Barack Obama — whom we are told is performing a transcendent miracle by "changing the very nature of politics" — doesn't believe in law, or justice, or the republic; he won't fight for them, he won't stand up for them. Neither will Hillary Clinton. Neither will John McCain. Like all of our "leaders," they will talk of such things; they will extol law and justice and the Constitution in the loftiest terms. But when it's time to lay it on the line, to put their professed beliefs into action — they fold. They shift. They dissemble. When they are confronted with overwhelming evidence of high crimes by the president and his henchmen, they "take impeachment off the table." For as Obama says, impeachment should be reserved for "exceptional circumstances." And outright violations of United States law against torture and murder are not, in Obama's eyes, exceptional circumstances.

This is why I don't take the presidential election seriously. None of the candidates believe in or support the constitutional republic that I believe in. They are vying for the leadership of a different country altogether; or rather, they are fighting, like vicious weasels in a cage, to gain temporary ascendancy over a savage and monstrous power system imposed on the country — a system unconcerned with democracy or the common good, and rigged to serve a rapacious elite.

Even a creative Hollywood producer couldn't have conjured up a film in which Bill and Hillary Clinton would pursue the tactics of personal destruction against a Democrat in full-throated alliance with the vast right-wing conspiracy!

Wonder why Clinton confidant Terry McAuliffe sings the praises of Fox News with the hilarious compliment that they are the most fair of the cable networks? Wonder why Hillary goes on Bill O'Reilly's show confident O'Reilly will further the demonization attack against Barack Obama? Three guesses why Hillary's great new friend and ally is none other than right-wing mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, a founding leader of the vast right-wing conspiracy against the Clintons?

Let's have a round of applause for Hillary's new get-out-the-vote-for-Hillary champion, Rush Limbaugh!

Of all the strange features of this presidential race, the tarnishing of Barack Obama has got to be the most ridiculous. First Obama was accused of anti-religious elitism. Then he was accused of identifying with the underclass anger of his spiritual mentor. Excuse me, but which is it? Am I supposed to believe that Obama is a supercilious elitist or a menacing ghetto radical? Is he contemptuous of religion or too close to a religious leader? Obama's critics don't bother to say. Meanwhile, real character issues go relatively unheeded.

Bored by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.

While Sen. Obama has to explain what he knew and when he knew it about Wright’s angry sermons, the Bush Family floats above its financial and political associations with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean theocrat who had denounced the United States as “Satan’s harvest” and likened American women to “prostitutes.”

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering, Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins.

But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee’s delusions or thinks AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right.

After 9/11, Jerry Falwell said the attack was God’s judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

"I am proposing a gas-bag holiday," Sen. Obama told a capacity crowd in Indianapolis. "Under my plan, all gas-bags would go on vacation until the second week of November."

But within minutes of floating the idea of the gas-bag holiday, Sen. Obama came under fire from several prominent gas-bags, including MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

Scalia says torture is legal, because it isn't punishment. If only you were a fascist too, then you could understand his argument.