Can there be any doubt that if the White House finds out who leaked the story of its illegal spying, fierce retribution will follow? Another way of asking that question is: Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?

Talk of censure and impeachment has begun swirling around President Bush. Can Vice President Cheney come to the rescue? He will do so if enough of Bush's opponents adopt the position of this Philadelphia Daily News op-ed writer -- the position that impeaching Bush would be a mistake, since Cheney is worse than Bush.

I channel my cats. I really do. I know what they’re thinking and I simply translate these impressions into humanese. My three-year-old tabby, Atticus Bach, likes to watch television with me, suffers through my morbid CNN addiction, and forms his own opinions.

Congressman John Conyers has introduced a bill to censure Bush, another to censure Cheney, and a third to create a select committee to investigate and make recommendations on grounds for possible impeachment. The reaction I'm hearing seems to be three-quarters enthusiasm and one-quarter concern that censuring Bush and Cheney will hurt the chances of impeaching them.

This past week, Bush admitted to giving a 2002 order to the National Security Agency (NSA), a super-secret, subsidiary of the Pentagon believed to be even larger than the CIA, to spy on Americans by wiretapping international phone calls and reading e-mails without warrants.

ow it is common knowledge that there are secret courts, detention programs, searches, seizures and wiretappings of U.S. citizens without warrant based on what are essentially secret determinations of probable cause, meaning that evidence about their connection to terrorism or their involvement with any group deemed an "aid international terrorism" is kept secret.

On an unusually warm day in late October, I found myself lying face-up, on a comfortable stretch of grass, between two old, flaking tombstones, in Halifax’s oldest graveyard, St. Paul’s Cemetery.

It's one thing to say the emperor has no clothes. It is another thing to say that the emperor has no mind or thinks that we have no mind. George Bush is on the hustings defending the occupation of Iraq. And George Bush is determined to prove that George Santayana was wrong when he said (a paraphrase) that those who learn nothing from history are condemned to repeat it.

Clearly Stanley Williams is not an appropriate candidate for the death penalty.  His trial was riddled with extraordinary constitutional violations.  Additionally Williams has reformed in prison and can serve as an asset to society while serving a term of life in prison without possibility of parole.

Dear Mrs. Bush: I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

On Tuesday in New York, Jonathan Tasini will announce the launch of his campaign for United States Senate, challenging Hilary Clinton in the Democratic primary. 

In the 1930's, when I was but a child, my aunt was married to a travelling evangelist who presided over camp meetings and she was very proud of his work. She loved telling me of his "miracles" of healing, saving souls, and casting out demons.

The Bush administration is using the IRS in an apparent attempt to punish its critics and reward its friends. President Bush has proven himself a friend of some religious organizations, generously doling out billions of US taxpayer dollars to them each year in violation of the Constitutional injunction against doing so.

No one has ever confused George Bush with an intelligent man. What he has always been though is charming, folksy, if you believe the corporate press that is paid to make him look good. This charm was enough to fool America for five years now.

As I see it, TV has gotten, all things considered, worse politically in recent years. The cable stations are all pretty rightwing, not just Fox News but also the others that specialize in news and current affairs, at least in comparison to the networks.

We can all forget about God blessing America. No God would bless such a narcissistic nation. It's time to dispense with our deluded and romanticized notions of America standing for truth, justice, or the rule of law. We subvert such principles whenever it suits us.

In a wise and fortunate society, ruthless and amoral forces are kept out of power—blocked by effective constitutional checks backed up by the society’s “moral capital” endowing its elites with a genuine love of the greater good.

Right-wing psychologist, author and media personality Dr. James Dobson and his national organization, Focus on the Family, have risen in recent decades from obscurity to national prominence. Dobson and his followers now seem poised to wield the degree of national political clout once enjoyed by Jerry Falwell and his “Moral Majority.”

During the middle of the day on Friday, I spent an hour or two on a conference call with activists and congressional staffers discussing next steps to end the war.  We planned, among other things, to organize support for Congressman John Murtha's bill, H.J.Res. 73, which he introduced on Friday.

On a cloudless November morning, I stroll lazily along the sidewalk listening to an old Joni Mitchell tune, Big Yellow Taxi. And while Joni sings the refrain, it occurs to me that her words provide an apt epitaph for the end of Grim King George’s reign: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve gone till it's gone. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”