Sometime within the next several weeks, Tony Blair will end his remarkable ten year run as British Prime Minister and turn over the reins of 10 Downing Street to his Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.
British politics are continually fascinating, as are the politics of other British Commonwealth countries.  If I were British, my political philosophy would be Thatcherian Conservative.  Blair has made some remarkable accomplishments.  The British Labour Party, during the heyday of Thatcher in the 1980s, was a virulently left wing party committed to socialism and appeasing the former Soviet Union through unilateral nuclear disarmament.  It is to Blair's credit that he moved his party toward the center and moderated its policies enough that it was able to win power in 1997 after an 18 year Conservative reign that ended with British Conservatives fatigued and plagued by scandal.

Blair has been able to lead his leftist party to three consecutive electoral victories through relatively favorable economic policies, Conservative disarray, and good fortune.  Americans of all stripes, particularly Conservatives, should always be grateful to Blair for taking part in military campaigns against Islamist terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.  His relatively realistic understanding of this struggle and his willingness to take unpopular stands against Labour Party opinion reflects genuine courage. We should also mourn the British soldiers who have given their lives in this just struggle.  Blair is also a skilled orator and debator who is a formidable opponent in the rough and tumble of the British House of Commons.

Nevertheless, Blair's Britain has significant problems.  Crime is way up because of family breakdown, moral relativism, and preening multicultural political correctness that refuses to make individuals responsible for their behavior and maintains imbecilic opposition to the death penalty.  An example of this political correctness in fighting crime is reflected in the British Home Office website http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/ which proclaims the agency's mission as building a "safe, just, and tolerant society."  A tolerant society?  Could you imagine an American law enforcement agency spouting such nonsense?  Safe and just are fine but a "tolerant" society is one that is indulgent of morally relativistic criminal behavior.

Another problem with Blair is the continuing growth of the British Government.  Britain's National Health Service remains a bureaucratic monstrosity six decades after its creation and it still fails to provide Britons with quality health service despite expenditures of tens of billions of pounds.  Blair's government actually thought hunting was such a grievous "societal evil" that it ramrodded legislation through Parliament to ban it.
Taxation of industrious Britons has gone up and there has been no tangible attempt to integrate large numbers of Muslims into British society with the July 7, 2005 London bombing and recurring arrests of Muslims in terrorist plots being further indication of the abysmal failure of British authorities to confront the enemy within.

In addition, Blair's ill-advised experiment with devolving authority to Scotland has resulted in the election of a Scottish Parliament that will be lead by the petulant Scottish Nationalist Party that wants Scotland to be independent.  Fortunately, this party just won a bare plurality of seats and shouldn't have the public support to pursue its independence fantasies.  The recent bizarre episode involving so many British marines who were more concerned with being buddies with Iran's terrorist regime, than defending British military honor was also troubling.  An especially galling strike against Blair is his permitting the legalization of sodomite civil unions on his watch.

Gordon Brown, as Blair's successor, is a paternalistic socialist who wants to throw more western money into the foreign debt sinkhole known as Africa.  It's unclear how long Brown will continue Britain's military commitment in Iraq.  The Labour Party is running out of steam as witnessed by the drubbings it took in last week's local government elections.  The Conservatives are making some resurgence, but I'm not sure if David Cameron has the intestinal fortitude to be the tough leader the British need to confront Islamist terror.  Cameron has instilled some new life into the Conservatives but the jury is still out on him and he didn't help himself several months ago when he said that criminal hooligans known as "hoodies" needed to be hugged.

I am an Anglophile and haven't given up hope Britain will regain its moral compass and remain a significant force for good in the world.  However, I don't expect Gordon Brown to be the leader Britain needs to enable it to prosper morally and be an aggressive fighter against Islamist terror.

The frustations we are currently experiencing dealing with Islamist sectarian strife in Iraq are causing critics of this conflict to bring up the spectre of Vietnam to cloud the minds of the public.  Unfortunately, critics of our efforts in Iraq are learning the wrong lessons from the Vietnam War.  The lesson everyone should learn from Vietnam, as applied to Iraq, is not to abandon allies when the going gets tough!  When we left Vietnam we condemned the South Vietnamese to the rule of a tyrannical Communist regime which resulted in the sometimes tragic story of the boat people who left their now Communist state to risk their lives on the open seas.  We also condemned Cambodians to suffer the genocidal holocaust of the Khmer Rouge regime.  We abandoned the Hmong people in Laos to suffer under the Marxist tyranny of their own country which included suffering chemical "yellow rain" attacks.

By leaving Lebanon in 1983-1984 after the Marine barrack attacks by Islamist terrorists we sentenced that country to another two decades of Syrian occupation.  By leaving Somalia during the early years of the Clinton Administration, we sentenced that country to more than a decade of additional anarchic chaos which is ongoing.

Numerous people in Iraq, at great risk and costs to their lives, have supported us and our noble efforts to create a better country.  If we cut and run and abandon them we sentence them to the same grisly fate experienced by the South Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, and Lebanese.  It's vitally important that when the U.S. commits its resources and military personnel to combat operations in another country that we carry out that commitment until it is successfully completed no matter the cost!  Islamist terrorists want to throw us and other democratizing influences out of the Middle East so they can impose Taliban like regimes on that area of the world and on other regions.  This week's idiotic congressional votes are telling the Iraqi people an d our enemies that we don't have the guts and moral principle to fulfill our commitments.  These votes tell our relentless and remorseless enemies that we don't have the moral courage to fight them when things get tough and that we will abandon our allies in Iraq like we abandoned the nations and ethnic groups listed above.  They tell potential future enemies in Iran, North Korea, and perhaps China that we don't have the stomach and long-term moral persistence to engage them in potentially protracted and costly struggles.

Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, John Murtha and other members of the cowardly terrorist appeasing curs club may be prepared to reconcile themselves to sectarian Islamist genocide in Iraq and wash their hands of America's allies again in Pilate-like fashion.  Americans who care about the commitments their country has made in Iraq should rise up and tell these individuals what intellectual and moral cretins they are for their actions.

Harry Reid inserted his foot into his mouth with his recent declaration that the war in Iraq was lost.  Could you imagine the Senate majority leader in 1942 declaring the war against Japan was lost because of defeats at Wake Island or other locales?  Of course not.  Unfortunately, Contrary Harry is not a statesman looking out for the U.S. national interest.  Harry Reid is a short-sighted prick more concerned with scoring cheap political points and enhancing his Las Vegas neon sign sized ego than finding constructive ways to win the war against terrorism.  To my knowledge, Harry Reid has not served on any national security related committees during his senatorial career.
Even though he has access to classified information, he probably has not authored substantive national security related legislation during his career.  Has he ever bothered to read substantive and classified appraisals of the situation in Iraq written by on location military and intelligence professionals?  Don't bet your lunch money on it.

Harry Reid loves to tell how he grew up in the modest locale of Searchlight, NV.  This community is near Las Vegas and Reid obviously draws his true values and campaign finance resources from that city's corrupt gambling interests.  Reid is way over his head when it comes to making intelligent decisions on how to conduct the war against Islamist terror.  Al Qaida operatives should wear Harry Reid campaign buttons when they go into battle as a token of his tacit support for them which he demonstrated in his recent comment.  Reid has spent a good chunk of his senatorial career fighting federal efforts to create a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain Nevada.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if Reid were forced to live there among the radioactive waste deposits?  It would  be an appropriate legacy for someone who is creating an increasingly toxic operating environment for our forces in Iraq by his idiotic comments.

About two years ago, my wife and I were dining at an Italian restaurant near the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.  Sitting at an adjacent table was contrary Harry and some associates.  It took all my self-restraint not to go over and tell him what a prick he was.  Considering Reid's recent idiotic comments about the situation in Iraq, take a couple moments to email, write, or phone with him at his Washington or Nevada offices and let him know how stupid he is.

Arizona's senior Senator John McCain is running for President and gets the lion's share of media attention.  Senator McCain has some desirable qualities including his strong support for the war in Iraq.  He also has his weaknesses as the abominable McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform act demonstrates.

Arizona's other Senator John Kyl is, I believe, better suited for the presidency than McCain.  Kyl has served in the Senate since 1995 and was in the House from 1987-1994.  Kyl currently serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee and that committee's Homeland Security Subcommittee where he has been a stalwart supporter of conservative constitutional principles.  He has served on the Senate's Energy & Natural Resources Committee and currently serves on the Senate Finance Committee where he demonstrated his commitment to conservative fiscal principles.
While in the House, he served on the House Armed Services Committee and he is a highly respected figure on national security issues.

Kyl is a man of sound character and judgment.  He also possesses an intellectually substantive grasp of today's multifaceted and complex public policy issues.  Visit his website http://kyl.senate.gov/ to learn more about this distinguished leader.  Arizonans are fortunate to have him as their U.S. Senator.  Conservatives looking for a serious and substantive presidential candidate from Arizona should give serious consideration to John Kyl.

After years of experiencing defeats in judicial abortion cases, yesterday's Supreme Court ruling upholding a federal ban on partial birth abortion is exceptionally satisfying.  It's good that a bare majority of Supreme Court justices had the intellectual sagacity and moral discernment to uphold some restrictions on abortion.  It's especially delightful to hear abortionists and their apologists wail and gnash their teeth over this important verdict.  The Court's detailed description of the gruesome nature of partial birth abortion is particularly informative and should serve a useful pedagogical purpose for individuals who have a view of abortion as a "sanitized" clinical procedure.

It's to early to say if this will result in the overturning of the intellectually vacuous and morally abominable Roe vs. Wade.  The abortionists and their useful idiots will fight even more ferociously now that their talisman of a "woman's right to choose" has been dealt a intellectual body blow by yesterday's ruling.  This ruling does, however, make it possible to believe that we could see the joyous day when Roe vs. Wade is relegated to the dustbin of history  like the Dred Scott decision.  It's vitally important that we elect a conservative pro-life President in 2008 and a Congress that is committed to pro-life positions.

I share the horror others feel at yesterday's Virginia Tech tragedy and my prayers are with the victims, their families, and friends.  Additional details about this tragedy will undoubtedly be revealed in the days and weeks to come.  It's clear the university's administration did an abominable job in informing students of the first incident.  Relying on email to communicate to the student body and community is absolutely pathetic!  Were university administrators stupid enough to think that all members of their community are looking at their email 24/7?  A campus wide system of loud speakers would have been a much more intelligent and effective warning mechanism.  Va. Tech's president has now revealed that it was a student who was the perpetrator.  It's to early to say what are the best procedures to implement to prevent the occurrence of other tragedies on campuses.

Some things are clear.   University students, faculty, and staff need to recognize that a college cannot be a completely safe environment.  These same individuals need to recognize that life is a precious gift from God and can be revoked at any time.  Human beings are not indestructible!  Two often at secular universities, the reality of God is dismissed or relegated to the sideline.  The appearance of unadulterated evil is dismissed as being a psychological or sociological aberration curable by secularist multicultural socialization.  My biggest prayer is that this will cause university students and faculty to confront the reality of their own mortality, our need to cherish every moment of our lives, and our absolute dependence on God for life and health.  Counseling sessions by ignorant secularist psychologists or vapid quasi religious platitudes by university administrators will not comfort the moral fragility Va. Tech students are experiencing at this time.

Va. Tech university administrators and administrators at other university campuses need to take a long hard look at their souls as they seek to develop truly effective responses to this tragedy.  Relying on technology alone to reduce the possibility of such events occurring won't cut it.  The profound moral implications of this tragedy must also be addressed.  Universities need to quit treating students as customers and resume the role of in loco parentis as they seek to educate their students. 

Students themselves need to come to grips with their own mortality and be aware of their surroundings at all times.  Quit yakking on your cell phones all the time and get over your pathetic baby need to be in 24/7 electronic contact with other people!  Build genuine, effective, and enduring relationships with your fellow students that are not restricted by cell phones, email, or text messaging.  Know your fellow students and what makes them tick and care about them.

If reports are true that the perpetrator of the Va. Tech tragedy was of Asian ancestry, this should also cause university administrators to do more to assimiliate non-American students into American cultural mores.  If true, this incident should also cause university administrators to not be so uncritically accepting of any international student who wants to study at their universities.  These administrators need to look at the mental and emotional stability of these students and weed out any who show tendencies toward using violence to resolve their problems.  Such administrators need to get over their cultural relativism and accept the reality that acceptable behavior in some cultures is not acceptable here in the U.S.

The liberal media and the civil rights victims mentality lobby are riding in full fury over Don Imus' idiotic comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team.  Imus comments were stupid but why in the world does anyone take this bozo seriously or care about what he thinks? Why does the Rutgers women's basketball team think they need personal validation from a crude shock jock like Imus?  The Rutgers women should quit wasting their energy or time worrying about what Imus says or thinks and prove him wrong by being excellent women in their professional and personal lives.

The liberal media, the civil rights victims lobby, and their academic allies, fail to realize that you can't outlaw stupid comments.  You can no more prohibit public expressions of  "racist" or "misogynist" comments than you can stop the rainfall we're experiencing in western Indiana this morning.  Does the First Amendment no longer apply in public discourse?  Are we becoming a totalitarian state where we can't make justified or unjustified criticisms against individuals or "preferred" ethnic or gender groups?  Do we consider the idiotic ramblings of morning radio disk jockeys to be worth creating public controversies over?  Does everything that is said on the media in this country have to be approved by Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson?

Only people who have absolutely no self-esteem will let themselves be paralyzed by derogatory comments made about them by people such as Imus.  Normal people realize that the person or persons making such comments are uninformed fools and get on with their lives instead of wallowing in self-pity like the Rutgers women's basketball team appears to be.  

Michigan Senator Carl Levin chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee and is also on the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.  Consequently, he is an important player in sculpting congressional national security policymaking.  Levin has gotten a lot of attention recently for posting the Defense Dept Inspector General's report on the Iraq intelligence activities of former DOD Undersecretary Douglas Feith on his website.

Considering the already voluminous body of literature documenting prewar U.S. intelligence failures in Iraq, it's difficult to determine what constructive use publication of this report will have.  Unfortunately, Carl Levin is an anal retentive prick who's more concerned with looking good in his three piece pinstripe suits and scoring pedantic political points than actually providing constructive and positive oversight to the military.  It would be nice if Levin and his Democratic congressional colleagues, with the honorable exception of Connecticut's Joe Lieberman, actually wanted to help the U.S. win its war against Islamist terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.  It would be extremely nice if Levin and company would commission federal agencies, the military, and academe to find ways of winning the war against Islamist terror.

Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.  Carl Levin has probably never had a constructive solution to a military matter during his entire political career.  Instead of conducting effective oversight, giving the military the tools they need to win wars, and providing positive motivation and encouragement to civilian and military policymakers, Carl Levin has been more concerned with bolstering his ego and engaging in rhetorical grandstanding.

It would be nice to think that the Senate Armed Services Committee will have a statesman and constructive policymaker guiding its deliberations someday.  Unfortunately, that will have to wait at least until January 2009 because Unleavened Carl will be the pedantic playground bully over this important committee's hearings until then.

 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has convinced herself she is a diplomatic virtuoso by jetting off to Syria to "dialogue" with Syria's tinhorn dictator Bashir Assad.  What she hopes to gain from this besides boosting her Pacific Ocean size ego and showing the Syrians how stupid some Americans can be is beyond me.
Pelosi's pilgrimmage reminds me of how many gullible Westerners sojourned to the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s to praise Joseph Stalin's sadistic regime as ably documented in Paul Hollander's 1981 book Political Pilgrims.

In 1789-1790, Congress passed the Logan Act which prohibited private American citizens from conducting U.S. foreign policy.  Perhaps a clever Justice Dept. attorney can find a penumbra in that statute which could be used to prosecute Pelosi.  Her idiotic actions are bringing comfort to a bloodthirstry dictatorial terrorist supporting regime which has the blood of thousands of individuals of all nationalities on its hands including American soldiers.

If Pelosi really desires a career in diplomacy she has two options.  She could take the Foreign Service exam like thousands have and see if she can gain admittance to the Foreign Service Institute and work her way up the diplomatic career track.  She could also hope that a future Democratic President appoints her Secretary of State and makes her diplomatic dreams come true.  Pelosi would be best advised to stay in her catbird seat in the House and try managing her 434 other Representatives and their staffs.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should bluntly tell Pelosi to butt out of her turf and leave the conduct of U.S. foreign policy to the President, Secretary of State. and individuals explicitly authorized by these two officials.

Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, Iran has apparently decided to release the 15 British soldiers it illegally seized several days ago.  No doubt gullible sectors of world public opinion will how herald Iran's pig grunge "President" as a farsighted humanitarian or some other nonsense for his propaganda step.  Unfortunately, this event will only embolden Iran to pursue their nuclear weapons aspirations and terrorist subversion in Iraq and elsewhere.

The Iranian regime only understands brute force or the credible threat of using such force against them.  You don't "dialogue" with such a regime.  Future U.S., British, and other world leaders need to bluntly explain this reality to their populations.  The west needs to work on covert and overt means of destabilizing and toppling this regime such as stopping European investment in Iranian energy sectors and increasing support for opposition movements within Iran.

I recently dissed John Edwards in this blog and now I have another opportunity to do so.  I am sorry to hear that his wife has suffered a recurrence of breast cancer.  However, their decision to continue his presidential campaign reveals a lot about his character or, more accurately, lack of character.  Edwards is so convinced of the "righteousness" of his liberal cause, that he and his wife will continue campaigning for the presidency despite the recurrence of his wife's cancer and despite the fact that they have two young children.  A question that should have been asked of Edwards at his self-congratulatory press conference yesterday is "Do you think God is impressed by you continuing your candidacy?"  Normal intelligent and moral political candidates would suspend their campaigns if their spouse was found to have cancer or some other serious medical condition.  That's why the phrase "in sickness" is part of most wedding vows.  One's marriage should be more important than your political aspirations however laudable they may be.  But not with John and Elizabeth Edwards.  To them, promoting their "sacred liberal cause" must be done at all costs regardless of the consequences it may have on Elizabeth Edwards health or on the well-being of their children.  Has anyone ever gotten in John Edwards face and told him how out of whack his priorities are?  Didn't he get the message from the 2004 election campaign that Americans don't want him to be their Vice-President or President? 

The inmeasurable arrogance of sanctimonious posturing liberals like Edwards never ceases to amaze me.  To consider your political career and ideology as being more important than your wife's well-being is absolutely despicable.  I hope as many Americans tell Edwards how misplaced his priorities are.  It's not "cowering" to withdraw from public life to give your wife the support she needs.  It's more accurately called being a loving and loyal husband and demonstrating integrity.

Karl Rove has really gotten inside Democrats heads with his electoral successes in 2000, 2002, and 2004 along with his perceived influence advising President Bush.  Whenever any controversy erupts in Washington, Democrats screech like hyenas that Karl Rove was involved and demand that he be subpoenaed to appear before an actual courtroom or a one of their congressional inquisitions.  This was most vividly demonstrated in the Valerie Plame affair and is now being demonstrated in the controversy over the firing of 8 U.S. Attorneys.

Given the low intellectual and moral quality of today's Democrats, they are likely to depose Karl Rove for causing every conceivable natural and human-caused disaster.  I'm surprised he hasn't been blamed for Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami.  Will he get blamed for screwing up Ted Kennedy's bar tab or Hillary Clinton's latest hairdo?

If you want to have fun with Democrats, the next time you see someone with a bumper sticker saying "Impeach Bush" or some other idiocy, right a note on their windshield saying something like "Karl Rove does not approve of your bumper sticker", "your phone calls will now be monitored by the NSA wireless surveillance program" or something similar.  

Karl Rove has made strong and weak decisions in the advice he has given President Bush just like any other presidential political or policy advisor.  It would be nice to see Democrats acknowledge his skills as a political advisor and it would be even nicer to see them quit blaming him for every problem under the sun.  However, that would require far to much inteligence and integrity for the Democrats to demonstrate.

The chattering liberal media and their Democratic congressional allies are in a tizzy over the recent firing of eight U.S. attorneys by the Bush Administration.  Critics of this decision fail to remember that U.S. Attorneys are political appointees who serve at the President's pleasure.  It's not uncommon for presidential administrations who've been reelected to seek to bring in new blood for the second term in order to reinvigorate implementation of that administration's policies.  This is what has happened in this case.  Critics of this decision also forget that it's common managerial practice to regularly evaluate the job performance of employees and to relieve low performers of their duties if they don't meet organizational expectations.  Given the Democratic Party's close involvement with organized labor, this is a difficult concept for these critics to grasp.

The most obnoxious of those critics is New York Senator Charles Schumer.  I can't use the word that best describes Schumer in this forum but it has seven letters and rhymes with sinkhole.  Schumer gravitates towards TV cameras the way vultures gravitate toward the corpse of a dead animal.  He is a demagogue of the worst sort and he is one of the political leaders that contributes to a country's downfall such as those portrayed in Thomas Cole's series of paintings "The Course of Empire".  This series of four paintings shows the rise and fall of nation states and Schumer's image can be found in the third of this series of painting's showing the empire as it goes through its death throes.  I doubt Schumer has any substantive or positive legislative accomplishments to his credit.

I hope Attorney General Gonzales is not forced to resign over this Democrat hissy fit and also hope he has the courage to tell Schumer and his Democratic compatriots on the Senate Judiciary Committee to "shove it" when he goes up to testify before them on the Hill next week. 

Prominent news coverage was given this weekend to the antiwar demonstrations erupting at various locales across the country.  Naturally, the liberal media fawned over the "sincerity" and idealism of the demonstrators without bothering to ask about the consequences of these demonstrators getting their way on U.S. national interests and the safety of the American public.

If the demonstrators get their way to bring the troops home the following consequences are possible.  Iraq will continue its bloody descent into internecine warfare and disintegrate as a nation with Iran and Syria reaping the benefits.  Iraqi territory will become a sanctuary for Al Qaida who will be emboldened to engage in attacks against the U.S., its allies, and its interests in the Mideast and elsewhere in the world.  The chance of another 9/11 style attack or series of attacks in the U.S. will increase drastically and such attacks could involve weapons of mass destruction or devastate critical U.S. infrastructures such as ports, bridges, highways, etc.
You also increase the likelihood of their being random suicide attacks against soft civilian targets like malls, theatres, restaurants, sporting events etc.

Yet you will hear none of this from the antiwar retards.  None of them seem to understand that we are engaged in a titanic existential struggle against sadistic Islamist brutes that want to impose a Taliban like regime on the entire world.  Not one time have any of these critics presented ideas that could actually help us and our allies more effectively prosecute the war against Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere!
These dipsticks are so poisoned by their personal animosity against President Bush that they can't see through their anger and confront the real threat facing the U.S. and the democratic world.

Such liberal antiwar imbecility is not unique in U.S. History.  There were numerous critics of the war of 1812 who didn't think we should defend our hard won independence against British revanchism and many of these critics were British useful idiots in New England.  During the Mexican War, New England was also the center of antiwar sentiment lead by the author Henry David Thoreau who's geopolitical knowledge ended at Walden Pond's boundary.  Note the recurring pattern of New England derived antiwar stupidity in U.S. History. During the Civil War, the antiwar Copperhead movement exhibited many comparable traits to today's antiwar movement as Mackubin Owens as pointed out in a recent National Review online essay.

We can continue on to the absolute geopolitical and moral stupidity of anti Vietnam War activists who still haven't accepted responsibility for their role in producing a Communist victory in that conflict which produced the exodus of boat people and other refugees from SE Asia and the Khmer Rouge holocaust in Cambodia.  Have these antiwar critics reconciled themselves to genocide?

Stand up to these incorrigibly stupid antiwar imbeciles today!  Let them know they are serving as propagandists for an evil as deep as Hitler's, Stalin's, and Mao's.  Let them know they endanger the lives of our soldiers, the soldiers of our allies, and our future national security and national strategic interests through their words and actions.  Tell them that if they have constructive suggestions for fighting this war to present them and if they don't tell them to shut up and go back to the sewer infested holes they came from.

Advocate victory not supine surrender and defeat in this titanic generational struggle!

The recent controversy over Ann Coulter's criticism of John Edwards has revived the perennial topic of civility in politics.  It's extremely amusing and hypocritical for liberals to bemoan the coarsening of American political culture when they are the primary perpetrators of this coarsening.  My biggest memory of this occurred twenty years ago when the distinguished jurist Robert Bork was nominated for Associate Justice on the Supreme Court by President Reagan.  Under normal circumstances, Bork's nomination would have been approved even by a Democratic controlled Senate.  As we all know, Bork was defeated by a fusillade of Democratic lies lead by the Chappaquiddick Mariner "Senator" Ted Kennedy.  Kennedy said Bork's confirmation would result in a return of back alley abortions and a host of other demagogic lies.  Additional examples of Democratic political attacks include the vicious smears against Justice Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the vitriolic attacks Bill and Hillary Clinton and their apologists such as James Carville used against their critics during his shameful presidential administration, the attacks Al Gore and his apologists launch against those with the audacity to criticize his global warming claims, the assaults Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other leaders of the liberal civil rights movement launch against those who don't believe Black Americans are pathetic victims of the amorphous phrase "institutional racism", and the assaults Gay Rights activists launch against their critics, and countless others.

If Democrats were serious about restoring civility to political discourse they need to look in the mirror and see the rhetoric emanating from their corroded dessicated souls.  The fact of the matter is that Democrats and their establishment media and academic allies can't take it when someone exposes them as the frauds that they are!  As long as the media continues to give creedence to Democratic posturing, as long as senile demagogic  frauds such as Senator Robert Byrd are allowed to pose as respected statesmen when they make malicious attacks against President Bush and other conservatives, there is no reason to let up in our criticism of liberals, their ideas, and the toxic impact these individuals and ideas have on our culture and political discourse.