Back to work everybody! Stop having fun while you are informing yourselves. Stop laughing at other people’s expense, too. There’s a time and a place for everything, and there’s never time for mirth here in the War Room. I’m gonna get back to writing letters to my representatives regarding global warming, Iraq, world hunger, poverty, etc.

Let’s see... I'm quite certain Lamar Smith, (R) Texas, would love to hear from me on these subjects. Sure, he’s a well known DeLay crony, but I bet he’ll listen to reason, anyway. Same with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, (R) Texas, and Senator John Cornyn, (R) Texas. You don’t get to be a U.S. senator unless you are willing to listen to all sides and consider every practical solution to these very pressing concerns... 'scuse me while I go busy myself with important work.

Look, you're right, of course. But you come across as a humorless schoolmarm when you lecture the rest of us on what we can and cannot joke about here. And saying what Tim did is "shameful" is way over the top. I read War Room to inform myself and to have fun sometimes, as well. To me, Jack Abramoff is a character so contemptible that he's beyond being shown the sort of courtesy I would show anyone else. I'm just not capable of feeling any sympathy for him right now. And you have every right to feel differently. If I come across as a bratty smart-ass, then I can live with that. Especially in this case. But the bottom line is this: a few people joking about Jack Abramoff's plight at Salon.com's War Room are the least of his problems right now.

"It's just going to take a long period of time for the ideology that is hopeful -- and that is an ideology of freedom -- to overcome an ideology of hate . . . . We'll succeed -- unless we quit."

Pardon me if I choose not to hold my breath.

that while he may not pay attention to this stuff, millions of other people do. And they are the ones who vote. It might behoove him to pay attention to things that are important to the folks who vote, whether it matters to him or not. Just a thought.

Nearly 4,000 dead Iraqi civilians in one month is acceptable. 3,000 dead American civilians on 9-11 is not. See how that works? See why that makes so much sense in the grand scheme of things? Yeah, me neither....

Wow.

Where does one even begin with that list? A guy is indicted for obstructing justice in a case where a CIA operative has been outed--who they claim wasn't really undercover--and their most important questions are about Iraq or 9-11? How telling is that? And the one about Cheney is brilliant! How many potential jurors are they gonna have to sift through to find 12 people who are neutral on him? Amazing. I'm gonna be reading this list all weekend. In fact, I'm gonna print it out for the long car trip tomorrow.

ps--I also love their 3-2 ratio of Rep to Dem on the congressional scandal question. Bravo!

that anything bad should happen to the Bush twins during their vacation. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. That being said, what's the difference between harm being done to one or both of them, or harm being done to any Iraqi citezen on a daily basis? I don't have to ask, "What makes them so special?" because that's obvious. But, in the grand scheme of things, "What makes them so special?"

Judging from the most current Quinnipac poll, there's a reasonable chance that Guiliani and/or Romney will end up on the presidential ticket in 2008. If either of them winds up on the ticket as the presidential nominee, then all bets are off as far as the Republican hold on the south goes. I'm not saying it will happen, but it certainly could at this point. And southerners have more contempt for "yankees" than they do Democrats. Trust me on that one.

"I mean, everybody comes to us: 'You got to fix this and you got to fix that.'"

Ole Rush has a point: not a day goes by where some country's leader isn't coming to us, hand in cap, begging for us to interefere in his or some other country's business, in the hopes that we create some sort of fiasco of biblical proportions.

We went into Iraq in the first place because of faulty intelligence, rather than Bush's hubris. And things have gone so badly since we got there because the Iraqis are delusional and won't tell us what we really need to do to get the job done. The only part that doesn't make sense now is what happens to all that blame that the Democrats should be taking?