Are you old enough to remember the promise made by Senator Pat Roberts (former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee) to complete Phase II of the Senate inquiry into pre-Iraq invasion and occupation? That was five years ago. For five long years, Pinocchio Flight Jacket's (aka George W. Bush's) obedient sitter wagged his tail, dangled his tongue and did his favorite trick. He sat.

Now at last the report under Senator Jay Rockefeller's chairmanship has been officially submitted. While it is certainly less than flattering for the Bush administration -- thanks in large part to the, uh, leadership of Poodle Pat Roberts -- the five year delay provided ample time for covert CYA, short for cover your asses. Poodle Pat and his master surely sighed, "Thank you, Jesus and our busy Department of Defense PR staff."

But they're still nervous. Day after day the same drone from Pinocchio Flight Jacket's camp: "Well, everybody thought, uh... everybody had the same, uh, intelligence. It was the dadgummed intelligence was wrong, don'cha know. Lies? No, no, no. Uh, bad intelligence."

It is important, nay, crucial, for Americans to respond to administration propaganda with these stubborn reminders...

This kid deserves an Oscar:

"..the question... is not whether newspapers are making any money here -- assuredly they are; rather it's whether this 'miracle heater' ... is something you should buy for the advertised price of $298...or just another fast-buck hoax foisted on you by a newspaper advertising department with limited scruples...." (Pete Selkowe, Racine Post, Wisconsin)

I'm disappointed and cranky.

Bad enough Bill O'Reilly from FOX (Pretends-to-be) News roosts regularly on my local paper's opinion page. Now the advertising department accepts garbage as well.

Friday was the second time this full page ad mimicking a news story appeared in this paper. The first time I chided our editors about the "Heat Surge Roll-n-Glow" advertisement, but my objections obviously didn't carry much weight. Last week an identical or nearly identical full page ad was headlined, "Amish man's new miracle idea helps home heat bills hit rock bottom." Horse hockey...

Dick Armey: "Now, the fact of the matter is, the party isn't so upset with John Wayne as some personalities are upset with John Wayne ..."

Tucker Carlson: "John Wayne? A euphemism for John McCain?"

Dick Armey: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, John McCain."
(MSNBC, Jan. 30)

Armey, a former Republican congressman from Texas, is credited as the author of the Contract with America which led to a Republican takeover of Congress in the 1990's Whether or not his slip of the tongue was intentional, he was dead-on.

My friends, the understated machismo of John Wayne is precisely the strategy that McCain McBush hopes will win him the White House.

The John Wayne McCain movie now playing is, of course, "The War in Iraq." And we hear the predictable paranoia monologue...

Patrick Lowry's column was a solid and necessary critique of local Rotary practice and attitudes. It will, of course, infuriate militant fundamentalists who'd like the U.S. to become an official theocracy rather than a government of, for and by the people -- respecting their increasingly diverse spiritual proclivities (or lack thereof).

Why is it some self-proclaimed Christians think they have a lock on morals? My own suspicion is such a claim to certainty is often evidence of insecurity -- and particularly so when it becomes angrily judgmental of those who may hold commendable social values but do not hold the same theological convictions.

Wasn't it Jesus Christ who advised followers not to pray for public effect, but to retire to their private closets where honesty before God plays better than ceremony?

"I cannot but conclude the bulk of your race [humans] to be the most pernicious generation of little, odious vermin, that were ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." -- The King of Brobdingnang

Marion Coulson, my straight-laced, crew cut writing instructor at college, liked the quote from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. It has often bubbled up from my brain in moments of reflection upon the cruelties and insanities committed by humans acting as purported agents of a transcendent God.

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and the government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain

In a newspaper column, Anti-Americanism in American Schools (here or here), Thomas Krannawitter says we the people are imminently threatened by teachers honoring multiculturalism who would destroy our democratic republic. FHSU philosophy prof Paul Faber then weighed in with great kindness, chiding his former student for painting with too broad a brush. Krannawitter responded here.

Krannawitter teaches at Hillsdale College, a school of some 1,500 in Hillsdale, Mich. Ostensibly nonsectarian, its Articles of Association declare, "It shall be a conspicuous aim to teach precept and example the essentials of the Christian faith and religion." I could be wrong but my best guess is that the likeness of David Horowitz, the tireless ultra-conservative anti-multiculturalist, is sculpted at campus center -- sword unsheathed for battle, astride a granite stallion out of the Book of Revelation. (I hope I jest.)

I confess. Colin Powell suckered me in with his WMD bluff to the UN in February of 2003. I bet many of you also figured he held a straight flush.

Of course, in February of 2001, Powell had said that Saddam had "not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction" and was "unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." Condi Rice that July, two months before the infamous 9-11, said that we were "able to keep arms from [Saddam]. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

So when I watched Powell at the UN just two years later, I thought, hey, something changed the man's mind. My doubt seemed unpatriotic. The bloom soon fell off the rose. Truth beats blind patriotism. This administration lied, now lies, will lie out the wazoo until their hand is called. For that and other reasons nearly too numerous to mention, impeachment proceedings should be underway as I write.

"The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitive. In the long run basic results in influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the intellectuals." ~ Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, The Goebbels Diaries, London, 1948

Easter. Most authorities say the word derives from Oestre, the ancient Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic pagan goddess of spring.

Over 2000 years ago, a Carpenter from Nazareth was executed by Roman authorities as a threat to provincial stability. The Romans were abetted by Jewish priests whose legalistic religiosity he challenged. As a warning to others, they nailed him ignominiously upon a cross along with other troublemakers. So he died. For the times, ordinary stuff.