Along with Joe Conason and VERY FEW other columnists, Sidney Blumenthal is by far the very best of true journalistic commentators today. The Internet offers many valuable bloggers and commentators who have escaped from from the "mainstream" media, but their audiences are relatively small and easily drowned out or ignored by TV and newspapers, as compared to a Blumenthal writes cogent stories for both the Internet and European print media. His commentaries nearly always present reliable and new factual information about "insider" events and maneuvers in the Cheney/Bush White House. They are never rants, but reasoned and incisive accounts. His opinions are based on rock solid information. His example SHOULD set the standard for future journalism, an assertion extremely in doubt since American media are being or have been purchased by large corporations whose only goal is the "bottom line" - - usually with a conservative bias. Only the Interent and the embarrassment of better journalism by (a few, at best) foreign news sources seem to offer any hope of any kind of turnaround by our media. If the megalomaniacal takeover campaigns of Murdoch and his ilk can be diminished, there may be a chance to save journalism as we once knew it; otherwise, say goodby to the responsibilities assigned to the "free press" as expressed in our Constitution. We will continue have only the obsequious, mindless, stenographic scripts presented by the likes of David Broder, Gloria Borger, and the Washinfgton Press Corpse [correct spelling !] to waste our time and exclude any real news.