With the release of a Canadian Report from the CSIS Americas Program on the future integration of North American Society, called North American Future 2025 , that is the creation of MexiAmeriCanada- I have to say after reading it I am less then impressed by its lack of Pan Americanism. It basically creates a North American Empire that excludes the rest of the hemisphere. If you want integration and a borderless economy that is a fine goal for any one who honestly believes in free markets, but note that it should be the entire hemisphere and come as a result of sovereign republics that believe in the principles of Jeffersonian Democracy or Bolivarian Democracy and there will be less turmoil in doing it. You do not need to create crisis after crisis to bring a hemispheric society together, the OAS can do that through greater and uplifting cycles of mutual development, free markets, trade even with people we have had historical disagreements with, and prosperity for our citizens ens...

If you can spare the time tonight, watch the 2nd part of Frontline series "Bush's War" tonight on PBS (9pm on Ch. 12 WHYY). Or you can watch it online : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/ Part One, aired last night, was a simultaneously riveting and infuriating look at the Bush administration's (e.g. Dick Cheney) and the neo-conservatives' single-minded, utterly-duplicitous, inconceivably-manipulative machinations to plunge this country into the most perilous, costly, fruitless, and entangling foreign misadventure in our history. The bureaucratic-warfare politics and Machiavellian skullduggery laid out by first-hand witnesses from both sides of the issue are a monologue of proof that raw power is far too concentrated in Washington, D.C. and the power in D.C. is far far too concentrated in a unitary chief executive. The temptations of this level of power and the designs of evil men find too easy a nexus....as they did and still continue unabated. ...

If you're not reading Just a Girl in Short Shorts Talking About Whatever on a daily basis like I told you to do, it's your loss. Today's Rocking with Huckabee takes a devastating look at why Mike is the perfect candidate for the new and not-so-adorable Republican Party. In the process, she reminds Republicans of their roots before the social conservatives and neo-con foreign policy interventionists took over. And, being Becky, it's all good, razor-sharp fun: Mike Huckabee is a conservative populist—kind of a happy version of Pat Buchanan. But unlike Pat, the Huck is a big government conservative. And he is honest about it. Huckabee's crunchy conservatism is a lot more appealing to Americans than the nasty populism of the no-more-sunny John Edwards. And all Hillary can do is trot out her aging husband, and try to invoke old memories of pre-9-11 prosperity. And we are comfortable that the preacher will have the federal government overseeing the moral state of the c...