Thoughts for the fourth

Leonard Pitts: Can Ideals Save America?

One can only wonder what history will someday say about this era where torture is defended, the rule of law is flouted, civil liberties are abridged, hate groups are rising, people are frightened and the very idea of American exceptionalism, that there are some risks you take, some things you don't do, some challenges you just have to meet, because this is, after all, America, seems frayed and worn and spent.

Keith Olbermann: You ceased to be the President of the United States:

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them — or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them — we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.
...Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.
Resign.
And give us someone — anyone – about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, “I didn’t vote for him, but he’s my president, and I hope he does a good job.”

Just about every post on Digby's blog the last couple days.

Can we even show the flag on days like this?