Where has this week gone? Come to think of it, where has the year gone?

Another week, another newspaper off the press and on the streets.

And while going through that routine, my only contact with the outside world has been NPR on the drive home, some Internet news sites and then some of the regional political blogs I monitor.

Even so, I believe with all my heart that the problem with our current leadership - and I mean the National Command Authority especially - is that they have lost sight of the most basic element of loyalty in this society. When our federal elected officials, military officers, judges and other officials take their oaths of office, they swear to uphold the Constitution.

Not the flag, not Christianity, not the President.

The Constitution.

All this talk of defending the flag, the Judeo-Christian way of life, family values and God-fearing society is horsecrap.

The one thing in this society that even makes the existence of those things - or the pretense of those things - possible is the existence of the Constitution of the United States.

I think that the last six years especially show that our federal executive and legislative branches have paid the lowest form of lip service to the Constitution.

So-called patriots can talk their game about defending the sanctity of the American flag. The flag means nothing if the Constitution behind it is subverted and abused.

Personally, I don't think the occupants of the White House and the Naval Observatory would recognize the Constitution if someone rolled up a copy of it and smacked them across the nose for fouling the carpeting.

Long live the Constitution and the United States, and lifelong dishonor to those scumbags who would trod upon it under the pretense of patriotism.