matt- thanks. I’ll be writing regularly…sort of.

Athene- Aren’t our freedoms what our armed forces fight to protect? Who’s the one demoralizing them now. I wonder? After all, they aren’t dying to defend leadership that is corrupt and above the law, are they?

Thanks for dropping by.

Windspike- You are right- zealous fundamentalists of any stripe tend to be bad news for the tolerant majority.

Trust must be earned, and once lost is hard to regain. But to evaluate the worthiness of ones trust, one also has to have open eyes, something sycophants are sorely lacking.

Thanks for the comment.

What troubles me most about the whole situation - and you draw an interesting correlation with the spying and the tourture - is that when you have a president who feels like and is emboldened enough by his own hubris that he thinks he is above the law and answers only to God, then we are in for a very rocky trip. Note, fundamentalist governments in Iran and other such places are no different.

If W believes he can issue secret orders that are a direct constitutional violation, how can we trust him when he is behind the drawing up of a new ban on torture (or at least agreeing to it on the face). I don’t trust him. Why others do is beyond me.

http://www.athene.biz/index.php/archive/maher-humor/