Those of us around at the time of the 1979 Iranian student revolution that deposed the shah are having strong feelings of déjà vu because that uprising was swiftly co-opted by Ayatollah Khomeini who hated the Great Satan, America, as much as he hated the Little Satan, Israel.

The U.S. lost a major ally in the Middle East. The Shah may have been a bastard, but he was our bastard. The CIA had put him on the Peacock Throne.

A friend of mine wrote to me concerning a project which is to be funded in part by taxpayer money, “A shrine to the late senator Ted Kennedy.”

As shirl put it “Congress: I protest my tax dollars going to a shrine for a drunk who was a national disgrace!!! Let his family and friends pay for a shrine for him. Funds for this should not come from us taxpayers, we are being forced to pay for something we don’t owe and most of us don’t want.”