Hollywood public policy experts.

Check out the clever magazine cover over at Flopping Aces, 2/17/06.

FA reports that:

• Alec Baldwin enlightens us about the "lying, thieving Cheney" and
• Richard Dreyfuss calls for "a return to the principle of civility."

Actually, Mr. Dreyfuss, one of the greats in Hollywood, mind you, gets high marks for civility himself, though one wonders what it was that he had to say that caused the National Press Club to invite him as a speaker.

We could not detect that his conclusions about Mr. Bush's impeachable behavior were particularly well founded. Nor could we detect that he has studied the intricacies of the constitutional debate about the President's powers to listen in to international communications between persons suspected of terrorism and persons in the U.S. Studied them more than, say, Pastor Inkvest or the UPS delivery man have studied them.

We don't say Mr. Dreyfuss is ignorant, just that his views don't much rise out of the cosmic background noise. Just like the opinions of a lot of voters in the Republic.

Celebrity gets you before the NPC, it seems.

More important. WHY is the Colonel not invited to speak there? Are we not a distinguished (if slightly obscure) blogster with heartfelt and significant conclusions about the political scene?

Curt correctly notes that Mr. Dreyfuss did not see fit, as a self-confessed middle of the roader, to complain about any of the excesses of Mr. Clinton when he was making off with the White House silverware, obstructing justice at the RTC, lying, tormenting the honorable Billy Dale, and reading the FBI files of his enemies while in the bathtub, among other things. Sooo many things.

We surmise that "middle of the road" in Hollywood, or to Mr. Dreyfuss, means Democrat, left wing, or liberal.

We've been wrong before.