Now Republican elites are reaching for their stash of lotus fruit, chewing them stems and all, desperate to forget, particularly their own orgy of federal spending to purchase support for the war in Iraq, their role in the departing president's political wretchedness secure in the history books.

And Democrats, now on their hopium with Obama of Chicago and the reforms they think will come with the Daley machine having a pipeline to the White House, expecting more federal health care, more federal schools, more federal this, more federal that. If we run out of money, don't worry, let's party and print some more.

Neither side is willing to see that they're so very much alike. The leviathan grows, horns and all.

And the two sides, Republican and Democrat, unleash their high priests to fight for what they've always fought for. Not ideas, not really, and certainly not the freedom of the individual.

Only power.

John Kass this past weekend.

Labels: Obama