The cover of April's edition of Vogue has generated controversy over how NBA star LeBron James is depicted with model Gisele Bundchen. Some critics have alleged that the picture, taken by renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz, makes him look like King Kong carrying off Fay Wray, a racially loaded simian metaphor. Others don't see it at all, suggesting that James is demonstrating the same intensity he shows on the court and people are trying too hard to be offended. A comparison between the cover and a World War I recruitment poster should settle the argument. Leibovitz was clearly, unmistakeably using one of the world's most famous black men to portray a ferocious gorilla carrying off a white woman.

Jimi Hendrix asked, "Are you experienced? Have you ever been experienced?" Hillary Clinton now (and Republicans later), asks, "Is Obama experienced? Has he ever been experienced?" And the whole issue is the rottenest of red herrings.

For days, Hillary Clinton has padded her foreign policy resume with an anecdote about a 1996 trip to Bosnia in which her diplomatic entourage evaded sniper fire and made a dangerous corkscrew landing. Now that video has emerged to prove this to be blatantly false, it may be the biggest blunder of her campaign.

I really think we need to reconsider what we call "constants", those things we can really rely on to never change; death, taxes, relativity...

And the total arrogance of our leaders, oh yes....

While most people were nervously watching the continued economic disintegration of the country, the Pew Center on the States published a report that should (but won't) cause sufficient national disgust to create a rebellion. We've reached the exalted state of having a full 1+ percent of our adults behind bars.

I've been thinking of late that we might have hit bottom as a culture, a country, and a concept. I should know better, and who better to teach me once again that you can always go lower than a nice respected institution of higher learning like Hunter College.

This commentary may well get me another load of brickbats my way, but I seem to adore playing the iconclast, always have. Well, grab a chair, light one up, and let's rehash some rhetoric.

And yes, learn something about sorry excuses...

Answer: One. As in equivalent. If you heard a vague temporal echo when Ferraro said that Obama would not be where he is if he was white (or a woman), it's because it sounded a hell of a lot like Limbaugh insulting Donovan McNabb in 2003.

If you want to see the dangerous silliness that true, zealous, blind Biblical belief can produce, check out Can A Pagan Practice Be "Christianized?", Marsha West's passionate defense of Christianity against the deep evils of Yoga, "Christian Yoga" especially. It's not how many angels can dance on a pin nonsense; it's crazier and more foolish than that. As you read the rest of this, just imagine what this story would be like if West and her compatriots had the luxury of living in a country where their version of God and God's commandments was also the law.

Far be it from me to question the motives or veracity of the 12 honorable Republicans on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, but isn't it just a little too coincidental that, for the first time since GW Bush ascended to the throne, they're asking for a bigger VA budget than the Dems on the committee are requesting?

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