I drew a line in my mind

A NYT editorial Wednesday described one aspect of the neglect of Walter Reed outpatients: “They have been swamped with confusing paperwork and forced to take responsibility for managing their own medical care.” If you’ve been paying attention to Bush’s recent speeches on health care reform, you know that that’s exactly what he has planned for all of us: “And our view is, is that in order to have -- to worry about health care costs, the more a consumer is involved, the more likely we’ll be able to deal with the increasing cost of health care.”

Newt Gingrich, in an interview with Focus on the Family’s James Dobson that I listened to so you don’t have to, says that his attacks on Bill Clinton for his adultery while he was committing adultery himself with a much younger House staff member was not hypocritical at all: “I drew a line in my mind that said, ‘Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept . . . perjury in your highest officials.’” What I like about that quote is how he thinks of himself as a hero, running the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and it’s that very hypocrisy that makes him such a hero.

Not much else of interest in the interview. He wants to abolish the 9th Circuit, fire all its judges, and appoint new ones. “This would be a perfectly reasonable court ... in France.”

He says that we know American liberty is totally based in religion because it says so on all the public buildings. There’s some religious inscription on the Washington Monument, the tallest building in DC, the first one hit by the dawn sun as the earth rotates. Dobson must not have been paying much attention, because I would have expected him to deny the heresy that the earth rotates.

Speaking of religious monuments, Bush will be visiting a Mayan one in Guatemala, which will have to be cleansed of bad spirits afterwards.

Actually, after January 20, 2009, we should probably have the entire US boiled. In holy water. Just to be sure.