Jim Freeman’s views of American politics are salted with irony and lightly peppered by humor, a relief from the unending rants of the far left or far right and reasonably balanced by common sense. They’re here as Freeman wrote and published them at the time, unedited and without the benefit of hindsight.

2007 was a year when we came to realize 2006 wasn’t merely a blip on the screen and that Wall Street had us in deep trouble. This fourth segment of The Dark Side of the Moon series begins with ‘Enough Naming Everything as War’ and winds up nearly 500 pages later with ‘Making Second-Class Citizens of Non-Christians’.

What else was going on while America edged closer to the crumbling cliff of financial disaster? Presidential candidates positioned (then repositioned) themselves, and scandals seemed to come and go with equal regularity. The Dark Side of the Moon brings focus to that sequence. That’s its purpose, as a remembrance of the times that so quickly become a blur that we find ourselves wondering how it all happened. If there’s a sense of humor and a bit of irony tucked in along the way, so much the better.