IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS COUNTRY, GO BACK TO RUSSIA WHERE YOU DIDN'T COME FROM! For years, the Ole Perfesser has been telling us complainers, oh yeah, you think America is bad -- well Saddam ran a guy through a shredder! And such like.

Old habits die hard -- and usually just get worse. Today, after another typical, lazy-ass, lifted rundown of Putin's assassinations, the Perfesser drops this Value-Add: "[It's] Safer to attack Bush -- which is why more people do that."

If your impulse is to counter, "Really? I thought we attacked Bush because he's our actual fucking President and allegedly responsive to the will of the People," your common sense is commendable, but you are missing the more amusing psychological justifications that may be offered in the Perfesser's defense.

The simplest would be that the Perfesser first learned the pleasures of lawyerly argument as a lad, on playgrounds where, confronted with his own malfeasances, he would distract inquisitors with more serious allegations against other children; child is father to the man.

I favor a more forward-looking approach. As we know the Perfesser yearns for godlike immortality; it may be that he expects to outlive the United States, and sometimes forgets that some of us plebes yet identify ourselves as its citizens.