George Clooney is feeling good. His "Good Night, and Good Luck" just got pegged by the National Board of Review as the best film of the year, and now his "Syriana" is inspiring a hot new debate on our dependency on foreign oil.

He just got the Producer's Guild prize for Best Picture ("Good Night, and Good Luck"), he's getting a 'Modern Master' honor at next month's Santa Barbara Film Festival, his new Vegas hotel is soon to open, his injured back is feeling better - this guy's on top of the world!

So even though he just begged his fellow celebrities a few months ago to stop talking about politics, George just can't help himself. He's in the zone, you might say - like Kobe Bryant, firing up dozens of shots in the fourth quarter of a Lakers game.

He's got the hot hand, so he decided to fire off a few more opinions about life, the universe, and everything to The London Times. Forgive us if we quote George at length - a complex, subtle mind like his deserves it! (How did this guy flunk out of Northern Kentucky?):

Clooney on Being a Liberal:

"'Yes, I'm a liberal and I'm sick of it being a bad word.

"I don't know at what time in history liberals have stood on the wrong side of social issues. We thought that blacks should sit at the front of the bus, that women should be allowed to vote, that maybe McCarthy was a jerk, that Vietnam was wrong and strip-bombing Cambodia was probably stupid. We've been on the right side of all these issues.'"

Clooney on Hillary:

"Asked about Clinton's tortured attempts to distance herself from her past support for Bush, Clooney shrugs dismissively: 'She's pretty political so I'm not surprised. Am I disappointed? Yeah. I hate it when smart men and women are saying, "Well, if I knew then what I know now." The fact is: I knew it then and I don't have national security clearance. I knew there was no tie between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. We all knew the U.N. inspectors wanted to keep looking for weapons of mass destruction. Basically, the Democrat leadership was scared (of criticizing Bush) and it's too bad, because it's come back to haunt them.'"

Clooney on Being a Traitor:

"I asked Clooney if he felt any sense of vindication that two years after he was denounced as a traitor, his doubts about the war have become mainstream: ' You don't see any of us standing up going, hey, hey, we were right. There's nothing fun about being on the right side of history if the children of friends of mine are being killed.'

"'The truth is, you still have to ask questions. We do have Syria, Iran and North Korea. We've got a lot of other issues and we don't want to have to go into these with an (ideological) agenda, and then fake whatever information we need to back up our agenda again.'

"Clooney insists that he has no intention of running for political office he has always described himself as a 'yes, I did it' candidate, meaning that he would have to admit to a long list of past misdeeds with wine, women and more besides if ever he submitted himself to electoral scrutiny.

"Instead he sees himself as 'an irritant - picking at the scab a little  to challenge authority. My father taught me that.'"

An irritant. Fine, George. We're happy to think of you that way.