From Altercations, Eric Alterman's blog comes this Reader comment, to which I can only add BRAVO and AMEN.

Correspondents' Corner, if this were still Friday:
Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA
Eric - Because Every Day - even Thanksgiving Day - is Slacker Friday. Part XXIII.
During the extended JFK obsequies last weekend, I had one of those toss-the-remote moments when I heard Gerald Posner explain the stubborn persistence of conspiracy theories concerning the events in Dealey Plaza. It happened when Posner's speculated that conspiracy theories survive because We - you know The People, see Madison, James: The Collected Works - find it hard to believe that a nut with a $12 rifle can take down a major historical figure.

I'm sorry, but this is all bollocks, as my cousins say. It is a perfect statement of the kind of infantilization that is central to our devalued national discourse. You heard the same sort of thing during the extended mishigas in Florida three years ago. 'We' had to short-circuit the constitutional process because 'We' couldn't stand the length of time those processes would have taken. This, despite the fact that the country was doing just fine, and it had a president who, you know, really liked the job and likely would have worked the extra couple of hours it would have taken for Tom DeLay to steal the election in the House, the way the Founders intended. Instead, we had Tim Russert holding our binkies for us while Nino and Silent Clarence threw the Constitution under a bus.

Look at the pathetic doings in Washington this week. The Republicans passed a campaign commercial.There is not a single serious person who believes that the new Medicare feedbag - Subsidies for HMO's and the Democrats couldn't beat that? - will affect no change on any public problem at all. (And I will bet Bill Frist a dead cat that, when the prescription drug benefit is supposed to kick in in ?06, 'budgetary considerations' will call for it to be 'postponed.') It has to do with positioning for the 2004 race, because all 'We' are interested in is the horse race. The Congress passed a myth, a fairy tale, the equivalent of a Sense Of The Senate resolution that Unicorns Shall Be Preserved On All Federal Lands. But we got coverage of The Big Win and The Big Loss.

Bad things are making themselves permanent, and it's time for people to notice. Barney Frank, who does not easily panic, has looked around himself and has seen the 'end of parliamentary democracy' in America. HRC sees it, too. A general says one more bad terrorist episode and we're Pinochet's Chile. Mainstream political journalism is bad kabuki theater at best. We are spoken to like children, and we deserve (and should demand) better. Grow up, the lot of you down there. We're already there, waiting.