After six years of a fellow evangelical in the White House, many no longer take it as a given that the Republican Party and its candidates are in step with Christian values. Mark Foley’s dalliances with pages may be the shorthand for the general discontent, but it’s Jack Abramoff, Bob Ney and Tom Delay, too.

As of today, Democrats are favored to pick up six governor’s seats.

As of today, Democrats are favored to pick up six seats, just enough to win the Senate.

For a while as an AP reporter in Los Angeles, I started my day chatting up the mother of a man who murdered Bobby Kennedy, tearing a big hole in U.S. history. Most of the world probably missed it last week when Sirhan Sirhan was again turned down for parole. Like a tree that falls unheard in the forest, little note was made of it -- even Sirhan didn't show up for his 13th parole hearing.

Farmers have, since time immemorial, bred the local corn with other strains, while also cross-breeding these crops with bacteria, viruses, fungi, and the occasional jellyfish or horse, in search of grains that can infect others, grow under toenails, cause intense pain or run the steeplechase.

Rove knew it was a win-win confrontation: At a time when Bush's poll numbers are slipping — although by reading The Times you'd think they were as low as Jimmy Carter's — Rove rallied conservatives with predictable but crowd-pleasing denunciations of luminaries like Michael Moore and the goofballs at MoveOn.org.
 
In the next news cycle, as Rove no doubt anticipated, profiles of courage such as Sens. Harry Reid (who's called Bush a "liar"), Chuck Schumer, Jon Corzine, Chris Dodd and John Kerry (labeled Bush an "idiot") were in an equally predictable dither.

Massey claims to have uncovered a 1997 plot by the Varwicon (his name for the vast right-wing conspiracy) for war in Iraq. He seems unaware of the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, approved unanimously by the Senate and signed by President Clinton. Was this, too, a right-wing plot?

 
The mass-production of a hydrogen fuel-cell car may be a costly pipe dream. Moreover, it offers few, if any, net benefits to the environment.
 

It's true that Rice ranks high in the polls for possible contenders, alongside her fellow high name recognition non-starters Rudy Giuliani (way too socially liberal) and John McCain (too old, cranky and contradictory).

Can someone besides a besotted Deaniac explain how an "antiwar, anticorporate, anti-Bush" presidential candidate is going to conduct a 50-state campaign, especially without Bush on the ballot? The politics of The Nation have no chance of succeeding in any red states and, if too vituperative, could flip battlegrounds like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania to the GOP.

It’s time for Democrats to face unpleasant facts: Can anyone remember a period when the national party was as impotent, rudderless, and devoid of ideas as today?

In any case, if one read only the Times -— and there is, believe it or not, a sub-species that does just that —- you'd think that unemployment was 20 percent rather than 5.2 percent, the Dow was crashing and toddlers were selling apples on the streets on Manhattan and Chicago.

The implication is that had John Kerry bested Bush last November he'd have canceled all revelry, made a dignified address to the nation, and perhaps invited a few friends and advisers for cupcakes and coffee.

Sometimes the obvious is true: What carried Bush to a second term was the War on Terrorism.

If anything, it would be better for Blair if Brits viewed him as a bloodthirsty hawk in league with Bush. That at least would carry macho kudos. But the favoured satirical representation is of a coiffeured poodle gambolling on the White House lawn.

What the party must not do is turn once more to the Kool Aid pouring cult-leaders on its leftmost fringe. Calling John Ashcroft and George Bush fascists is bad politics in addition to being dim. There is no way for a party led by a contingent of America-haters to win American elections.

"I feel like I'm under occupation!" Eric Kirchberger told the audience. "Whatever they hate: that's what I'm going to be. I'm gonna be a gay married abortionist!"

The parties and their pundits have been thrilled with the vision of a polarized America where candidates offering “a choice, not an echo” divide the country into equally sized competing camps. This makes for good combat, good coverage, and more predictable political math — but for bad political dialogue and a decaying democracy.

The United States of America -- the historic exemplar of adherence to international law -- now kidnaps, assassinates, tortures and disappears combatants and civilians alike, citizens of other nations and, on occasion, our own.

21st Century kids have more to worry about than the media-created hobgoblin named George W. Bush.