There is no one home right now in the White House. There is, though, the combined maladies of our American life summed up as the prophet of false righteousness, George Bush.

If there is a chance that the revisionists will rewrite him as not so bad in thirty years it will be rooted in the continual debasement and lack of learning and participation in the broader American life that requires citizenship and care for our place in the world.

Today all we are interested in as a people is lower prices at Wal-Mart. Sadly, we may have gotten our just punishment for banishing the American ideal for cash

Joe Conason said, "From the beginning, the only relevant question was whether the networks would uphold decent values. Under pressure of conscience or commerce or both, NBC and CBS did the right thing -- and sent a refreshing message that all the excuses in the world cannot change."

The networks holding up decent values...please...pause..climb down off the "look I wrote a story that shows what a caring guy I am throne" and breathe my friend, deeply. I love your writing, but you are pandering to the same level of crap that has gone on since this began. There's a situational ethics here, and it smells so very bad. Sure, Imus is a jerk and got fired and should be expected to suffer the admonishment of the public.

What really makes this whole argument specious at best is that everyone talks the talk about how hip-hop culture degrades women openly and by design yet nothing will be done because they represent big money for fat executives. For Don's Imus's firing to have any value we need to accept that the degradation of black women in our culture is affected far more seriously by black rappers.

Why? Because while Imus is an asshole, they are the septic tank festering and fermenting the minds of young people at an alarming rate. Sure, young people hear Imus (not anymore thank God) but vast legions of young people listen to and suck in the vile crap that is part of some strange cult of degradation that makes money.

If the networks have morals and ethics, let the war against the continued soiling of American women begin. I'll bet no one is really interested.

Lynn Harris begins her article with a political poke at Bush and friends. Before you lump me in with those folks, my former posts are decidedly anti-Bush and quite agnostic in my religious beliefs. Here's how I see the mess:

As long as there is a partisan reason to for the Supreme Court to rule or Congress to debate with a jaundiced eye toward the truth, we'll continue to have this argument.

Common sense should indicate that a woman's health take precedent over that of the unborn child. Denying a non-invasive means of protecting the life of the mother is senseless.

Equally senseless and equally of no morality is the decision most pro-choice folks make about abortion in general. When wanting or not wanting a child deems the unborn as tissue or a human at the whim of anyone, we have lost our bearings. No one has the right to claim it is not a child from even the moment of conception just because it is not desirable to have a child.

As long as we accept such varying opinions of life, the child's or the mother's, and it is based on getting votes or supporting political agendas of any kind, this nonsense will live on forever.

We are afraid to call all this what it truly is, and that is part of a self-centered-who-cares nation with values of convenience.

"# 1 crime fighter." What he is, is a co-conspirator against the perpetuation of this republic's ideals as laid out by the founding fathers. He and his boss and others in government are doing the moral equivalent of sending us back to the days of slavery. We talk it, but we don't walk it.

Of course Bush will support him. If he doesn't there is a man on the loose who can create a scandal vastly larger than Watergate.

God, I voted for this regime thinking it the less of two evils.

I think Chuck Hagel says it all clearly. I have been riding the fence between liberalism and conservatism for decades, mostly because being a conservative, fiscally, seemed less better for the country by not creating big government. He is right, we have created one big government machine that is deadly for us as a people.

Even deadlier is our position, or lack of position in Iraq. Hagel is correct again in saying we are an "occupying force" in the Middle East. The real problem is that we are NOT an occupying force. To do what we are doing, without the same level of commitment that we had as an occupying force in WWII, leaves our soldiers in a very dangerous place. Maybe the administration did not want to name us as an occupying force as it then tells a different story about motive and status.

I find every life lost there a reason to feel that the current administration should be removed. This is not about what they declared. We'll be lucky if we can get people like Hegel in the race.