A is for...

Pat Robertson apologizes for “remarks which I can now view in retrospect” – in retrospect, mind you, after, you know, some reflection – “as inappropriate and insensitive,” but doesn’t actually retract his opinion that God smote down Ariel Sharon for pulling out of Gaza.

Robertson’s fellow theologian Ryan Thomas Green was sentenced to death in Florida today for shooting a guy who was wearing a University of Alabama baseball cap – Green thought the letter “A” meant the guy was the Antichrist. Also, a bull told him to do it, as did some colors (I’ll bet it was magenta; magenta’s such a bitch) and symbols. He also shot another guy and a bull that day, not clear in the AP story whether it was the talking bull. Green may have some mental health issues. Or bulls and colors talk to him.

The Chinese government supports the practice of extracting bile from bears, says it’s painless. But it is concerned about Tibetan eagles, and will crack down on the Tibetan practice of feeding dead people to the birds which, while gross, is the prescribed religious practice there.

AP headline: “Records Show Army Ended Abuse Probe Early.” Anal probes, not so much. The Iraqi detainee, who held a high-level position in the Baathist regime – he’s a relative, possibly a second cousin, of one of Saddam Hussein’s bodyguards – claimed the usual colorful variety of abuses, and the army ended its investigation without questioning any Americans involved, or looking at the records, which were “lost” in a computer “glitch.” When the military says it investigates these cases, this is evidently what it means.

Speaking of lost stuff, the palaces handed over by the US to the Iraqi military were all thoroughly, and I mean thoroughly, looted, including doors and electrical switches. Freedom, ain’t it grand?

By the way, after a week of hearings, I have to ask: what was so bad Harriet Miers, exactly?

Filibustering Alito

I have sent this message to my senators:


Senator Boxer,

It is essential that Samuel Alito’s nomination be filibustered, and that you must support that filibuster. Indeed, I believe the oath you took to uphold the Constitution requires it. There are many reasons why Judge Alito should not be promoted, but I will focus on three:

1) If you believe that there is a right to privacy, and a right to bodily integrity including the right to abortion, you must oppose the nomination of a man who will wrongly take those rights away. If you are not there to protect the rights of Americans, what are you there for?

2) Judge Alito’s advocacy of the false theory of a “unitary executive,” not only verbally but in his record as a judge and in the Reagan White House, would undermine the constitutional system of checks and balances and separation of powers that protects us from an overweening, even dictatorial executive branch. If you are not there to protect Americans from tyranny, what are you there for?

3) Judge Alito’s pattern of evasion, contradiction and outright dishonesty makes many of his answers suspect, and from a constitutional standpoint make a mockery of the advice and consent role of the Senate. If you will not stand up for the prerogatives of Congress and its proper role as a co-equal branch of government, what will you stand up for?

If it were only a matter of disagreeing with Judge Alito’s judicial philosophy and worrying about how he would vote in individual cases, I might ask you for a no vote but not a filibuster. But I believe he represents such a threat to individual rights and to the constitutional order that I do not hesitate to call a filibuster your duty. Thank you for your attention.

But we can’t build a judiciary around that issue

Lindsey Graham, in between bouts as the self-appointed politeness czar of the ScAlito hearings, tells Democrats (yesterday, I’m a bit behind), “I know that free speech is important. It’s important to me, and it’s important to you. But we can’t build a judiciary around that issue.” No, wait, it wasn’t free speech. “I know that freedom of religion is important. It’s important to...” No, that wasn’t it either. “I know that the right not to have soldiers quartered in time of peace in any house....” Oh, I’ve got it, it’s the right of abortion people are making too much of a fuss about.

I could have used “the right to bear arms” in that paragraph, but does anyone think he’d even have been nominated if he hadn’t decided in favor of everyone’s right to a machine gun?

And then Graham made ScAlito’s wife, played here by Nathan Lane but still looking very much like someone named Martha-Ann should look – good job Nathan – cry by asking, doing his impression of a Democrat – leave the impressions to Mr. Lane, Senator Graham, but please, do give up your day job – ScAlito if he was a bigot. And everyone was so focused on the Runaway Bride that they missed him answering, yes, I am one huge bigot, thank you for asking. I don’t have the stomach to watch much more of this nonsense, but I’m guessing that today every news channel has their cameras firmly affixed to her, looking for a little faux drama.



Bolivia’s president-elect Evo Morales, a light packer, has been traveling the world, showing off this sweater in meetings with the presidents/prime ministers of France, Spain, China, and here, South Africa.



Detail about the military commissions in Guantanamo I didn’t know: the prisoners are not allowed to represent themselves, are required to be represented by someone assigned to them by the Pentagon. This from the hearing for “Osama’s bodyguard,” actually a Yemeni guy who put together videos for Al Qaeda, and is therefore clearly too dangerous to be allowed to roam free.

Disappointing

Back in October I asked who would be the first senator to call Judge Alito “ScAlito” (which I believe is his porn name). It was John Cornyn, yesterday, according to Maureen Dowd.

Today is the 4th anniversary of the use of Guantanamo to detain prisoners in The War Against Terror without trial.

Bush, at a “town hall meeting” in Louisville organized by the Chamber of Commerce, has a little pronoun trouble, or possibly a Sun Kingly inability to distinguish between himself and the United States:

We took action because the Taliban refused to expel al Qaeda. And we took action because when an American President says something, he better mean it. In order to be able to keep the peace, in order to be able to have credibility in this world, when we speak, we better mean what we say. And I meant what we said.

About the invasion of Iraq, he (or possibly they) says “I understand that the intelligence didn’t turn out the way a lot of the world thought it would be. And that was disappointing”. Yeah, disappointing, exactly the word I was looking for, like when the pie at that restaurant isn’t as good as you remember, disappointing, like when your kid gets a B+ instead of an A, disappointing, like when the most powerful person in the world is a complete moron, disappointing, like when he gets us into a never-ending quagmire, with tens of thousands dead, disafuckingppointing.

Still, it was a hard decision to go to war, “because I understand the consequences. I see the consequences when I go to the hospitals. I see the consequences when I try to comfort the loved ones who have lost a son or a daughter in combat. I understand that full -- firsthand: War is brutal.” I happened to catch this bit on CNN; do you see which phrase enraged me? First-hand. He thinks he knows what this war is like first-hand because he visited some wounded soldiers, well after they received their wounds, in an antiseptic hospital.

On Iraqi insurgents: “They’re not going to shake my will.” Now that’s just dirty.

Asked about immigration, he said he was against amnesty, but defined amnesty as “automatic citizenship,” which of course it isn’t.

Although it was said in advance that the questions wouldn’t be screened, there wasn’t a single critical one.

Oh, it’s on.

Open

I’m not sure I see the logic behind Alito’s admitting that his 1985 statement that he didn’t believe the Constitution protected the right to abortion was indeed a statement of his views in 1985, while refusing to say what his views are now. He does, however, promise to keep an open mind, which certainly reassures me. If he’d said, No Senator, I do not intend to keep an open mind, then I might have worried just a little bit, but he didn’t say that, he said that he’d keep an open mind. He even said, and this just shows how open his mind would be, that if an abortion case were argued before the Court, “I would listen to the arguments that were made.”

You know what’s always open that shouldn’t be? Joe Biden’s fucking mouth.

You kept that oath underseas and under fire

Bush visits the Veterans of Foreign Wars, whose numbers he has worked so hard to increase: “You took an oath to defend our flag and our freedom, and you kept that oath underseas and under fire.” We have to fight them in Atlantis so we don’t have to fight them over here.

Gearing up for the election year, he set out the limits of acceptable discourse:

there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate... The American people... know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right. When our soldiers hear politicians in Washington question the mission they are risking their lives to accomplish, it hurts their morale.

So minor quibbling about the way the war is conducted is okay, but any discussion of The Mission at all is disloyal, and any questioning of how we got into this mess is dishonest. Got it.

Corrupt member

Jack Abramoff’s next endeavor: writing a commentary on the Torah. The All-Loophole Torah, no doubt.

Noted ethicist Newt Gingrich had this to say about the Abramoff scandal: “You can’t have a corrupt lobbyist unless you have a corrupt member.” Heh, he said corrupt member, heh.

It’s interesting that Alito... hold on a second...

Corrupt member. Heh.

... that Alito chose in his opening statement to rehash some old class resentments. Considering that he’s pretending that if confirmed he’ll just drop his opinions – if those are his opinions and he’s not gonna confirm or deny that they are – here he is talking about how he worked his poor Italian ass off to get to Princeton and when he got there it was full of damned hippies!, “very privileged people behaving irresponsibly” as opposed to the “good sense and the decency of the people back in my community.”

Actually, that period may be the key to Alito. He really did work his poor Italian ass off to join the ruling elite, this modern-day Rastignac, and just as he was poised to do so, its offspring experienced a Vietnam-fueled crisis of confidence and began to question the very legitimacy of the power so nearly in his grasp. He’s spent the rest of his career trying to bolster that power, making the intellectual and legal case for its legitimacy.

Corrupt member. Heh. Heh.

(Update: oh dear, it seems the whole quote is “You can’t have a corrupt lobbyist unless you have a corrupt member or a corrupt staff.”)

Reaching out to the rejectionists

I was listening to the opening salvos in the ScAlito hearings, but had to turn off the car radio after Chuck Schumer said that ScAlito was trying to fill Sandra Day O’Connor’s shoes, which were big shoes, and they were also special shoes.

Scottie McClellan denied that the US was talking with terrorists in Iraq, but “We have been reaching out to the rejectionists.” No means no! Bad touch!

Speaking of rejectionists, the Bushies seem to spend a lot of time lately playing Miss Manners, telling people what they can and can’t say. On critics of the war, McClellan: “There’s a difference between loyal opposition that has a different view, and those who are advocating a defeatist approach that sends the wrong message to our troops and the enemy.” Scottie was asked to clarify Bush’s call for “dignified” confirmation hearings, to define what exactly wasn’t dignified, which he didn’t really do, although he suggested that questioning ScAlito’s integrity was out of bounds. However, he did say “the Senate has a very important role to play in confirmation hearings,” which I’m sure Chuck Schumer would be delighted to hear, but he seems to have locked himself in the bathroom with Sandra Day O’Connor’s shoe again.

What Scottie would not do was tell us what the heck is wrong with Cheney’s foot, and I am so not gonna make another Schumer joke here. I’m not even going to make a joke about gout, which is what rumor would have it afflicts Big Time. I understand it’s quite painful and not just for bloated plutocrats anymore and not humorous at all despite having the funny name, c’mon say it with me: gout gout gout gout gout...

Here’s what Iraq has come to: the sister of the interior minister was kidnapped last week, and it’s barely considered news.

The intellect necessary to bring a lot of class to that Court

Today Bush visited a school to commemorate the 4th anniversary of No Child Left Behind, trumpeting the death of the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” where “It’s more important that somebody be shuffled through than it is to determine whether or not they’re capable of meeting certain standards”. Speaking of standards, earlier in the day he said that Samuel Alito should be confirmed because “Sam’s got the intellect necessary to bring a lot of class to that Court.” It’s all about standards, folks. Speaking of standards, back to the NCLB photo op: Chimpy commented that Laura often read to the twins, for all the good it did; “Occasionally, I did, too, but stumbled over a few of the words and might have confused them.” That was at the start of a speech about how important education is.


Hell, even the transcript guy is marking Bush down:

And the best place to start is to make sure every child can read and write and add and subtract. And so that was the spirit behind proposing the No Child Left Behind Act. And as I mentioned, there was a lot of non-partisan cooperation -- kind of a rare thing in Washington. But it made sense when it come [sic] to public schools.

That’s transcript guy’s sic. And later, “Laura and I’s [sic] spirits are uplifted any time we go to a school that’s working”.

Naturally, because he was in a public school, he ended his speech, “God bless the teachers here, and the principal. God bless the parents. And may God bless the students, as well.”


As for ScAlito, as far as Bush is concerned, it’s all about surface appearance dignity:

And my hope, of course, is that the American people will be impressed by the process. It’s very important that members of the Senate conduct a dignified hearing. The Supreme Court is a dignified body; Sam is a dignified person. And my hope, of course, is that the Senate bring dignity to the process and give this man a fair hearing and an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

Followed by a dignified funeral for the Constitution as we knew it. He made the same call for a dignified confirmation process for Roberts, when I wrote,

I can’t even imagine how he defines dignity in this context (but then, I can’t imagine him spelling dignity). Possibly for him, nothing says dignity and gravitas like abject capitulation and subservience, like that butler he always calls Jeeves (but whose name is not actually Jeeves), who always says Yes sir, at once sir, in that fruity accent.

Destroying traditional morality, creating a new moral code and prohibiting any dissent

The British government has set up a website where members of the public can nominate and vote on the Icons of England: Stonehenge, Punch & Judy shows, a nice cup of tea, Benny Hill in drag, John Cleese in drag, Winston Churchill in drag, double-decker buses, the Amritsar massacre, an Eton schoolboy being buggered, a Beefeater being buggered, Oscar Wilde being buggered, Winston Churchill being buggered, a stockbroker in a bowler hat with a rolled-up umbrella being buggered, Dr. Who being buggered, Mr. Bean being buggered, Pitt the Younger being buggered, Big Ben, the humble bobby being buggered, queues, Winston Churchill in a queue, queues for being buggered, those red phone boxes, the Queen Mum’s gin bottle, Prince Charles’s ears, that sort of thing. (Update: I’ve gone through more of the site. They actually do list men in drag.)

After hearing that an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian and Britain’s Channel 4 was investigating the misuse and theft of funds, American troops, according to the Guardian, “blasted their way into [his] home... firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children”, put a hood on his head, seized his videotapes, and dragged him off for interrogation. He was later released.

Darn, I knew I forgot something. “Justice Sunday III” was today, broadcast on finer Christian tv stations everywhere, and I forgot to watch. Rick Santorum said that “The only way to restore this republic our founders envisioned is to elevate honorable jurists like Samuel Alito”. Republic? Are you sure you aren’t thinking monarchy, Rick? Or theocracy? (I started writing Holy Roman Empire there, but realized it might be taken as a reference to the forthcoming Catholic majority on the Supreme Court, which wasn’t what I had in mind). Little Ricky claimed... actually, I want to point out that the WaPo truncated his comment to “extremely liberal justices [are] destroying traditional morality”, when the complete quote is, “destroying traditional morality, creating a new moral code and prohibiting any dissent.” Damn activist judges: that’s the role of the executive branch.


On the other hand, the Post mentioned, and the AP left out, that the event was held at a black church, whose pastor has received over $1 million from the federal government through the Faith Based Initiative program. One speaker is from something called Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation; didn’t really think that acronym through, huh?

Well, he’s still more charming than Tom DeLay

Favorite headline of the day, from the Sunday Times: “Cannibal Goes on Charm Offensive.” That’s the German guy who advertised on the Web for a willing main course. The prosecutors are appealing his sentence (8½ years), which was light because the victim did volunteer. Herr Meiwes says, “I have three good lawyers and I am calm, relaxed and very confident.” Now when you say good lawyers, do you mean good in the sense of delicious with some fava beans and a nice chianti, or something else? He piously turned down media offers until he found one that would tell the story properly: “I want to explain what made me do this and I want to warn other people.” Yes, because without your warning, who knows how many people might kill and eat somebody they found on the internet. One good thing about being a cannibal in prison: they give you your own cell.

The Pentagon claims that the number of hunger-strikers at Guantanamo has dropped to 40, of whom 32 are currently being force fed. The new German chancellor has criticized Guantanamo, saying “Different ways and means must be found for dealing with these prisoners.” I’m handicapped in formulating a joke about that because I have somehow never watched Hogan’s Heroes. Please feel free NOT to post your own in comments. And here’s a little detail in an Observer story about all this, demonstrating American cultural sensitivity at its finest: “During Ramadan, tube-feeding takes place before dawn.”

Name of the week, from a WaPo article about how evangelical Christians love them some Jewy Jews: the Rev. Lamarr Mooneyham.

We really didn’t see the insurgency coming

Paul Bremer, former Viceroy and Grand Vizier of Iraq: “we really didn’t see the insurgency coming”. Bremer has a book coming out, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope. So he didn’t see the insurgency coming because he was too busy filling his hope chest. Or trying to lure the centenarian out of retirement for one last Bob Hope tour.



Bremer’s ghost-writer is one Malcolm McConnell, who also ghosted Tommy Frank’s memoirs, a book on “How Belief and Prayer Can Help You Triumph Over Disease,” a book on the Challenger explosion, and a book on prostate cancer, so he was clearly the man for the job.

Tom DeLay has decided not to seek to regain his leadership position, not that anyone was asking him to, and pass on the Toupee of Power to Roy Blunt.


He says that he has “always acted in an ethical manner” and expects to be cleared, but that Congress needs to be focused on, you know, not him, because “we live in serious times”. Which is presumably why he tried to relieve that seriousness with the joke about acting in an ethical manner. “History,” he goes on, “has proven that when House Republicans are united and focused, success follows.” Er no, not success, that would be evil which follows. Republicans always get those two confused for some reason.

The only way to lose this fight is to quit

Hugh Thompson, Jr. has died. He met the enemy, and it was us.

The Pentagon admits to having hit the wrong house in Baiji (on which I posted Tuesday night). But while I’ve re-read yesterday’s CNN story reporting this several times, I can’t figure out if they just bombed the wrong house, or if the strafing (over 100 cannon rounds) also targeted the wrong house. Bad writing by CNN or fuzzy info by the Pentagon, I dunno. I’ve waited before posting anything because I assumed someone other than CNN would be covering the story of the US bombing the wrong house and killing an entire family, but, well, not so much. Also, 4 days later and apparently no one has yet checked to see if that was really an IED those guys were planting.

Dick Cheney tells the troops forced to listen to him at Fort Leavenworth, “Every American serving in this war can be absolutely certain that the people of our country do not support a policy of passivity, resignation, or defeatism in the face of terror.” You’ll note that passivity, resignation and defeatism are not, in fact, policies, they are states of mind, as is terror. Clearly, the Bushies have now left the real world entirely, and are fighting The War on Terror (TWAT) not in Iraq but completely within the confines of their own skulls. Says Cheney, “The only way to lose this fight is to quit” (which, he adds, is not an option); that’s only the case if the fight is taking place entirely within your own mind. I wonder how the troops who actually have to fight this war and be shot at and blown up feel being told that victory is really just a matter of the Power of Positive Thinking.

Maybe next time they could just send a singing telegram

Flash: all those scores of people killed in multiple attacks in Iraq yesterday were a good sign, according to alliterative General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an indication, in fact, that last month’s elections were a “major blow” to Al Qaeda. “I see the terrorist attacks as acknowledgment on the terrorists’ part that this is a center of gravity (in the war on terror) and that they’re losing.”


What’s really dangerous, of course, said Pace, “damaging to morale,” are some critical comments by American congresscritters like Jack Murtha, who said that he personally would not volunteer to join the military today.

So to sum up, suicide bombings show that everything is bright and sunny and hopeful, with daisies and puppy dogs, while the news that a 73-year old won’t be re-upping threatens us all with doom and despair and darkness.

If he did not repent, he would be executed. It’s the only way.

A judge in Maryland rules that a man who mooned his neighbor during an argument did not break the law.

I have to admit to being a little surprised that Bush recess-appointed an almost universally awful, underqualified bunch of toadies, fund-raisers and ideologues to various positions, as if the last year had never happened. The move neatly combined kingly arrogance with cronyism, the traits that gave us domestic surveillance and Michael Brown. The destruction of New Orleans and its aftermath was evidently not enough of a lesson that it made him think twice before appointing Ellen Sauerbrey assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. So here’s my question: why do we on the left never learn that Bush never learns?

You will remember the editor of the Afghan magazine Women’s Rights being sentenced to two years for blasphemy (the prosecutor had asked for the death penalty), the judge saying that he was acting under orders from the Ulama Council. Well, I missed this, but two weeks ago, he recanted and was released. Somehow, the death penalty came back into play. Said one of the appeals judges in the case, “if he did not repent, he would be executed. It’s the only way.” So to recap, in a country occupied liberated by the United States, an editor was forced on pain of death to deny and abjure the ideas that women should have equal status to men in courts, that apostates should not be executed, and that lashing adulterers 100 times is a bad idea.

In other press-freedom news, a newspaper reporter who called in his blog for the boycott of the Beijing News after the Chinese government fired its editor and two of his deputies, has seen that blog shut down by Microsoft. Microsoft’s defense: “Most countries have laws and practices that require companies to make the internet safe for local users.” Safe.

In yet more press-freedom news, the British government’s heavy-handed and yet silly and doomed order to British newspapers not to name the MI6 head of station in Greece who was outed in the Greek press and who allegedly watched the beatings of 28 Pakistanis suspected of having something to do with the 7/7/05 train bombings, while rather pointless in the age of the internet...

his name is Nicholas Langman by the way...

he looks like this...

(the London Times helpfully describes the picture, so that when you google your way to the Greek paper that printed it, you’ll be able to recognize it even if you don’t know the language) has nevertheless for the most part inhibited the British press from investigating the claims. He said, she said, and they were done.

From the LA Weekly, among many other entertaining lists this week, Things We Learned from the Intelligent Design “Controversy”:

1. Some complexity is irreducible.

2. Evolutionary theory has gaps.

3. Gaps are evidence of God.

4. Naomi Watts is evidence of God.

5. God doesn’t play dice, but he does play Life.

6. God is falsifiable.

7. What’s religion in Delaware is science in Kansas.

8. Thirty-eight Nobel laureates aren’t as smart as the Kansas Board of Education.

9. It’s quite possible that humans rode dinosaurs.

10. Any crackpot theory deserves a hearing, unless it involves spaghetti.

11. A man is like a watch: If you don’t wind him up, he doesn’t work right.

12. Some people spell Creationism with only two letters.

And this cartoon is from that issue:

I appreciate you being such a solid citizen of our country

The population of Japan is in a slight decline, but it is the Year of the Dog, so Prime Minister Koizumi has advised Japanese women to do it doggy style and learn from their canine sisters: “Dogs produce lots of puppies and, when they do, the pains of labour are easy.” Clearly the problem with Japanese women is that they aren’t producing large enough litters.

Speaking of large litter, this is the Guardian headline about Ariel Sharon: “Huge Shadow Cast Over Israel.” Is this really the time to be making fat jokes? Oh, sure it is, go right ahead.

Several high-fatality suicide bombings in Iraq today, including yet another attack on yet another line of applicants for police jobs, cleverly located outside the Ramadi Glass and Ceramics Works, aka Shrapnel ‘R Us. Here’s the line I liked, from the BBC: “US military spokesman Capt Jeffrey Pool said the surviving recruits later got back in line to continue the screening process.” Some screening. Some process.

Bush today pretended to listen to a group of former secretaries of state and defense. Why, no one can accuse him of living in a bubble now that he has met with Robert McNamara! Afterwards he kept calling them solid, as in “I appreciate your interest. I appreciate you being such a solid citizen of our country.” On closer inspection, however, it turned out that Melvin Laird is actually a liquid, Alexander Haig is a gas, and Colin Powell is hollow. Jokes about the word solid, ladies and germs! I need a nap!

(Update: actually, he didn’t even spend more than 5 to 10 minutes pretending to listen to them, according to the NYT.)

Caption contest:

People will be making decisions not based upon who has got the biggest gun

Going to a funeral in Iraq must be... different. “I’m going in to mourn. Cover me!”

From the BBC, the segue of the week:

In the worst attack, at least 36 people were killed in a suicide bombing at a Shia funeral north of Baghdad. Across Iraq, more than 50 people died.

In Washington, President George Bush said the plan in Iraq was going well.

Indeed. In a variation on the popular children’s game “Telephone,” George Bush was given a national security briefing today, and then had to give us a briefing on the briefing. Hilarity ensued.


Wonkette:

From the sounds of things, each Pentagon briefing is much the same as all the others -- freedom is marching, constant elections will soon replace potable water as a source of refreshment, a new Middle Eastern government based on Sharia law is just what the American taxpayers wanted, the Iraqi forces are well on their way to retaking Hadrian’s Wall from the Celtic hordes, et cetera, ad infinitum, with liberty and justice for all, strategery.

Bush:

During our briefing we talked about the areas of concern in this global war on terror, recognizing that the enemy, which has an ideology of hate and a desire to kill, lurks in parts around the world. I assured the generals that this administration would do everything in our power to bring these enemies to justice.

Wouldn’t it be funny if these meetings were actually just like Bush describes them? If the generals really did talk about the enemy having a desire to kill and lurking in parts around the world, and he really did assure the generals that etcetera?

Says that what will no doubt be endless haggling to form a new Iraqi government will show that “people will be making decisions not based upon who has got the biggest gun [I think George has just unwittingly revealed something about himself we didn’t need to know], but who has got the capacity to rally the will of the people. And that’s positive.” Professor Bush’s PolySci -101 seminar continued:

Democracies yield an ideology that is based on an ideology that says, people are free -- free to choose. The ideology of the enemy says, a few people will choose, and if you don’t like what we tell you to believe in, we’ll kill you, or -- or treat you harshly.

I note a bit of rhetoric creep: “artificial” timetables to withdraw troops from Iraq has become “false political timetables.”

He demonstrates his eerie ability to get inside the enemy’s head: “See, al Qaeda thinks they can use Iraq as a safe haven from which to launch attacks. That’s their stated objective. I’m not making this up.”

They will dwell in the shadows, with a security deposit and first and last month’s rent, and no pets

Dick Cheney, at (where else) the Heritage Foundation: “Either we are serious about fighting this war or we are not.” I’ll turn this car around, you kids! He accuses some, unnamed, politicians of “yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country”. Yielding to temptation; makes it sound like getting a blowjob from an intern.

Cheney doesn’t much like terrorists, but then perhaps he’s projecting just a little: “They dwell in the shadows [undisclosed location], wear no uniform [I had other priorities], and have no regard for the laws of warfare [cough], and feel unconstrained by any standard of morality [cough cough].”

Evidently, everything Cheney learned about good government, he learned from... Gerald Ford:

Serving immediately after a period of turmoil, all of us in the Ford administration worked hard to restore people’s confidence in the government.

As opposed to restoring government to a condition where the people could repose confidence in it.

We were adamant about following the law and protecting civil liberties of all Americans, and we did so. Three decades later, I work for a President who shares those same values.

Ford nostalgia fever: Catch it!!

Also, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, and just for a change of pace, 8/11. Domestic surveillance is necessary to prevent another 9/11, and in fact has actually prevented, oh, let’s say, eight 9/11s that you’ve never even heard about, because we’re just that good.

Wave bye bye to your civil liberties. Bye bye!

We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves

The US military bombed and hit with 100 cannon rounds (from a plane) an Iraqi house that contained some people who’d been spotted digging a hole in a suspicious manner, allegedly to plant an IED, by a drone aircraft operating at night. Incidentally, the first Pentagon press release was that the military had launched all that steel “against insurgents placing an improvised explosive device,” as if they had been caught in the act.

The US is still not admitting that non-terrorists including women and children were killed. Which they were. Says military spokesmodel Barry Johnson, “We’re now trying to determine in coordination with Iraqi security forces in the area exactly what casualties occurred, and why they occurred.” I would have thought the bomb and the 100 cannon rounds explains the “why” pretty comprehensively. Johnson went on to say, “We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves.” Some shield. And the AP, as is pointed out by Eli, whose post I had intended simply to point you to, but then I came over all ranty, but you should read it too, calls the house a “hideout,” although the men may well have lived there. Anyway, here it is well over a day later, and no one seems to have gone to see if they were actually planting an IED and maybe even defuse it before it, you know, kills somebody.

Searching for bodies.

Body.

Bodies.

Government officials and governmental action are not for sale

Listening to Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher talk about Jack Abramoff today,


you might think she was less concerned with portraying him as a crook, than with portraying every other lobbyist, and the politicians they’re in bed with, as not being crooks: “Lawful lobbying does not include paying a public official a personal benefit with the understanding, explicit or implicit, that a certain official act will occur. That’s not lobbying. That’s a crime. ... Government officials and governmental action are not for sale.” No, they’re not ON sale; it’s full retail price. No sales tax, though. And you can get gift cards.