The Bush administration is in a state of collapse. Around the country, people are starting to talk about the need to impeach and remove Bush from office. Many of these people, like the one-time Republicans described here are, like William Buckley, totally lost and devoid of answers. Especially in Red or Purple areas, everybody will know who the resident liberal is - even if you have never said a word about it.

Today, I heard author and blogger Andrew Bard Schmookler speak about the problems in our society. The reason he says that liberalism frequently doesn't have spine is because it has difficulty recognizing the concept of good and evil. I think that this concept can very easily be applied to our Democratic leaders frequently. Although they have done better this time around, especially in their questioning of Chertoff, they still have a long ways to go before developing the kind of spine that we would like to see here in this community.

Schmookler discusses spirituality in applying his concepts. He says that spiritual well-being and goodness involves wholeness, while evil involves brokenness. Before the 1960's, there were very clear institutions that defined right and wrong. They were the school, parents, churches, and society. All our movies had black and white endings in which the good guys had a clear point of reference to look forward to.

Tom Friedman has come back from vacation with an astonishing slap in the face of George Bush and Dick Cheney over their continued support of the failed politics of the past as opposed to the politics of the future. He says that the current biggest enemy facing this country is not Islamism, Communism, or other such ideologies, but Petrolism, or the practice of sustaining a country through oil revenues. He calls for a new policy of Red, White, Blue, and Green.

If this had come from someone from Greenpeace or Earth First, nobody would raise their eyebrows. But coming from a man who was at one time one of Bush's biggest enablers is a sign that the Bush administration has run desperately adrift and is losing some of its key supporters. This would explain the photo-op meeting yesterday by the Bush administration and many former Democratic and Republican administration officials which was all spin and no deliverance.

The Republicans made a monumental political blunder when they passed the $100 billion tax cut bill on a vote that was almost totally split among party lines. They handed us a perfect opportunity for us to brand us and brand them as well. By this vote, we have shown that we are the party that puts the money in, while the GOP has shown that they are the party that keeps the money out.

The Republicans ignore a basic fact of life year in and year out -- it costs money to run this country effectively. Therefore, they can never be credible again when talking about the sanctity of human life, because upholding the sanctity of human life involves quality of life. And they can never be credible again when talking about jobs, the economy, health care, or education, because it costs money to fund them. On the other hand, we have always fought to put money into the economy so people can have a better quality of life.

Recently, I have been talking about the sanctity of human life and how this ethic must cover quality of human life, not just the hot-button issues of abortion, the death penalty, and war.  Quality of human life includes the right to work. One way to secure employment for all Americans is to legalize marijuana, allow USA farmers to grow and sell Hemp, and regulate it as opposed to banning it like we do today.

If we legalize Marijuana, that will mean new industries will spring up to meet the legal demand for the product. New industries will mean more jobs and therefore, more money for the government to put into jobs, the economy, education, health care, and the environment.

Yesterday, we talked about the sanctity of human life. Today, Armando talked about the Alito nomination and his rabid advocacy of abolishing Roe during the Reagan years. That diary sparked a heated debate over the merits of overturning Roe.

It would seem that my adoption of the sanctity of human life would dovetail with the anti-abortion position. But that is not the case. It is a fact of life that we as a society value the woman over the fetus. Even the right-wing fundamentalists would do so. They would not advocate the death penalty for a woman who ended her pregnancy, even though they normally support the death penalty for murder. If you really think that the fetus is valued the same as a woman, then, by logical extension, you must advocate the death penalty or life imprisonment for a woman who ends her pregnancy. If you don't, then you are not really pro-life and are being morally inconsistent.