I apologize for getting a little crazy whenever I hear your voice on the radio. I don't know if it's possible to develop an aural allergy - especially this late in life - but I think that might be what's at play. When I hear your tone when you articulate certain words - "terror" and "nuclear," to name two - a temporary form of Tourette's syndrome seems to kick in, and I find myself cursing at the top of my lungs, even when I'm alone in my car. For fear of having my response mistaken for road rage, I immediately switch to another station. I'm sorry.

Being a realist, I'm happy to accept that a candidate I do support is never going to go along with all of my positions. On the question of marriage, for example. Since at least 50 percent of all marriages between a man and a woman end in divorce in this country, my belief is that the best way to preserve the institution is to have a constitutional amendment banning heterosexuals from marrying. However, I don't expect any of the current crop of presidential hopefuls to stand up for it, and I'm OK with that.

January: After paying five billion dollars for The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch will reduce the size of the paper by removing the facts.

As we close this year on the low of Congress giving Bush more billions for war, and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, let’s remember some of the year’s gains that can revive our spirits for the New Year. Here are just ten.

2007 witnessed the apotheosis of the progressive trend in both features and documentaries, as 1000 filmic flowers bloomed. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, ticket buyers often overlooked many of these pro-people, anti-establishment films. In order to highlight this movie movement, and to draw attention – and audiences – to them, the "Progressive Picture Prizes" is being launched. The "Progies" shine a light on films in a number of categories, honoring them for their achievement in crafting consciousness and conscience into content for a mass communications medium.

My picks for the biggest assholes of 2007

Congress is perched to enact the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 20007 (Act)," probably the greatest assault on free speech and association in the United States since the 1938 creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman, California Democrat, the bill passed the House of Representatives on Oct. 23 by a 404-6 vote under a rule suspension that curtailed debate. To borrow from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, the First Amendment should not distract Congress from doing important business. The Senate companion bill (S. 1959), sponsored by Susan Collins, Maine Republican, has encountered little opposition. Especially in an election year, senators crave every opportunity to appear tough on terrorism. Few if any care about or understand either freedom of expression or the Thought Police dangers of S. 1959. Former President John Quincy Adams presciently lamented: "Democracy has no forefathers, it looks to no posterity, it is swallowed up in the present and thinks of nothing but itself."

Denuded of euphemisms and code words, the Act aims to identify and stigmatize persons and groups who hold thoughts the government decrees correlate with homegrown terrorism, for example, opposition to the Patriot Act or the suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is signaling that a second Clinton presidency will follow the look-to-the-future, don’t-worry-about-accountability approach toward Republican wrongdoing that marked Bill Clinton’s years in office.

I know Kucinich supporters don't like Hillary Clinton. When I write about her, they respond, again and again. "She's a bought and paid corporatist." "She backed the Iraq war from the beginning." "She supported the regressive bankruptcy bill." In fact, many say, "If she's nominated I'm staying home." Or. "If Hillary gets the nomination, I'll change my registration to Independent and vote third party."

Republicans are on a hysterical search for a candidate they can seriously call their own amid a field of bores (Thompson), stay-the-course warmongers (McCain, Giuliani) flip-flopping liars (Romney, Giuliani), 9/11 necrophiliacs (McCain, Giuliani) and reconstructed thugs (Giuliani, Giuliani). So they have seized on Mike Huckabee, who himself seized on a kind of manufactured oh-shucks sincerity as the most opportune seduction routine since Ronald Reagan’s genial head-cock (and look where that got us). The current narrative has it that Huckabee’s neotaliban view of the world (“My faith doesn’t influence my decisions, it drives them…. I don't separate my faith from my personal and professional lives,” “I support and have always supported passage of a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman,” “I consistently opposed banning assault weapons and opposed the Brady Bill”) doesn’t matter because at least he’s sincere. He wears his faith on his sleeve, as if that somehow absolves him of nurturing a theocratic corporatism up his sleeve. Sooner or later the reality of Huckabee as a kind of reactionary that would make even Antonin Scalia think twice about voting for him will, one hopes, emerge. It’s beginning to.

In Iowa, the Christian Right is backing a preacher. Iowins, and other Americans of the Christian Right, should take a little time out from Bible thumping and attempt an understanding of why church and state should be mutually exclusive. James Madison, often referred to as The Father of the Constitution said, "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

But Iowins are backward, ignorant and dadgum proud of it.

Voting for Mike Huckabee is voting against all that America was founded on. Your right to believe in the choice of faith you want or to ignore faith entirely. Huckabee is hoping that many people will take their faith to the poll and elect him as America’s beacon of light back to Christ but I personally do not believe Jesus ever wanted a political office that proposed hate or judgment on anyone he loved. All you non-believers included.

Our nation and the foundation it was built on will stand strong when we have a President that believes that his or her faith can not come first when governing. We are a house built with many products called faith and the roof needs to be replaced. Mike Huckabee is not Jesus Christ, I know Jesus Christ Sir. And you Sir are no Jesus Christ.