How many of these incidents will it take before America realizes that the family values crowd is a big, fat fraud? They are a batch of moralizing molesters, pious pervs, closeted creeps and values voyeurs. It is time the right just closes shop and stops pointing fingers - because we have no idea where those sticky fingers have been.

Hypocrisy or self-delusion is accepted on the right. Indeed it is practically the engine of the conservative politics that still governs America, and the particular breed of western politics that brought us Larry Craig.

Let's cut through the crap. The real reason why the GOP distanced itself so rapidly from Sen. Larry Craig is because they'd be uncomfortable while taking a leak next to him at the urinal.

It really is hypocritical, because the Republicans, for nearly three decades now, have been out to screw every man, woman and child in America who doesn't have a seven-figure bank account.

If a right-wing blogger asserts that open criticism of the Iraqi war is treasonous, and that therefore Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and Democrats in general are a bunch of traitors who deserve to be rounded up, put on trial for treason, and shot, the reaction from other right-wingers is likely to be kudos to the writer for putting it all so succinctly and wittily.

If however, a liberal blogger points out that making open criticism of the Iraqi war treasonous would result in Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, and many, many Democrats, including the liberal and the liberal’s family, being hauled off for execution, many of those same right-wingers will scornfully denounce liberal “paranoia.”

The reactions don’t logically scan until you realize that the right-wingers in question are not actually objecting because they believe that what the liberal says is untrue and therefore “paranoid.” They are objecting because the liberal has made rounding up American dissidents, putting them on trial for treason and shooting them sound like a bad thing.

We should end foreign aid, abolish the CIA and withdraw from all international organizations, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Americans would be astounded at how much money they could save if we shucked the empire, and pretty soon they would be amazed at how much the rest of the world actually liked us once we quit interfering in their lives.

I am, of course, indulging in wishful thinking. The empire is very profitable for an elite few. Every foreigner with his hand in our treasury has hired lobbyists and public-relations firms to make sure it stays there. On the whole, Congress is gutless and, to a large extent, brainless. Some members are outright crooks, and others have oiled the zippers on their trousers. They are in love with the sound of their own voices. Most are contemptuous of the voters, confident they can dupe enough of them for a slim majority at the next election.

Presidential Candidate Mike Gravel comments on the similarities between Iraq and Vietnam, and his experience with both.