Eagles may soar high but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines

Edward Gibbon quotes at the Gibbon-o-Matic.

Favorite AP story of the day: “Pa. Police Dog Suspended for Potential Racism.” Actually, after a police dog has bitten a 9-year old kid, it should never have been put back to work, allowing it to bite another kid. It’s almost incidental that both were black.

Joshua Marshall: “When I look at the federal investigation being launched into the Janet Jackson boob incident, I realize what I like about this administration: they believe in accountability.”

Yesterday Powell said he might not have advocated war with Iraq had he known that there were no stockpiles of WMDs. It would have changed “the political calculus.” There’s that fuzzy math again. Today he backtracked (that’s when you put your rhetoric into reverse and back over the tiny shred of integrity and self-respect you have left), saying that Saddam’s was a “regime with intent”. To repeat: if he had had ham he could have had ham and eggs, if he had eggs.

Chirac is going the way of Berlusconi in making libelous attacks on judges and the whole judicial system in the defense of corruption. Former PM Alain Juppé, convicted of corruption from when he worked for Chirac in the municipal government of Paris (he created fictional workers and fed their pay to the Gaullist party), also refuses to step down from any of the offices he holds.

So when will Bush admit that Cheney is a risk factor?

http://theonion.com/4005/infograph.html

Interestingly, the Bush budget gives absolutely nothing to his good buddy The Collectinator. In fact, Calif. would see a decrease in federal money, and will reduce the money to help CA. pay for imprisoning illegal immigrants who commit crimes to zero.

Education Sec. Rod Paige says that No Child Left Behind is “more than sufficiently funded.” More than sufficiently?

Speaking of money the federal government owes people, the matching fund for election expenses is broke, even though Bush, Dean & Kerry are all opting out. The poor schmucks who abided by the rules are being paid 46% of their matching funds, with the rest coming after April 15, when it will be too late.

Saw another boring Kerry victory speech. Got a bit better as it went along, and then everyone cut to Wes Clark. I may scream if I hear Kerry use the phrase “band of brothers” one more time in his ongoing attempt to out-flight-suit Dubya.

I think I deserve some points for never making a “Joementum” joke. And now I don’t have to.

Dean is evidently not as electable as John Fontleroy Kerry. Hah, the WP spellcheck doesn’t recognize electable as a word, although it does suggest execrable. I think we’ll all be very sick very soon of hearing the word, which may be the most pathetic ever attached to a candidate by his supporters, if supporters is the word for people who don’t care who they get as long as it isn’t Bush. Still, he’s had his coronation tonight. Dean’s front-runner status was evidently a fiction of somebody’s imagination, like Iraqi WMDs. I assume at some point the media will tell us how they fucked up so badly, anointing as front-runner a man with no electoral support.

WaPo editorial against a Texas execution scheduled for Thursday, a case I hadn’t heard of, an insane guy who was allowed to act as his own, sole attorney. Dressed in a purple cowboy outfit. Tried to subpoena Jesus, John F. Kennedy and Anne Bancroft. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t competent to defend himself, so long as he was competent to choose to defend himself incompetently. Other link.

And Gov. Arnie just denied clemency to someone who hadn’t had a clemency hearing, which has evidently never happened before.