Today is the winter solstice, maybe my favorite day of the year. This is as dark as it gets. Even as winter deepens, the temperature falls and the snow piles up, I can reassure myself that the days are growing longer, there's more sunlight to brighten the desolation. The processes which will inevitably end the winter, bring back warmth and life, are already underway, regardless of how it might appear.

I've read the news this week about how those in control of our country have been illegally spying on us, but at least the secret has got out. Poor people, the elderly and the young have just been robbed to pay for more bombs and guns, yet again, but this time it took a tie-breaking vote by a millionaire torture enthusiast to pull off the heist. A judge in Pennsylvania -- and a conservative at that -- dismissed intelligent design as the load of politically motivated medieval nonesense it is.

No doubt the lies will continue to fall thicker and faster, the looting will become ever more feverish, the attempts to impose a theocratic police state will be redoubled. But it is possible that the forces of reason and decency which will eventually roll back the darkness of greed, hated and ignorance which has enveloped us for too long, are already at work.

I hope so.