First Step: Getting Legislators to Sign Onto A Resolution Demonstrating the U.S. Intends to Leave

Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers Fame, gave the worst news of the day to those examining lessons from Vietnam thirty years after the end of the war – we're going to be in Iraq a long time. It will be tougher to get out of Iraq, than it was to get out of Vietnam. Why? The major difference between Vietnam and Iraq is Iraq has oil, Vietnam doesn't and we need oil.

It is much easier to start a war than it is to end one.

Ellsberg was speaking at a forum organized by the Institute for Policy Studies held Thursday, April 28 at the Rayburn House Office Building. He pointed out that in 1968 the anti-Vietnam War protests were at full force and the U.S. did not get out until seven years later, 1975. President Nixon even ran for office promising he had a secret plan to end the war – and we did not get out for years after that. If it had not been for Watergate, says Ellsberg, we might not have gotten out.

In 2003, President Bush nominated California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the U.S. Courts of Appeals.  However, due to her ultra-conservative judicial views, the Democrats in the Senate prevented her nomination from going forward by use of the filibuster. Mr. Bush re-nominated her again in February. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a party-line vote, approved of her nomination, with all 10 Republicans affirming her, and all eight Democrats opposing her. Unless Republicans elect to carry out the so-called “nuclear option” of abolishing the filibuster, Democrats will almost certainly block her nomination again. And for good reasons.

I'm a friend and contributing writer, as you know. I don't want FreePress to think I've lost confidence in them, or vice versa. I hope we'll stay friends.

But really, folks! James A. Baker III was, more than any other individual, responsible for stopping the recount in Florida in 2000. He was summoned by the Bush family for that very purpose, and he fulfilled it. Baker is not interested in election reform any more than Victor Yanukovich is. Baker is interested in protecting George W. Bush from the public knowing that he was twice elected by fraud.

For FreePress to run an editorial that speaks of Baker as if he were a legitimate representative of the people, on a par with Jimmy Carter, is very, very disappointing.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Being of the populist persuasion, I am a terminal fan of Thomas Frank, who has gone from "What's the Matter With Kansas?" to "What's the Matter With Liberals?" in the current issue of the New York Review of Books, which is a good spot for it.

Those of us in the beer-drinking, pick-up-truck-driving, country-music-listening school of liberals in the hinterlands particularly appreciate his keen dissection of how the Republicans use class resentment against "elitist liberals," while waging class warfare on people who work for a living.

The unholy combination of theocracy and plutocracy that now rules this country is, in fact, enabled by dumb liberals. Many a weary liberal on the Internet and elsewhere has been involved in the tedious study of the entrails from the last election, trying to figure out where Democrats went wrong. I don't have a dog in that fight, but I can guarantee you where they're going wrong for the next election: 73 Democratic House members and 18 Democratic senators voted for that hideous bankruptcy "reform" bill that absolutely screws regular people.