That's racist, guys. Their faces are painted white.

Also, those tricycles - though an environmentally sound choice - are very insensitive to one-legged Americans, schoolchildren and the UAW (the last thing those poor guys need is MORE competition).

In the future, please try not to resort to ad hominem attacks. New tone, guys, new tone.

MM critiquing anyone's journalism is like a garden slug critiquing poetry.

This is a transparent administration, alright.

Transparently evil.

Sounds like they're playing their favorite song again...

"If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat,
If you get too cold, cold, I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, walk, I'll tax your feet..."

Well put, John. Yes, we know who these people are and yes, we know they are liars, crooks and frauds. We also know that there is a certain, mindless contingent of bottom-feeders who will back them no matter what happens between now and Election Day. We got the "know thine enemy" stuff down pat, but that is meaningless for the fight ahead.

One positive silver lining is that "it's always darkest before the dawn" has plenty of historical precedent. By the winter of 1776, many of those in the Continental Congress thought the revolution was doomed, and were certain that they would soon be hanged.

Sure, things are pretty dark now, and they will no doubt get darker in the days ahead. But that is also the exact reason our ideas and our shared faith in our original principles is spreading like wildfire. It's clear that the enemies of these principles are fighting very scared now, and getting desperate. Now's the time to leave them to their nonsense, and focus on all the good stuff on the horizon: restoring our individual liberties, defanging our vast regulatory system to create jobs and save our flagging economy, bringing real accountability and competition to our education system while putting the power of choice back into the hands of parents, achieving energy independence while creating wealth and putting more money back into the hands of American taxpayers... Turn on the light!

Lee, it sounds to me like the scales are beginning to fall from your eyes. Are you beginning to see the pattern?

Even if you remain a steadfast liberal until the day you die, you are clearly an honorable guy. That goes a long way in most honest, sane people's eyes, no matter their political stripe.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was an honorable liberal. Where has that sort of loyal opposition gone? It feels like they are on the verge of extinction.

Congratulations on the beginning of what sounds like a genuine political journey, Lee. Some of your posts lately have been fascinating... and I'm sure some of the responses to them from the "professional Left" have been equally fascinating for you!

One thing I have found interesting about the BIG sites is that many of us here did not begin our own journeys as small-government conservatives or libertarians, but rather these were conclusions we arrived at as a result of debate, study and observation of the real world... that is, the world and human nature as it is, not the utopias that function only in the imagination of the Left's sophists.

We are also open to debate... even though our ideas are often marginalized, distorted and ridiculed in the traditional mass mediums. That was the entire point of our experiment in liberty, after all: reasoned debate. Not the lockstep, incoherent, presumptuous herd mentality you have run afoul of recently... a fleet of left-wing drones who see beams in everyone's eyes but their own.

Godspeed on your journey. And who knows? Maybe we will even be able to change your mind about a few of your ideas along the way, or vice-versa.

Has Obama tapped him for a cabinet position yet?

The topic of Insurance has to loom large at some point in these negotiations. Sheen is bankable, sure, but is he even remotely insurable any more? Thanks to his winning ways, the guy is topping the charts on death pools, and he looks like he's one or two parties away from "violently torpedoing" into that Big Sitcom in the Sky.

Look, Chairman O may well be a fraud and a cipher when it comes to foreign policy, but castigating him for it misses a much larger point: THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH SHOULD NOT BE DECLARING WAR.

I know, I know... these are not "wars." Since the days of Vietnam, they have been twisted and transmuted by Newspeak into "police actions" and "allied security operations." But that's a bunch of bullcrap!

War powers were designed as the strict domain of Congress, and for very good reasons that I'll assume are too obvious to have to defend on this blog. The founders openly feared that the executive branch might forcibly bestow war powers unto itself someday - which would mean that the cause of liberty was lost, and that we had fallen into monarchy and despotism again.

But what has happened over the course of the past fifty years is way, way worse. The executive didn't "steal" war powers from the rats in the DC legislature... those rats happily ceded it those powers, and with them the accountability for "controversial" votes. Makes it easier for them to sit on their committees like pashas for 30 years, doling out taxpayer money in return for job security and all the perks and privileges of power.

This situation in Libya will soon become a live shooting war, with boots on the ground. Anyone who thinks otherwise has gone full retard. And when that happens, the DC vampires can all point their fat fingers on high, at the dolt in the White House who'll be in charge for six more years at the max (and may well get the boot in two).

When it comes to military action, the executive has far too much power, and the Congress has far too little responsibility. We need to restore the balance of power in this country. Congress should declare wars, and the president should run them - or, in the case of the current buffoon-in-chief, his cabinet can run them while he parties down in Rio.