In my country, marijuana smokes you!

William Lind, a retired Colonel and not a left-winger.

His writings on fourth generation warfare are dead on.

His writings on fourth generation warfare are dead on.

Yeah, they're excellent.

Marijuana plants are not an enemy -- marijuana plants are a friend! Can't they see this?

10 feet tall - are they marijuana or hemp. they might be hemp. Of course, you'd have to smoke some to make sure...

In the war on drugs, the drugs are fighting back.

Yeah, but the rest is pretty damning of Democrats, and CongressCritters in general:

A post-election Democratic House, Senate, or both might in theory say no to another war. But if the Bush administration's cynicism is boundless, the Democrats' intellectual vacuity and moral cowardice are equally so. You can't beat something with nothing, but Democrats have put forward nothing in the way of an alternative to Bush's defense and foreign policies. On Iran, the question is whether they will be more scared of the Republicans or of the Israeli lobby. Either way, they will hide under the bed, just as they have hidden under the bed on the war in Iraq. It appears at the moment that a congressional demand for withdrawal from Iraq is more likely if the Republicans keep the Senate and Sen. John Warner of Virginia remains chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee than if the Democrats take over.

But donkeys will think when pigs fly. A Democratic Congress will be as stupid, cowardly, and corrupt as its Republican predecessor; in reality, both parties are one party, the party of successful career politicians. The White House will continue a lost war in Iraq, solely to dump the mess in the next president's lap. America or Israel will attack Iran, pulling what's left of the temple down on our heads. Congress will do nothing to stop either war.

Oh no! Heavens! Criticizing the Democrats? We'll have NONE of that!! Why, I'll bet Madeline "500,000 dead Iraqi children is worth it" Albright has NOTHING to do with angry Wahabists attacking American forces in the Middle East!

And John "I voted for the war, but then became nuanced" Kerry would be SO different!

And Lyndon Baines "I didn't cowtow to hardline right wing elements of the military industrial complex to have JFK killed and acquise to a giant war in Southeast Asia" Johson was such a visionary and peaceful Democrat too!

Or William "I'll bomb an aspirin factory in Sudan as a public distraction, and change my principled position on capital punishment just in time for the Presidential Race" Clinton.

We all know how peaceful and righteous he democrats are!!

Seriously though, while I won't be jumping for joy when the Democrats pound down the gates this fall, I think that it will be the only way to tell the morons in charge that they can't get away with this s*** any more.

No, I won't be jumping for joy, but I would seriously be pissed if the Republicans somehow squeeked out in control of Congress...their "win" would be fodder for my conspiracy theories that would probably involve Diebold voting machines and no paper record.

God I hope that the Republicans get their asses kicked, even if the alternative isn't much better!

Jon, what's been missing and what we really need is a divided Congress - it puts a brake on some of the corruption (corporations will have to pay both sides, without the certainty of outcome they've had under the Republican Congress) and pork-barrel (since both sides have to agree, there'll be less of the "kids in the candy store" phenomenon), and will serve as a foil to the unmitigated arrogation of power we've seen under the unitary dunce.

I've no illusions that Dems are any wiser than Republicans - they've certainly been wimps after 9/11. But we desperately need our checks and balances!

The Republicans have been very astute (and underhanded) in choosing their voters, through gerrymandering, throwing up all manner of hurdles (some no doubt illegal) to likely Dem voters, and pandering to emotionalism in their core voters (gays! flag burning! oh my!). If they manage to hang onto both houses it will be very discouraging; if they lose one, I hope we'll see the Dems push for prosecutions and changes in laws that make it easier to vote and that cut back on the excesses of gerrymandering.

In case of the later, the Supreme Court decision that there are no Constitutional checks on these practices at the state Congressional disctrict level was very disappointing. Both parties have been trying to lock themselves into power and the effect has been very damaging to both citizen control over representatives and to political discourse.

Yes, checks and balances. Yes Tom, those are good points.

Here are couple of random ones of mine.

-This "unitary executive" theory scares the heck out of me, and apparently GWB has more or less admitted that wielding this kind of power is his biggest wet dream.

-Perhaps, just maybe, the underlying issue is that everyone of both parties claim "Democracy" or the "Will of the People" to be the final end of government power. But it should not be that way. The final end should be the rule of law. Why? Ideally, law is nothing other than pledge of universal protection of universal rights, enscribed on paper. But when some strong guy gets up there and claims that he holds the mystical power to know "the will of the people" and claims to act in their name, all kinds of abuses can and will occur.

Of course, many people roll their eyes in condescension when they hear the cliche' "the rule of law," because that term has been abused and debased over the years. And that is a shame.

[Rolls eyes.]

Jon, you are being WAY too fuzzy-headed. At its core, government is about the rules that a cummnity sets to govern behaviors. But as economies and governments grow, increasingly governments evolve into theft machines, through which different groups seek "rents" from the government via "boons" in the form of special deals over resources or exemptions from legal exposure for risks that are shifted to third parties. The government makes itself bigger and bigger by intruding more and more into all or lives, so that different interests and objectives are not solved via voluntary market transactions between owners of resources, but by atttempted power grabs using legislators, the adminsitrative branch and the courts.

Republicans and Dems alike are guilty, with hyposcrisy from the Republicans being rather breath-taking in its scope and brazenness.

The "rule of law" USED to mean the protection of limited, carefully circumscribed rights, designed to protect essential liberty and property. What people mean now by "universal protection of universal rights" is often a shorthand by someone that others have the obligation to provide him a livelihood or a litany of other unearned benefits.

May I presume that is not your agenda?

Yeah, let's withdraw from Iraq right now and bring the war home with us...