Do you want freedom fries with that?

The word of the day at the Pentagon website today is “laud.” One headline: “Secretary Lauds Deployed Servicemembers.” Another: “McDonald’s Lauded for Support.” Evidently that support is “super-sized.” And high in saturated fats. Oh, and McDonald’s D’s “also offers career opportunities to disabled servicemembers and military veterans”. Sarcastic responses to that in comments, please.

Rummy told the future burger-flippers troops that he expected terrorist attacks to increase until the new Iraqi constitution is finalized, oh and until the referendum on it, and gosh who knows, maybe after that as well. And that’s an excellent sign, because suicide bombings are “a sign of weakness” and desperation. Can you believe they’re still pushing that line?

Scotty McClellan justified the White House refusal to turn over various documents written by John Roberts because “we have a responsibility not only to preserve the attorney-client privilege for this administration, but also for future administrations.” “Future administrations,” boy that’s a blast from the Nixonian past, a leaf out of the Big Book O’ Stonewalling. He slyly followed this up by saying that to release the docs would “stifle” the advice given to the solicitor general by his staff in the future, clearly a subtle reference to that staple of the Nixon era, All in the Family, part of a ‘70s nostalgia thing.

By the way, if the president or the solicitor general were the “client” part of the attorney-client relationship, shouldn’t they have paid Roberts’ salary out of their own pockets?

I’ve been reading Prop 73 on California’s November ballot (pdf file), mandating parental notification of abortion for minors. I’d be against this anyway, but there are one or two problems with the judicial bypass provisions: it can take so long that parental notification might become redundant; and if there is any sort of abuse, including “emotional abuse,” the court must inform Protective Services, a provision which seems less about protecting abused pregnant minors than it is a “nuclear option” designed to raise the stakes for girls opting for abortion. The agenda of punishing the little trollops is made even clearer in the ballot argument for the prop.: “When parents are involved and minors cannot anticipate secret access to free abortions they more often avoid the reckless behavior which leads to pregnancies.” Also, the prop. requires doctors to report abortions performed on minors to the state. That can’t be good.