Dear Glenn:

I love your blog dearly, and it is regular reading for both my wife and me.

That being said, I'm not so sure that Dowd is equating Bush and Clinton on the level that you suggest. However, she does separate the two administrations with interesting adjectives: "classy" for what the Clinton White House wasn't, and "inspiring" for everything that the Bush administration wasn't. I think that's the real offense here: her assessment that the Bush administration's major failure was simply to be "uninspiring." That is, of course, beyond toothless and understated and clearly points to the flaws of the MSM that you so rightly point out.

While I disagree with you concerning whether or not she's equating the Clinton and Bush failures, I think the terms she uses to distinguish them are even more damning and perfectly capture the failure of people like Dowd to do the public any service whatsoever when it comes to providing information and analysis.

As a side note, how about places like Yale University, who accepted George Bush purely as a "legacy" student, thus allowing him to begin failing his way up to the presidency? The same could be said of Annapolis and their acdeptance of the unbelievably unqualified John McCain. These family-based acceptance decisions become foundational resume builders for completely undeserving and unqualified people.

Dear Glenn:

As usual, love your work.

My question is, where do you think Colin Powell fits into this--do you think he is a war criminal, as Chris Floyd frequently refers to him as being? (You've referred to Floyd's blog in your columns before, so I was curious if you shared his point of view in this instance.) I've been troubled about this since Powell's endorsement of Obama and how the media immediately, as they always have, bowed down to Powell's reputation as being someone of unimpeachable integrity. You mention Bush, Rumsfeld "and others." Is Powell one of these others?

Dear Mr. Greenwald:

Thanks again for an important and riveting column. I asked this question of your last posting and it still applies: when you write "Cheney is and will remain a symbol of profound seriousness, entitled to respect and endowed with permanent wisdom," do you think the same applies to Colin Powell? In all of the discussion about war crimes and war criminals, Powell's name seems to be insulated from any blame or involvement--in fact, he's talked about as if he wasn't ever a member of Bush's administration. In your opinion, is Powell's absence from this war crimes discussion, and continued public celebration (as when he endorsed Obama) the appropriate treatment for him?