BARCELONA -- An oppressive and beleaguered empire, a terrorist international, a storm raging in the international press about torture, right-wing Christians on the march against moral decline and the collapse of family values Ö you can stand here on Montjuic hill and history grips you by the arm.

In 1896, all of Europe was shaken by reports of the terrible tortures endured by prisoners entombed in the dungeons of the fortress built by the Bourbons on Montjuic. Terror, in the form of militant anarchism -- the Al Qaeda of its era -- had already been on the march for a generation, its detonations caused by such devices as the "Orsini bomb," with its sinister horns filled with fulminate of mercury, which exploded on impact, thus bypassing the need for a fuse. The testing range selected by Felice Orsini, an Italian nationalist who had taken up residence in Palmerston's England, were abandoned quarries in Devonshire and Sheffield. Orsini went to the guillotine in 1858 after hurling his invention at Louis Napoleon. He missed, but killed eight and injured 156. In 1862, Nobel patented dynamite and gave "propaganda of the deed" a deadlier tempo.

If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is…Peggy Lee

Words out there’s another election ‘bout to take place, and rumor has it this time it’s really, really important. Who is going to win this election, or what difference it will make is as insignificant as our choices seconded only to the obsolete ritual act of choosing.

Our nation’s original band of brothers were rascals, rogues, and renaissance men who drafted our nation’s position papers not in disregard of history, but because of it. From the declaration of its birth, 278-years ago, the concept of “We the people”, a “Representative Government” with “checks and balances” a “Constitutional Republic” and our original Patriot Act, known as “The Bill of Rights” was the foundation and promise of this new nation.

PHILADELPHIA -- We all had our debate moments, but the one that stunned me was, "It's (Iraq is) hard work. I see it on the TV screens."

Watching it on TV, boy that is tough work all right. And what was the "hard work" thing about? Did Rove poll and find out people think the president vacations too much?

I also came to a full stop after the one about sending troops to die. "I never -- when I was running -- when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I'd be doing that." He never dreamt it?

It never occurred to him? Was this man prepared for the job? Help!

I lean to the "bubble president" theory of Bush's peevish, petulant performance in debate. They've kept him surrounded by people who keep telling him he's great. I blame Karl Rove, of course. Bush is not used to being questioned. In Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War," the president is quoted: "I'm the commander in chief, see, I don't need to explain, I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting part about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

It was Bush’s sophomoric pandering to the "average Joe" that ruined the quality of the debate and his insistence on untruth. That really was not a debate but a facade that needed more propping in the hurricane of truth from Kerry.

It was suggested by some media outlets that Kerry has a poor record in the Senate but the time he spent on these very issues that indited the right is then not referenced. His 2 investigations, one being the BCCI investigation and the Iran Contra investigation were both started by him.

He threatened the right and obviously has more guts to stick it out despite criticism and pressure from the "powers that be" as he did when he came back from Viet Nam.

It is these same guts that he used in the "debate" to enlighten the American public about the reality of the current administration and its present state.

Stephen Caruso