reagan, former gov. of california, bequeathed the nation an additional 4 trillion in national debt, during his two terms. bush senior was in congress, and director of the cia, before becoming v.p. under reagan. he continued reagan's practice of arming & supporting saddam. this led saddam to assume we'd do nothing, when he invaded kuwait. after all, we did nothing, in 1988, when he gassed the kurds in his country. seems like a reasonable assumption to me.

unlike the current bush, both clintons have achieved by merit, neither came from the level of wealth that bush came from. where ms. noonan gets her "royalty" bit from, with respect to the clintons, is a mystery.

in fact, i would take anything ms. noonan says with a huge sack of salt, since she herself is a former hack speechwriter for bush sr. and reagan.

with respect to the current crop of republican candidates, i salivate at the prospect of any of them being nominated, since all of them are losers.

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.
...
a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr Venter, led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.

The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life, removing a fifth of its genetic make-up. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, which the team have christened Mycoplasma laboratorium, has been watermarked with inks for easy recognition.

It is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of the process it is expected to take control of the cell and in effect become a new life form.

The idea of America being run by two families for two decades is anathema to such conservatives, as it is to many liberals. There is something inherently corrupting about it - not just corrupting of them, but corrupting of us. The experience of such power - presiding over the most powerful nation in modern history - cannot but corrupt; and our decision to delegate real decisions to various royal families while boning up on the latest news from Britney Spears is a sign of real decadence. In a war this dangerous, it's positively reckless, especially given the vast new neo-monarchical powers this administration has seized and will, in large part, bequeath to the next president. We have learned how one such succession has worked out. We should be extremely leery of another, especially since so many in the Washington establishment have already decided that this race is over, and it is now the voters' job to crown the next-in-line for the throne.

The Trance

Mr. Obama often seems to be thinking when he speaks, too, and this comes somehow as a relief, in comparison, say, to Hillary Clinton and President Bush, both of whom often seem to be trying to remember the answer they'd agreed upon with staff.

Has the Democratic Party noticed it actually has some impressive candidates? They should not be written off, and when you think about it, it's weird that they're being written off. Joe Biden used to seem mildly giddy, vain but in a small way, not a big and interesting way. (Big is LBJ: Ah will impose mah will. Small: Where's my hair-sculpting gel?) But it has been 35 years since he became a figure in Washington, and in the past few years in particular he has been ahead of his peers on Iraq--ahead with warnings, ahead with tripartite thinking, ahead with a seriousness and sobriety about the fix we're in. He is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he's been reading daily threat reports for a long time. He is impressive. Why don't the Democrats notice?

Chris Dodd is the head of the Senate Banking Committee, and nothing if not sophisticated. In the post-9/11 world, sophisticated is not so bad. He's been in the Senate 27 years. In earlier years his thinking on government, his assumptions about what can and should be expected of it, veered from the utopian to the world-weary, and were sometimes both at once. But if you listen to him and watch him in debate, you might legitimately conclude this is a candidate who understands how it all works and what time it is. He's one of the grown-ups.

if you keep track of your stuff throughout the year, you don't need a 6 month extension, to file your return. you also should be able to cut down on the stress of getting it all together at one time.