The following quote is posted not for the status of its source (modest), but for its pithy timeliness:

It is more than investigation of possible counterterrorism oversight that [the Bush administration is] resisting. They are resisting the erosion of the dissent-free culture of political orthodoxy that has dominated this nation's for the last eight months -- and it comes not a moment too soon.

The President who couldn't even name the leader of Pakistan has embarked on a foreign-policy nightmare. America has allied itself with a number of flagrantly undemocratic nations, from Uzbekistan to Malaysia. Evidence emerges almost daily of our probable role in an aborted coup in Venezuela, while our support of a brutal civil war in Columbia resembles the early years of Vietnam. One and a half million troops are massed at the India-Pakistan border, ready to plunge the Indian subcontinent into chaos. War with Iraq looms. The situation in Israel and Palestine threatens to destabilize the entire region, and our policies in the Holy Land risk birthing a new generation of anti-American terrorists.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has revived talk of using nuclear weapons on a first-strike basis, overturned the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, declined to sign a biological weapons treaty, hid our own production of biological weapons, refused to recognize International Criminal Court, held up the World Council on Children, and -- after rejecting the Kyoto Accords -- replaced the head of the International Panel on Climate Change. Domestically, we have an energy policy written by the same people responsible for staging an energy 'crisis' that cost the state of California $30 billion. The denial of public inquiry into the matter was justified with an invocation of, more or less, the divine right of kings -- fitting, perhaps, given the administration's disregard of the Constitution in the name of fighting terrorism.

To top it all off, contrary to Bush's campaign promises, our budget deficit is at least $121 billion -- and, according to a note from Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill in our government's 2001 financial report, it may actually run to half a trillion dollars.

The time has come to lift the star-spangled shroud of silence that has hidden the affairs of our nation.