The larrikin moon

Bush today opened his mouth, which is never a wise move for him. He said that Iraqis who obeyed orders to use WMDs would be “persecuted as war criminals,” and referred to “the so-called inspectors”. Also, France and Germany will be “held to account” if they don’t back Bush’s war.

And then Secretary of War Rumsfeld opens his mouth and pisses off all of “Old” Europe.

WaPo on the sort of advice Bush gets on AIDS and homosexuality.

(Later): Jerry Thacker has had to withdraw, although he says that his calling AIDS a “gay plague” was taken out of context.

Orrin Hatch will make it harder for D’s to block Bush’s nominees for judgeships the way he allowed R’s to block Clinton’s nominees.

Also in the hypocrisy stakes, Harvey Pitt is *still* in charge of the SEC, which just quietly gutted most of the new accountancy rules imposed after last year’s scandals, which were, after all, *last year’s* scandals.

Been meaning to mention Maureen Dowd’s column of the 23rd, which says precisely some of the things I said recently: “The Bushes seem to believe that the divisive thing in American society is dwelling on social and economic inequities, rather than the inequities themselves.”

The Sundance Film Festival is going on right now and one of the big hits is a documentary about some of my relatives. It sounds like the film thinks they didn’t actually abuse all those children, so that’s nice, I guess.

Speaking of sex with children, we need to know exactly how the story about Scott Ritter leaked to the press just as he was about to go to Baghdad on a peace mission.

For your surfing pleasure, it is now possible to access all of Salon’s articles. They make you watch a commercial first (although if you have more than one screen up at once and your speakers off like I do when I web-browse, this isn’t much of an inconvenience). Actually, Salon is not what it once was, but some of its political and cultural writing is still worth reading.