"some reporter on staff"   and since he's not ON staff anymore, Doug, it's ok to read the Times again, huh?

Don Meixner said: " I think we'll be under the Republican thumb for several years to come and losing civilrights every step of the way. ..and I suspect he is right. In a post in another thread I made a point that Democrats and Republicans operate not only from different political philosophies, but also from different moral attitudes about what is fair/expedient/legal to do to GET and KEEP power.

.......The point being, whether you like or DON'T like the detailed results of a Democratic administration, you don't find your basic personal freedoms and abilty to be heard being eaten away under them.

You may or may not pay higher taxes under Democrats and some of them do have trouble keeping their pants zipped, but you won't find the current type of blatent **attempts** to sabotage the other party and to crank up a propaganda machine worthy of foreign dictators!

Nixon tried to do it himself, Reagan had advisors doing most of the thinking...but Bush takes it a step further and is fully aware of what Rove, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others are doing, even if they are the brains behind it all.

Now, having just sounded like doomsayer, I hasten to add that I am fairly confident that the mechanisms built into the US constitution can probably prevent any 'takeover' and I do NOT foresee a Bush 'dynasty' or dictatorship....but I am aghast at the trends and terribly afraid of what the landscape will look like in 5-6 years if Bush is re-elected.

I'm afraid that "smoke and mirrors" DO fool all too many.