The rise of Mike Huckabee as a presidential candidate represents a seismic shift in the tactics, ideology and direction of the radical Christian right. Huckabee may stumble and falter in later primaries, but his right-wing Christian populism is here to stay. Huckabee represents a new and potent force in American politics, and the neocons and corporate elite, who once viewed the yahoos of the Christian right as the useful idiots, are now confronted with the fact that they themselves are the ones who have been taken for a ride. Members of the Christian right, recruited into the Republican Party and manipulated to vote against their own interests around the issues of abortion and family values, are in rebellion. They are taking the party into new, uncharted territory. And they presage, especially with looming economic turmoil, the rise of a mass movement that could demolish what is left of American democracy and set the stage for a Christian fascism.

The very characteristics that made Giuliani (for his first term) such a popular and effective mayor render him spectacularly unfit to be president. In many senses, the city that Giuliani inherited in 1993, languishing in chaos and craving order, is the antithesis of the United States of 2008, plagued by previously unthinkable abuses of executive power.

New York City in the mid-1990s presented an authoritarian mayor with the ultimate challenge: impose order on a city that was widely assumed to be ungovernable. But America in 2008 presents an authoritarian president with the ultimate fantasy: the ability to wield more power than any other human being in the world, with the fewest real limits in modern American history.

There is too a difference between the two major parties. Republicans want us to spend, die and lose in Iraq. Democrats want us to spend, die and lose in Afghanistan.

There's a difference between the two major wars, too. Afghanistan is even less justifiable than Iraq. It's also less winnable.

The White House, one of the most historic structures in the nation’s capital, burnt to the ground today after Vice President Dick Cheney attempted to incinerate a cache of CIA interrogation tapes in his office.

Oh, those crazy liberals with their conspiracy theories! Now they've wondering whether the fire in Cheney's office was deliberately set in order to burn incriminating records. They obviously don't understand either digital technology or the nature of evil. For one thing, Cheney's staff has been shredding paper documents for months. They don't need to destroy them in such a conspicuous way.

There's a much more innocent explanation for the Cheney fire, and all I'm going to say is ... See, kids! That's why I won't let you conduct Satanic rituals in the basement. Oh, sure. Recite a harmless prayer to Asmodai, draw a harmless Pentangle on the floor in chalk ... then somebody trips over a candle, and next thing you know Smokey the Bear is wrestling Old Scratch to keep the rec room paneling from going up in flames.

So, in all probability, they were just doing their usual heat-the-sacrificial-blood-with-candle-wax routine at the weekly staff meeting when the candelabra tipped over. These things happen. No need to get all conspiratorial about it.