I guess I don't have to read Paul Krugman's new book, "The Great Unraveling," a selection of his op-ed columns, to know what he's been writing. I've read him faithfully ever since his column began, and a morning doesn't go by when I don't wish he wrote daily instead of just twice a week.

If his column had appeared daily I doubt that I would have anticipated him yesterday, on the second anniversary of 9/11, when I cited a story in the Washington Post and wrote: "The nation mourns. Gee Dubya Shrub exploits." Today, Krugman cites the same story for a column headlined "Exploiting The Atrocity." (Free registration required.) But he goes on to say a few more things worth noting:

+ "It's almost certainly wrong to think that the political exploitation of 9/11 and, more broadly, the administration's campaign to label critics unpatriotic are past their peak."
+ Bush "could have governed as the uniter he claimed to be ... [but his] advisers were greedy" and "[n]ow [that] it has all gone wrong," the Bushies are again resorting to thuggish behavior. Krugman puts it euphemistically: They can't "simply lose like gentlemen," he writes. "For one thing, that's not how they operate." (Remember their style during ballot-counting in Florida?)
+ For another they have to save their hides. "Everything suggests that there are major scandals — involving energy policy, environmental policy, Iraq contracts and cooked intelligence — that would burst into the light of day if the current management lost its grip on power. So these people must win, at any cost."
+ Consequently, "if you thought the last two years were bad, just wait: it's about to get worse. A lot worse."

Against this, what have the Democrats got? Howard Dean? John Kerry?? Al Sharpton??? The American Civil Liberties Union???? And now some celebrities with (ahem) clout, who are willing to criticize Bush in an ACLU ad campaign? (Free registration required.)

So it's Richard Dreyfuss and Kristin Davis (who plays Charlotte in "Sex and the City"), Martin Sheen and Kurt Vonnegut, Samuel L. Jackson and Al Pacino, and let's not forget singer Michael Stipe of R.E.M. or Sheryl Crow, vs. the thugs???? Oh, mama. As the editor of National Review told The New York Times: Celebrities "obviously have a right to speak their minds and a right to be morons, and they usually exercise both." How do you defend against quips like that?