Our republic turns 232 years old on July 4th and, as always, the day's celebrations have roused my patriotic impulse.

This year, I've come up with a slightly whimsical, but mostly serious, top ten list for the occasion. Here are the Top Ten Reasons I Love the USA:

10) Barbecued ribs and bacon cheesburgers.

9) Hollywood movies (the good ones, anyway).

8) California, Montana, Virginia and New England.

7) Seattle, Santa Fe, San Francisco, New York and Washington D.C.

6) Italian restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Mexican restaurants, Thai restaurants, Japanese restaurants, French restaurants, Ethiopian restaurants... (Where else on earth can you eat like this?)

5) Rock and roll.

4) American women.

3) The mountains, the prairie, the oceans white with foam.

2) The fact that our country is still a work in progress.

1) The Bill of Rights.

That's my list. Now, here's my Burning Question: What are the top ten reasons you love the USA?

A stern reporter asked the mayor at his press conference on Wednesday, "Who lost the Sonics?"

The implication seemed to be "You, Greg Nickels, you lost the Sonics!"

I'd argue that the Sonics were stolen. Clay Bennett arrived from Oklahoma City as "a man possessed" by the mission of rustling Seattle's NBA franchise and hightailing it back to his hometown as quickly as possible. Well, it cost him $45 million bucks to get out of his lease, but he achieved his goal.

If anyone lost the Sonics, I'd say it might be Howard Schultz, the Starbucks magnate and ex-Sonics owner who was so eager to dump the team that he fell for Bennett's pledge to make a good faith effort to keep the franchise in Seattle. Or maybe state legislators lost the Sonics by their refusal to act quickly to open the way for local investors to buy the team.

In reality, though, Seattle is simply another victim of the extortion racket run by major league sports. If cities don't play along and build ever-more-glorious arenas for their basketball, baseball or football clubs, money-grubbing owners are allowed to move their teams of millionaires to other gullible municipalities where the whole con game starts anew. I actually credit Mayor Nickels for refusing to completely roll over for Bennett and his enablers in the NBA front office.

It seems as if the deal the mayor worked out is about the best we can expect from this mess. The remaining debt on Key Arena gets paid off and lost revenue is covered by the $45 million, plus the city gets another $30 million if a new team cannot be brought to town. Only one thing seems to stand in the way of that new team coming and that is the willingness of the legislture to allow King County to extend the local hospitality tax to pay for yet another upgrade of Key Arena.

There's no guarantee of that, of course, since legislators can read the polls that indicate a majority of voters don't want to spend another dime on a big league sports facility. Still, I'd lay a very modest bet that the deal gets done and, within two or three years, Seattle will have inherited a team from some other hapless town. Then, the Sonics logo will be taken out of storage and slapped on the uniforms of a new set of players and all the angst about losing Sonics version 1.0 will be forgotten. Of course, that will only mean we've jumped back into the fool's game of major league sports economics.

Here's my Burning Question: What do you think about the "loss" of the Sonics? Are you sad to see them go and do you want a new team to replace them?

In his talk to a gathering of the nation's editorial cartoonists in San Antonio, Henry Cisneros had something important to say about the demographic transformation that will shape the future of the United States.

Between now and 2050, the country's population will grow by 130 million people. Anglos will account for 18 million of those new citizens, 25 million will be African American and 27 million will be Asian American. Hispanics will be a huge 63 million of that total. Whites will still be about 50 percent of the entire population, but they will be an older group. Younger people, particularly new families, will be heavily minority and largely Hispanic.

These numbers will have a distinct impact on marketing, entertainment and many other aspects of our economy and culture. It will be absolutely vital for Americans to respond to the educational challenge this demographic shift represents, Cisneros said. Right now, Latino student lag seriously behind their white and Asian counterparts. In order to sustain the nation as a global economic power, we will need a new generation of scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and highly-trained workers. Many of these new skilled people will have to come from among young Hispanics, Cisneros observed, otherwise we simply will not have enough of them.

"We're an immigrant nation and our immigrants come here to work," Cisneros said. "The only thing to give pause is this question: will we invest in the education of these newcomers and create a pathway for these folks to move into the middle class? If not, we won't have a middle class."

Friday morning, Henry Cisneros gave America's editorial cartoonists the respect they may or may not deserve but, certainly, seldom get.

The former Clinton administration HUD secretary, ex-mayor of San Antonio and tarnished political star of the U.S. Hispanic community left a meeting with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in Washington, D.C., in order to fly a circuitous over-night route to San Antonio that got him to the city at 8 AM in time to give a speech to the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. As soon as he was done, he headed back to D.C. to re-engage with the discussion of how to transfer Sen. Clinton's strong Latino support to Sen. Obama. Cisneros' willingness to go to all that trouble just to give a one-hour talk to a bunch of cartoonists demonstrated his inclination to keep a commitment, as well as his respect for John Branch, the editorial cartoonist at the Hearst-owned San Antonio Express-News.

Cisneros had some interesting things to say. He has been close to Bill and Hillary Clinton for years and still seemed a bit surprised at the result of the Democratic primaries. He, like most Hillary supporters, was blindsided by the Barack Obama phenomenon. Acknowledging that the Clinton campaign had made two huge mistakes -- one, by not competing in many caucus states and, two, by failing to have a post-Super Tuesday game plan -- he said Hillary "didn't expect to come up against a force of nature like Obama." Cisneros indicated that he had expected Obama's inexperience and race to be major impediments. Instead, Obama rode the wave of passion for change and ran a nearly flawless campaign, thus demonstrating superb management skills that Cisneros believes are proof that he can be an effective president.

Cisneros had nice things to say about John McCain, too. "I'm a great fan of the senator," Cisneros said, having worked with him during his time at HUD. McCain would be a formidable candidate in any normal election year, but Cisneros sees 2008 shaping up to be a very abnormal year in which the Democratic candidate, because of his charisma and his race, has a good shot at taking normally Republican-leaning states, such as Georgia and Virginia, and swings states, such as Michigan, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada.

Cisneros said the meetings he was involved in with Clinton and Obama were "very sobering, actually." It's very difficult giving up power, he said, and "Hillary wanted to be the nominee worse than I imagined. You could see in her face she was giving up a dream, maybe forever… It was difficult and awkward, but she handled it in a professional way."

In order to get Hispanics to come out and vote for Obama as they did for Hillary, she will need to be very visible in her support of the Democratic nominee in Hispanic communities, Cisneros said. Otherwise, many will turn to McCain who has won admiration among Latinos for his moderate position on immigration issues.

Here's a new experience for me: blogging by the side of a swimming pool.

I'm in San Antonio, Texas, attending the convention of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. It's a yearly gathering that I try not to miss since editorial cartoonists are a small and beleaguered band and it's nice to have the chance to share the unique pains and glories of the profession with the only people who really understand what it is I do and why I do it.

The pool time, here at the top of the lovely Hotel Contessa, is actually a rare moment of relaxation. Morning hours have been spent in sessions discussing weighty subjects, such as illegal immigration and the care and rehabilitation of severely wounded U.S. soldiers, as well as career related stuff, like journalism contests and the latest computer graphics technology.

One of the most entertaining panel presentations was about reader feedback – what used to consist of stern letters to the editor and heated phone calls, but is now an occasionally vile stream of insults delivered via e-mail and through comments logged below online cartoons.

Mike Lester who works in Rome, Georgia, offered the best answer to readers who ask editorial cartoonists why they can't draw positive cartoons: "Because those are called greeting cards." That retort, however, is not likely to satisfy cartoon critics.

Clay Bennett, who, in recent years, has won more awards for his consistently excellent work than any of us, told how he once opened his mail to find a clipping of one of his cartoons dipped in excrement. Another unhappy reader e-mailed him the following pleasant message: "Ann Coulter has more patriotic blood in her one used tampon than you have coursing through your entire body."

Ted Rall, who regularly pushes the boundaries of offensive commentary in his syndicated work, found reaction went beyond the standard anonymous insults from angered readers when he criticized widows of 9/11 victims. He felt a few of them were exploiting a horrible situation to enrich themselves. A group of New York City firefighters begged to differ. They showed up outside his apartment in a fire truck and milled around holding axes. They waited for him to come out until a friend of Ted's showed up with a camera and started taking pictures. Soon thereafter, Rall received a phoned death threat from a policeman who left his name and telephone number. When the cops and firefighters want to do you harm, Rall wondered, whom do you call for protection?

As disturbing as reader reaction can sometimes be, Bruce MacKinnon, a fine cartoonist who works in Halifax, Nova Scotia, had a much more chilling tale to tell. Recently, Canadian authorities broke up what they were quite sure was a serious terrorist plot. During the investigation, the wife of one of the alleged plotters threatened to sue the government for millions of dollars. The woman, a Canadian of European descent, is a convert to Islam and unfailingly appears in public wearing a black burkha. MacKinnon did a cartoon satirizing her lawsuit threat in which he drew the woman as she appears in her Islamic garb with no distortion. Incredibly, Islamic groups brought a human rights complaint that led to a police investigation to see if MacKinnon was promoting genocide. The investigation remains open – a frightening demonstration of the fact that, even in a country like Canada, hypersensitivity to the concerns of easily-offended religious sects is leading to infringement of free speech rights.

I've just put up a new gallery of 25 cartoons dealing with environmental issues.

To find it, click on GALLERIES in the link bar above.

A number of the cartoons were reprinted as illustrations for the book, Affluenza, the All-Consuming Epidemic. The book is a witty and insightful look at the many ways we are all damaging the earth and our own true quality of life by over-consumption. John de Graaf, the lead author, is a producer at Seattle's PBS affiliate, KCTS. De Graaf's film, Affluenza, preceded the book and was broadcast by public television. Both the book and the documentary are worth giving a look.

Now that summer has kicked into gear at last, it is my duty to remind men of a looming seasonal hazard: bikinis.

Last weekend, with the sun bright and the air warm, I went for a run around Green Lake. Half of Seattle seemed to be there, too, walking dogs, zipping past on roller blades, chasing frisbees, lolling on the grass, exposing pale northern skin to the first serious UV rays of the year. About half way into a three-mile lap of the lake, I noticed a young woman up ahead sitting on the lawn by the side of the path. She was blonde, slim and pretty. She sat with her legs crossed, Indian-style, her arms resting on her knees, her upper torso thrust forward. As I got close, I glance at her and saw that she was wearing a very small bikini which barely covered a very prominent bosom. I also saw that she was grinning at me, as if to say, "Hah! Caught you looking!"

This entire incident took no more than two seconds, but it significantly altered my frame of mind. An hour later, I was back home, having dinner with my family on our back deck and I began to describe my sighting of the bikini girl. If you are thinking this was not a smart idea, you are right. After joking that the encounter nearly caused me to run into the lake, my wife smirked and said that would have been a really good idea. My daughter just looked appalled. Like any young woman, she doesn't want to know her dad is actually just like all those other brainless, boob-obsessed guys out there. My son was no help. He professed to be equally appalled, though he was probably wondering if the girl was still at the lake and if he had time to get over there.

Well, men of America, I relate this incident because there is now scientific proof that none of us is to blame if we are inadvertently distracted by a bikini. It's simply biology or psychology or, perhaps, anthropology. The latest edition of The Journal of Consumer Research features a report titled, Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice. Simplified, the conclusion reached in this report after extensive scientific investigation is that bikinis turn men into boobs. The visual stimulus actually causes male thought processes to narrow and focus on one thing, to the exclusion of rational thought. In other words, we're baboons.

You can read about this in Brian Alexander's column at msnbc.com. Here's the link. As Alexander notes, this male response has long been exploited for commercial purposes. The advertising, entertainment and fashion industries rely on the assumption that if a female in a bikini can somehow be put on display in an advertisement or a movie or TV show, men will notice and their money will follow. As Alexander says, "None of this excuses bad boy behavior, but..."

...it may help women understand why even a choir boy is tough to dissuade once he's built up a head of steam.

Whether or not women are as blinded by sex as men remains an open question. Would a picture of David Beckham in briefs influence a woman to pass up a bigger payout? Maybe, but the studies on sexual arousal and decision-making have mostly been done on men, so the verdict is out.

In general, though, all our brains, (researchers believe), can be thought of as being of "two minds," there is the "affective system," ("Dude! Who cares what it costs! She's hot!") which answers to our basic drives, and the deliberative system ("That's your IRA contribution!"). To think of this another way, picture an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Even in the heat of the moment, there is still that little voice that says "You know you are making a mistake" -- the trouble is it gets drowned out by the volume of the affective system.

I'm thinking we didn't need science to tell us all of this. Experience is the constant teacher. I also figure what we can't change, we should just enjoy. Bikinis are one of the great inventions of Western Civilization, right up there with the internal combustion engine and the iPod. They should be celebrated and admired.

But it's probably a good idea not to mention any of this celebrating and admiring to your wife and kids.

Yikes! My cartoon of the president and the queen having tea caused quite a kerfuffle in the blogosphere.

Alert readers noticed that the drawing was a revised version of a cartoon I drew in 2001. Some thought it was a clever updating, others thought I had gotten lazy. But the discussion did not stop with the readers of davidhorsey.com. Rob Tornoe at Politicker.com posted an item titled, Another day, another cartoonist plagiarizes himself. Hot on the trail of cartoonists who copy themselves, Tornoe believed he had caught me in a deception.

Today's culprit is an artist I admire a great deal, and if it wasn't for the fact that I own several of his books, I might not have noticed that he changed up an old cartoon and simply resubmitted it as new.

However, I wasn't trying to deceive anyone. I assumed plenty of folks would remember the cartoon. It was reprinted in the book Tornoe has on his shelf, From Hanging Chad to Baghdad, and I've used it over and over again in public presentations. When I read that Pres. Bush was closing his term in office having tea with Queen Elizabeth, I thought it would be fun to revisit the image I had drawn of their first tea time, to give it a new spin and, for online readers, present it in color. It didn't seem like such a controversial idea. Apparently, I was mistaken.

A bigger debate ensued at The Daily Cartoonist. It's rather fun to read a bunch of cartoonists questioning me, then questioning themselves and finally coming out as friends (what a rare moment of amity in the blog world!). Read it here.

As I said in my final retort in The Daily Cartoonist dicussion...

Perhaps I'm wrong. Still, it seems like there's a rather large gray area. Is Tom Tomorrow guilty of plagiarizing himself when he uses incredibly similar images in cartoon after cartoon and employs essentially the same formulation time after time in his satire of right wing thought processes? Or is he like Monet doing water lilies over and over again? Is Oliphant's recurring jab at the Catholic Church -- St. Pedophilia -- a clever variation on a theme or a lazy way to recycle the same tired joke?

It's an interesting question to contemplate. I know I certainly won't revisit an old cartoon again unless I acknowledge very clearly in the drawing what I'm doing. But, even if I do that, is it still cheating if I don't actually redraw every line?

And finally, is it really plagiarism if you are stealing from yourself? Or is it more like artistic masturbation? And, if so, are sex toys permissible?

On the plus side, it's nice to know a journalist can still be widely admired by the public.

The response to the sudden death of NBC's Washington bureau chief, Tim Russert, seems to demonstrate that many Americans can recognize the difference between a serious newsman and the many self-serving blowhards who gobble up hours of air time on the cable channels. By all accounts, Russert understood that journalists have a sacred mission in this democracy: to confront those in power and make them accountable for their words and actions, but to do it fairly, intelligently and without any partisan agenda skewing the process.

Beyond this commitment to a lofty journalistic ideal, the other aspect that set Russert apart from the careerists in the national media was his commitment to his family, his friends and his church. Clearly, he was one of the good guys. He leaves a huge hole in television journalism where the performance of so many would-be Russerts is perfectly defined by the perjorative "talking heads."

Nevertheless, despite my admiration for Tim Russert, I have been uneasy with the amount of coverage his death has received, especially on the cable news channels. Perhaps it is simply an example of the cable news dynamic where, once a hot news item is latched onto, it is not easily let go and the ceaseless attention eventually makes the news event seem trivial and the news organizations look ridiculous. Was Russert's importance to the nation so great that all other news needed to be shut out while his friends and colleagues talked about his fine qualities hour after hour?

Well, no. He was a very good TV journalist and was particularly important to his news organization, so that organization indulged itself. The question I raise is whether this was really a service to the American public or simply a manifestation of the Washingotn, D.C., media's fascination with itself.

For a more complete analysis of this question, I'd suggesting looking at a media critique by Jack Shafer in Slate. Shafer raises several good points, including this:

I wonder whether the media grievers gave a moment of thought to how this Russert torrent they produced played with viewers and readers. Did the grievers really think Russert was so important, so vital to the nation's course, and such an elevated human being that he deserved hour upon hour of tribute?

Shafer also quotes Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times who also saw overkill in the coverage:

Watching the cable news networks in the hours after his death, one was struck by the outpouring of admiration and affection from across the political spectrum and from journalistic colleagues of every sort. It was impossible not to be struck--once again--by just how incestuous and claustrophobic the Washington-based nexus of politics and journalism has become.

What do you think? Were the tributes to Tim Russert moving or too much?

What is there to say to newly-minted college graduates embarking on careers in the expanding universe of communications?

On Thursday night, I had to confront that question. I was being honored as the 2008 Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Washington's Department of Communication at the department's graduation ceremony. After hearing nice words said about me and receiving a very impressive framed certificate, I stood before the several hundred students and their friends and families and here's what I had to say:

Congratulations, graduates, on arriving at this day. Having taken the same path as you a few years ago, I know what it means for you and your families to finally be here. And I'm sure, for some of you, getting through college was pretty easy. You went to every class, read all the books, wrote all the papers, took all the tests, got good grades and now here you are, ready to receive your degrees right on time. You all did it that way, right?

Or not.

Maybe, you were more like me. When I was a student at the UW, I devoted a lot of time to sitting in the HUB talking to my friends. I spent endless hours working at the Daily. I spent more endless hours dealing with the angst and allure of college romance. I went to the classes I liked and skipped too many of the ones that were less compelling. And, when it came to fall quarter of my 6th year at the University of Washington, I remember staying up very late one night with my roommate, Peter Rinearson, trying to figure out how in the world we could ever graduate. It seemed like we'd been in school forever and still were not close to getting out.

Well, desperation is often the source of inspiration. I re-learn that lesson almost every day as I face down yet another deadline without a clue about what cartoon I will draw for the next day. Something always comes up, just in the nick of time. Desperation leads to inspiration, just as it did on that night that Peter and I were sitting in my room worrying about our never-ending college careers.

Back then, communications students could earn 12 credits for doing an independent project. So, Peter and I dreamed one up. Essentially, it was a road trip. We proposed to travel around the country interviewing newspaper editors about what was then a hot topic in journalism: public access to the media. The head of the school went for it, gave us $300 to help us along the way and, within just a few days, we were on the road. It was actually a very solid project… and had the added benefit of allowing Peter to visit his girlfriend in St. Louis and me to see my girlfriend who was doing an internship in Washington, D.C.

We were on the road for most of a month. When we got back, we spent many long hours typing up the dozens of interviews we had done with editors – and I mean typing on a typewriter, not a computer. We used the facilities at a weekly paper where Peter was working to lay out, paste up and print several copies of our final 195-page report. And we got our 12 credits. That was enough to push me on my way toward a couple of reporting internships and, finally, graduation a few quarters later.

It also confirmed my love of road trips. I never feel more free and alive than when I am driving down a long highway in unfamiliar territory heading for new and often unexpected adventures. This last winter, the Post-Intelligencer paid my way on my latest road trip. It was a dream assignment any journalist would love to have. I traveled through six western states in the weeks before the Super Tuesday primary in February. I talked to people about some of the big issues that were driving the presidential campaign, went to the candidate debates in Los Angeles, drove along the border with Mexico, dropped in on the Sundance Film Festival and braved an empty highway in the middle of a blizzard in Wyoming just so I could get to an interview. I produced a series of 11 front page columns and cartoons and, every day, got up in the morning thinking how much fun it is to do journalism.

It has been fun from the day I started my career as a novice reporter covering the state legislature, but technology has now made it all so much easier. On my trip through the West, I traveled with a laptop, a small portable scanner and a wireless card that enabled me to send my stories and cartoons from anywhere. This was a lot different from the journalism world I entered into after graduation. In 1980, just a year after I joined the P-I, I was at the Democratic National Convention in New York City. The fastest method then available for getting my cartoons back to the newspaper was to send them by Federal Express. That meant there was a lag of a day and a half between the time I sent my cartoon off and the moment it was finally published in the newspaper. Now, of course, there is no lag at all. I can post a blog or a photo or a cartoon on my web site and readers can see what I've done instantly.

There were some advantages to having that lag, though. In New York in 1980, I drew a full-page cartoon to run the final day of the convention. I had to send it off with Federal Express a day ahead of time and that meant my job was done and I had time to play. Well, I played pretty hard at a couple of parties and didn't get to sleep until about 5 AM. At about 10 AM, the ringing telephone broke through my sleep. It was my editor wanting to know where that full-page cartoon was. We soon discovered FedEx had lost it, so I redrew the whole thing on too little sleep and with a pretty monumental hangover. These days, thanks to computer technology, e-mail and the Internet, I'd know if my work had arrived well before the parties started.

This shift in technology has done a lot more than make my job easier, of course. It has utterly transformed the world of communication. The theme of that project Peter and I did now seems rather quaint. Journalists were then worried about how to involve the public in newspapers. Now, everybody is a publisher. In the brave new world of blogs and Youtube and MySpace and Facebook and Yahoo, it's easy for anyone to share information with a potential worldwide audience. The media monopoly is long gone. Communication is not just the dominion of those who own the presses and the TV stations, communication has become the democratized and pervasive activity of our entire society.

This has meant trouble for newspapers and broadcasters because the old business models don't work anymore. Because of this, the communications industry that you are now entering may seem a bit uncertain and scary. But it is also exciting. We are in the opening days of a communications revolution that is going to provide opportunities and careers that have barely been imagined.

In this new communications world the toughest and most important task will be to sort out what is useful, effective, important and true in a vast flood of information. You graduates, in all the diverse fields of communication that you are about to enter, are the ones who will be responsible for doing this. And I want to leave you with two rules as a guide. I call them Keith Webb's axioms.

About ten years after I earned my BA in Communications, I got a Rotary Foundation Scholarship and went to the University of Kent at Canterbury in England. There, I earned an MA in International Relations. One of my favorite teachers at Canterbury was a very smart, very funny man named Keith Webb. Keith said that for students, for researchers, for academics, for journalists, for anyone trying to find the needles of truth in the haystack of opinions, conjecture, spin and propaganda, there are two rules to follow:

First, something is not true just because some expert says it is true.

This rule is fairly obvious to anyone who has the skeptical mind needed to be a good journalist, a good researcher or even just a thinking human being. Experts, pundits, politicians and even presidents often say things that are less than true and accurate.

The second rule is tougher:

Something is not true just because you agree with it.

This is the biggest trap that all of us fall into on a regular basis, including big shot editorial cartoonists. There are politicians we want to believe just because we like them. There are viewpoints we want to believe just because they make us feel comfortable and make us part of a like-minded group. There are crazy things we find on the Internet that we believe because they reinforce our personal biases.

But I challenge you just as I challenge myself every day to fight against comfortable opinions and seek the harder truths.

Anyway, that's about all the wisdom I have to impart. In closing, I should tell you things worked out pretty well for my friend Peter and me after we finally figured out how to get out of college. I've had a journalism career that has taken me all over the country and to other parts of the world and to New York twice to pick up Pulitzer Prizes. Peter won a Pulitzer, too, as a reporter for the Seattle Times and went on to found a software company and work as a vice-president at Microsoft. Several of my other friends from the Daily and the Communication Department also went on to win Pulitzers, write books and enjoy great careers at newspapers like the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the New York Times. So, I'll tell you this: I can almost guarantee that there are some future Pulitzer winners in this room today – somewhere out there in those graduation robes -- and many more who are going to make a big mark in the world of communications.

It all starts here, now. The communication revolution belongs to you.

Seize the day.