Why look, there's an idling, empty bus

Disingenuous, thy name is Krauthammer. Appended for some reason to a post decrying "the stuff" he prooflessly alleges was given as ransom to the North Koreans -- in Krauthammer's mind, I'm sure photos of the two American journalists toiling at a prison work farm would have made for better American propaganda -- is this:

There is a certain irony in an administration denouncing ordinary Americans who get together to express what they believe and to confront authority, when that administration is led by a man who began his career as a community organizer, whose job, as I understand it, is to take ordinary Americans, get them together to express what they believe, and express demands against the authorities.

So it's unbelievably hypocritical. And, of course, as we just heard, this only happens when you have a conservative protest. It is called a mob. If it’s a liberal protest, it is called grassroots expressing themselves.

Remember, just a year ago under the Bush administration, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. And today it is a kind of either organized anger, it's a facsimile of anger, it's unpatriotic, it's whatever.

Look, there is a genuine revolt against the idea of remaking a [health-care] system when over 80 percent of Americans have health insurance. Five of six of those are happy with their health care, and four of five are happy with their health insurance.

You have an administration arrogantly deciding it is going to tear it all up, start all over, and people are surprised that there are protests, and say that it had to be manufactured? Of course it is spontaneous. [If] people go together on a bus, that's entirely legitimate, and it ought to be encouraged.

"If people go together on a bus" to this entirely spontaneous demonstration of American political dissent.

Of course, his other points are just as salient.

• Dissent was encouraged during the Bush administration
• I guess it depends on who you mean by "ordinary Americans"
• Yes, there's "genuine revolt" over the idea of remaking health care in this country