[mburbank]

El Blanco, I respectfully disagree. That's coming from someone who will almost certainly stay.

But not without trepadation.

Reagan? I felt like I held the short end of the stick?

Bush I? Very short end from my perspective.

This feels qualatatively different for me. It approaches how I would hve felt (only approaches at this point) during the McCarthy Era. I feel our democracy is threatened. Now the country swung away from McCarthy, and we haven't gone so far yet, but this administration frightens me in ways I have never felt before. I feel they are capable of things there predecessors have not been, and I feel they are far more agressively activist than anything I've ever seen. Well before 9/11 W. was acting like a President who'd won a landslide as opposed to an electoral college victor. I think he feels his mandate comes not from his constituents but from God.

The main reason I'm alive is that at some point my great grandparents knew life was no longer tenable in Russia, Poland, and Germany. If they'd picked rance for their destination, I'd almost certainly never have gotten born. This makes me feel a great deal of loyalty to the United States. But it's also a history that makes me wonder at what point do you see the writting on the wall and think of Grandchildren yet to be.

I never even thought along these lines, it never even crossed my mind until I saw what I think is this administration's active use of 9/11 to futher it's agenda as quickly and as far as possible in every arena. For me this isn't Reagan and it isn't Bush I. This is something entirely different.