Baltimore sage H.L. Mencken provided several observations that are relevant to the current political situation. For example, he wrote that "people constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men."

On the fact that the fractious incompetents in Congress were all duly elected and that the country has thus gotten the kind of Congress it voted for, he reminds us that "democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."

Lastly, he commented on American history that "Lincoln marked the halfway post on the road to the sewers."

Were he alive today, doubtless he would report: "And now we have arrived."

Mark R. Chartrand, Baltimore