The Republican Party as a whole is reaping

what the Republican Party as a whole has sowed

ever since Nixon. The bird flu chickens are

coming home to roost.

Wasn't Prescott Bush an active Nazi Collaborator and Trader With The Enemy during

World War II? Didn't the whole Republican

Establishment spend the decades since Roosevelt

seething with hatred for the New Deal, and

didn't they spend the following their decades

plotting their revenge?

Didn't they all support the Reagan Revolution,

at least in its economic policy aspects of

redistributing lower class wealth and income to

the upper class? Didn't they all support pro-

pollutionist anti-regulationism? Hasn't the

abolition of Social Security been a treasured

Republican goal ever since Social Security was

passed? And by the way, didn't they all support

the Bushite putsch which denied the Presidency

to the legal victor? And don't they all support

digital electoral systems which are so corrupt

and infinitely hackable as to call into question

the utility of even bothering to vote at all?

Dubya Bushism is the logical conclusion of the

Reagan Revolution. Now that it doesn't play

in Peoria, the Establishment Republicans wish

to be seen as somehow distant from it all. Face

it folks, the Party of Lincoln has been the

Party of Jefferson Davis ever since Nixon launched

the Southern Strategy with broad Republican

Establishment support. The only cure at this

point is to abolish the entire Reagan Revolution

and all its evil works, starting now.

Happy to see the GOP "establishment" voicing their concerns about W--though they seem to have waited til after he tossed them out on their a**es to do so.

It's hard to forget that these are the people who helped him and his "cabal" gain office in the first place. And that they, more than most, knew the truth about him all along.

Don't count Bush out. The people in this country still do not see the bungling in this administration. In a Gallop poll today only 49% said that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq; that was down from 59% a month ago. Half of the American people are brain dead!

And all Bush has to do is snap his fingers and those moderate Republicans will be right back in Washington telling him how to get back on track.

As for Fitzgerald, I'm not counting him to indict Rove or Libby. Somehow these neocons lead a charmed life!

I truly enjoy your writings on the issues that are so profoundly impacting our beloved country, but as much as I've enjoyed so much of what you have written, this article touched me more deeply than much of what has been been chronicled during these difficult days. To see the Presidency reduced to a dime store novella of the Old West leaves you feeling nauseated and disgusted as the same time and left with only one overwhelming thought; and that is that the time is now that any one with the ability to do so stand up, speak up and get serious about what's going on so that this "thing" that is infecting our country not get any more uglier than it is right now. We're not so much fighting with the rest of the world as we are with each other. It's absolutely terrible what is happening.

We presume, according to the news reports and various spin, that Joe was the one who got hit when Valerie got outted. But let's think for a moment. Valerie was a senior WMD analyst in the Agency that contested the Whitehouse propaganda on Iraqi WMD. Rather than Valerie being the means to hit Joe, isn't it more likely that Joe was the convenient means to hit Valerie? When he went to Niger and then wrote about it, she got taken down for something we haven't heard about yet, on the spin that he was the target. It was quite serious indeed, to take out a senior CIA oponent on this core WMD question, but the spin is that it was just a cheap trick against a freelance investigator who spoke out of turn. Cheney knew quit well which of the two was the more dangerous to the his aganda, and he used him to get her.

A few years back there was a famous photographer on Charlie Rose. (Forgive me -- I forget his name.) This man had taken iconic shots of everyone of celebrity or infamy from Winston Churchill on. If you've ever been a photographer or a videographer, you know what an intimate process shooting someone is.

Every single person interested this photographer. Even the villains. He grokked and savored their uniqueness.

This was back in Charlie Rose's era of having swilled the WMD-9/11 terrors koolaid. If not quite a toady for the Bush Administration in that timeframe, he, like Ms. Miller, was a bit of a chalabi. (If I may update quisling.)

This was a confection show as was appropriate. A lot of stunning portraits. Tabloidism at a caviar level.

Friskily with a certain sychophance like a Golden Retriever puppy, Charlie asks Mr. Photo, "You shot a portrait of our (sic) President when he was governor of Texas?"

All the air went out of the room. The amusing flock of anecdotes all fell out of the sky like dead birds. There was a long silence, ghastly on TV. Mr. Photo's voice lost all its buttery over-&-undertones, and he said with flint, "He's a hard little man."

The president, George W. Bush was the only figure of the past 54 years that this observant photographer had not either loved, liked, or been interested in. It was that moment, I think when I felt the rising menace of this cold and colorless of soul Administration most starkly.

Mr. Photo, pressed for more comment, said, "We were alone in a room in the Governor's mansion and as I was setting up the shots, Governor Bush just watched me warily through slitted eyes. He is a hard little man."

Mr. Photo did not say it except between the lines. But Mr. Bush was right to be wary. As many tribes in less modern lands knew, a photo can show your soul. Awkward if you don't have one.