An October 13 Associated Press article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Liz Sidoti is headlined:

GOP FRETS ABOUT McCAIN'S STRATEGY

Liz Sidoti states:

"McCain has to make the case that he's different than Bush and better than Obama on the economy," said former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

John McCain happens to be the favorite of the religious right in the 2008 presidential election.

When President Clinton had a consensual extra-marital affair, the moral guardians vowed to impeach him.  Much of his time was taken away from his vital presidential duties to answer to endless investigations.

Approximately $40 million was spent by Republicans desperately trying to make a case of for business corruption with the Whitewater land case, but they failed.

These are the same people who apparently refuse to investigate and impeach George Bush for launching a war against Iraq with lies.  The death, destruction, debt and Iraqi displacement has not bothered their consciences.

Ah, how much piety was in the air with Republicans such as Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde, both of whom were marital philanderers, when they sought along with their similarly self-righteous party colleagues to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency.

The key question for these self-righteous Republicans was:  "Did Clinton lie?"  The corollary was that if President Bill Clinton lied on the subject of whether or not he had sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office then grounds for impeachment existed.  

It is doubtful that thoughts of the stains on Lewinsky's blue dress have left the "chaste conscience" of "moralist" Ann Coulter for a single waking minute since the Clinton-Lewinsky liaison occurred.  

To put the issue in perspective, the lie that Clinton ultimately acknowledged he told was in an affidavit in a civil legal case.  Virtually any domestic relations attorney or psychologist dealing with matrimonial affairs would concur that perhaps the single leading instance of lying occurs when spouses deny extra marital affairs, the type of conduct applicable in the case against Clinton for impeachment.

Nothing prompts Karl Rove to salivate faster than the prospect of a new protégé.  It was reported that Rove waxed enthusiasm from the first time he met George W. Bush, loving his "swagger" and recognizing what he perceived as a natural and engaging charisma that he believed he could take all the way to the presidency.

Despite Rove's enthusiasm he recognized that he could not accomplish this feat independently.  The important thing about promoting an incurious and inarticulate buffoon-like figure such as Bush to the presidency was a willingness to please the neocon power structure and that he did.

To invest Bush with the kind of manufactured machismo that typified Ronald Reagan, who had earlier been fine-tuned by the corporate establishment all the way to the presidency, some early steps were taken.  

Like Reagan, Bush developed a "man's man" image by becoming an instant cowboy as arrangements were made for him to purchase his Crawford, Texas ranch, the first step toward becoming the Lone Star State's governor, an important pivotal position en route to Washington.

While George W. Bush and Dick Cheney continue to tell Americans that things are looking up and that the new "Surge" campaign only needs some more time and patience time to succeed, the tragic reality of what is actually happening in Iraq was revealed to the nation's viewers Sunday night in a brilliant report on 60 Minutes.

CBS correspondent Lara Logan visited Baghdad and interviewed a local citizen who was willing to tell America and the rest of the world what is really happening, penetrating beyond the perpetual smoke screen generated by the blustery Cheney-Bush Administration's propaganda brigade.

Mahmud al Wadi told Logan that he could not conceive of driving his daughter to school without his trusty revolver.  What does his daughter do with the rest of her time away from school?  Mahmud had a simple answer.  She doesn't do anything, staying home out of necessity.

He needs to venture out periodically to buy gas.  This activity requires three days, with Mahmud al Wadi sleeping as he holds his place in line.  He recounts what sometimes happens when he reaches the front of the line, learning that the station has no gas to sell, meaning an exhausting effort has been expended in vain.

Newton Leroy Gingrich, seen at the American Enterprise Institute. Reuters file photo.

My maternal Grandparents came to this country from Sicily before the First World War, I never knew my Grandfather as he died in 1946 when I was two years old on the very day that my brother was born. I did however know well, my round, sweet, wonderful smelling, ugly shoes, Sicilian Grandmother whose words I didn't always understand but whose meaning was always unmistakable, a large lovely sometimes frightening woman who fed me incredibly well and often, and taught me to behave with her air of peasant efficiency, lessons she delivered in a warm and colorful language, with a sharp and colorful tongue and a gentle hand.

Grandma DeCarlo spoke a thickly accented English flavored with untranslatable phrases of peasant Sicily but she understood, and made herself understood in English well enough to become a citizen, a member of the American work force, a property owner, the matriarch of a proud clan and the mother of a son who landed at Anzio Beach in a return to Italy that was no pleasure cruise, and something that Newton Leroy Gingrich has approximately zero understanding of.

She was a far better person, and I believe, a better American than Newton Leroy Gingrich will ever dream of being.

Does the current Congress consider the Constitution a dead document?  Ronald Roberts of Redmond, Washington, in a compelling letter to the Seattle Times editors on March 12, posed this impeachment necessity bluntly:

"Our legislators at both the federal and state level are equally bound by Article 6 of the United States Constitution to support it.  To ignore the assault that has occurred is dereliction."

As for Democrats who have failed their constitution-bound duty to begin impeachment proceedings, we must censure Nancy Pelosi emphatically.  How dare Nancy decide, "Impeachment is off the table."

Apparently instead of demanding that impeachment investigations begin immediately, Nancy has demanded a larger airplane to supply for herself and those she deems worthy to be taken along for the ride, at taxpayer expense, of course.

In a period when politicians are noted more for dodging the truth and running away from vital issues it is a pleasure to see a candidate running for Congress in the 15th District of Florida possessing unique qualifications along with the intellect and integrity to unabashedly address the major issues confronting America today.

Dr. Bob Bowman, one of the nation's most knowledgeable and articulate voices in the national security field, is running for Congress in the 15th District of Florida, which is located in Brevard County and home to the Kennedy Space Center.  Bowman, who resides in Melbourne, is a rocket scientist with a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.    

Bowman flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam and directed all the "Star Wars" programs under Presidents Ford and Carter.  He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President's Medal of Veterans for peace, was honored twice by the Society of Military Engineers with ROTC Merit Awards, received 6 Air Medals, while receiving dozens of other awards and honors.  

What immediately impressed me about Bowman was his campaign promise to do what this Internet columnist has been proposing for better than four years.  If elected Bowman will introduce Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush and his fellow architects of deceit and disaster.  

(Warning: Post contains unnecessary potty mouth. Sorry.)

Everyone knows that John 'Stumpin at the New School' McCain, Mitt 'Steal the Democrats Ideas' Romney and Rudolph 'Cheatin Heart' Giuliani have focused their bleary eyes on the '08 GOP Presidential Candidacy.

What many people may not know is that the dark specter of the Republican Revolution is looming large in their shadows as a not-so-dark horse candidate for the GOP. Yup, you guessed it, Newt 'Cheatin-on-cancer-stricken -wife-and-serving-divorce-p apers-as-she-lies-in-a-hosp ital-bed' Gingrich is hot on their tail. In fact, the Grinch even took top honors in a Minnesota Straw Poll where the GOPsters were careful to note that both McCain and Giuliani were simply too moderate:

The diary below was originally posted on my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal, on May 20th.

Progressives are struggling to synthesize a movement that can rise above identity politics and mobilize people under a unified theme. Robert W. Fuller, Ph.D. argues in his newly published book, All Rise (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.), that simple dignity is an elusive need that cuts across demographics of race, gender, age, and class. Fuller attributes this void to a culture of "rankism" which he defines as "abuses of power associated with rank." In his writings Fuller advocates for a grassroots effort to establish a "dignitarian society."

Well, we all could see this coming a mile away, couldn't we? Under the headline, GOP Leaders Seek Distance From Abramoff, the Washington Post reports:

With a House Republican committee chairman implicated in the criminal case and the highest echelons of the Republican Party increasingly vulnerable to charges, GOP leaders moved yesterday to distance themselves from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and prepare to combat a growing corruption scandal.

The same story goes on to detail Newt Gingrich's advice about Total Distance Management (TDM), focusing on beleaguered Senate Majority Leader Tom Delay:

In 1990, Newt Gingrich published a booklet he called "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control". He mailed his little manifesto to Republican leaders throughout the land and encouraged them to "paint a vivid, brilliant word picture." Gingrich, showing distrust for his fellow Republicans' judgment, saw fit to supply the leaders with two lists of keywords, a positive word list to use in describing themselves and a negative keyword list to describe those evil Democrats.

Gingrich's positive words for Republicans (hold your nose)

"Active, activist, building, candid(ly), care(ing), challenge, change, children, choice/choose, citizen, commitment, common sense, compete, confident, conflict, control, courage, crusade, debate dream, duty, eliminate good time in prison, empower(ment), fair, family, freedom, hard work, help, humane, inventive, initiative, lead, learn, legacy, liberty, light, listen, mobilize, moral, movement, opportunity, passionate, peace, pioneer, precious, premise, preserve, principle(d), pristine, pro-flag, pro-children, pro-environment, prosperity, protect, proud/pride, provide, reform, sights, share, strength, success, tough, truth, unique, vision, we/us/our, workfare"

Particularly entertaining was the inclusion of such words as "Eliminate good time in prison", "peace" and "pro-environment". No. They did not include "Audacity" in their "pro-Republican" word list. Anyway, Newt continues with his choice of words to describe the opposition.

Perhaps what they meant to list were "Eliminate peace and the environment" and "pro-prison"?