Everything's gone to Vegas, Rosemary. But I think the viscious talk is part a bigger problem with the public: total lack of respect for each other. I disagree with President Bush on alot of issues, but why does he have to die for it? Alot of these "kill" folks need to see how death really looks like and smells like. Not from afar. But up close and personal. Let's see how quick you jump on the "kill" bandwagon then.

Indeed. The exponents of universal unconditional "love" are the worst haters of all, and the worst hypocrites. I'd better mention that if you threaten to kill the President, you should expect a visit from some of his Secret Service men. It's against the law.

I must note, however, that Ted Rall is actually on record as supporting the Second Amendment, at least until the revolution. That's the only thing I like about him at all, however. Dan Perkins, a.k.a., Tom Tomorrow, is a better Left-Wing cartoonist. I used to read him only 3 years ago.

Ted Rall, Ward Eichmann, and their ilk lost the election. George W. Bush is still President, both the House and the Senate are predominantly Republican now, as is the Supreme Court, this Rehnquist Court. It is not Ted Rall who makes or interprets the laws in America, not has he any command over our armed forces. Nor has he any influence within the most powerful institution of all, i.e., religion, which is where we, even atheists, derive our primary view of our origin, meaning, and destiny, our ultimate values. Religion is the most powerful force in history.

Speaking of religion, Arnold Harris often likes to tell an interesting story when names like Ted Rall, Lord Pork Pork, Ward Eichmann, and the like come up. The story he tells is this:

Thousands of years ago, way out in a desert in the Sinai Peninsula, there existed a tribe known as Amalek. Nobody living today would have ever heard of Amalek except for one big mistake they made: They attacked the Chosen People, they attacked the Children of Israel who were leaving Egypt and on their way to the land promised to Moses. They set upon them and slaughtered many of them. There was a bitter war between the two tribes, but in the end the Hebrews won. The Hebrews, who later became the Jews, never forgot and and never forgave that barbaric attack during their formative years. They not only wrote about it in their Scriptures, but, every Sabbath, Orthodox rabbis recite the Scriptures pertaining to Amalek. They curse the name of Amalek, which they have come to associate also with all of their persecutors from Haman to Hitler, and they pray that the hated memory of Amalek be blotted out from the minds of all men forever. They pray that, and yet the irony is, as Arnold Harris points out, the only thing that keeps the memory of Amalek alive at all in anybody's mind is those very samerabbis preaching against them every Sabbath.