Leonard Pitts, Master Wordsmith

Frequently on these posts you will see the Commander using the term the Master Blogger or the Master Comedian. But what exactly is the criteria for Master.

When I say someone is a Master, we are talking about the best of the best of the best, to use the old cliche'. Take the Master Wordsmith Leonard Pitts, as an example:

Blind loyalty led Bush's team into big sinkhole
By LEONARD PITTS Jr.
Mon, Mar. 19, 2007

It is this notion -- that being a ''loyal Bushie'' is a qualification for getting or keeping a job -- that rankles. And if any of this sounds like déjà vu all over again, that's only because you've been paying attention. Indeed, the revelations spilling out of Gonzales' office are distressingly familiar.

Take Brownie -- please. You remember Michael Brown. Guy had zero experience in disaster management. So naturally, he wound up as head of FEMA, the federal disaster management agency. He was, after all, a ''loyal Bushie'' -- a friend of a Bush friend. Not that that helped him when a hurricane named Katrina came knocking.

The flow of Mr. Pitts words are breathtaking. Even if you disagree with what he says, and I have on occasion, his ability to put ideas on paper with a clean elegant form of expression is remarkable. It is a style that is uniquely his own, as though the medium of communication, the written word, does not exist and you can imagine him talking to you personally.

Read some of his previous columns. No weasel words, no lying, even a grudging realization that some may disagree with his opinion concerning a recent "death" in the Comic Book Universe:

In the real world, meantime, American troops continue to die in a conflict predicated on bad readings of worse intelligence. And the National Security Agency eavesdrops on American phone calls and e-mails. And the Transportation Security Administration might put your name on its ''no-fly'' list and you can neither find out why nor appeal. And prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are in their fifth year of indefinite detention, no charges filed.

And if all that's just fine with some of us -- ''We're at war!'' they like to shout -- others of us watch with trepidation. We marvel -- no pun intended -- at how blithely the nation has mortgaged its moral authority, international prestige and sense of national mission. We wonder where America went. We wonder if we will ever get her back.

The flow of ideas. Would that we could all communicate like Mr. Pitts. I would give a months pay to have even half of his ability.