Leaving 2007 with a sigh of relief, I am ready to see a few things forever in the past, never to return again. With my usual optimism, I think this has happened.

Any remaining vestiges of credibility for this administration have disappeared. No longer are we treated to those holdouts from the 2000 campaign, waiting for a return to compassion, to rational economic policy, to respect for the constitution, to law-abiding behavior and the Rule of Law. This may be the end of respectability for the entire GOP, and it has the gloss of rationality that in the past was allowed to rhetoric in support of the right. The lies have totally engulfed the entire right wing.

Naming its people of the year brings out a perverse consideration in other press organs than just Time magazine. In Dallas Morning News choices, number 6 choice is our most famous judge, Sharon Keller of "we close at 5" fame. That is the judge who ended a man's life rather than wait for a computer glitch to be cleared.

Murderous and ruthless, these are qualities like those of Putin, Time's Man of the Year 2007. Whatever floats your boat, I suppose is the standard for the choice.

The U.S. has reached a very low point as revelations daily show how deeply mired the country's government has been in unspeakably immoral behavior. Torture is anathema to the civilized world, yet it has been brought into the fold of this occupied White House.

A public that has grown almost accustomed to the brutalization of this administration has rejected its use of brutish methods, and has turned against it. Some of us liberals are getting weary of the mounting criminal acts, and destruction of our constitution. So when I ran across an extensive interview with Noam Chomsky in Japan Focus, I thought it would be worthwhile to bring it to our attention.

The Dallas Morning News distinguished itself this year by ending its 100 years of support for the death penalty. Sunday, it put forth the argument that a history of color bias indicates the death sentence cannot be maintained. We need to encourage this courageous stand.

This is the border you're paying to fence.

Today we will get that credit crunch "Plan" the occupied white house has been trumpeting about, that will give relief to only those home buyers who can meet and have been meeting scheduled payments on their sub-prime loans, and has been bought into by mortgage financers.

The administration is finally forced to act because it is threatened with actual solutions to the overall problems being offered in Congress. This patch on a bursting industry is being pressured out of an industry that knows it has taken the whole country into highly dangerous territory by its greed and mammoth malfunctions. The small number of loans affected will help to boost that new Gold Standard, 'consumer confidence'. That may save the country from disaster, but as I reported in my post earlier this week, most industry insiders are dubious.

I took the opportunity yesterday of watching seven hours of the Office of Thrift supervision forum on home funding, with four panels and several speakers. The occupied White House couldn't have the news there get out, so it defrauded the public of real reporters by sending them on a wild goose chase.

Secretary of the Treasury Paulson scooped all the real news by announcing his vague plans to get the mortgage servicing industry to commit to freeze rates and bail out the industry.

No Thanksgiving is complete without a turkey.

This is the kind of great news for cancer victims that you hope will break down the walls of a prejudice. Cannabis has been found to have potential for halting the metastases of breast cancer, and has been shown to have that effect in brain cancer.

Anyone else remember that O. Roy Chalk bought the D.C. trolley system in 1955 and tried to promote it, but the D.C. government, WaPo and the Senate District Committee refused to allow that, and replaced it with buses? Picture D.C. today with an electric above ground system instead of those fuming behemoths - of course, now there's the Metro, but it makes occasional stops only - and we might have still had both.

So last night I chanced by PBS's History Detectives, on a review of how the Cleveland, OH trolleys suffered a similar fate. Then watched in horror as the report pointed out that the very political personages who'd worked to let go of the trolley to the gas belch had later been rewarded by GM. Of course, collusion was never proven, but the pattern occurred in one city after another.

Usually I want to bring a little more emphasis on the role we play in adult matters, and national or international affairs. Today I saw something I think needs attention on an inter-personal level.

Maybe mommying isn't for just anyone. I don't think anyone has ever found it easy, but then later you have an adult to talk to without any sort of barriers to get over, if you're lucky.

Sometimes it seems to bring out the worst in us though. And when parents gang up in their kids' rivalries some bizarre and horrible things tend to happen.

A wonderful observation popped up in a WaPo editorial today, and since lately they've been so few and far between, it seems worth notating.

Kucinich's Cheney Impeachment Resolution being read by Clerk of the House, charges of misleading information used to send the country to war on lies.

This is a wonderful day.

The farcical nature of the post-911 attack on 'terrorists' was brought out to me by Ibraham Warde, who appeared on "Foreign Exchange" this week. His account of the pursuit we tend to think of as "following the money" was so engaging, I looked up an account of the activity he had written earlier. It gives a really spectacular overview of our clownish cabal. It also points out that typically, small sums of clean money (not illegally obtained) are used to fund acts of terror

Costs are mounting in areas hit hard by the wave of mortgage failures in ways other than personal loss. Where vacant houses are popping up like fleas, housing values fall, the tax base suffers, and businesses lose sales. BBC.com has an interesting analysis of the situation, and notes that bailing out the lenders will not help the communities that are afflicted.

The picture, entitled "Zoo Poo" from BBC.

It's great when animal people show what chutzpah they have. At the Dallas Zoo, there's a Waste-to-Energy program that is winning awards, and keeping the beasties in light and warmth.

Standing up for a rule of law has brought about confrontation with General Musharraf in Pakistan, but the outbreak of popular revolt against his dictatorship will not end. In Burma/Myanmar, the same kind of military autocracy has met with popular revolts as well.

Here in the U.S., the popular revolt is expressed in increasing revulsion for the dictatorial overthrow of laws written by congressional representatives of the people. The torture of its enemies is administrative misuse of power that is universally rejected by the American people.

Crime is having a field day in the occupied White House in many ways. Business is being given the benefit of a large blind side when prosecution is neglected of crimes against the public.

The author gives a bow to the war criminals' claim that the GWOT is distracting them, but otherwise gives a pretty hard look at failure to control business crimes in "Corporate Fraud", in today's Dallas Morning News.

The proudly self-chosen identification with Darth Vader that Cheney has shown seems to have been upstaged by his junk-yard dog persona last night in Dallas. Threatening Iran with war and Iraq with perpetual war established him once more as the ugly American personified. His appeal is to the lowest element, which he represents inimicably.

It amazes me that there isn't anyone with the acuity to laugh aloud at lines like 'no one will trust America again' if we leave Iraq. As if anyone could trust an America that attacked a country unilaterally on created lies for that purpose.

Please say "Stop It" in the comments here, if you are okay with the commenters over at WaPo showing much better judgment than its editorial writers. Being At One With Torture is okay today with Hiatt, and he's nudging the nomination of Mukasey as Attorney General along.

See, Congress can pass a law against torture (which WaPo theoretically opposes) ... and then of course the occupied White House and its cronies will naturally do their constitutional duty and enforce the law.

Doesn't that sound peachy keen?

The grounds of mental retardation are established as reason for preventing execution because the accused has to have an understanding of his crime. In Texas, a retarded man was supposed to be kept from doing others harm, but a just sentence must take into account humane regard for what is inflicted on a person afflicted with mental incapacity to act in what is considered normal realms.

The way we treat our fellows is how we can judge not just criminals, but those administering our laws. In the state that has executed a man who had more than one grounds to be spared, and in our highest court, there is a lot of disregard for humanity and for life.

Today a member of the legal team that was trying to stave off the execution of Michael Richard, now deceased, has spoken out about the massive failures of humanity that sent Richard to his death.

Personalities are something I generally avoid, but for doing a totally poor job, this appointee has got to rate high as they come. Karen Hughes is finally going to stop trashing the U.S.'s reputation by being its representatives, and applause is called for.

As the croniest of cronies, this woman has embarrassed us abroad very much like the occupier of the White House has embarrassed the country everywhere and for all time.

In a recent post, I told you about a horrible event in the halls of justice in Texas, when a man was executed because an appeal had been refused for being filed minutes late. Today there is action to make sure that doesn't happen again, and to punish the person responsible for the atrocity.

Some stereotypes that I have encountered about our immigrant communities have been proved so wrong that I forget even rational people can hear them so many times that they begin to think they're true. As in the recent debacle about some media stating that al Quaeda was destabilizing Iraq before we made war there, there are statements that take hold and don't get enough attention that poison our minds. It's time to spread the truth.

Today I was glad to see a local columnist take on a piece of fiction that I know isn't true, but which she had been finding people spouting as if it were. The fiction; that illegals are draining our funds.

Two very big events happened today. In Dallas, about an hour ago, a man was released who had served too much time (although any time is too much) for a crime he did not commit.

In Georgia, a man who was sent to prison for oral sex with a minor, while he was a minor himself, was released.