AUSTIN, Texas -- Sometimes the ironic timing of events in our public life is so striking as to cause one to wonder if the Great Scriptwriter in the Sky isn't trying to make a point. Thus, the word that the U.S. Senate voted for tort deform last week came just a few days after the news that seven executives of W.R. Grace and Co. were indicted on criminal charges for knowingly putting their workers and the public in danger by exposing them to asbestos ore.

Hundreds of miners, their family members and townsfolk in Libby, Mont., have died, and at least 1,200 more are sick from breathing the air polluted by the mine. Since the ore was shipped all over the country and was used as insulation in millions of homes, the total health effects are incalculable. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer deserves credit for bringing Grace to public attention with a series back in 1999.

The executives and the company were indicted on 10 counts of conspiracy, knowing endangerment, obstruction of justice and wire fraud.

W.R. Grace & Co. "categorically denies any criminal wrongdoing," said a spokesman.

The National Association of Secretaries of State recently held its annual convention. In the wake of two disputatious presidential elections in a row, there was considerable sentiment at the meeting for a resolution barring state secretaries from simultaneously serving as partisan political officials. In the two states where the greatest controversies arose in 2000 and 2004, Florida and Ohio, this had been a glaring problem.

The convention did the opposite. It passed a resolution stipulating that it was O.K. for secretaries of state to proselytize for their parties’ candidates, indeed even to serve as party chairpersons during the campaign. By inference, the N.A.S.S. would allow such officials to suborn acts of voter disenfranchisement, make rulings contrary to state law, interfere with legally sanctioned recounts, even to later campaign for higher office on the basis of having “carried our state for (the incumbent).”

Deborah L. Markowitz, Vermont’s Secretary of State, attended the convention. She said later that she recognized the need for reform, but added, “It’s hard to change the system. I’m a Democrat. I don’t want to appear partisan.”

When conservatives talk of George W. Bush’s “transformational” role in American politics, they are referring to a fundamental change they seek in the U.S. system of government in which the Republican Party will dominate for years to come and power will not really be up for grabs in general elections…

Four years ago, some hopeful political analysts predicted that the rightward swing of the media pendulum, which so bedeviled Bill Clinton in the 1990s, would lurch back leftward once Bush took office in 2001…

But no self-correction ever occurred. Instead, as Bush enters the fifth year of his presidency, major news outlets are continuing to swing more to the right…

[W]hile commentators expect Democrats to praise Bush, the major news media acts as if Republican disdain for Democrats is the natural order of things. There was barely a peep of media objection on Jan. 20 when triumphant Republicans jeered John Kerry when he joined other senators at the Inaugural platform on Capitol Hill.

But it’s not only Democratic politicians who can expect rough treatment these days.

A system glorifies its winners. The mass media and the rest of corporate America are enthralled with professionals scaling career ladders to new heights. Meanwhile, the people hanging onto bottom rungs are scarcely blips on screens.

Far from the media spotlights are countless lives beset with financial scarcity, often in tandem with chronic illness, monotony, adversity and despair. The same institutions and attitudes that lavish outsized respect on high achievers (the wealthier the better) are apt to convey ongoing disrespect for low achievers.

The flip side of adulation for winners is often contempt for people with cumulative misfortune, who routinely slog through murky quasi-netherworlds and do their best to keep from going under. According to mass-media calculations, they just don’t rate. In a society overdosing on unmitigated capitalism, it’s not just a matter of scant disposable income. As a practical matter, the country treats many people as disposable.

When personal dreams of success or even equilibrium sink below horizons, the same media outlets that laud the successful have little