This Can't Be Happening!

I have no sympathy for New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the hot-shot prosecutor of call-girl operations who was hoist on his own petard, as it were. I mean, what a jerk! And aside from the hypocrisy, what a fine message he was sending to his three teenage daughters about the role of women.

Having said that, Spitzer's bust should give pause to those in Congress who are ready to hand President Bush a free pass to continue his six-year campaign of warrantless spying on Americans.

Well, fellow Americans, we are finally going to get our just rewards.

That “Almighty Dollar” you used to hear about is heading straight towards the scrap heap of junk currencies (think Ruble, Rupee, Lira, Escudo).

With Pennsylvania the last big test of the Democratic primary season, we can expect to see some ugly campaigning.

Already, the desperate Hillary Clinton campaign has been turning to racial politics, appealing to Hispanics in order to counter the built-in advantage Barack Obama has with black voters.

In Mansfield, CT, the town where I grew up, there were no police. Oh, there was a resident State Police officer with a big cruiser, but mainly, his job was patrolling the stretch of four-lane highway that ran north of us between Hartford and Boston. The University of Connecticut, a sprawling ag school at the time, had a few police, but their job was limited to patrolling the campus. If something happened, like a kid stealing candy from Phil’s, the local Five and Ten, or if there was some kind of domestic dispute, it fell to the local town constable—an elected position—to handle.

With a viral campaign underway via email, right-wing radio, and on the street suggesting that Barack Obama is a black “Manchurian Candidate,” secretly trained as a Muslim fanatic who will insinuate himself into the White House, thence to undermine all that we hold dear, perhaps it is time to look at the Manchurian Candidate we already have in the White House, who, together with his handler over in Blair House, has pretty much done all the damage already.

While Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination debate and compete over whose healthcare reform plan is best, and over whether or not it’s okay to talk with “America’s enemies,” and while Democrats and Republicans lob attacks over whose foreign policy is more muscular, there is a lengthening list of global catastrophes all of which are simply being ignored.

Let’s look at that list:

I reported in this space yesterday that Gannett's USA Today newspaper had incorrectly identified the message of the orange ribbon worn at the Oscars by Oscar nominee Julie Christie. The paper had said it was for the ACLU. I had said it was the symbol of the national impeachment movement.

A new report on the August 30 incident in which six nuclear-armed advanced cruise missiles were effectively “lost” for 36 hours, during which time they were, against all regulations, flown in launch position mounted on a pylon on the wing of a B-52H Stratofortress, from Minot AFB in North Dakota across the continental US to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, has left unanswered some critical questions about the event.

All the attention in the breaking story about John McCain's 2000 relationship with a blonde young telecom lobbyist has been focussed on the question of whether or not they were "doing it."

As George Stephanopoulos claimed on ABC, the importance of the story depends upon whether McCain is shown to have had a "relationship" with the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman.

I would not have thought that the coverage of the US presidential campaign could get more shallow and meaningless, and then, along comes the plagiarism story.