The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton. - Al Gore

The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America. Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even — we must use the word — tortured — to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say. These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House.

I actually thought and believed that the story would be compelling enough to cause a real sea change in the way Congress reacted to that issue. I thought they would be startled, too. And they weren't.

one Russian analyst said, “The old people come and the old people come and the old people come and all vote for one candidate — for Putin. Why are they voting for Putin? Watch TV. There is one face: Putin.” And indeed, one of the many reasons for television’s dominance in the political media landscape of almost every country is that older people both simultaneously vote in higher percentages and watch television more hours per day than any other age group. In the U.S., people aged sixty-five and older watch, on average, almost seven hours per day.