While the first version had some good ideas, there were others that needed to be amended.

Any immigration policy should ensure that we can continue reaping the benefits that immigrants bring to this country. Any immigration policy should reduce illegal immigration to a minimum. And any immigration policy should be able to protect American jobs while giving people outside the country who wish to enter this country the opportunity to come here and live and work.

George Bush, in his weekly radio address, gave one of the whiniest speeches of his career when he pouted that the Democrats were micromanaging the conflict. The whole speech was nothing but the same tired old politics as usual from a President who cannot take no for an answer.

All of this reminds me more and more of a teenager defying his parents. "Johnny, you can't go out with your friends because last time, you were out too late." "NO!" "Johnny, you're 16, but we can still tell you what to do." "MOM, You're so mean!! All you ever do anymore is tell me what to do!!"

As I have talked about before, right-wing political thought is segregation repackaged for modern consumption. It is the merger of Republicanism with the dying segregationist ideology revived under the banned of "Law and Order" and "States Rights."

Since it is no longer acceptable to smear Jews or Blacks in political discourse, the right has turned to groups that are more acceptable to smear, such as Muslims. Smears against Muslims are much more believable than smears against Blacks because of the 911 attacks. This MO is necessary because the political right needs scapegoats to survive, and Islam fits the bill for them.

Hunter wrote one of the most pessimistic diaries that I have seen on Iraq. Basicly, he outlines a grim future for Iraq in which there will be American troops there for a good long time, although the numbers would be greatly reduced from this year's figures.

But this is all about a matter of priorities for this country -- should we be taking care of someone else's problems, or should we be taking care of our own first?

Case in point -- A McClachty investigation found that over 16 million Americans are living in severe poverty.

The right-wingers would love to have you think that it was the markets that gave you all of the advances in technology that we have enjoyed over the last 50 years. But a new report from the Longview Institute completely debunks that notion. In fact, it was government programs and government funding that led to all the advances that make Bill Gates and his people happy.

27 Democratic Congressmen have sent a letter to new Defense Secretary Robert Gates regarding the Pentagon's use of contractors at places like Guantanamo who torture prisoners. The letter was triggered by an FBI finding documenting new instances of torture at Guantanamo.

John McCain is whining about the Warner/Levin amendment that opposes Bush's plan to send more troops to shore up the occupation of Iraq. McCain made his remarks on today's "This Week." With his performance today, along with his vote to abolish the Federal Minimum Wage, he has placed himself out of the mainstream of American political thought and into the political fringe.

All of the media attention was focused on Bush's address to the nation where he continued to justify the occupation of Iraq. But as Guardian writer Alan Wolfe points out, Bush's address the next day to soldiers at Fort Benning is just as significant because of the way in which he blames the American people for the occupation turning into the quagmire that it has.

Given the fact that Harold Ford nearly won in TN, a red state, I suggest that this country is ready for  a Black Vice Presidential candidate. I propose that John Lewis is the best person for this job. This is not merely a matter of him being Black, but a matter of him being well-qualified because of the fact that he was one of the main forces behind the Civil Rights Movement along with Martin Luther King as well as his service in the House as well.

Al Gore has taken his message of the need to stop climate change around the world, starting with Australia and New Zealand. He has been training volunteers to continue to spread the word that we need to work together to stop the accelerating trend of climate change before it is too late and many parts of the world become too hot to live in.

In a classic example of pork barrel politics, the Guardian reports that money that was supposed to go for the overthrow of Castro is instead going for gameboys, luxury items, and chocolates which are them being shipped by Cuban dissidents to relatives over in Cuba.

A scathing congressional audit of democracy-assistance programmes found "questionable expenditure" by several groups funded by Washington in opposition to President Fidel Castro's rule on the communist Caribbean island.

The Miami-based Acción Democrática Cubana spent money on a chainsaw, Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations, mountain bikes, leather coats and Godiva chocolates, which the group says were all sent to Cuba. "These people are going hungry. They never get any chocolate there," Juan Carlos Acosta, the group's executive director, told the Miami Herald.

Since Russ Feingold will not be running for President, I will now be endorsing Al Gore for President for 2008. I am asking anybody who supported Russ Feingold for President to support Al Gore for President so we can restore the rule of law to the White House and restore the system of checks and balances to our Constitutional system.

Like many of us, I was not enthused by Al Gore in 2000. I voted for Nader as a way of pushing the Democratic party to the left and thus creating a Green Revolution. I thought that Bush would not be that bad of a President anyway, as he would be bipartisan and supposedly be above the fray. In the meantime, we could move the party and the country to the left and everybody would be happy.

This year, Joe Lieberman was the main candidate we targeted for primarying out of office. But it is not too early to start thinking about who we can primary out of office for 2008 for acting like a Republican instead of a Democrat. An early candidate for primarying out of office would be Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. Not only did she sign a bill similar to the most regressive anti-abortion bills in the state. In the wake of the post-Katrina disaster, she has engineered the most regressive Republican-style attacks on public education in the country by taking over the New Orleans school system and turning it over to private management.

When discussing the topic of free speech, one of the key schools of thought that we have to deal with is the Biblical Restorationists. These people believe that at one time the country was totally founded on Biblical values that were somehow lost. They sell videos like America's Godly Heritage which provide a variety of quotes from the Founding Fathers which purportedly support the notion that we are somehow a Christian nation founded solely on the principles of the Bible. But even if these quotes are totally accurate and within context, they have not proven their case for a theocratic Christian state.