I just listened to the President's news conference.

Point One: Good for you for having a press conference. It shows you are perhaps emerging from your bubble.

Point Two: Telling people on the intelligence committees that you are doing some wiretapping and swearing them to secrecy about it IS NOT OVERSIGHT.

Point Three: You cannot emerge from YEARS of lying and misuse of intelligence and then ask us to "trust you" to not misuse what is essentially unchecked power to spy on Americans. Read your freaking constitution.

Point Four: I agree that we can't pull out of Iraq willy-nilly...not because of your desire for some unidentifiable "victory" (which by the way, you declared over 2 years ago in case you forgot), but because (1) YOU have created a collossal mess that the world will never forgive us for if we don't see it through to some conclusion; and (2) over 2000 American women and men and, your silly guesstimate notwithstanding, approximately 100,000 Iraqis have died in Bush's Folly...and to abandon efforts at building a sustainable peace now would mean those lives were lost for no reason at all.

Point Five: Good for you, admitting FINALLY that your justification of the war on the grounds of weapons of mass destruction was baseless (though your insistence that EVERYONE thought the same thing is starting to sound like a chastened schoolboy trying to spread the blame for a failed prank). Shame on you for assuming we have forgotten it (and the already discreditted connection between Iraq and 9/11) were the SOLE cornerstones of your argument for war.

Point Six: Your suggestion now that the creation of a democracy in Iraq might somehow justify your actions is indefensible...an imposed democracy is a violation of international law and, regardless, will NEVER survive on its own unless the hearts and minds of the people are ready to embrace its messy compromises...look to the Philippines, where our multi-decade occupation couldn't sustain democracy (unless of course Marcos is your model for the Presidency)...and to Japan, where a pliant and beloved Emperor, an almost decade long occupation, and a massive multi-year campaign to sell democracy were all required before that nation's democracy was self-sustaining.

Point Seven: Did you actually hear yourself say "Democracies don't go to war?" Um, pardon me Mr. Proto-fascist, but that's precisely what YOU did (with Congress' spineless acquiesence) just a few years back. Do you really think we aren't listening?

Point Eight: Shaming Congress into reauthorizing the Patriot Act, as though this cobbled together invasion into personal rights and freedoms is somehow the Holy Grail of freedom, may sell in some households who are still dining on your tantalizing feast of fear served up in the 2004 campaign, but in my little corner of the world, we're on a diet. Nice try Chef Rove...but it's not what we ordered and we don't have to eat it.

End Rant...