3 Biggies come through Denver today

The parade started with a foreign policy speech by John McCain at the University of Denver. He broke with the Bush administration, calling for multilateral destruction of nuclear weapons.

Then President Bush addressed graduation at the Air Force Academy, comparing the pacification of Iraq to the situation in Europe after World War II. He added that this time it was harder, because terrorists keep formenting violence, while it was peaceful as troops paciificed Europe.

Finally, Barack Obama came to town and spoke at an alternative high scool stressing the arts in Adams County. He pledged to fix what he called "the broken promises in No Child Left Behind." This program should never have passed in the first place. It is an illegal and immoral intrusion of the federal govenment into local schools. There is no "fixing it." It was ill-conceived, a bastard child spawned by Ted Kennedy and the Bush administration, and should be allowed to expire.

It is unbelievable how many millions of taxpayer and private dollars are lavished into these presidential and would-be presidential visits. The plane travel, replete with a large entourage, the motorcade to get them from place to place, the security, the inconvenience to the normal course of activities at the venues where the visits were staged--it all adds up, just to have the practical effect of coming up with a couple sound bites for the national news.

I can't personally imagine getting trapped in the crowds, parking hassles, early arrival to twiddle your thumbs for two hours with nothing to do, just to catch a glimpse of somebody who might one day become president.

I can barely stand to watch it on television, let alone endure being there.