While looking at the newspaper this morning over my second or third cup of coffee, I happened upon Nat Hentoff's column entitled: Presidential candidates on you tube is a good thing. After the third paragraph I decided he was really on to something.

I tried to find the column somewhere on the net so I could at this juncture insert a hyperlink to the column, but had no luck finding it, so I will summarize the first three paragraphs that caught my eye.

He first cites a C-SPAN program, which if you haven't run across it and watched it, you should, called PRIME MINISTER'S QUESTIONS. The program where the Prime Minister of England stands up before the whole House of Commons and answers questions and faces criticism of his governments policies. Before which according to National Public Radio in England, "they have to devote several hours to preparing for all sorts of questions, and they go in there and they know that it's to be live on television" while many citizens are watching, and remembering.

Former conservative party leader Howard emphasizes that this weekly breakthrough of government transparency-when the house of commons is sitting- "ensures that, first of all, the prime minister knows what's going on".

Hentoff goes on to say that not only in the Bush administration, but in some previous administrations, it has been far from certain that our president does know all that's going on in his government's most controversial practices.

He further suggests that if we had a regular 'Meet the President' on C-SPAN once a week, at least the President would have to bone up on what's actually going on in his administration. We the people would certainly benefit, as well. The column goes on, but I won't.

This proposition makes so much sense on two fronts that I am sure it would not, or could not be agreed to by any administration, but it would be great wouldn't it.

A CLIP FROM YOUTUBE OF 'PRIME MINISTER'S QUESTIONS'