Ladies and Gentlemen, the 44th President of the United States

Russ Feingold:

During the Watergate hearings, then-Senator Howard Baker, a Republican, showed tremendous courage, and a deep sense of Congress’s duty to hold President Nixon accountable, when he asked that now-famous question: "What did the President know and when did he know it?" Baker was one of a handful of Republicans during the scandal who stood up to their party, and to the President. Today, as the President admits, even flaunts, his program to wiretap Americans on American soil without the warrants required by law, we need more courageous Republicans to stand up and check the President’s power grab.

When the President breaks the law, he must be held accountable, and that is why I have introduced a resolution to censure the President for his actions. Yet, as we face a President who thinks he is above the law, most Republicans are willing to cede enormous power to the executive branch. Their actions are not just short-sighted, they are a departure from one of the Republican Party’s defining goals: limiting government power.

Some Republicans are defending the President’s conduct as appropriate and arguing he should have free rein to continue his program, regardless of whether it is legal. Others seek to grant him expanded statutory powers so as to make his illegal conduct legal. But current law already allows a wiretap to be turned on immediately as long as the government goes to the court within 72 hours. The President has claimed an inherent authority to wiretap Americans on American soil without a warrant that he thinks allows him to break this law. So why would anyone think the President will comply with any new proposal? The constitutional system of separation of powers demands that we check a President who recklessly grabs for power and ignores the rule of law, not reward him—particularly when the law he breaks is designed to protect innocent Americans from intrusive government powers.

As many Republicans focus on defending the President, they are losing sight of what ceding these powers to the President now will mean for their own party down the road. Those expansive powers will rest with whoever sits in the Oval Office. Republicans who argue today that the President has the power to ignore a law passed by Congress are relinquishing authority not just to this Republican President, but to future presidents of any party. They are helping to render future members of their own party powerless to check an executive who claims expansive powers under the Constitution or a future Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution.

The Republican effort to defend the President works against the party in the long run, and it also goes against the party’s longstanding rhetoric about checking government power and strengthening individual freedoms. It’s hardly in keeping with those values to allow Americans’ communications to be monitored without a warrant, or to concentrate power in one branch of government. One of the best ways to limit government power is to ensure that each branch provides a check on the other two, but most Republicans in Congress today aren’t checking the President’s power or defending the judicial branch’s right to do so—they are giving him a blank check to ignore the rule of law.

A party that prides itself on limiting government, and supporting individual freedom and the rule of law, should think twice before it allows any President to ignore the laws that Congress passes. By supporting the President now, Republicans are making it tougher for members of their own party to challenge the power of future presidents and departing from their own values in the process. That’s a short-sighted strategy that won’t serve either party, or the nation, in the long run. What would serve the nation, and support the rule of law, is for a few courageous Republicans to follow the example set during the Watergate scandal by standing up to a President of their own party, asking tough questions, and holding the President accountable for his abuse of power.

Russ Feingold is holding censure hearings today, but you'd never know it from looking at the traditional media. Except for the New York Times, the media are mum.

But here's what we do know, for those of us not watching C-SPAN:

The committee met to consider a resolution by one of its members, Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, to censure the president over the surveillance program. The resolution was not voted on and is almost surely going nowhere, but it still had the power to ignite feelings.

Under Mr. Bush's theory of government, Mr. Feingold said, "we no longer have a constitutional system consisting of three co-equal branches of government. We have a monarchy."

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the panel's ranking Democrat who was congratulated on his 66th birthday today in a rare moment of bipartisan friendliness, sided with Mr. Feingold, although stopping short of saying he would vote for censure.

The Congressional resolution of force passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, makes no mention of surveillance, Mr. Leahy said, yet "the administration claims now that Congress unconsciously authorized warrantless wiretaps."

"This is 'Alice in Wonderland' gone amok," Mr. Leahy said. "It is not what we in Congress said, and it certainly was not what we in Congress intended."

But Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said Mr. Feingold's move was "completely without merit," and he spoke contemptuously of one witness, John Dean of Watergate fame, as "a convicted felon" bent on publicizing his books.

"And I believe that the American people would view what we are about here as part of the surreal atmosphere that they believe, and sometimes correctly so, is completely out of touch with the rest of the United States," Mr. Cornyn said.

Another Republican, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, wondered why "the national spasm" over the surveillance program had not run its course. The president was within his rights and within the law to have the National Security Agency do limited surveillance, and he has kept Congressional leaders informed, the senator said.

Mr. Sessions said Mr. Feingold's resolution was irresponsible, "and it has the potential to send abroad throughout the terrorist community and to those who are watching our resolve around the world a very perverse and false message."

The panel's chairman, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said he too thought Mr. Feingold's resolution was without merit. "But it provides a forum for the discussion of issues which really ought to be considered in greater depth than they have been," Mr. Specter said.

The expert witnesses were also far apart.

"The president did not break the law," said Prof. Robert Turner of the University of Virginia's Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs. "Every wartime president, even every wartime leader going back to George Washington, when he authorized the opening of British mail coming into the United States during the American Revolution, has done this kind of behavior. It's essential to the successful conduct of war."

But Bruce Fein, a lawyer who worked in the Justice Department in the Reagan presidency, said Mr. Bush's assertions of powers "have to be taken as permanent changes on the political landscape on checks and balances." The president's claims are "extravagant" and his interpretation of the authorization given him by Congress "is not just wrong, but preposterous," Mr. Fein said.

Then there was Mr. Dean, the White House lawyer for President Richard Nixon, making his first appearance before a Congressional panel since he mesmerized the country in his Nixon-incriminating testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee more than three decades ago.

Mr. Dean, who spoke in favor of Senator Feingold's measure, is the author of the 2004 book "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush." Presidents "push the envelope as far as they can" in their power struggles with Congress, Mr. Dean warned. Had Mr. Nixon been censured, "it would have been a godsend," Mr. Dean said, apparently meaning that all the abuses that led to Mr. Nixon's resignation might never have happened.

One thing Mr. Dean said prompted no disagreement whatever. "I must say, I think I have probably more experience first-hand than anybody might want in what can go wrong and how a president can get on the other side of the law."

And herein lies the failing of our system of government: The men who wrote the documents which created our system of laws made the mistake of assuming that those called to public service would put the good of the country and the rule of law ahead of party loyalty. Alas, the current crop of Republicans do not meet that standards. And if that means helping George W. Bush turn this country into a monarchic dictatorship with him at the helm, in perpetuity, they'll do it....because they are Republicans.

The bitter disappointment of Mets ballplayers

The Mets have a long history of trading players who go on to be superstars, preferring the immediate, if illusory benefit, of big-name stars on the waning side of their careers.

It must be hard to play on a sub-.500 team, watching your former teammates burn up the league for someone else.

This year, it looks like the Mets may actually field a credible team, but even this year is not exempt from the trademark Mets disappointment.

This disappointment is not to be found on the field, however, it's about a promise that Anna Benson, wife of ex-Met pitcher Kris Benson, made on the Howard Stern show last year, a promise now destined to be fulfilled with members of another team:

Bensons kayoed

Hubby hurler cheated, sez sexpot Anna

BY LLOYD GROVE and DAVE GOLDINER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Sexpot Anna Benson and her ex-Met hubby are headed for Splitsville after she caught him fooling around with one of her friends, the Daily News has learned.
The naughtiest wife in baseball filed for divorce yesterday from pitcher Kris Benson, who was traded in the off-season from the Mets to the Baltimore Orioles.

"She's completely crushed; she didn't see this coming," said Anna Benson's spokesman, Jules Feiler. "She had no choice but to take this action."

What's bad for Kris Benson could be good for new teammates Miguel Tejada, Melvin Mora and the rest of the O's.

Anna Benson once vowed to sleep with every one of her husband's teammates if she caught him in the sack with another woman.

"I told him, 'Cheat on me all you want.' If you get caught, I'm going to [have sex with] everybody on your entire team," she told Howard Stern on his radio show in 2004. "Everyone would get a turn."

But Anna Benson's spokesman warned the Orioles not to get their hopes up. "I think she was joking," Feiler said.

If you are a Mets player today, you are probably kicking yourself...or Omar Minaya.

UPDATE: As expected, Blogtopia's #1 Mets fan, Steve Gilliard, has more. And before anyone is tempted to go all "traitor to the feminist cause" on my ass, forget about it. I'm not trashing Anna Benson because she behaves in a slutty manner; that's her privilege; though Gilliard is right -- in professional sports, it does not behoove a professional male athlete to appear to be whipped by such an unaccomplished piece of trash. If Anna Benson is a feminist, then Dick Cheney is Mother Teresa.

It's not about Anna Benson's body, or what she decided to do with it. It's about Anna Benson trying to score wingnut points off of Carlos' Delgado's history of refusing to stand during the Seventh Inning Stretch playing of "God Bless America" -- a staple at ballparks in the aftermath of 9/11 as a protest against George W. Bush's Iraq war. This kind of peaceful protest is what's called "free speech" in this country, and Anna Benson, a woman for whom New York was nothing but a place in which to use her tits to advance her career, has either forgotten or never knew about the First Amendment -- unless it involves her OWN right to free speech.

Anna Benson is literally a wingnut wet dream -- a mindlessly jingoistic, moronic bimbo with huge fake hooters who spouts off on her web site about Michael Moore, America haters, and the usual litany of right-wing talking points.

But Anna Benson never understood New York, for that city, where the World Trade Center fell, is still the least jingoistic place in the country. The crap Anna Benson spouts may play south of the Mason-Dixon line, but people in New York City are capable of thought, and they weren't buying what she was selling.

It's really too bad -- too bad for the Mets, who didn't get much for Benson, but who have been gun-shy (so to speak) ever since the infamous 1980's alleged-and-later-debunked David Cone Flashing In the Bullpen incident. It's too bad for Kris Benson, who would have been a star on a contending team this year and now not only has to get used to a different league but is going to get taken to the cleaners for the standard mid-twenties male mistake of thinking with the wrong part of his anatomy. And it's too bad for Baltimore, in whose Camden Yards the end of this sorry tale is going to play out.

Here we go again

A military strike on Iran would seem to be crazy, wouldn't it? After all, we're broke, our military is already overextended in Iraq, and our reputation in the world is utterly destroyed. But when did that ever stop the death cultists in the White House and the Pentagon?

Joseph Cirincione, in Foreign Policy, points out how this Administration is using the EXACT SAME TACTICS in trying to convince the American people that an attack on Iran is necessary. The only question is: Will we buy it yet again?

Does this story line sound familiar? The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S. secretary of state tells congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The secretary of defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism. The president blames it for attacks on U.S. troops. The intelligence agencies say the nuclear threat from this nation is 10 years away, but the director of intelligence paints a more ominous picture. A new U.S. national security strategy trumpets preemptive attacks and highlights the country as a major threat. And neoconservatives beat the war drums, as the cable media banner their stories with words like “countdown” and “showdown.”

The nation making headlines today, of course, is Iran, not Iraq. But the parallels are striking. Three years after senior administration officials systematically misled the nation into a disastrous war, they could well be trying to do it again.

Nothing is clear, yet. For months, I have told interviewers that no senior political or military official was seriously considering a military attack on Iran. In the last few weeks, I have changed my view. In part, this shift was triggered by colleagues with close ties to the Pentagon and the executive branch who have convinced me that some senior officials have already made up their minds: They want to hit Iran.

[snip]

The unfolding administration strategy appears to be an effort to repeat its successful campaign for the Iraq war. It is now trying to link Iran to the 9/11 attacks by repeatedly claiming that Iran is the main state sponsor of terrorism in the world (though this suggestion is highly questionable). It is also attempting to make the threat urgent by arguing that Iran might soon pass a “point of no return” if it can perfect the technology of enriching uranium, even though many other nations have gone far beyond Iran’s capabilities and stopped their programs short of weapons. And, of course, it is now publicly linking Iran to the Iraqi insurgency and the improvised explosive devices used to kill and maim U.S. troops in Iraq, though Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace admitted there is no evidence to support this claim.

If diplomacy fails, the administration might be able to convince leading Democrats to back a resolution for the use of force against Iran. Many Democrats have been trying to burnish a hawkish image and place themselves to the right of the president on this issue. They may find themselves trapped by their own rhetoric, particularly those with presidential ambitions.

The factual debate during the next six months will revolve around the threat assessment. How close is Iran to developing the ability to enrich uranium for fuel or bombs? Is there a secret weapons program? Are there secret underground facilities? What would it mean if small-scale enrichment experiments succeed?

Fortunately, we know more about Iran’s nuclear program now than we ever knew about Iraq’s (or, for that matter, those of India, Israel, and Pakistan). International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have been in Iran for more than 3 years investigating all claims of weapons-related work. The United States has satellite reconnaissance, covert programs, and Iranian dissidents providing further information. The key now is to get all this information on the table for an open debate.

The administration should now declassify the information it used to estimate how long it will be until Iran has the capability to make a bomb. The Washington Post reported last August that this national intelligence estimate says Iran is a decade away. We need to see the basis for this judgment and all, if any, dissenting opinions. The congressional intelligence committees should be conducting their own reviews of the assessments, including open hearings with independent experts and IAEA officials. Influential groups, such as the Council on Foreign Relations, should conduct their own sessions and studies.

An accurate and fully understood assessment of the status and potential of Iran’s nuclear program is the essential basis for any policy. We cannot let the political or ideological agenda of a small group determine a national security decision that could create havoc in a critical area of the globe. Not again.

Tony Roma's, Sydney

Tony Roma's Original Baby back ribs $27.50 (full slab)Cut from tenderloin and basted with original barbecue sauce, we consider them the "filet mignon of ribs"I love my veggies. And I love my meat.The best meat is cooked whilst still attached to the bone. Bones add flavour, give moisture protection, and give some reassurance that the flesh you're eating really is what it claims to be (chicken

Tony Roma's, Sydney

Tony Roma's Original Baby back ribs $27.50 (full slab)Cut from tenderloin and basted with original barbecue sauce, we consider them the "filet mignon of ribs"I love my veggies. And I love my meat.The best meat is cooked whilst still attached to the bone. Bones add flavour, give moisture protection, and give some reassurance that the flesh you're eating really is what it claims to be (chicken

In wingnutland, being a studio-bound pundit is the REALLY dangerous job

The idea of the "101st Fighting Keyboarders" was supposed to be snarky, but the wingnuts truly believe that they, not American soldiers who are being shot at in Iraq, are the true brave ones. First we had Laura Ingraham, who spent eight highly-guarded days in Iraq, calling the journalists who are out there in the flak jackets, crouching in gutters to get the story, cowards, accusing them of covering the story from their hotel balconies.

Now, courtesty of Crooks and Liars, we have Hugh Hewitt, extolling his own bravery because he sits in the Empire State Building, which he calls a terrorism target:

MW: Let's look at it this way. I mean, you're sitting back in a comfortable radio studio, far from the realities of this war.

HH: Actually, Michael, let me interrupt you.

MW: If anyone has a right...

HH: Michael, one second.

MW: If anyone has a right to complain, that's what...

HH: I'm sitting in the Empire State Building. Michael, I'm sitting in the Empire State Building, which has been in the past, and could be again, a target. Because in downtown Manhattan, it's not comfortable, although it's a lot safer than where you are, people always are three miles away from where the jihadis last spoke in America. So that's...civilians have a stake in this. Although you are on the front line, this was the front line four and a half years ago.

You know, Mr. Brilliant went into Manhattan every day for two years. He took a bus through the Lincoln Tunnel and then a subway. Today he's going to job interviews in the city, going through the Lincoln Tunnel and then taking a subway. If he gets one of these jobs, he will be once again going to work using conveyances that are CONTINUALLY targets. Now, I love Mr. Brilliant dearly, and I would be devastated if something happened to him. But I think even Mr. B. would agree with me that as potentially dangerous is New York is, it's still not the same as being in Baghdad.

Smear war heroes like Paul Hackett as chicken, then claim that YOU, in your comfortable studio, are the real war heroes. That's reality in Republican Delusionland.

Jeebopalooza

That paragon of Christian virtue, Tom DeLay, spoke at the -- are you ready -- War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006 conference yesterday.

If you needed any further proof that what this bunch is about has nothing to do with virtue, read Michelle Goldberg's report on Day One of this hatefest:

The conference began on Monday and was saturated with millennial anxiety. A succession of preachers, talk-radio hosts, religious right operatives and, significantly, major Republican politicians took to the stage at the posh Omni Shoreham hotel to rally the troops for an epic battle between the forces of national renewal and those of vice and enervating perversion. So it wasn't surprising to hear Scarborough, a Baptist preacher who has made it his mission to organize "patriot pastors" for political action, talk about DeLay's legal troubles as part of a culminating war between heaven and hell.

"I believe the most damaging thing Tom DeLay has done in his life is take his faith seriously in the public office, which made him a target of all those who despise the goals of Christ," said Scarborough, a former college football player and longtime DeLay ally. Taking the stage before the 200 or so adoring activists in the banquet hall, DeLay ran with the end-times theme. "We have been chosen to live as Christians at a time when our culture is being poisoned and our world is being threatened, at a time when sides are being chosen and the future of man hangs in the balance," he said. "The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will."

[snip]

Perhaps worrying that anti-gay rhetoric hasn't been sufficiently inflammatory lately, some speakers urged listeners to start using more scatological and stigmatizing language. Peter LaBarbera, who heads the Illinois Family Institute and is known for his obsession with gay men's most outré sexual practices, told the audience, "My greatest frustration has been our side's inability to make homosexual behavior an issue in the public's mind." In order to inspire the kind of revulsion he wants to see more of, he read from a posting on a gay message board: "Hey guys, I know this is kind of gross and all, but I was wondering if I'm the only one. I'm usually the bottom in my relationship with my boyfriend. After having been the receptive partner in anal sex it's only a few hours before I start to experience diarrhea ... it really stinks, because I really like sex, duh, but it takes the fun out of it when I know I'll be tied to the bathroom for the next day."

"I don't think so-called GLBT teens are told anything like this" by their school counselors, LaBarbera said. "We need to find ways to bring shame back to those who are practicing and advocating homosexual behavior."

Is it just me, or are these people just OBSESSED with anal sex? And do they spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about gay sex? Why are they so concerned with what gay people do in their own bedrooms? I never think about what my gay friends do in their bedrooms. For that matter, I don't think about what my STRAIGHT friends do in their bedrooms. The only bedroom I care about is my own. Therefore, I can only assume that these people DON'T have anything going on in their bedrooms, and they're jealous of those who do.

But instead of chalking it up to sexual frustration, or confusion about their own sexual orientation, it's easier to just invoke God and try to remove the obsession from their own brains by eliminating the stimulus.

More:

Laurence White, a bearded Lutheran pastor in a clerical collar who followed DeLay, repeated a quote that he, like many before him, erroneously ascribed to Alexis DeTocqueville: "America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will also cease to be great."

"My friends," White said in a stentorian voice like burnished oak, "America is no longer good. Unrighteousness, evil, corruption, perversion and death are now standard operating procedure in the United States of America. If we do not put an end to it now, in this moment of divine destiny, then God will and God should judge America."

This was remarkable language to hear at a political forum. Imagine if Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi gave a conference address that was followed by a furious condemnation of her country. She would have to scramble to distance herself from it and would be excoriated in the press regardless. But it's not unusual to encounter this kind of thing at one of Scarborough's events because they manage to bring together congressmen -- this one featured Sen. John Cornyn and Republican Reps. Todd Akin and Louis Gohmert -- with some of the most radical elements of what was once the right-wing fringe. (Sen. Sam Brownback was supposed to speak as well, but he couldn't make it because he was needed for a vote).

At one point, speaker Herb Titus held up a copy of Kevin Phillips' "American Theocracy," offering it as evidence of the putative war on Christians. It was an audacious move, given that Sara Diamond, the preeminent scholar of the Christian right, reported in a 1998 book that Titus was forced to resign his post as dean of the law school at Pat Robertson's Regent University because he refused to renounce Christian Reconstructionism. Christian Reconstructionism is a theocratic sect that advocates the replacement of civil law with biblical law, including the execution of homosexuals, apostates and women who are unchaste before marriage. Christian Reconstructionists used to be politically radioactive, but a new generation of religious right leaders like Scarborough have embraced them, and some members of today's GOP apparently see no problem associating with them. This does not mean that America is on the verge of theocracy, but it signals an important shift. The language of religious authoritarianism has become at least somewhat politically acceptable.

Dana Milbank, showing a bit of influence from his frequent appearances on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, snarks:

There are those who would say Tom DeLay lost his job as House majority leader because he was indicted by a Texas grand jury on charges of money laundering and conspiracy, or because of his extensive ties to lawbreaking lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But they would be wrong.

In fact, the Texas Republican fell from power because he is a Christian.

That, at least, is the view of Rick Scarborough, convener of a conference this week called "The War on Christians."

"I believe the most damaging thing that Tom DeLay has done in his life is take his faith seriously into public office, which made him a target for all those who despise the cause of Christ," Scarborough said, introducing DeLay yesterday. When DeLay finished, the host reminded the politician: "God always does his best work right after a crucifixion."

Tom DeLay is Jesus. Who know? I guess that means Jack Abramoff is Paul.

More:

This would seem to be an odd time to declare Christianity under siege. A Christian conservative president has just nominated two Supreme Court justices who take an expansive view of religious rights, and religious conservatives are ascendant in a Republican Party that controls both chambers of Congress.

But, as Scarborough knows, believers will be more motivated to go to the polls in November (and to contribute money to his group) if they feel threatened. And so his forum offered all sorts of books and pamphlets proclaiming dire warnings: "The Criminalization of Christianity," "Liberalism Kills Kids" and "Same-Sex Marriage: Putting Every Household at Risk."

[snip]

But when it came to providing evidence about this war on Christians, the examples were a bit stale. Don Irvine of the conservative media watchdog Accuracy in Media led off. He cited a "Jesus freaks" slur by former CNN boss Ted Turner (from 2001), a CBS employee's description of Bauer as a "little nut" (1999), a columnist's description of "Taliban-like" conservatives (2002) and a radio report linking conservative Christians to the anthrax attacks (2002).

Irvine's most recent example was an item Monday in USA Today taking issue with the name of the "War on Christians" conference. "I'm so relieved that USA Today has found this wonderful religion reporter," Irvine said, neglecting to mention it was an op-ed by somebody not on the paper's staff.

Also on the panel were Tim Graham of the Media Research Center, another conservative watchdog (he cited a 2001 survey of journalists), and Janet Folger of a group called Faith2Action. She cited a 13-year-old Washington Post article and a 17-year-old remark by Turner, and she tearfully recounted a bad experience she had on ABC's "Nightline" -- eight years ago.

[snip]

These were only warm-up acts for DeLay, whose entrance caused a ripple of applause that spread into an extended standing ovation.

"This is a man that I believe God has appointed," Scarborough said, a view that might surprise the voters of the 22nd District of Texas. Scarborough, in his introduction, said DeLay had been "virtually destroyed in the press," and he urged the crowd to campaign for DeLay -- though he said nonprofit tax rules prevented him from actually "endorsing" DeLay.

The congressman started with a profession of faith, then went on a tour of the religious views of great presidents. He seemed to be on the verge of discussing his own troubles when he recalled Lincoln's view that men should "confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow."

But this was not the time for a DeLay confessional. Instead, he gave his view on the War on Christians. "Sides are being chosen, and the future of man hangs in the balance!" he warned. "The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will. . . . It is for us then to do as our heroes have always done and put our faith in the perfect redeeming love of Jesus Christ."

Have you ever seen a better example of the kind of "clean slate Christianity" that I'm always talking about? Does anyone actually believe that what Jesus meant was that you can do whatever the fuck you want -- steal from Indian tribes, embezzle money, take bribes in return for legislation -- and it's all OK because some Jew got nailed to a tree 2000 years ago? This particular brand of Christianity was developed for thieves and perverts, as far as I'm concerned.

There are many people, some of them self-styled libertarians, who have long been willing to accept the Dominionists the way you'd accept the crazy aunt in the attic who has money to leave you. You humor them, but if they're the foot soldiers who have to be tolerated in order to further the cause of a corporatist America, so be it. But I wonder how many of them wonder how much they're selling their soul and wallets to a group of people who are no better than the Islamic Taliban?

Is Bush ever going to take responsibility for ANYTHING?

"It's Clinton's fault." "It's the Democrats' fault." "It's the media's fault."

It's everyone's fault but that of George W. Bush.

Now he's gone completely over the edge, blaming the civil war in Iraq on Saddam Hussein, who's been out of power for two years:

President Bush said Wednesday that Saddam Hussein, not continued U.S. involvement in Iraq, is responsible for ongoing sectarian violence that is threatening the formation of a democratic government.

In his third speech this month to bolster public support for the war, Bush worked to counter critics who say the U.S. presence in the wartorn nation is fueling the insurgency.

Bush said that Saddam was a tyrant and used violence to exacerbate sectarian divisions to keep himself in power, and that as a result, deep tensions persist to this day.

"The enemies of a free Iraq are employing the same tactics Saddam used, killing and terrorizing the Iraqi people in an effort to foment sectarian division," Bush said.

The president also pushed Iraq to speed up the formation of a unity government, seen as the best option to subdue the violence gripping several Iraqi cities

Uh....George? Can you please put the rolled dollar bill and the mirror and the bottle of Jack Daniels down long enough to listen to me?

Sure....one more line, one more swig. I can wait.

Ready?

OK.

George, you simply can't have it both ways on this one. If Saddam Hussein is to blame for exacerbating sectarian tensions, then what on earth makes you think that the country is capable of putting together a unity government? And here's another one: If Saddam Hussein exacerbated sectarian tensions, how come we didn't see this kind of violence in Iraq while he was in power? Isn't it just possible that as awful as he was, the kind of iron fist he wielded kept the violence in check?

Sorry, George, but this one is ALL YOU FAULT. Say that along now...."IT'S ALL MY FAULT." Acknowledging a problem is the first step towards solving it. Try it. If you're lucky, admitting you screwed up might even allow you to save your sorry-ass legacy.

Pier 26, Darling Harbour

Ocean trout with grilled zucchini, figs, semi-dried romas, cider and goats cheese dressing $20.50It's no secret I'm a big fan of Pier 26. I think I've worked out why. The food is reliably tasty and presented deliciously. It's plated nicely without being wanky. The portions are neither excessive nor miserly. And there's always something that tempts you either on the regular menu or the glass-wall

Pier 26, Darling Harbour

Ocean trout with grilled zucchini, figs, semi-dried romas, cider and goats cheese dressing $20.50It's no secret I'm a big fan of Pier 26. I think I've worked out why. The food is reliably tasty and presented deliciously. It's plated nicely without being wanky. The portions are neither excessive nor miserly. And there's always something that tempts you either on the regular menu or the glass-wall

9/11 Loose Change

Watch this film. Then decide if you believe the official story of 9/11 or if, at the very least, you have questions.

For the record, I don't subscribe to the theory that a plane did not hit the Pentagon. This is for one plain and simple reason: I was supposed to go to Washington, DC that day to attend an FDA compliance training class, and obviously my trip was cancelled. A co-worker, however, had gone down the night before, and she saw the low-flying plane. I have some questions about exactly what happened, and why it was that the plane just happened to hit a newly-reinforced area of the Pentagon that was sparsely-populated. The evidence on this presented in this film may be questionable, but something just doesn't smell right.

I think that there is enough about 9/11 that doesn't pass the smell test even without this that makes this film compelling viewing. When you look at what's transpired since then -- the Iraq war based on lies which was planned even before 9/11, the escape of Osama Bin Laden when Saddam Hussein was easy to find; the administration's refusal to wipe out Abu Musab Zarqawi in 2004 when given the chance, and George W. Bush's setting himself up as a dictator-king, all in the name of the "war on terror", you have to at the very least consider that the official version just doesn't wash.

Yots Cafe Bar, Pyrmont

It'd been over a year since we'd last eaten at Yots. A friend had recommended to me, and just as well, as it's so discreetly hidden that you would never find it otherwise, tucked away down a boardwalk under the shadow of the Maritime Museum.I remember tucking in a pair of perfectly cooked lamb shanks, the meat so soft and tender it was falling off the bone. We'd sat in perfect summer sun,

Yots Cafe Bar, Pyrmont

It'd been over a year since we'd last eaten at Yots. A friend had recommended to me, and just as well, as it's so discreetly hidden that you would never find it otherwise, tucked away down a boardwalk under the shadow of the Maritime Museum.I remember tucking in a pair of perfectly cooked lamb shanks, the meat so soft and tender it was falling off the bone. We'd sat in perfect summer sun,

Note to MSM: Bush is not a "popular president" and McCain is not a "straight shooter"

In case you had any delusions that John McCain was the guy to return honesty and integrity to the Republican party, forget about it. He's just another wingnut whore who has sold his soul to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade:

Senator John McCain to Address Liberty Commencement Ceremony
March 28, 2006

LYNCHBURG, Va. — American military hero and Arizona Sen. John McCain will deliver the Commencement message at Liberty University on May 13, at 9:30 a.m., in the Liberty University Vines Center. In addition, renowned Christian conservative leader Gary Bauer will speak during the University’s baccalaureate service on May 12, at 7:00 p.m., in the main sanctuary of the Thomas Road Baptist Church.

Liberty University was founded by Jerry Falwell, that wonderful guy who brought you the following statements:

Falwell on Osama Bin Laden:
"I had a student ask me, 'Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?' Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed."

Falwell on 9/11:
"And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen"

"I put all the blame legally and morally on the actions of the terrorist, [but America's] secular and anti-Christian environment left us open to our Lord's [decision] not to protect. When a nation deserts God and expels God from the culture ... the result is not good."

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."

"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

"If we are going to save America and evangelize the world, we cannot accommodate secular philosophies that are diametrically opposed to Christian truth ... We need to pull out all the stops to recruit and train 25 million Americans to become informed pro-moral activists whose voices can be heard in the halls of Congress.

I am convinced that America can be turned around if we will all get serious about the Master's business. It may be late, but it is never too late to do what is right. We need an old-fashioned, God-honoring, Christ-exalting revival to turn American back to God. America can be saved!"

And these are the people with whom McCain has signed up.

A man is judged by the company he keeps.

I guess these are the "activist judges" Bush talks about

Bush Administration judicial definitions:

Activist Judge: a judge who believes in the law.

Strict Constructionist: a judge who believes that George W. Bush is the king

Bush may believe the latter, but five judges disagree:

Five federal judges gave a boost Tuesday to legislation that would bring court scrutiny to the Bush administration's domestic spying program.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., the judges reacted favorably to his proposal that would require the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to conduct regular reviews of the four-year-old program.

The existence of the warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency was revealed by The New York Times three months ago.

The judges stressed that they were not offering their views on the NSA operation, which they said they knew nothing about.

But they said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has operated capably for 28 years and is fully able to protect civil liberties and give the administration all the speed and flexibility it needs to execute the war on terror.

The administration contends the president has inherent war powers under the Constitution to order eavesdropping without warrants.

"I am very wary of inherent authority" claimed by presidents, testified U.S. Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum. "It sounds very much like King George."

Where have you gone, Tom Lehrer, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you

For might makes right
And 'til they've seen the light
They've got to be protected
All their rights respected
Till somebody we like can be elected

-- Tom Lehrer, from Send the Marines

Just like here in the U.S., the Bush Junta believes that democracy and free elections are only a good thing when they produce the desired result. The Administration has been attempting to mine political benefit from the collective purple fingers of Iraqis going to the polls, but now that the new Iraqi premier isn't doing the Administration's bidding, suddenly they don't like democracy all that much:

The American ambassador has told Shiite officials that President Bush does not want the Iraqi prime minister to remain the country's leader in the next government, senior Shiite politicians said Tuesday.

It is the first time the Americans have directly expressed a preference in the furious debate over the country's top job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the Americans and some Shiite leaders.

The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the head of the main Shiite political bloc at a meeting on Saturday to pass on a "personal message from President Bush" to the interim prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, said Redha Jowad Taki, a Shiite member of Parliament who was at the meeting.

Mr. Khalilzad said Mr. Bush "doesn't want, doesn't support, doesn't accept" Mr. Jaafari as the next prime minister, according to Mr. Taki, a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite bloc. It was the first "clear and direct message" from the Americans on a specific candidate for prime minister, Mr. Taki said.

Why not just send the Iraqis a dead fish? That's what the Bush family's role models, the Corleones, would do.

This is yet another outcome of the Bush Administration's refusal to plan for postwar Iraq. I'm not an international affairs expert like Juan Cole, but even I knew that Iraq was an artificial construct, cobbled together by the British. If Iraq was anything, it was Yugoslavia, only more so. And for all the lofty talk of democracy, when you have multiple groups that hate each other, a unified government is impossible.

All you have to do is look to Washington, DC to see that it's true.

Greek Festival, Darling Harbour

I swung past Greek Fest on Sunday hoping to sample some souvlaki, dolmades and perhaps a couple of loukoumades.Apparently so did everyone else. Tumbalong Park was the most people-saturated I've ever seen. Every Greek person in Sydney must've been there.The queues for food were far too long for me to even contemplate, but I lingered long enough to take a couple of snaps before I extricated myself

Greek Festival, Darling Harbour

I swung past Greek Fest on Sunday hoping to sample some souvlaki, dolmades and perhaps a couple of loukoumades.Apparently so did everyone else. Tumbalong Park was the most people-saturated I've ever seen. Every Greek person in Sydney must've been there.The queues for food were far too long for me to even contemplate, but I lingered long enough to take a couple of snaps before I extricated myself

Tell me again how only George W. Bush can keep us safe

Someone please tell me how George W. Bush has made us safe...when investigators were able to bring what is essentially the makings of a dirty bomb into the country undetected:

Two teams of government investigators using fake documents were able to enter the United States with enough radioactive sources to make two dirty bombs, according to a federal report made available Monday.

The investigators purchased a "small quantity" of radioactive materials from a commercial source, according to a Government Accountability Office report prepared for Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican.

The investigators posed as employees of a fictitious company and brought the materials into the United States through checkpoints on the northern and southern borders, the report stated.

"It's just an indictment of the system that it's easier to get radiological material than it is to get cold medicine," said a senior subcommittee staffer about the findings.

The report, along with two others by the GAO on the subject of smuggling and detection of nuclear materials, were provided to reporters by congressional sources in advance of the first of two hearings by the subcommittee scheduled to begin Tuesday.

The focus will be on what the federal government has done to protect the country against nuclear terrorism. This week's hearings come after almost three years of bipartisan and bicameral investigations into the subject.

A second GAO report notes that while the departments of State, Energy and Defense have provided radiation-detection equipment to 36 countries since 1994 to combat nuclear smuggling, operating the equipment has proven challenging.

Those challenges include technical limitations of some of the equipment, a lack of supporting infrastructure at some border sites and corruption of some foreign border security officials.

The report also notes that the State Department, the lead interagency coordinator in this effort, has not maintained a master list of U.S.-funded radiation-detection equipment in foreign countries.

Without such a list, program managers at the agencies involved "cannot accurately assess if equipment is operational and being used as intended; determine the equipment needs of countries where they plan to provide assistance; or detect if an agency has unknowingly supplied duplicative equipment," the report says.

It further criticizes the State Department, saying that "without taking steps to ensure that all previously provided radiation-detection equipment, specifically hand-held equipment, is adequately maintained and remains operational, State cannot ensure the continued effectiveness or long-term sustainability of this equipment."

State Department. That's Condi -- the one many Republicans are touting as the most likely candidate to be able to retain the White House in 2008.

Peter Bergen debunks the Iraq documents

Wingnuts all over the place are crowing about newly-issued Iraqi documents that they insist show a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

What a coinkydink. The Pentagon could have released these documents at any time, but they choose to release them NOW, three years into the war, at a time when most Americans believe the war was a mistake and the Downing Street Memos have FINALLY hit the traditional media.

I don't know about you, but I know old moldy cheese when I smell it.

Peter Bergen, who is far more knowledgeable than I on such things, debunks this "explosive" revelation:

Even though the 9/11 commission found no "collaborative relationship" between the ultrafundamentalist Osama bin Laden and the secular Saddam Hussein, the administration's reiterations of a supposed connection — Vice President Dick Cheney has argued that the evidence for such an alliance was "overwhelming" — have convinced two out of three Americans that they had "strong" links.

Some administration supporters have drawn an analogy to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in which Stalin and Hitler put aside ideology in favor of pragmatic goals (carving up the Baltic states, Poland and Finland). But history is not a good guide here: not only was the ideological divide between Al Qaeda and Baathist Iraq far greater than that between the two 20th-century dictators, but unlike Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the two sides had nothing practical to gain by working together.

What do the new documents establish? According to ABC News's translation of one of the most credible documents, in early 1995 Mr. bin Laden — then living in Sudan — met with an Iraqi government representative and discussed "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia. The document also noted that the "development of the relationship and cooperation between the two parties" was "to be left according to what's open [in the future] based on dialogue and agreement on other ways of cooperation."

The results of this meeting were ... nothing. Two subsequent attacks against American forces in Saudi Arabia — a car bombing that year and the Khobar Towers attack in 1996 — were carried out, respectively, by locals who said they were influenced by Mr. bin Laden and by the Saudi branch of Hezbollah, a Shiite group aided by Iranian government officials.

As for the other new documents, there is one dated Sept. 15, 2001, that outlines contacts between Mr. bin Laden and Iraq, but it is based on an Afghan informant discussing a conversation with another Afghan. It is third-hand hearsay.

And, strangely, another document, dated Aug. 17, 2002, from Iraq's intelligence service explains there is "information from a reliable source" that two Al Qaeda figures were in Iraq and that agents should "search the tourist sites (hotels, residential apartments and rented houses)" for them. If Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda had a relationship, why was it necessary for Iraqi intelligence to be scouring the country looking for members of the terrorist organization?

Another striking feature about the supposed Qaeda-Iraq connection is that since the fall of the Taliban, not one of the thousands of documents found in Afghanistan substantiate such an alliance, even though Al Qaeda was a highly bureaucratic organization that required potential recruits to fill out application forms.

All this goes to the central problem faced by proponents of the Qaeda-Iraq connection. It's long been known that Iraqi officials were playing footsie with Al Qaeda in the mid-1990's, but these desultory contacts never yielded any cooperation. And why should they have? Al Qaeda was able to carry out the embassy attacks in Africa in 1998, the bombing of the destroyer Cole in 2000 and 9/11 with no help from Iraq. The Iraqi intelligence services, for their part, could handle by themselves low-level jobs like bumping off Iraqi dissidents abroad. And after the botched attempt to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush in Kuwait in 1993, Saddam Hussein never attempted terrorism against an American target again.

We know, too, that Mr. bin Laden had long distrusted Saddam Hussein; months before the Kuwait invasion in 1990 he angrily warned colleagues that Iraq had designs on Persian Gulf states. He even offered his own fighters to the Saudis in that war, making it clear that he yearned for the "infidel" dictator to be overthrown.

If there was a method to Saddam Hussein's madness, it was that he wanted to remain in power. Al Qaeda, however, wanted theocratic regime change across the Middle East. In the end, their goals and worldviews were diametrically opposed, and no number of sketchy intelligence documents is going to bring them closer.

Meetings do not imply an ongoing collaborative relationship, no matter how much the President needs them to be in order to salvage some remaining shreds of his credibility on this war.

UPDATE: Tristero has more.

An interesting dilemma

Diarist DarkSyde at Daily Kos posits an interesting hypothetical dilemma for a president who refuses to support stem cell research on the grounds that it "destroys life in order to save life:

How about this: Shortly after takeoff, an airliner strays off course. Then the transponder goes off, the plane won't answer hails, and the airliner begins a gentle turn coming to a heading towards Washington, DC, or New York City. The situation is muddled and time is short. It would be a heavy decision to have to make, but after 9/11, I could see a case for why that plane might have to be shot down.

Uh-oh! A communique comes in from the airline company; In addition to the 200 men, women, and children on board, there is a cryogenic container carrying fertilized human embryos. It happens that they're being flown from an IVF clinic to a biomedical waste disposal facility where they will be destroyed. Regardless, the President has no choice, he cannot bring the plane down, not and and remain consistent with his own position. Shooting down a plane full of people? Tragically, possibly, necessary. Embryo on board? Cease fire!

The Bush Administration cannot create its own reality on global warming

No one is going to claim that the Bush Administration is entirely responsible for global warming. This is a process that's been going on for years. If you want to point fingers at presidents, the place to start is Ronald Reagan, who put the kibosh on all efforts started during the Carter Administration to explore alternative sources of energy.

In recent years, though, Americans have blithely been burning fossil fuels at a ferocious rate, buying ever-bigger SUVs and ever-larger houses with cathedral ceilings that are impossible to heat or cool. And now the Christofascist Zombie Brigade can deny it all they want, and the Bush Administration can silence scientists, but there's no denying that the effects of global warming are here, and it is not going to be fun:

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry -- a Category 5 storm with wind bursts that reached 180 m.p.h. -- exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast -- when the emergency becomes commonplace -- something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.

The image of Earth as organism -- famously dubbed Gaia by environmentalist James Lovelock -- has probably been overworked, but that's not to say the planet can't behave like a living thing, and these days, it's a living thing fighting a fever. From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us. Scientists have been calling this shot for decades. This is precisely what they have been warning would happen if we continued pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the heat that flows in from the sun and raising global temperatures.

Environmentalists and lawmakers spent years shouting at one another about whether the grim forecasts were true, but in the past five years or so, the serious debate has quietly ended. Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it. If there was any consolation, it was that the glacial pace of nature would give us decades or even centuries to sort out the problem.

But glaciers, it turns out, can move with surprising speed, and so can nature. What few people reckoned on was that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. Pump enough CO2 into the sky, and that last part per million of greenhouse gas behaves like the 212th degree Fahrenheit that turns a pot of hot water into a plume of billowing steam. Melt enough Greenland ice, and you reach the point at which you're not simply dripping meltwater into the sea but dumping whole glaciers. By one recent measure, several Greenland ice sheets have doubled their rate of slide, and just last week the journal Science published a study suggesting that by the end of the century, the world could be locked in to an eventual rise in sea levels of as much as 20 ft. Nature, it seems, has finally got a bellyful of us.

Captain Codpiece gave lip service to global warming in his State of the Union address this year, but given his association with the oil industry, I don't have any faith that he or his party are in a position to implement the kind of visionary, out-of-the-box solutins that would be required. What we need is a Marshall Plan on global warming -- a devotion of resources and brainpower -- and money -- the kind of money we're currently spending like drunken sailors in Iraq. A party dominated by people who expect to be raptured home to Jesus any day now is not going to take its stewardship of the planet seriously.

And when America's leaders don't take the threat seriously, Americans don't take it seriously. Everywhere you go, there are more SUVs, more McMansions, more sprawl, more communities being built where you have to drive to get a quart of milk.

Global warming is no joke, but Americans are still treating it as if it just means that inland suburbanites will finally have waterfront properties.

Meanwhile, the New York Times editorializes today on the Republicans still showering Federal cash on the oil industry in the form of tax breaks:

A public already groaning under huge deficits does not need more red ink. An oil industry already rolling in record profits does not need more tax breaks. But both are sure to happen unless some way can be found to claw back from a decade's worth of Congressional and administrative blunders, aggressive lobbying and industry greed.

According to a detailed account in Monday's Times by Edmund L. Andrews, oil companies stand to gain a minimum of $7 billion and as much as $28 billion over the next five years under an obscure provision in last year's giant energy bill that allows companies to avoid paying royalties on oil and gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico.

The provision received almost no Congressional debate, in part because Congress was lazy and in part because the provision was misleadingly advertised as cost-free. The giveaway also seemed a natural sequel to a measure passed in 1995 to provide royalty relief. But that measure came at a time when oil prices, and new investment in oil and gas exploration, had declined. It also included an important safety valve: in any year when oil prices exceeded a threshold, about $34 a barrel, companies would have to resume paying royalties.

However, in what appears to have been a bureaucratic blunder, the Clinton administration omitted that crucial escape clause in all offshore leases signed between the government and the oil companies in 1998 and 1999. It seemed a harmless mistake at a time when oil prices were still below $20 a barrel. But times changed. Prices have been above the cutoff point since 2002, and an estimated one-sixth of the production in the Gulf of Mexico is still exempt from royalties for no good reason whatsoever.

That blunder was compounded, again and again. First, a court decision in 2003 effectively doubled the amount of oil and gas exempted from royalties. Then the Bush administration offered special exemptions for "deep gas" producers, drilling more than 15,000 feet below the sea bottom. Then came the 2005 energy bill, which essentially locked in the old incentives for five more years.

At least one oil company has the grace to be embarrassed by all this. "Under the current environment," one Shell official told Mr. Andrews, "we don't need royalty relief."

But some companies seem to want more. A lawsuit filed by Kerr-McGee Exploration and Production would greatly expand the royalty relief. If the suit succeeds, the lost revenue may rise to as much as $28 billion.

Edward Markey, a Democratic member of the House from Massachusetts, has proposed a bill that would keep any new contracts from granting relief when oil and gas prices were high, and would instruct the interior secretary to try to renegotiate existing contracts. That is a fair and overdue remedy.

Keep an eye on Markey's bill. If it's killed in the House, you'll know that this party, whatever lip service its members give to global warming, is NOT serious about the problem.

The Christofascist Zombie Brigade wants its pound of flesh NOW

The theocrats are upset that the Republicans aren't moving fast enough to set up the U.S. as a Christian Dominionist nation. They're making noises that Republicans who want to be elected this fall had better shape up or they might find horse's heads in their beds:

Social-conservative groups have warned Republicans that their voters feel unappreciated and frustrated with Congress and that the party must get more aggressive on such values issues as marriage, human cloning, religious freedom and abortion if they want a decent turnout from the conservative base in November.

"That message has definitely been conveyed," said Jim Backlin, vice president for legislative affairs at the Christian Coalition.

The House and Senate are expected to vote this year on a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, and Mr. Backlin said a recent meeting with Republican leaders leaves him confident that the Senate also will vote for the first time on a few key pro-life bills.

Leading conservative activists have been sounding off lately, frustrated that since 2004, when their voters turned out in force to help President Bush win re-election, the Republican Party has backed off the values issues. A constitutional amendment against homosexual "marriage" failed in 2004 to get the required two-thirds majority in both houses.

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Let's address values issues," wrote conservative activist Gary Bauer last week in a memo to friends and supporters, noting that 19 states have amended their state constitutions to protect marriage with an average approval vote of 70 percent, yet many lawmakers still shy away.

"What I don't get is, why there is so much reticence on the part of our public servants to defend normal marriage beyond an obligatory press release or applause line in a stump speech?" he said.

Maybe because they aren't a bunch of closet cases like you are and they realize that gay marriage doesn't make them any less married? Just a hunch.

A Family Research Council poll released last week found that 63 percent of social-conservative voters think Congress has not acted on a pro-family agenda on such issues as marriage, abortion and broadcast decency.

"In the Republican Party in general, when it comes to Christian conservatives, we don't exist except during election years," said Tom McClusky, acting vice president for government affairs at the FRC.

[snip]

Much of the conservative anger is directed at the Senate, the activists said. Mr. Backlin said that out of 400 Senate votes in 2005, only one was even moderately important to his group. Mr. McClusky said that three years after the Janet Jackson Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" halftime incident, the Senate has yet to act on TV decency.

And amazingly, the world is still spinning on its axis, despite the Boob of Doom. Imagine that.

There's also talk in the Senate about taking action against what some conservatives see as a judicial attack on the Pledge of Allegiance because of the phrase "under God," one Senate Republican aide said. The House passed such a measure in 2004.

"Just those three alone -- marriage, abortion and religious freedom ... that would be really exciting to our grass roots, and it'd probably ensure that the Republicans keep the House and Senate," Mr. Backlin said

And that's all they care about, really, isn't it? That women should know their place, that they not have to look at gay people, and that they be able to shove their religion down everyone else's throats? The fact that America is bankrupt, that peak oil is real, and that the foreign investors on whom we depend to finance Bush's debt are royally pissed off (thank you, James Wolcott) doesn't matter, as long as this bunch of medieval perverts and neurotics doesn't have to look at two men kissing or at a woman's breast on television.

Time for Fat Tony to recuse himself from all POW cases

Antonin Scalia is frothing at the mouth again, telling an audience in Switzerland that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee due process rights to "enemy combatants":

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia reportedly told an overseas audience this month that the Constitution does not protect foreigners held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

He also told the audience at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland that he was "astounded" by the "hypocritical" reaction in Europe to the prison, this week's issue of Newsweek magazine reported.

The comments came just weeks before the justices are to take up an appeal from a detainee at Guantanamo Bay. The court will hear arguments tomorrow on Salim Ahmed Hamdan's assertion that President Bush overstepped his constitutional authority in ordering a military trial for the former driver of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Hamdan has been held at the prison for nearly four years.

Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees could use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. Scalia disagreed with that ruling, and in the recent speech repeated his beliefs that enemy combatants have no legal rights.

"War is war, and it has never been the case that when you captured a combatant you have to give them a jury trial in your civil courts," Newsweek quoted Scalia as saying. "Give me a break."

Scalia's dissent in the Rasul v. Bush case in 2004 said: "The consequence of this holding, as applied to aliens outside the country, is breathtaking. It permits an alien captured in a foreign theater of active combat to bring a petition against the secretary of defense. . . . Each detainee (at Guantanamo) undoubtedly has complaints -- real or contrived -- about those terms and circumstances. . . . From this point forward, federal courts will entertain petitions from these prisoners, and others like them around the world, challenging actions and events far away, and forcing the courts to oversee one aspect of the executive's conduct of a foreign war."

Newsweek said Scalia was challenged by an audience member in Switzerland about whether Guantanamo Bay detainees have protection under the Geneva or human rights conventions.

Scalia replied: "If he was captured by my army on a battlefield, that is where he belongs. I had a son on that battlefield and they were shooting at my son, and I'm not about to give this man who was captured in a war a full jury trial. I mean it's crazy," Newsweek reported.

That last statement is telling. I'm not an attorney, but it seems to me that if a Supreme Court Justice is out there with this kind of reptilian-brain emotional response to this issue before a foreign audience, right before he is going to be hearing a case on just this issue, he has an obligation to recuse himself. Of course he won't, but this blows any argument that he doesn't legislate from the bench right out of the water.

Late isn't always better than never

The information about the Downing Street Memos has been out for almost a year, but only now that George W. Bush's approval ratings are in the toilet does the New York Times see fit to cover them:

Stamped "extremely sensitive," the five-page memorandum, which was circulated among a handful of Mr. Blair's most senior aides, had not been made public. Several highlights were first published in January in the book "Lawless World," which was written by a British lawyer and international law professor, Philippe Sands. In early February, Channel 4 in London first broadcast several excerpts from the memo.

Since then, The New York Times has reviewed the five-page memo in its entirety. While the president's sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.

The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.

The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.

[snip]

The January 2003 memo is the latest in a series of secret memos produced by top aides to Mr. Blair that summarize private discussions between the president and the prime minister. Another group of British memos, including the so-called Downing Street memo written in July 2002, showed that some senior British officials had been concerned that the United States was determined to invade Iraq, and that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush administration to fit its desire to go to war.

[snip]

Mr. Bush was accompanied at the meeting by Condoleezza Rice, who was then the national security adviser; Dan Fried, a senior aide to Ms. Rice; and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff. Along with Mr. Manning, Mr. Blair was joined by two other senior aides: Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide and the author of the Downing Street memo.

[snip]

Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation. Since they were first reported last month, neither the White House nor the British government has discussed them.

"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.

A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo does not indicate how Mr. Blair responded to the idea.

In February 2002, a half-million people marched in New York City because we knew that this president was going to take us into a war based on lies. The denizens of Left Blogistan knew that this president was going to take us into a war based on lies. When the Downing Street memo first came out, the British, and anyone who bothers to read anything other than the New York Post and the New York Sun and watch anything other than Fox News, knew for certain the kind of chicanery in which Bush and Blair engaged in order to get us into this war.

And now the rest of the country should know. The question is whether they will still choose not to know, because to know is to be obligated to get involved with the political processes necessary to do something about it.

A bad day for Howie Kurtz

Wow. First Lara Logan, then Kos. Now, I'm not part of the Markos Moulitsas Admiration Society. I'm not up there with the alpha dogs of Left Blogistan, to be sure, nor do I ever expect to be. And while I admire what he's been able to accomplish, Kos seems a tad too puffed up with his own self-importance -- perhaps understandably so, but still....And his willingness to put women's issues on the back burner is completely at odds with what I regard as progressive.

But all that notwithstanding, he, like Lara Logan, did a heck of a job [Brownie] today on Reliable Sources demolishing Howie Kurtz' vain attempts to:

1) equate Air America's little 2000-watt stations with the Limbaugh/Hannity machine;

2) defend WaPo's hiring of Ben Domenech as "providing balance." Kos pointed out that Dan Froomkin is a long-time journalist at the Post, NOT a blogger; and

3) make Domenech's plagiarism look like just college oversight.

Kurtz doesn't even TRY to not look like a shamelss Bush Administration shill. But he got thoroughly raked over the coals today, both by the traditional media (Logan) and by Kos.

As always, video at Crooks and Liars. And DO toss them some cash, willya? Bandwidth costs money.

The real journalists are finally coming out of the shadows

CBS News' Lara Logan did the smackdown of Howie the Whore Kurtz on Reliable Sources this morning, and gives the odious Laura Ingraham some more of what she so richly deserves.

We're finally starting to see some passion from the journalists who are putting their lives on the line trying to cover Bush's botched Iraq adventure; the journalists who have tried mightily to do their jobs while also obeying their corporate masters' mandate to cover the good news so as to prop up the sagging fortunes of Captain Codpiece.

Crooks and Liars of course has the video; here's a sample of the transcript:

KURTZ: Thank you.

Bush and Cheney essentially seem to be accusing you and your colleagues of carrying the terrorist message by reporting on so many of these attacks. What do you make of that?

LOGAN: Well, I think that's -- that is a very convenient way of looking at it. It doesn't reflect the value judgment that's implicit in that.

As a journalist, if an American soldier or an Iraqi person dies that day, you have to make a decision about how you weigh the value of reporting that news over the value of something that may be happening, say, a water plant that's being turned on that brings fresh water to 200 Iraqi people. I mean, you get accused of valuing human life in a certain way depending on how you report it.

And also, as -- I mean, what I would point out is that you can't travel around this country anymore without military protection. You can't travel without armed guards. You're not free to go every time there's a school opening or there's some reconstruction project that's being done.

We don't have the ability to go out and cover those. If they want to see a fair picture of what's happening in Iraq, then you have to first start with the security issue.

When journalists are free to move around this country, then they will be free to report on everything that's going on. But as long as you're a prisoner of the terrible security situation here, then that's going to be reflected in your coverage.

And not only that, but their own figures show that their reconstruction project was supposed to create 1.5 million Iraqi jobs. To date, 77,000 Iraqi government jobs have been created. That should give you an indication of how far along they are in terms of reconstruction.

We have to put everything in its context. We can't go to one small unit and say, oh, they did a great job in this village and ignore all the other villages that haven't seen any improvement in their conditions.

KURTZ: There is no question that the dangerous conditions for journalists there are making it much harder to report on some of these signs of progress, as you point out. But I look at just the last couple of weeks of your coverage. Besides covering the Saddam trial, you reported on allegations that U.S. troops had killed a group of civilians. Then you reported an attack on a police station, the bombing of a police convoy, you talked about the threat of a civil war. All legitimate stories. But critics would say, well, no wonder people back home think things are falling apart because we get this steady drumbeat of negativity from the correspondents there.

LOGAN: Well, who says things aren't falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn't see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.

What about all the American soldiers that died this week that you didn't see on our screens? I mean, we've reported on reconstruction stories over and over again, but the order to (ph) general for Iraqi reconstruction says that only 49 of well over 100 planned electricity projects happened.

So we can't keep doing the same stories over and over again. When a police station's attacked, that's something new that happened this week. If you had any idea of the number of Iraqis that come to us with stories of abuses of U.S. soldiers and you look at our coverage over the last -- my coverage over the last few weeks, or even over the last three years, there's been maybe two or three stories that have related to that.

So, I mean, we have to do the stories that when we've tested them and tested them and checked all our sources, and that they are legitimate stories on that day, that that is the biggest news coming out of Iraq, then that's what we have to do.

KURTZ: So what you're saying...

LOGAN: I mean, I really resent the fact that people say that we're not reflecting the true picture here. That's totally unfair and it's really unfounded.

[snip]

You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.

Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked.

I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country. Reconstruction funds have been diverted to cover away from reconstruction to -- they've been diverted to security.

Soldiers, their lives are occupied most of the time with security issues. Iraqi civilians' lives are taken up most of the time with security issues.

So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

You really have to see the video. Logan is PISSED, as are many of the journalists trying to cover this war. These are people who faithfully carried water for the Bush Administration for five years, and now that the war is a botch, the Administration is pointing their fingers in the direction of the media, instead of taking responsibility for its own actions.

Have you ever, outside of a five-year-old, seen anyone as eager to point the finger at other people to avoid culpability, as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney? Remember when these clowns took office and said "The adults are now in charge"? Well, what adults do is they take responsibility for what they do. Hell, even Bill Clinton apologized for the Lewinsky affair. It was late, and it had to be wrung out of him, but he did it. This bunch decides it's all the media's fault instead of the fault of their own faulty assumptions, faulty implementation, and faulty planning.

I can only hope that these journalists have awakened now to whom they're really dealing with, and tear the figurative door off the hinges of the West Wing and tell the American people just who is running this country and what they're trying to do.

What Ben Domenech was taught while home-schooled

Nice article in the LA Times (registration required, or go to Bug Me Not and get a user ID and password) musing on just what kind of ethics and morals were taught by Ben Domenech's mommy at home school, and notes just who was exercising journalistic responsiblity:

In fact, Domenech is something of a poster child for contemporary social conservatism. He was home-schooled by his mother — that's the new right-wing school tie — in the impeccably red states of South Carolina and Virginia, and his father is the White House liaison to the Department of the Interior. The younger Domenech began writing for Human Events at 15. Under the pseudonym "Augustine" — no lack of chutzpah there — he contributes to a variety of rather nasty online discussions in the course of which he has compared the Supreme Court to the KKK because of its abortion rulings, called Coretta Scott King "a communist" and described Teresa Heinz Kerry as resembling an "oddly shaped egotistical ketchup-colored Muppet."

Definitely no manners class in that home school, and he must have had a cold the day mom touched on facts and logic.

By Thursday night, WashingtonPost.com had received more than 1,000 protests over the appointment. Brady told the Post's Howard Kurtz that "Domenech is 'controversial' and the fact that liberals object to his hiring 'shouldn't really be a shock to anybody.' "

What did turn out to be shocking is the fact that the conservative wunderkind is a serial plagiarist with a documented record — turned up by liberal bloggers — stretching back to his undergraduate days at the College of William & Mary. (One of the people he ripped off was P.J. O'Rourke and nobody at his school apparently noticed. Those kids should get out more.)

No ethics class at that home school, apparently.

[snip]

THE most interesting thing about this whole embarrassing incident has to do with the relative exercise of responsibility by the online journalists — and all prissy hand-wringing to the contrary, their number certainly includes independent bloggers —and the mainstream news media, in this case represented by the Post.

Even a casual reading of the facts demonstrates clearly that the online folks — whatever their ideology — performed pretty much as one would wish. In fact, they vindicated many of their medium's claims to be a seedbed to communities of collaborative watchdogs, each building on the other's work to shed light on an issue that engages them.

And, as anyone who's ever owned one knows, the best watchdogs will bite, as well as bark.

While the initial concerns about Domenech were raised by liberal bloggers and online commentators alarmed by the extremity of his politics and the recklessness with which he expressed them, his critics didn't stop there. Because his career — if a 24-year-old can be said to have such a thing — has essentially been conducted online, there was a digital trail to follow through cyberspace. And follow it they did, within hours. What they found was not simply vulgarity and intemperance, but serial plagiarism of an unsophisticated, unimaginative undergraduate sort.

In short order, the evidence was up on the Web for all to see and judge for themselves. That's when something important happened. Now, the Web is about as polarized as a virtual place can be. It doesn't value civility; ideologically, the law of tooth and claw attains. But because the liberal bloggers and commentators had fashioned a convincing and utterly damning case against Domenech out of his own vanity — who in their right mind compiles an archive of his own thefts? — by Friday morning, conservative bloggers, one after another, began calling on the young man to resign.

(Hat tip: Americablog)

Glenn Greenwald on the Administration's power grab

It amazes me that the President of the United States has come out and said point-blank that he doesn't have to obey any laws he doesn't agree with -- and Congress doesn't care, the media doesn't care, Americans don't care.

Glenn Greenwald explains exactly what Bush did:

The Republicans and Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee submitted detailed questions to the Bush Administration regarding the NSA program, and the DoJ's responses to both the Democrats' questions and its responses to the Republicans' are now available.

There are numerous noteworthy items, but the most significant, by far, is that the DoJ made clear to Congress that even if Congress passes some sort of newly amended FISA of the type which Sen. DeWine introduced, and even if the President "agrees" to it and signs it into law, the President still has the power to violate that law if he wants to. Put another way, the Administration is telling the Congress -- again -- that they can go and pass all the laws they want which purport to liberalize or restrict the President's powers, and it does not matter, because the President has and intends to preserve the power to do whatever he wants regardless of what those laws provide.

[snip]

The reality is that the Administration has been making clear for quite some time that they have unlimited power and that nothing -- not even the law -- can restrict it. But here, they are specifically telling Congress that even if Congress amends FISA and the President agrees to abide by those amendments, they still have the power to break the law whenever they want. As I have documented more times than I can count, we have a President who has seized unlimited power, including the power to break the law, and the Administration -- somewhat commendably -- is quite candid and straightforward about that fact.

I believe that even people who are aware of these facts have not really ingested or accepted the reality that we have an Administration that has embraced this ideology of lawlessness. Yesterday, I received numerous e-mails from people asking why I had not written about this report from the Boston Globe, which reported:

When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

The reason I didn't was because, as extraordinary as this signing statement is in one sense, it really reveals nothing new. We really do have an Administration which believes it has the power to break all laws relating, however broadly, to defending the country. It has said this repeatedly in numerous contexts and acted on those beliefs by breaking the law -- repeatedly and deliberately. They are still breaking the law by, for instance, continuing to eavesdrop on Americans without the warrants required by FISA.

This is not theory. The Administration is not saying these things as a joke. We really do live in a country where we have a President who has seized the unlimited power to break the law. That's not hyperbole in any way. It is reality. And the Patriot Act signing statement only re-iterates that fact.

[snip]

Put another way, the Administration has seized the power of Congress to make the laws, they have seized the power of the judiciary to interpret the laws, and they execute them as well. They have consolidated within themselves all of the powers of the government, particularly with regard to national security.

You know, the next big secular holiday in this country is Memorial Day. For most of us, that means the day we officially fire up the grill, open up the pool, listen to a baseball game, take a day off and enjoy the unofficial beginning of summer. But even if we don't do it most years, this year I think we all ought to attend a Memorial Day parade and buy the poppies -- not as a jingoistic celebration of some Riefenstahl-esque ritual of American chest-beating, but to remind ourselves of particularly the men who died in WWII fighting the fascism of Germany and Italy. Those men, perhaps more than in any other war, died to defend freedom against power-mad dictators who believed themselves to be larger than any state or any country. I don't think any of the young American men who died in Europe or Japan from 1941-1945 died so that an underachieving cokehead could be appointed president by a partisan Supreme Court, seize a re-election by smearing a decorated war veteran and keeping black people out of the polls in Ohio, cynically use an attack on American shores to lie us into a war to enrich his family and friends, and then unilaterally claim he has dictatorial powers and that the Constitution is null and void.

The next secular holiday after that is Flag Day -- June 14. If you have children, they will be drawing flags in school that day. When they bring home their flag drawings and flag stickers, think for a moment about what that flag means -- and then think about the aforementioned president deciding that our entire system of government as set forth by the Founding Fathers who originated that flag is no longer applicable -- because he says so.

Is that the America we now live in? And are we going to put up with it?

Truth is truth

It seems that Tweety has had a moment of sanity, realizing how he's allowed himself to be duped by the Power of the Presidential Codpiece. I don't expect it to last, but for one brief and shining moment, there was clarity from Chris Matthews.

Amidst all the hue and cry and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments about how it's all the media's fault that Americans no longer support the war, because the media are only showcasing the bombings and deaths instead of the three people that managed to have a hummus in a pita without being blown to bits, one little tidbit gets lost as Howard Kurtz and his ilk spin away: Perhaps the "bad news" is the largest component of the truth.

If you want to see what's being done in our name, go take a look at this.

The Grey Lady loves the smell of schädenfreude in the morning

The sordid saga of Ben Domenech hits the New York Times (a paper that has dealt with its own scandals of late), and now there's additional news: It seems that Not-So-Gentle Ben is just unable to tell the truth. He hasn't learned that it doesn't matter if you can spin faster than a centrifuge; if people are actually looking for the truth, it won't work:

But by late Thursday, the bloggers had found instances of what appeared to be plagiarism, including an article by Mr. Domenech in The New York Press that contained passages resembling an article that ran on the front page of The Washington Post.

Evidence of one instance of plagiarism first surfaced on the liberal blog Daily Kos on Thursday. A comment posted on the blog said a passage from an article by Mr. Domenech was nearly identical to a chapter from P. J. O'Rourke's book, "Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People."

Other articles that contained passages that appeared to be copied were published in National Review Online, The New York Press and The Flat Hat, the student newspaper at the College of William and Mary, which Mr. Domenech attended.

Jim Brady, the executive editor of The Washington Post Web site, said that he knew that Mr. Domenech would be controversial but that a background check before he was hired did not reveal plagiarism.

"We've been catching a lot of grief on the blogs for not catching this ourselves, but obviously plagiarism is hard to spot," Mr. Brady said. He said The Post planned to hire another conservative blogger in Mr. Domenech's place.

In an interview, Mr. Domenech said he never "purposefully" plagiarized but admitted that some passages in his articles were identical to those previously published elsewhere.

He said one instance was the fault of an editor at the student newspaper, who he said inserted a passage from The New Yorker in an article without his knowledge. In a staff editorial posted on the Web site of The Flat Hat, the student newspaper, the editors called Mr. Domenech's actions, if true, deeply offensive.

Mr. Domenech also said that he may have mixed up his notes with articles from other authors.

"Frankly, if I had been less of a sloppy writer," he said, "this wouldn't be a problem."

He explained the passage that appeared to be copied from Mr. O'Rourke's book by saying that Mr. O'Rourke gave him permission.

Contacted at his home in New Hampshire, Mr. O'Rourke said that he had never heard of Mr. Domenech and did not recall meeting him.

"I wouldn't want to swear in a court of law that I never met the guy, Mr. O'Rourke said of Mr. Domenech, "but I didn't give him permission to use my words under his byline, no."

Meanwhile, Domenech's employer has decided that ideology trumps honesty and integrity at all times. He's still employed at Regnery Press, which is hardly surprising, given that particular house's rather lax standards about the truth. The rest of wingnuttia has a mixed response. This may be the only time I'll give props to Michelle Malkin for anything, but yesterday she found the evidence compelling and advocated Domenech's resignation.

Other reactions:

Glenn Reynolds, who writes the blog Instapundit, said the bloggers were "motivated by a desire to get" Mr. Domenech.

"They didn't like him because he was a conservative and he was given real estate at The Washington Post," he said. "Their goal was to find something they could use to get rid of him, and they succeeded."

Mr. Domenech addressed his detractors yesterday in a blog post on RedState.com, where he will remain a contributor. "To my enemies: I take enormous solace in the fact that you spent this week bashing me, instead of America," he wrote.

Delusions of grandeur much, Ben? Perhaps a shade of Narcissistic Personality Disorder? I hate to tell little Ben this, but the whole mess played out over three days, not the entire week, and those who were on the case from the beginning had plenty of time left over for the many horrors of the Bush Administration.

John Aravosis and his compatriots at Americablog, for instance, has noted Barbara Bush earmarking her much-ballyhooed tax-deductible contribution for Katrina relief specifically for a company owned by her son, Neil the Thai Hooker Fucker; Bush's "We don't need no es-teenking badges" signing statement over the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act; and Senate races that are problematic for Republicans.

Pam's House Blend has reported on the outcry over Wal-Mart stocking the Brokeback Mountain DVD; the lovely blue color covering more and more of the map of the U.S.; and Mitt Romney's metaphorical act of fellatio performed on the Christofascist Zombie Brigade. ShakesSis reports on Madeline Albright's smackdown of Bush's foreign policy.

So I hate to puncture little Ben's balloon any further, but he is just a small cog in the vast wingnut machine; and today he's an even more insignificant one; another sexually-repressed little tightassed prig in a cheap suit trying to take the fast track to the top by sucking up to the powerful. Every generation has these guys. Little Ben, contrary to his puffed-up view of himself, is nothing special.