Double standards

Bush, in an act of typical imperial arrogance (oddly combined with furtiveness, since he announced it when most people are celebrating Festivus), will renominate 20 of his crappiest failed judicial appointments. I’ve previously written about Priscilla Owen here and William Pryor here and here (see also this Salon article on Pryor). Press secretary and constitutional scholar McClellan insists that, “The Senate has a constitutional obligation to vote up or down on a president’s judicial nominees,” but failed to specify where in the Constitution that “obligation” is to be found.

France has outlawed insulting homosexuals (as a group) and sexist comments. There goes the whole basis of French culture. The Guardian notes that the law could mean that “devout Christians who denounce homosexuality as ‘deviant’ would be prosecuted; comedians can no longer make mother-in-law jokes; the producers and distributors of the camp comedy film La Cage Aux Folles could end up in the dock; and parts of the Old Testament might be banned.” So, yeah, I support free speech and shit, but wouldn’t that be just cool?

Putin complains that the US has double standards for saying that occupied Iraq is ready for elections but occupied Chechnya is not. OK, fair enough, Vlad, but how does your saying exactly the opposite not mean that you also have double standards?

He also accused the West of fomenting “permanent revolution” in Ukraine and elsewhere in the ex-Soviet Union. Dubya = Trotsky?

And Putin says he can work with Yuschenko, as long as he doesn’t appoint any “people who build their political ambitions on anti-Russian slogans” to his administration. So by “work with,” he means “dictate to.”

Ricky Gervais of “The Office” will write an episode of The Simpsons.