When Bill took the White House, he faced a hostile Congress and achieved less than he might have with a Democratic Congress. Truman chafed at a Republican Congress toward the end of his term, just when he was getting used to being President.

FDR, Johnson, Bush II: all of these Presidents walked into the White House after their first election (in LBJ's case I'm talking 1965) with their Congress already in place. Sure, they had their battles but things ran more smoothly than they would have with some powerful opposition in Congress.

What you'd want is for a Democrat Congress to be elected in 2006, start blocking a few bills and conducting some investigations, so that the Democrat President can come to office two years later and make maximum use of the momentum from early in their first term.

If Hillary was All That she'd be leading the push for a Democrat Congress in 2006. She'd have the candidates for marginal GOP seats, and the money, and the strategy to put a Democrat Congress to good use. The GOP could be on the back foot for a generation with a bit of careful work today. Hillary isn't doing any of that, but the next Democrat President will.

I wasn't aware that Flanagan was so big in the States, but she seems to be a deadpan version of the satirical character 'Polly Filler' in Britain's Private Eye magazine. Polly's blithe descriptions of her useless husband, spoiled child and succession of illegal nannies is the joke that Walsh was making Flanagan out to be.

I disagree that Flanagan is an honest striver after truth: the strident tone, the "straw women" and the all-or-nothing dichotomy put paid to that. While women writers might get a hard time, save your sympathy for someone who deserves it. Ask yourself whether or not Flanagan is helping people with fewer choices than she and it will become clear whether or not the harsh approach is justified.

Mr Conason, you said: "The best way to deal with Iran is to achieve a diplomatic solution that preserves peace".

I doubt that such an outcome is possible. No Rusk, Vance, Albright, or [insert the name of a US Secretary of State you regard highly] could achieve such an outcome, not with this President, not after this President goes, not even if President Gore had served.

The government in Tehran is belligerent and is the most effective supporter of terrorism since al-Qaeda five years ago. The moderate government of Khatami failed. Any serious peacemaking effort would be toyed with as the European powers were toyed with by Hitler in the 1930s.

This does not mean we should support the gung-ho approach of bombing raids. This administration could not be trusted with a short, limited military effort such as 1983 Grenada. The bigger-than-Iraq requirements of an attack on Iran would be far beyond the competence of Cheney-Rumsfeld and would rebound horribly upon the United States for decades to come.

It is sad to say that when opposing the Bush administration, one has to resort to policies that have no hope of success. Given the choice between the unpalatable and the impractical, people will always choose the unpalatable.

... when you're going around in circles.

... every problem looks like a nail. To a writer, everything looks like the subject for a book, a novel, a poem, a piece.

If you are truly as open to the arts as you would like to think, Mr Keillor, surely you are open to the possibility that a symphony, a dance, a painting may just tell the story about 9/11 far more tellingly than the acres of newsprint and mountains of books published and to be published on this matter. Be fair. The artists of the world have not spoken yet. And when I say "the world", I allow for the possibility that a non-American may express this American tragedy more tellingly than the stale and tinny Kennedy-style rhetoric that has served for describing Serious Matters of Public Importance in the US for forty years.

Comparing Thatcher's Britain to contemporary regimes Galtieri's Argentina, Iran or Iraq is stupid. OK, so Thatcher was overly impressed by authoritarianism abroad, but apart from within the Conservative Party she didn't practice it at home (and no, the miners' strikes and poll-tax protests aren't equivalent).

Anyone who judges an airport on account of the food is expecting too much. It's excellent, or not worth mentioning.

Best: Hall's Creek, Western Australia. The small plane taxis to the gate of the permiter fence. You step out, go through the gate, across the road and into the pub, where anyone you'd ever want to meet in the entire town is catching up or doing business.

Hall's Creek is not that big but its airport reminds you what they are for: a place to get on and off a plane. Not a shopping mall or a bottleneck for the officious.