This is good news…

…from the latest Pew report.



Withdrawal may be a point or two from a majority position, but it's hardly marginal anymore, and the Republican insistence that it is, that half of Americans are somehow un-American, only demonstrates the radicalism that the GOP has succumbed to.

Bush will end his war as Nixon ended his, because we will make him.

On the other hand, this isn't.



The almost casual acceptance of the notion that 'they're all crooks' is one of the greatest dangers to the political health of our nation. Citizens must demand better government, and we must make them know that Democrats stand ready to deliver better government.

It won't take a new round of legislation, though that will doubtless come in cascades. The kind of wholesale bribery and extortion that has been a matter of policy for the Republican caucus is against the current rules and a variety of criminal statutes.

But it's simply not true that they all do it. Most don't. Most folks who go from wherever to Washington, DC are decent people with a genuine desire to serve the folks at home well. Unfortunately for the honest Republican members, they were simultaneously elected into a criminal enterprise, and are tainted by virtue of their acceptance of their leader's corruption as commonplace.

'They're all crooks' is a Republican argument because, well, to one degree or another, by act or association, they are all crooks. It's the world that sustains them, the only world they know.

We must demand a better government, one in which bribery and extortion are considered crimes, not strategy. Democrats, too, have had their scandals and scoundrels, but have never institutionalized criminal conduct to the degree that was achieved by the Gingrich and DeLay machines in the House of Representatives.

America can do better. It's easy. It's kindergarten ethics. Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't cheat.

But it's going to take the Democrats to do it.