I am drinking my new favorite beer tonight so I thought that I should update my list...

10. Duvel

This is a classic Belgian strong ale and particularly great in the summer. I used to not drink this much as it seemed too much of a cliche. But it is such a great beer that I keep coming back to it. It has a wonderfully crisp taste with a hint of apple. But don't be fooled by the lightness; it packs a punch at 9% alcohol.

Some jokes are too close to home.

For many years now, Rep. Cynthia McKinney has been viewed as a political joke, not just by Republicans but I believe by the average person in America. Michael Moore probably comes closest to Cynthia in sheer outlandish demogoguery. And he isn't an elected official.

Well, I'm not laughing. Cynthia is my representative.

Imagine having a representative in Congress who cares nothing about their constituents. Imagine your representative constantly being a target of mockery because of lunatic statements that would make great headlines at The Onion. Imagine having a virulent racist as your representative. Imagine having a representative who cared only about themselves.

I don't have to imagine these things. I have to live with this every day.

I have been very interested in following the aftermath of the New York Times story that broke the news about anti-terrorists efforts to track financial transactions. It would have been very easy to jump on the conservative bandwagon and proclaim the New York Times and Bill Keller as treasonous. But I have decided to spend a little more time thinking about and researching this topic. Not really the blog way of doing things.

I think the most disturbing thing about this episode is the implication by Bill Keller and others in the press that "we the people" just need to trust them. I'm a little reluctant to trust my elected officials much less a private citizen who has done much less to get into such a position of power and influence.

Jeff Jarvis makes a great point about the lack of journalistic standards and transparency in the media:

"I want to see the editor of a major U.S. newspaper who is covering and uncovering classified government antiterrorism programs write a piece under the headline: “When and why I will reveal secrets.” For I have not yet seen a satisfactory answer to that obvious and essential question in any of the many letters and editorials those editors have been writing lately. If journalism is about upholding standards, then let’s know what those standards are."

It is rather ironic that the media usually shouts from the mountaintops about the need for more transparency in business or government but is loathe to allow such a thing in their own house.

Of course the bigger concern is whether or not the media is serving the public interest by publishing classified information, especially during a war. During this week's Journal Editorial Report, Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal asks Marvin Kalb of the Jones Shorenstein Center on the Press and Politics and Public Policy whether stories like this latest one from the New York Times will put people in danger. Kalb responds:

"But I can tell you, flat out, that most journalists are very respectful of the rights, of the needs, of the soldiers. They are not going to run anything that they think is going to harm the American people or the American troops. I think we all know that."

I'd like to believe that, but I'm not sure that I would agree with Kalb that "we all know that". I am reminded of an old article in The Atlantic Monthly that James Fallows wrote entitled "Why Americans Hate the Media". Fallows begins his article with a description of a public television series in the late '80s called "Ethics in America".

The episode was taped in the fall of 1987. Its title was "Under Orders, Under Fire," and most of the panelists were former soldiers talking about the ethical dilemmas of their work. The moderator was Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School, who moved from panelist to panelist asking increasingly difficult questions in the law school's famous Socratic style.