AUSTIN, Texas -- As those silver-tongued poets at the Pentagon put it, we are in a target-rich environment. One cannot -- honestly, one simply cannot -- pass up the Brownie memos.

The e-mails sent to and from "Heckuva Job" Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during and after Hurricane Katrina, are too absurd, too please-tell-me-they-made-this-up awful. As Katrina sent a 30-foot wall of water toward Mississippi, Brownie, steeped in disaster relief work at his former job with the International Arabian Horse Association, asked a top aide the burning question: "Tie or not for tonight? Button-down blue shirt?"

Fashion was quite the FEMA priority under Brownie. On the day Katrina hit, his press secretary wrote of his appearance on television: "My eyes must certainly be deceiving me. You look fabulous -- and I'm not talking the makeup." Brownie replied: "I got it at Nordstroms. ... Are you proud of me?"

An hour later, he added: "If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god."

Apparently the new "ethics refresher course" at the White House is going to focus on reminding White House staff that classified information is not supposed to be told to reporters. 

Ethics Part 2, to be taught in the Spring, will delve into the appropriateness of endangering the life of a woman and her colleagues because you're pissed off at her husband. 

Those who opt for Graduate Level ethics refreshment will study the question of whether anger is justifiable if the object of that anger is guilty only of exposing you as a fraud and a liar. 

And PhD candidates will be required to address the eternal enigma involved in the question: Is it morally good to aggressively attack another nation if you tell a bunch of lies about it first? 

Students will be required to pay all library fines and parking tickets and hand in completed applications for presidential pardons prior to graduation.  There will be an extra charge to have Ashcroft pour vegetable oil on you.

Seriously, who in the hell are they kidding?  Themselves? 

Billy Joel was on to something when he sang "Only the Good Die Young." Here in America, our government does not jail its dissidents; it launches programs like COINTELPRO to pursue them (with reckless disregard for the law), and to covertly engineer their assassinations. Fred Hampton, Martin Luther King, the Kennedy brothers, and Malcolm X are but a few of "the Good" who dared to challenge the wealthy US ruling elite’s malevolent domination over the poor, minorities and working class. In the "land of the free", your right to dissent (and to live) ends when you begin posing a serious threat to those who truly wield the power.

Dear Editor,

I couldn't believe my ears. Was someone actually standing up and saying, "Let's get to the bottom of this? I had to write to this senator, who is the democratic minority leader, that decided enough was enough. So here was the letter I wrote and sent to him. Who knows, maybe I'll get more than a form letter response.

Dear Senator Harry Reid,

Kudos to you and all your constituents for finally challenging this ‘regime’ (who is entirely unchecked and out of control) about the manipulated intelli gence which duped the American public—and the Congress—into a reason for war. With everything that we now know or have suspected, it’s inconceivable that something so heinous isn’t being thoroughly investigated. By investigated I mean who leaked what to who and why, not indictments handed down for obstruction of justice and perjury during an investigation (which still begs and doesn’t answer the same question). The now current count of over 2,000—and counting—of american soldier deaths and the thousands more deaths of Iraqi soldiers and mostly civilian women and children, shows the magnitude of this crime—not to

The problem is worldwide. From the Ukraine to the United States, many voters no longer believe that their votes are counted correctly. And that's regardless of whether paper ballots or voting machines are used. The problem is the "secret" ballot.

Secret ballots are anonymous ballots. They can be easily replaced, altered or destroyed, particularly if voting machines are used. Even if voters 'verify' their ballots and even if audits are performed, widespread vote tampering can still occur with relative ease and little risk of discovery because there still remains no effective method to 'certify' the authenticity of ballots, no way to identify an individual ballot and link it to an individual voter.

With few exceptions, election officials around the world are certifying election results based on anonymous and untraceable ballots. And contrary to a growing legion of election statisticians, exit polls are not an adequate check on election results. It's ridiculous when you think about it, using anonymous exit polls to verify anonymous ballot results.