AUSTIN, Texas -- The Lord Impersonator is back again. This fella reappears every couple of years and causes no end of trouble. The jokester goes around persuading feeble-minded persons he is the Lord Almighty and that they are to do or say some perfectly idiotic thing under his instructions.

One of the worst cases we've had in Texas was the time the Lord Impersonator convinced 20 people in Floydada to git nekked, get into a GTO and drive to Vinton, La., where they ran into a tree. Seein' 20 nekkid people, including five children, come out of a GTO startled the Vinton cops. The nekkid citizens all said God told them to do it.

Quite a few people have been mishearing the Lord lately. The Rev. Pat Robertson thinks the Lord told the people of Dover, Pa., they shouldn't ask for His help anymore because they elected a school board Robertson doesn't like. And Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana said right after Hurricane Katrina that "we finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did it."

"What's more moderate than exploring the truth?  Is there really partisanship in truth?...We don't need to be afraid to use the word impeachment.  It is the process that was set up.  It's not a bad word.  It stands for accountability.  It is the system of justice in our political system…There's nothing radical in that." -- TONY TRUPIANO

While no congressional incumbent has yet introduced articles of impeachment or a resolution of inquiry into grounds for impeachment of Bush and Cheney, numerous 2006 candidates are committed to doing so.  I know because they're contacting ImpeachPAC, a political action committee I work for which was recently created to support pro-impeachment candidates.

Today ImpeachPAC announced its first endorsement, that of Tony Trupiano, Democratic candidate for Congress in Michigan's 11th District.  Tony has already been endorsed by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and by the Michigan Teamsters Union Joint Council 43.  He'll be challenging Republican incumbent Thaddeus McCotter, a pro-Bush, pro-war, pro-wealth Republican who seems to spend much of his time on such substantive matters as "defending the Pledge of Allegiance."

Bob Woodward probably hoped that the long holiday weekend would break the momentum of an uproar that suddenly confronted him midway through November. But three days after Thanksgiving, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” a question about the famed Washington Post reporter provoked anything but the customary adulation.

“I think none of us can really understand Bob’s silence for two years about his own role in the case,” longtime Post journalist David Broder told viewers. “He’s explained it by saying he did not want to become involved and did not want to face a subpoena, but he left his editor, our editor, blind-sided for two years and he went out and talked disparagingly about the significance of the investigation without disclosing his role in it. Those are hard things to reconcile.”

An icon of the media establishment, Broder is accustomed to making excuses for deceptive machinations by the White House and other centers of power in Washington. His televised rebuke of Woodward on Nov. 27 does not augur well for current efforts to salvage Woodward’s reputation as a trustworthy journalist.