boredom.

Warren's "prayer" was a self-indulgent, ego-driven load of pseudo-religious drivel. It felt about 5 times longer than Obama's speech.

Rick Warren lives only to serve Rick Warren. His only desire is to increase his own celebrity. Christianity is just the bait he uses to lure people into feeding his insatiable ego.

He was never worth the ire that gay activists and progressives worked up over him. He was a bad choice for the invocation, but not for any of the reasons that were being shouted a month ago. He was a bad choice simply because he was doing nothing but using a truly grand moment to further aggrandize himself.

The inane criticism of Obama from the left continues unabated. It is a big part of the reason why this is only my second visit to Salon since December. And I came this time just to see if this kind of nonsense was being published. I was not disappointed.

The bulk of the detainees at Gitmo will be dealt with just as Obama suggested during the campaign. Gitmo will be closed. The torture is over. But we still have a problem.

There are some downright evil bastards sitting in Gitmo that we probably can't convict in our court system. The Bush team broke every law known to man in dealing with these guys and the evidence pool is so tainted that to attempt to try them in civilian courts would end badly.

So today Obama proposed that a small percentage of the people at Gitmo would be tried by new tribunals that assured the accused of their rights. He called for an open process and even asked Congress to rewrite the 2006 law authorizing the tribunals to ensure that they are not the perversions of justice that the Bush tribunals were.

Of course it would be better if we had not gone the tribunal route to begin with. Few outside the Cheney/Limbaugh crowd would disagree. But Obama didn't win a time machine that allows him to go back and prevent the gang-bang of our Bill of Rights that was the Bush administration. Obama won the job of cleaning up the mess that Bush left behind.

There is so much that Obama wants to do to change the course that America has been on for far too long. There are so many changes that must occur moving forward. All that the left wing agitators are doing is making it harder for a left wing agenda to proceed. The media eats up dissent among the ranks. I am not suggesting that Obama be let off the hook for the sake of the agenda. I am suggesting that perhaps the far left should choose its battles carefully and stop making mountains out of mole hills.

Fighting Obama over how to clean up the mess he was left with is NOT the way to get the results we want. So what if approximately 20 of the hardest cases at Gitmo get much improved tribunals instead of trials? How does that affect our nation moving forward? If Obama should indicate that he intends to use tribunals on any future prisoners of war or "enemy combatants" then an outcry will be justified. But as long as these tribunals are being used solely to deal with the most extreme cases left behind by Bush, then they aren't worth getting worked up over.

Six months after Obama won, the left is still stuck in fight-the-White-House mode. I find myself falling into the trap when I try to read articles when I am too tired. Phrases like "the White House Spokesman said..." or "the First Lady said..." raise my defenses before I remember that it is Obama's spokesman or Michelle Obama being referenced. We need a good press to keep Obama's feet to the fire to be sure. What we don't need is a vocal, unthinking left wing fringe countering all the good that Dick Cheney is doing for Obama's agenda.