Three guys I’d like to hang out with at 2 in the morning at the Tick Tock Diner (Eat Heavy in neon) on Route 3 West

Guy No. 1. The totally exasperated Will Durst confessing to his barely restrained impulse to pimp-slap Condi rice.

For example: when asked to comment on Maher Arar, the Syrian-born Canadian whom our country kidnapped, sent to Syria as blindfolded baggage and then tortured for ten months, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the matter was "not handled as it should have been."

See, there's your problem, because if I had been the reporter who asked about this guy and got that as a response, I would have rejoined, "Are you fucking kidding me? The matter was not handled as it should have been? That's your fucking answer? A Canadian citizen was kidnapped, sent to another country and tortured?

Exactly how do you think your answer would differ if an army of small brained aliens came to earth and focused on terrorizing people with large foreheads and abducted you and sent you to Jupiter and kept you awake for weeks at a time and made you feel like you were drowning in methane gas for almost a year?

Do you think that your opinion would be that the matter was not handled as it should have been, you stupid fucking cow?"

Guy No. 2. The ineffable Matt Taibbi on the ominous curiosity that is the ebullient Mike Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee represents something that is either tremendously encouraging or deeply disturbing, depending on your point of view: a marriage of Christian fundamentalism with economic populism. Rather than employing the ­patented Bush-Rove tactic of using abortion and gay rights to hoodwink low-­income Christians into supporting patrician, pro-corporate policies, Huckabee is a bigger-government Republican who emphasizes prison reform and poverty relief. In the world of GOP politics, he represents something entirely new — a cross between John Edwards and Jerry Falwell, an ordained Southern Baptist preacher who actually seems to give a shit about the working poor.

But Huckabee is also something else: full-blown nuts, a Christian goofball of the highest order. He believes the Earth may be only 6,000 years old, angrily rejects the evidence that human beings evolved from "primates" and thinks America wouldn't need so much Mexican labor if we allowed every aborted ­fetus to grow up and enter the workforce. To top it off, Huckabee also left behind a record of ethical missteps in the swamp of Arkansas politics that make Whitewater seem like a jaywalking ticket.

All of which begs the question: If this religious zealot's rise represents the end of corporate dominance of the Republican Party, is that a good thing? Or is the real thing even worse than the fraud?

Guy No. 3. The jaunty hatted Greg Palast on The Family Bush’s inability to fix the vote in Venezuela.

The Bush Administration and its press puppies - the same ones who couldn’t get enough of the purple thumbs of voters of Iraq - are absolutely livid that this weekend the electorate of Venezuela had the opportunity to vote.

Typical was the mouth-breathing editorial by the San Francisco Chronicle, that the referendum could make Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s President, “a constitutional dictator for life.” And no less a freedom fighter than Donald Rumsfeld, from the height of the Washington Post, said that by voting, Venezuela was “receding into dictatorship.” Oh, my!

Given that Chavez’ referendum was defeated at the ballot box, we now know that, as a dictator, Chavez is a flop. Of course, without meaning to gainsay Secretary Rumsfeld, maybe Chavez is not a dictator.

Guys, I promise to always pick up the tab.