Be sure to join me tonight for my Saturday edition of Dark Voices Radio at 9:00 p.m. EST. Note that the time has been changed to one hour earlier than before: air time is, again, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, not 10:00 p.m. as it used to be.

High on the agenda tonight is a speaker-melting rant about the arrest of a 12-year-old girl in New York City. Her crime? Making two little doodles on her desk expressing her love for her two best friends. She did it in erasable marker, no less.

Zero tolerance? You haven't heard about zero tolerance until you hear my flaming condemnation of this madness and the people ramming it down kids' throats like New York City Public Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and his buddy, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. God! but I'm looking forward to tearing into those fiends this evening.

In other minor matters, readers may recall my January 2 article, "Personal Journey and Red Velvet Cake," which I began with a rather long-winded exposition on my personal revelation that, if I am going to bitch about other people's moral hypocrisy — Sarah Palin and a whole bunch of other Republicans come to mind, but so do some of Obama's disgraceful appointees, as well — I had best start working on cleaning up my own slothful life, first. On the physical side, my personal journey has included putting my health in order by losing weight, eating better, and dispensing with the woe-is-my-sorry-life attitude. I am not at all sure how the reparation of my mortal soul is going. On the bright side, in the next few months I will be formally announcing that I have at least secured a deal with a mainstream publisher for my first book. On the health side, I feel better now than I have in many, many years. As far as weight is concerned, from 190-some pounds, I now weigh 138 pounds.

Does that sound too low? Click here to see for yourselves. No, that isn't a Photoshop job. Photoshop was used, but only to render the original photograph black and white and to add graininess and more light gradient for artistic effect. Getting to this point wasn't easy, and remaining here never will be.

I cannot change the world, but I do presume to offer some advice, if perhaps only to an unusual breed of progressives: Republicans on the modern political stage of theatre and folly will not change; they are wholly committed to hypocrisy in their own lives and madness in their public discourse. Trying to reason with them is no more productive than accommodating their core of meanness. Stop wasting time. Find their weaknesses and feed them to the dogs of mainstream media's obsession with drool and scandal. More Republicans of the same ilk will come; they are locusts. Just keep wrecking their leading lights. They'll make it pretty easy for you; but you must have the guts to take glee not only in watching their self-immolation, but also in finding the accelerants of their demise.

But as much as you should rightfully take no quarter in wrecking any and every Republican, even those who pretend to some form or other of moderation, you are wasting every bit as much time hoping most Democrats who pretend to the call of leadership are anything other than craven shills for one or another parochial interest. Stop wasting your time thinking the salvation of this once-promising Republic is in the hands of Barack Obama or virtually any Democrat now in Congress. It is not, and the sooner you understand that, the more quickly you will look to truly progressive leaders waiting to be heard, to be elected, and to be trusted.

Tell me I am wrong, and I will tell you exactly what I think of anyone who continues to support a party that wants health care "reform" that includes fining me and putting me in prison because I will not be forced to buy the defective products of market-distorting, failed oligopolists. Neither will I support a President who feigns to competence by appointing and retaining demonstrably failed men and women.

Contrary to what millions believed in November of 2008, change begins within. Once it takes hold there, a person starts losing his or her fear of bad leaders, no matter how big their fist, no matter how attractive their promises.

Trust me on this. No matter how much the world around us needs to be reformed, change starts inside. From there, the rest might not be easy, but the road ahead is fairly clear.

So, too, are the roads that will lead to nowhere.