find something useful to do with her life. And she does have to find her sobriety. Other than that, get lost.

Really, dude, you do have a reality problem.

Sure, it's mostly hot air. But the Internet is dangerous for kids, and for young teens, and for people finding dates and buying on eBay and doing banking and--

These are serious issues, all of them. Who is it hurting, Farhad? I think a real legislator would be holding back the ninnies who want to wipe all porn from the Net, but he'd have to be thinking about a secure alternative. Do you have a kid? Do you buy things on the net?

Or is it just hicks who are concerned about this stuff?

There's your problem right there. There's no difference between Jethro Tull recorded in iTunes Plus and on a wire recorder, circa 1942.

And I predict that someone will write an iTunes ID editor in a second or two.

I had to keep on pinching myself to make me realize how nuts they are. No evolution, no God but God, no queers, God is War, God is Fear -- the parade of disgusting, creepy-crawly ideas just never stops. And Rudy is the Chief Nut.

Forget Ron Paul, folks. Sure, he looks like your elfin grandpa, and he speaks common sense on Iraq, but he wants to abolish Social Security. He's close to the Texas secessionists and the income tax is evil people. He's never coming within sight of a victory in a Republican primary. He's an artifact, an echo of the party 40 years ago.

Radicals, lefties, independents, if you don't want the war in Iraq to go on for the next 50 years, you're going to have to get the Democrats in. I know, I know. But this is your alternative. This Republican party is going to have to be forced to reformulate itself.

Or the Holocaust, or Jews, or anything like that. What we need to do is to be even-handed in that region. For far too many years, US foreign policy has allowed or encouraged Israel's preemptive wars, and see what happens? We do one for ourself. How has that Iraq business, our "three-week" war, played out, anyway? We have pushed other regimes around as if they were irrelevant, and laid our thumb on the scales over and over. See what it gets you? We've had the wonderful experience of Iran's blowback, and Afghanistan's, and Islamic revolts replacing the left nationalism of Nasser with al-Qaeda. The answer really isn't aggressive war, but neutral standards of human rights which we apply to all nations. The worst danger we have is turning into a decadent, belligerent empire. We're a republic.