As with almost every significant aspect of the Bush presidency, its handling of 9/11 was a catastrophe from start to finish.

The war on terrorism was a bait and switch operation.

Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin's 'Courant,' it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America's last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive.

Americans continue to suffer from a notoriously short attention span. They get mad as hell with reasonable frequency, but quickly return to their families and sitcoms. Meanwhile, the corporate lobbies stay right where they are, outlasting all the populist hysteria.

Fox News is nothing if not impressive. No matter how harsh the criticism it endures, the network somehow always manages to prove itself even worse than we had previously imagined.

American journalists tend to treat inequality as a fact of life. But it needn't be.

As with almost every significant aspect of the Bush presidency, its handling of 9/11 was a catastrophe from start to finish.