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Mr. Mehan seems a bit too optimistic when he writes the following:

"Setting aside social and environmental issues, policy areas where Barack Obama has not yet shown his cards, the president-elect's choices for economic and national security positions are downright centrist and extremely competent. This may be a hopeful sign that the GOP might be able to find some common ground without rolling over on fundamental issues of principle."

It is worth carefully watching the second-tier and lower appointments in Obama's Administration. This is where the rubber meets the road. An apparently 'centrist' appointment at the cabinet level can be very effectively neutered by subordinates with divergent agendas. This is a time-honored bureaucratic strategy used to great effect in both government and business.

It is far too early to tell whether apparently centrist appointments signify an embrace of pragmatism and possible bipartisanship or constitute window dressing and misdirection. Verify before you trust, please. Then verify again. Do not make the mistake of assuming yesterday's policy applies today -- elsewhere it has been noted that Obama's policy pronouncements have a limited shelf life.

Under no circumstances fail to fight for core principles - individual liberty, free markets, limited government.
-- Bud Hammons

Protecting Medicare from being undermined in order to pay for universal care may seem unimportant. But our traditional preference has been for equality in retirement years with Medicare recipients, while at the same time letting persons of working age to assume responsibility for their own healthcare. This is a big issue and it might gain some measure of support from both sides of the aisle.

The other issue is immigration, which as everyone on both sides knows is where our economic future lies. And universal care will certainly present an obstacle to continued legal immigration in the numbers we will need to compete.
-- Phill

LOSS OF RESPECT
Re: Brett Joshpe's The Real Threat to Democracy:

At one time I thought that conservatives well understood the dangers of a tyrannical government. We all read Orwell and were well acquainted with the history of the despotic rulers that spied on their citizens and had powers to imprison their citizens indefinitely without trial. And while I'm of the liberal persuasion, and while I have many disagreements with them, I nevertheless understood conservatives were opposed to tyranny and I respected them for that. It was very important to me that we agree at least on that issue so that I wouldn't have to worry about my children or grandchildren waking up one day to a country run by a dictator.

But in defiance of that opposition to tyranny they have now thrown their support behind a President having the power to spy on his citizens and to imprison them indefinitely away from judicial scrutiny. The Supreme Court may yet sweep away these powers, but the enthusiasm of conservatives for this kind of authoritarian government has driven away any respect I had for them. And now I realize that conservatives will not be found with those of us struggling to keep our freedoms when inevitably the majority out of some dread fear of some threat decides to submit to the absolute rule of one person as the Republics of both Rome and Ancient Greece eventually did.
-- Ron Schoenberg
Seattle, Washington

PINNING IT ON THEM
Re: Robert Stacy McCain's It Won't Work:

One important point needs to be made. The GOP mantra "It won't work" demonstrates the narrow and wrongheaded approach the GOP has taken and lost on. The mantra must be: "The DEMOCRATS broke it and can't fix it." Get the difference. Just saying "it won't work" leaves open the retort, "yeah, well Bush broke it." Outsmarted again.
-- John Charles