A question

Does it bother anyone else that James Frey, a guy no one ever heard of before he wrote a best-selling book in which large portions were fabricated, is being skewered as if he crucified Christ, but George W. Bush, who has killed over 2200 American young people and countless tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in a war based on lies and bankrupted the country in the process, gets a free pass from Americans?

Why doesn't Oprah get BUSH on her show and skewer HIS lies?

Whose lies have damaged the country more? And why are people angrier at Frey?

The new House leader is a problem if you're not Christian

NJDC has a list of "Ten Things Every American Jew Should Know About John Boehner", but his advocacy for Christianity in government should make EVERYONE who isn't a Christian nervous.

Republicans simply CANNOT handle elections

Lost in the news about the hard-on (Boehner) beating the spliff (Blunt) for the House leadership position today is this little tidbit:

House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting. Stay with RollCall.com for updates.

Even with no more than 435 votes, they still have more votes than eligible voters. And we should rely on Republican Secretaries of State to monitor elections nationwide?

The virtual age equivalent of the missing 18-1/2 minutes?

A story has been cooking up in the last 24 hours which would have been explosive if the president's name were "Bill Clinton." Apparently there are a bunch of White House e-mails which should have been archived, but weren't.

Patrick Fitzgerald has issued a letter to Scooter Libby's defense attorneys indicating as such, in response to their request for a barrage of documents which seem to indicate a defense built around assassination of Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson's character than having to do with what their client did or did not do.

The full letter (in PDF format) is here.

In the letter, Fitzgerald reveals, "We advise you that we have learned that not all e-mail of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system," but cautions that "no pertinent evidence has been destroyed."

That the destroyed e-mails may not have been of relevance to Libby's case is immaterial. The question is why they were deleted, when a 1994 court case ruled that all such electronic records are to be kept the same way any federal records are to be kept. This issue came up in April 2000, when the same Republicans who are no doubt going to excuse the Bush Administration for this cover-up of whatever they're covering up, investigated the Clinton White House for what they believed to be a cover-up of up to 250,000 missing e-mails.

Once again, Republicans set these rules for retaining White House e-mails. They are in no position to say now that it doesn't matter. And don't tell me 9/11 changed everything, either. I don't want to hear it. They've used that excuse too many times.

Digby has more.

That didn't take long

Bush to nation the day after the SOTU: "Kidding!"

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.
But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

The president's State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that "America is addicted to oil" and his call to "break this addiction."

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."
He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

Note to Republicans: He didn't mean anything else he said either. Pathological liars never do.

(hat tip: Americablog)

UPDATE: He's laying off energy researchers, too:

The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.

A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.

But of course the American Idiots(^TMGreen Day) aren't going to read the newspaper, so all they'll know is the lies they heard Captain Cokehead say on television on Tuesday night.

Chinese New Year Eve: The Feast

If there are three particular idiosyncrasies about Asian palates it's our love of bones, skin and fat.The roast suckling pig embodies all three in glorious gormandizing hedonistic glory.I had the good fortune to be invited to dine with Veruca Salt and her family on Chinese New Year's Eve, a night which traditionally involves a reunion dinner for celebratory feasting.The Chinese New Year mandate

Chinese New Year Eve: The Feast

If there are three particular idiosyncrasies about Asian palates it's our love of bones, skin and fat.The roast suckling pig embodies all three in glorious gormandizing hedonistic glory.I had the good fortune to be invited to dine with Veruca Salt and her family on Chinese New Year's Eve, a night which traditionally involves a reunion dinner for celebratory feasting.The Chinese New Year mandate