The U.S. Air Force Academy has been turned into a kind of Bob Jones University with a better academics, requiring a military task force to warn commanders against evangelical Christian coercion, as religious beliefs are still a personal matter in America.

(Oddly, all the Christ-talk did little to limit widespread sexual harassment and rape at the Academy. What Would Jesus Do, indeed.)

In Congress, House Republicans were forced to back off a measure that would have limited the combat roles of women, an effort so culturally backward — and detrimental to military readiness — that even Donald Rumsfeld opposed it.

It was a perfect example of Republican lawmaking at its best: An attempt to ram through a solution where there is no problem, solely to support the stunted thinking of conservatives — in this case, neanderthal views about the place of women.

(The touching effort to "protect" American women contrasted nicely with conservatives' complete lack of interest in the tens of thousands of Iraqi women and children who've died in the process of our liberating them.)

But the corrosive values of Republicans, as antithetical to American traditions as they are, aren't limited to social issues.

We are witnessing an unprecedented effort by Republicans to subvert our political process in every way possible.

It's not just that Bush's judicial nominees are hateful, mean-spirited and shockingly injudicious, or that likely UN ambassador John Bolton is, in the words of tearful Republican Sen. George Voinovich, "the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be."

The harm comes from the fact that a president would nominate such contentious, divisive candidates in the first place. And that senators and congressmen would work so tirelessly to get them approved, regardless of the consequences to comity, the spirit of compromise and a nation's increasingly fragile image of itself as an enlightened republic.

It fascinates me that as execrable a figure as Tom DeLay, for example, could make vague threats — including impeachment — against judges whose decisions he disagrees with, and is not himself threatened with impeachment.

Nobody could seriously argue that America needs federal judges like Priscilla Owen, just rated the worst  of all six Texas Supreme Court justices by the Houston Bar Association. Just as nobody could argue that a bullying ideologue like Bolton is the guy to serve in any post involving the word "diplomacy."

But that's not what matters to Republicans. Their agenda, like Bolton's, is not what's best for America; it's to get their way.

These must be very sexually inadequate men to have such a desperate need to win.

As for the bitterness, animosity and antagonism engendered by such tyrannical sociopaths in a nation once known for moderation in its politics... well, Republicans just don't care. Bill Frist said as much when he not only declined to endorse the Senate's filibuster compromise, but refused to take the nuclear option off the table.

There's a very simple solution to all of this. If a president's nominees inspire as much ill will and division as Bolton and his judicial equivalents have, common sense dictates that those nominations should go the way of the Macarena. That's not an unbearable standard; nor does it show a lack of willingness to fight for deeply held principles. It's simply a recognition that unity and harmony are more important than any single questionably qualified nominee. Moreover, it's how nominations have always been handled, and why 95 percent of Bush's judicial nominees were approved with little fuss. (By contrast, Republicans filibustered 65 Clinton court nominees during his last five years in office.)

Only sheer, intransigent belligerence could have led Bush to re-nominate his most controversial choices in the 109th Congress after they couldn't get through the 108th. He was raising a defiant middle finger to any and
all who disagreed with him, because that is, regrettably, his nature — and because he could. ("Political capital," you know.)

With his limited intellect, however, Bush does not grasp that statesmen do not raise middle fingers to their own people — and piss on the best political traditions of their nations. The man who grandiosely imagines himself in the pantheon of leaders like Roosevelt and Churchill is in reality acting like the loathsome, spoiled brat that he is.

Not that you'd expect more from a man who took a nation to war based on a pack of lies. (Or, as British defense ministry memo described the process, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.")

All the Viagra in the world couldn't help these guys.

But my concern is for my country. And on that, because of the fanatics currently in charge and obviously willing to do anything to stay there, I am less and less optimistic.