[T]he strike is inherently dangerous to the rich, and to the corporations who have brought this country to her knees, because it is the only defense the ordinary citizen has.

Matt Millen, you draft a wide receiver every year. HOW DARE YOU SIR, HOW DARE YOU!

A bully is fighting out of a need to dominate. And is usually unwilling to take the consequences.

Anything that prevents you from taking an action or actions that might reasonably dispel legitimate anxieties. Fear is what paralyzes you.

Once the Republicans get rolling, they assume they're going to win everything. They are zealots, and zealots assume the last five percent of whatever their plan is will be taken care of by their own greatness or momentum or divinity.

The key to terror, the key to terrorism, is not the act - but the fear of the act. That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotaped statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings. But why is the Republican Party imitating them? Bin Laden puts out what amounts to a commercial of fear; The Republicans put out what is unmistakable as a commercial of fear. The Republicans are paying to have the messages of bin Laden and the others broadcast into your home.

What, on the eternal list of priorities, precedes health? What more obvious role could government have than the defense of the life, of each citizen? We cannot stop every germ that seeks to harm us any more than we can stop every person who seeks to harm us. But we can try dammit and government's essential role in that effort facilitate it, reduce its cost, broaden its availability, improve my health and yours, seems, ultimately, self-explanatory.