In Britain the Prime Minister is obliged to appear in Parliament periodically and to answer questions from M.P.s from all sides of the aisle. Here's my own transcript of an excerpt from Mr. Brown's opening statement at his first appearance in Parliament as P.M.

All members of this house and all the people of this country have a shared interest in building trust in our democracy. And it is my hope that by working together for change in a spirit that takes us beyond parties and beyond partisanship, we can agree a new British constitutional settlement that entrusts more power to Parliament and to the British people.

Change with a new settlement is in my view essential to our countries future for we will only meet the new challenges of security, of economic change, of communities under pressure, and forge a stronger shared national purpose by building a new relationship between citizens and government that insures that government is a better servant of the people.

...

So I now propose that in twelve important areas of our national life the Prime Minister and the executive should surrender or limit their powers, the exclusive exercise of which by the government of the day should have no place in a modern democracy. These are:

The power to declare war.

...

The power to make key public appointments without effective scrutiny

The power to restrict parliament oversight of our intelligence services

...

Power in the appointment of judges

Power to direct prosecutors in individual criminal cases

...

and the executive powers to determine the rules governing entitlement to passports and the granting of pardons.

I now propose to surrender or limit these powers to make for a more open 21st century British democracy which better serves the British people.

Perhaps he isn't the same on his radio show because it's about sports, a different area that he hardly covers in his nightly broadcast.

Now, if Slado could actually address the content of Obermanns' special comment, that would be interesting.

As an employee, Olbermann was his own kind of Worst Person in the World. His sense of superiority and caustic vibe eventually cost him gigs and friends at three networks. How naughty was he? Olbermann was the only former ESPN star not invited back for the sports network's 25th anniversary (he's allowed to participate on Patrick's radio show only because Patrick promised that Olbermann would never set foot on the network's Bristol, Connecticut, campus). He was fired from his first stint at MSNBC after he denounced his own show in a commencement address at his alma mater. Fox hired him to host its major-league baseball Game of the Week and then sent him home with a year left on his contract simply for being a malcontent.

Bill Clinton didn't commute the sentence or grant a pardon to someone who had the ability to bring down his entire administration, and put him on a rock pile in Leavenworth making little ones on a big ones. So the pathetic Clinton bashing I so often see coming from the righties is not applicable.

There's going to be a Democratic president come 2009, and then there's going to be some real investigations into the high crimes committed by George W. Bush and his band of flunkies, and I promise you none of them are going to get pardons from anybody.

I'm sure some of you Bush loving treason excusing pseudo Americans will be scribbling away in your little blogs about how Dubya was one of the great misunderstood American heroes, and petitioning the government for his release from prison, and bringing him cookies and milk on visiting day, but the history books will record exactly what this president was, the first traitor to ever sit in the Oval Office.  I just pray he will be the last, and that our republic will survive this tragedy