Amid countless inanities in this week's "Real Time with Bill Maher," including gross misrepresentations by the host and perennial guest Andrew Sullivan about what's at stake with the FISA legislation, was a statement by slimeball pollster Frank Luntz that would have been career suicide... if it had been uttered by a progressive.

Chapter 1. Shrubsville

A pack of sleep dogs stretch and yawn lazily under a stand of tower Oak trees as the little commute train steams out of the Shrubsville station. Spring is here. The beauty Magnolias and Azaleas are just beginning to bloom. The passengers look out of the dirt windows as clouds of brick-red dust blow across the fresh-plow fields. Red Gibson, the engineer, peers out from under the bill of his stripe cap as the train moves slowly down the wind track in the direction of Shooterville. Red is a very tradition man. He remembers the glory days of the Republic Party—the Ronald Reagan days and the Contract-With-America days-- when the Democrat Party knew its place in the scheme of things. “We’ve come a long ways from Doleton and Gingrichburg,” he says to his crust old brakeman. “Imagine the gall of this new Democrat Majority—thinking they have the right to question the Decider on matters of nation security.”