» So that’s how George W. Bush won the presidency. We’ve always wondered.

» Even the U.S. Supreme Court believes in global warming, and says the Environmental Protection Agency should, well, protect the environment. Of course, our good friends at the Review-Journal editorial page join the dissenters.

Speaking of the dissenters, the high court decided this one only by a bare, one-vote majority. This underscores the importance of preventing Bush from appointing even one more justice during his lame-duck term. Howard Jones was wrong, people. Things can always get worse!

» The more things change, the more they don’t change at all. A new book reveals Republicans have always been liars willing to send men to their deaths in conflicts they knew in their black, merciless hearts were doomed. If that doesn’t make you want to believe in God — because of the whole ultimate, final justice thing — we’ve got nothing for you. Read more on the website of Vanity Fair magazine, where the book is excerpted.

» Speaking of believing in God, this is pretty odd: While one Christian right candidate lags in fundraising (that would be U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, a former roomie of our very own John Ensign), another excels (that would be former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney). And of the two, Romney is the one who’s flip-flopped on the central moral questions of our day. Hmmmm.

Could it be the religious right doesn’t have any more money because it gave it all to Pat "Kill Hugo Chavez" Robertson? Or because the Christian right has finally decided to stop being used as pawns by the hypocrites who call them names behind closed doors? (Nah, that can’t be it. Those rightists love to be patronized, and, after all, are accustomed to having faith.)

Why is poor Brownback (total raised for quarter, $1.9 million) lagging and tap-dancing Romney (total raised for quarter, $23 million!) surging? Well, Romney does have his venture capitalist roots, after all.

Hey, you don’t think he cut some kind of deal, do you?

» You mean to tell us that, when your revenues are down, it’s not a good time to put more money in the hands of business? Those Assembly Democrats and their hidebound adherence to reality.

» What the hell has happened to former U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt? He was cool back in the day, but he’s a tool of the capitalists these days, in their unending quest to privatize every sphere of public life and property in America. Kudos, by the way, to Sun writer Joe Schoenmann, who correctly identified "tolls" as another word for "regressive tax." And didn’t Gov. Jim Gibbons pledge to not raise taxes? It’s just so sad when you can’t trust people anymore, you know?