Outside the Spectrum

   Ouch.

   As the Republican Party enters a terminal tailspin seven months before the election I pause to look at the stories in today’s news.

   I might say that if you are conservative the news isn’t good, but I don’t believe that. I happen to know that with the state of conservativism as it is today democrats would be better at taking care of conservatives than conservatives themselves.

   I don’t want to sound partisan, because I have never cashed a check from a donor to the Democratic Party, nor have I ever been elected to any office of any kind. I don’t gloat in a “we’re winning, you’re losing” way because I don’t stand to get elected to an office as a democrat because the Republican Party is plumbing the depths of depravity and electoral contempt. When “we” win, in a way in which I really believe I belong to the “we,” we will have responsible politicians in office of both parties. And all of America will win, even if we differ on taxes and abortion.

   Because right now “we” are suffering with our government the way it is, and by “we” I mean liberals and conservatives of the everyday variety. So if you are Joe Schmo and you’re reading this and you happen to be conservative, don’t take it personally unless you happen to be a big believer in the morals of Tom DeLay. In which case I sincerely want you to rot in Hell.

   But to look at the news today is to look at the party of conservativism at its lowest ebb in history: an empty ideology, crooked leaders, and every argument transparently false.

   Today the Republican Party has the unenviable task of painting our soldiers as traitors and cowards, as 72% of them think we need to get out of Iraq inside of a year.

   And a special shout-out to the Bush Administration. How does that crow taste? They announced recently they will re-review the acquisition of the ports by the company based in the U.A.E., delaying said deal by 45 days, a proposition Bush promised to veto if congress passed legislation to that effect. Aaah, yummy, yummy black bird. How long did that policy change take? Four days, was it?

   How’s that job approval rating doing, Drinky? Not so good. Bush explores JARs formerly reserved for describing the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter as his base revolts, apparently, at the port deal. 34%! Good God! Even lower than the 42% or so he’s been living at for a year!

   Die-hard and delusional “conservative” members of the Cult of Drinky will deny, deny, deny until they are long dead, but this is a movement that is exploding spectacularly just seven months before an election. They’ll ignore the Zogby poll because Zogby is, as I’ve heard them say, a “biased” poll, as is the CBS poll, of course. They’ll ignore the writings of anybody in any media outlet that isn’t rabidly republican because the mainstream media and the liberal media outlets are all “biased” and “partisan.” They will continue to deny long after republicans are swept from office and their opinions are relegated to the garbage bin of history like fascism in Italy and Bode Miller’s gold medal aspirations in Turino.

   It’s over, guys. Seven months is a long time in politics, but we haven’t even gotten to Jack Abramoff’s testimony, or the “Scooter” Libby trial, or Tom DeLay’s trial, or any NSA investigation.

   The Writing is on the Wall, in a very biblical sense. Going all in and launching a berserk frontal assault on the truth has worked very well for many years for conservatives, but truth has a way of catching up with you, as “Kenny Boy” Lay is learning as we speak. Oh, I forgot. Drinky’s recent amendment to Kenny Boy’s nickname is now Ken “I never met him or Jack Abramoff in my life” Lay. Despite the pictures, the testimony, the fact that both were massive “pioneer” contributors, the friendly visits to Drinky’s ranch in Texas, the work they all did in abetting sweatshop owner’s operations in the Mariana Islands…

   I don’t want to harp on the connections between these corrupt men too much, because, unlike conservatives, unlike Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy, I’m not a big believer in guilt by association. But I think the Mariana Island stuff deserves a second look. Go ahead. Google it. Or, if you inexplicably hate Google for aiding the Chinese government in censoring information while ignoring the fact that FOX media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been doing it very publicly for far longer, Yahoo search it. It’s informative.

   It’s informative because this is the central tenet of the Republican Party, and has been for years. The GOP has devolved into a worthless shill for corporate interests. They only throw a bone to pro-lifers and militant patriots every once in a while to keep getting elected.

   I was reminded of this listening to the debate between GOP candidates for governor in my home state of Illinois. I don’t recall a single topic being explored other than ways to make it easier for business to operate in Illinois: tax cuts, protection from litigation, etc. To their credit, they also mentioned balancing the budget. But that’s it. That’s all they got.

   This myopia is far less benign at the federal level. The GOP has become worse than unpopular: they have become radioactive.  

   I suspect that one reason I hear right-wing talkers like Orifice babble about how dems have no plan is because they desperately need something to attack so they can go on the offensive and draw attention away from their own monumental blunders. Dems are dems. They have a plan for everything. Probably too many plans, frankly. If I were a democrat I wouldn’t have much of a problem at this point at crossing my arms, shutting up, and watching the fireworks as the GOP goes down in flames. As one famous publication said recently, “democrats understand the wisdom in getting out of your opponents way when they are destroying themselves.”

   I laugh when I hear the political pawns of Karl Rove say that you can’t win an election being negative. If you don’t understand the irony there please stop reading this blog and get yourself a brain scan. Check your pulse, because you might be dead.

   As an aside, Drinky has plans to essentially eliminate the Americorp. I have no words. A tiny, inexpensive program that enjoys great popularity and does tremendous good, and Drinky wants to axe it. Why not, right? Why stop with the lies and the depravity when the world hates you, when your country hates you, when your administration is an ongoing Theater of the Absurd?

   What is holding this guy back anymore? I mean, seriously, why not just cut to the chase and start throwing kittens out of tenth-story windows? When you have no agenda besides crushing harmless, beneficent things out of sheer spite what is left to do? Having already looted the treasury, destroyed international goodwill, ignored international law, raped the environment, and ripped up the democracy of your home country by gerrymandering opponents out of existence, Drinky is moving on to the little things in the autumn years of his presidency, like slapping homeless Katrina survivors and outsourcing the port security of the country to Osama bin Laden.

   But there will always be those who can’t see the truth when it is standing right in front of you, screaming, red-faced, and waving it arms. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that there will always be those who, in the midst of a life-long psychotic break, see everything that isn’t there and nothing that is: Powerline, along with Orifice in some of his recent, earnest soliloquies, is convinced that the WMDs were there, and were simply moved to Syria.

   That’s reason enough to invade Syria, isn’t it? I mean, after six years of this administration and their puppets in congress, we have long ago established that a fleeting suspicion of WMDs is the exact equivalent of utter certainty. Even a funny feeling in your gut will suffice.

   These noble and idealistic Don Qiohetes will gladly wage war on any country that might have WMDs, even if the evidence suggests otherwise, for the greater security of the United States of ‘Merica and the world. These brave citizen-soldiers will chase the beautiful desert mirage of a justification for an ugly, unjustified, criminal war no matter where it leads them, because they are simply that brave. Sure, in their spare time they rob poor people and crack racist jokes about brown people, but that stuff is just a superficial veneer over the huge, protective, loving heart that throbs within the breast of each and every one of them. Don’t believe me? Check out the comments section in Little Green Footballs or Cold Fury. That’s love, baby. Pure, sweet, unadulterated affection.

   But what about the Duelfer Report? Pah! Mere facts, my good man! That stuff has no bearing on the truthiness of the matter, on the fact that Iraqi weapons in Syria really, really need to exist. And when you go off your Thorazine drip in the mental hospital it is absolutely stunning how reality just warps itself to your will. It is magic, my good man. Just Believe, as our Savior once said. Christian conservatives are well-versed in matters of faith: trust them.

   This rock-hard conviction that the world is wrong when it conflicts with your beliefs is something that has flourished in the right like maggots in a block of meat left in the Iraqi sun for a month. Just read your Regnery Press books. Bone up on your corporatist literature, for God’s sake: Disinformation proved that the Lancet study of Iraqi deaths was a gross exaggeration, that Saddam Hussein really did have a functional relationship with Al Qaeda, you name it. Regnery Press will happily sell you a book justifying anything you want to believe, skeptics, and we all know, as our president has taught us, that as long as you can cite some facts or lies that support your position, no matter how grossly rancid they are, you must be right. You don’t even have to examine the evidence that doesn’t support your position. That would entail far, far too much reading, and why would you want to read about stuff that contradicts what you want to believe anyway?

   So when are we invading Syria, for God’s sake! It’s been two minutes already! What, are we waiting for Syria to launch a pre-emptive strike on Merica? Just push the damn button already I’m about to wet my pants!

   Whew. Sorry. Sometimes I get a little fearful. That’s why I support my Preznit no matter what. He’s a demented substitute for a real father figure.

   So what if we invade Syria and the weapons turn out to be gone again? They’ll just have moved to Iran, you fool, no matter what the world thinks, no matter what the official government report says. And isn’t it convenient that we’ll have a justification to invade a certain troublesome little Middle Eastern country that has nuclear ambitions? Kind of convenient, the way that irritating little Middle Eastern countries suddenly find that, unbeknownst to them, they have WMDs that necessitate a U.S. invasion. Kind of like how the crooked, er, I mean, pre-emptive cop plants a dime bag on a guy he knows is guilty of doing drugs. It reminds me of a bad play…

[This interlude brought to you by the Theater of the Absurd. Financed with generous contributions from Exxon. Exxon: you vote for corporate shills, and we’ll make record profits.]

“What do we have here, Rashim? It looks like a little baggy of crack!”

“What? I’ve never seen that before in my life! You just put that there, you bastard!”

“Likely story, Rashmed. Come with me, perp.”

“No, I mean, I saw you as you pulled the bag from your pocket and dropped it at my feet.”

“What are you going to do about it, Ramjob? What, you think the U.N. is going to enact economic sanctions against the biggest economic engine on the planet? There is no other police force to appeal to, Rimjob.”

   But back to reality, or, as conservatives like to think, The World as it Needs to Be.

   The theme just keeps going, gang. I mean, there is no end to it. Scooter knows. Scooter is charged with lying his ass off, repeatedly, to an investigator trying to figure out who leaked Valerie Plame’s name. You remember, that skinny bitch that wasn’t really undercover, according to Pat Roberts, the republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who would know. Scooter’s been caught in, shall we say, contradictions, and it’s really hard to warp reality when people are watching and taking notes. No problem. Internalize a little bit. Sure, in the outside world, Scooter admits, shall we say, he got it wrong. But was he lying? No! He forgot. In his own little word, a small and difficult place to navigate indeed, it is so misty and confusing that he didn’t remember what he said, what others said to him, etc. It’s really a crime that he was even charged with a crime, don’t you know. How can a man with such a disability be expected to even remember his own name? Valerie Who? Where am I? Where’s my binky?!?

   Stop picking on Scooter, you bastards! He can’t be expected to remember the truth!

   Drinky meeting Abramoff? He doesn’t remember, you bastards, he’s special. Stop bugging him. So what if there were pictures, invitations for visits, whatever.

   Did Drinky approve of that U.A.E. port deal? He didn’t even know about it! Leave him alone!

   Indulge me while I pause to enjoy the sweet, sweet smell of desperation emanating from Washington nowadays. How about another whiff: “Jack Who?” Aaaah…sweet, sweet desperation…
  
  

  

All the cagey lefty blogs and shows have been pointing out for 24 hours or so that Rasmussen has a poll out that shows that people favor the democrats over Bush in matters of national security 43% to 41%.

Right now if I were a voter I would be favoring democrats over Bush in matters concerning integral calculus, interpretive dance, tying my shoes, you name it.

But the Karl Roves of the Republican Party must be turning a little green. You officially have nothing to run on, W, not even the illusion of security, not even a brave face towards all of the ineffable destruction that six years of you has wrought.

You’re a corporate shill, Drinky, and the people knows it. I heard Laura Ingraham saying it! As I love to repeat, that’s your bigoted base, Mr. President.

I need a nickname for Ingraham, who I have determined is simply disconnected from reality. A liberal attourney called up and very conversationally contradicted Laura. Laura’s bizarre response was simply to say “Oooooooh, you’re an attourney. Big deal. What you are is a liberal attourney who disagrees with George Bush.”

The attourney went on about Justice Scalia’s “integrity problems.”

Laura interrupted. “What integrity problems? Name three!”

“Well, there was the duck hunting trip with Dick Cheney, several times when he refused to recuse himself, inappropriate gifts-”

“All that was just nothing. But go on to your second false point.”

This is just paraphrasing, but you get the idea. Simple dementia. Dismissing an assertion as “just nothing” and considering it refuted. Endless interruptions. Childish taunts (“Oooooooh”). A combination of childishness and an utter lack of awareness of the conversation you are currently in…of course. A kid with ADD! That leaves two nicknames for Ingraham: Ritalin Girl and Attention Deficit. Attention Deficit it is!

Whew, I feel so much better. Let’s think up a nickname for Medved, shall we?

Hmmm…Medved is really unabashedly bigoted, nationalistic…but he likes to take calls from people who disagree with him. He also sounds like a congested 15-year-old geek. Let’s see, a bigoted, nationalist geek…a young republican? No, that’s too innocuous: his nationalism is truly violent…the young militia member? More like the accountant for the Minutemen…or the Militia’s publicist…we’ll have to wait on Medved.

I’m tired of republicans like Orifice saying that this is an opportunity for dems to “seem” more hawkish on national security than the president. Ridiculous: a chimpanzee could have done a better job shoring up national security over the past five years than Drinky. Media matters has a good story here.

Retards like Russert do the cagey political analysis but they will always sound like dimwits when their base presupposition is that both parties are equally cynical political posturers. That’s like doing an analysis of Presidents Ford and Nixon and assuming that both were equally manipulative. The dems don’t have to “seem” more hawkish on national security, Russert, they are, you little shit bird. A little less talking head “analyassis” and a little more homework might be in order.

The same Rasmussen poll shows that only 17% of people are in favor of the U.A.E. controlling the ports. That number might change but Jesus is that a loser for Drinky.

More losers for Drinky: usually I ignore evidence of routine corruption in both parties, because it is too common and small-time to take time discussing. But this one piece by thinkprogress is a real winner, because it shows you who Drinky’s money guys are.

Just go down the list at Thinkprogress. It’s a winner. TIA is going strong.

The ACLU has long been a favorite organization of mine, both because of their radical dedication to the freedoms of all individuals and the fact that they drive conservatives nuts, which makes no sense, because the ACLU is the paragon of a libertarian organization. Recently the ACLU has publicized info about the abusive interrogation techniques that were “endorsed” by top Defense Department people, techniques that the FBI, the U.N., Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have all characterized as torture. Mother Jones has the story here.

This story is an old one, but until now there has been a fog of uncertainty about who authorized what. Some evidence was public about the DoD and its effort to redefine torture, but this is truly a big addition to what we know.

Sadly enough, stories like this have no legs, as a plurality or even a majority of people in this country don’t mind torturing foreigners who might be terrorists. Polls have shown this for a couple of years now since the Gitmo and Abu Ghraib stories first broke. ‘Mericans are all about torture.

One more thinkprogress: this is the story that was typical during the Reagan years, and has become typical during the Bush years: your average joe gets screwed. It’s not as sexy as torture or wiretapping, but while conservatives preach about supply-side economics let us never forget that the result is always record profits for Exxon and a slap in the face for the plebes.

   Congratulations, you nitwits. Your “security” president has just sold six of our ports to the United Arab Emirates.

   That should have been the headline of the New York Times a few days back.

   Seriously, what did this guy get elected on again? It couldn’t have been his record on security: he failed essentially every criteria the 9/11 Commission rated him on when they reviewed the security situation of the United States last year. Only 5% or so of the material coming into our ports is searched. And now the U.A.E. will be handling the cargo.

   I know all the fundies out there turned out to vote a man into office so he could appoint pro-life judges, no matter how despicable of a president he was. But the fundies are only a quarter of the population and pro-lifers all told are less than half.

   By now even the fiscal conservatives understand that this president isn’t a fiscal conservative. He has yet to veto a single pork-laden bill his republican congress has passed.

   Remind me again what this guy stands for, what the entire Republican Party stands for. I forget.

   On another subject, bad news from Iraq. Civil war threatens after militants destroyed the dome of a Sh’ite shrine. Over a hundred Sunni mosques have been attacked in retaliation. Sunnis have pulled out of government negotiations.

   I share the president’s optimism that the country won’t descend into civil war. It’s too bad the CIA doesn’t. But then again, we all know the president doesn’t pay attention to data and analysis from the CIA that conflicts with his earnest, privately-held beliefs. I can only assume that God told him Iraq won’t descend into anarchy. How far away are those troop pull-outs again?

   Michael Medved, always a sterling example of what is wrong with conservatives, opened his broadcast today by saying, “Today Muslims did what Muslims do best: kill each other.”

   Aaaah, religious bigotry. Thank you, Mr. Medved. He argued that Christians would never kill each other like Muslims are doing in Iraq. I wonder if, during WWI and WWII, Muslims were saying the each other, “There go the Christians doing what Christians do best: kill each other.”

   And there is more assorted lies from the right over at thinkprogress, the best one-stop shopping for liberal thought on the web. Tom DeLay lying blatantly about his relationship with Abramoff. I mean just ripping out a laugher. That would be, in case you’ve forgotten, Tom Delay the recently-appointed chair of the appropriations committee. That would be Tom DeLay, republican leader. Tom “The reality is, Jack Abramoff and I were not close personal friends” DeLay whereas in 1997 he was Tom “when one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff” DeLay. One little scandal and suddenly you can’t remember his friendship, Tom?

   So while Preznit Drinky is busy inventing new words like “incent” and “Great British” his people are handing over control of our ports to those Muslims, who are only really good at killing each other.

   I find it endlessly amusing that, after stoking the fires of fear and xenophobia for five years, Drinky suddenly wants to convince his rabid base that not all Ay-rabs are bad Ay-rabs. Tell it to Michael Medved, Mr. President. I don’t dismiss all Muslims as violent, I just don’t want them running our ports.

   Isn’t it comical? After five years of conflating Iraq with Al-Qaeda, Islam with Islamofascism, and insurgents with terrorists this president now wants us to have absolute moral clarity and a completely open mind about a company that is based in a country that was a safe haven for Al-Qaeda, that spawned two of the 9-11 hijackers, and that was a transshipment point for A.Q. Khan’s nuclear proliferation.

   As they say in your home state, Mr. President, that dog won’t hunt. You even have Apartheid convinced that this is a bad idea. Orifice is saying “whoa, Nelly.” Laura Ingraham is not pleased. That’s your bigoted base, Mr. President. The editors of the Wall Street Journal just don’t represent a very big voting block, in case you didn’t know.

   But the Cowboy don’t stop when the going gets tough. He’s threatened to veto congressional attempts to stall the sale.

   Good luck with that one, big guy. You might be able to bend congress to your will when their electorate is too pig-ignorant of the situation to know what’s going on, as in the NSA situation, but when little old ladies in Kansas are writing Pat Roberts to ask what the Hell is going on you have an entirely different problem on your hands.

   I predict a fresh, steaming helping of crow to be on the White House dinner menu in the near future.
  

   There is a wealth of conservative spin to report on today, but, sadly enough, it is from all the usual suspects. Don’t people get tired of new lies from the same faces? I don’t know. I do.

   Mary Matalin defends Darth Cheney from Maureen Dowd and David Gregory. I heard her on Laura Ingraham this morning unleashing the usual torrent of verifiable, factual lies into the airwaves. She said there was no leak of classified information in the Libby case because Fitzgerald didn’t charge anyone with the leak. Fitzgerald said in his press conference when he revealed the charges that he couldn’t find out who had leaked the information because of Libby’s obfuscations. He used the analogy of a baseball player (Libby) kicking dirt in the umpire’s face (Fitzgerald). How is it possible that an undercover agent had her name published if there wasn’t a leak of information somewhere, Matalin? Matalin said Woodward’s revelation about being told about Plame’s identity a month earlier invalidates the case, which has no relevance to the inconsistencies in Libby’s story.

   Matalin argued that the NSA case shouldn’t be called domestic spying, it should be called “signals intelligence.” This may be semantics, but I won’t let neocon crooks rephrase the debate to make it sound as innocuous as possible. The NSA program involves monitoring communications on American soil using American relay stations taking place between an American and a foreign person: that sounds pretty domestic to me, Matalin.

   And now we have the U.A.E. running the ports, which gets both libs and conservatives nervous. We’ve sold our debt to China and have been addicted to foreign oil for years, and now some people are perking up their ears at the influence foreign nations have with our government? How about that phone call the administration fielded from Saudi Arabia after the State of the Union address?

   Yet another republican senator goes off the reservation this week, and it is no surprise it is Orrin Hatch. He maintains that “Nobody denies that [Saddam Hussein] was supporting al-Qaida. Well, I shouldn’t say nobody. Nobody with brains.”

   I tire of bald faced lies, I really do. Need I resurrect the 9/11 Commission’s finding on the subject? No. I won’t even provide a link. Nobody with brains thinks there was a “collaborative relationship” between the two, as the report says, as we know.

   Orrin was really on a roll. On congress: “They’re moaning and groaning in Congress because he didn’t abide by what’s called the FISA Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That act is very important, but it was enacted in 1978 and it is not applicable in today’s world.”

   Thank you, Senator Hatch, for clearly explaining to us that this administration doesn’t feel the need to follow laws it feels are outdated.

   Do the people of Utah actually vote this ass into office every six years? Is anybody out there? Helllloooooooo…..Earth to Utah! Come in, Utah!

   A special counsel would be nice to investigate the NSA program, as this republican-controlled congress will not conduct a good investigation. Media Matters has a good write-up on the subject here.

   As an aside we get a little window here into the way Bill “She Does Respond” Frist runs the Senate: he cancelled the appointments of Condi Rice, a general, and others to testify about Hurricane Katrina in order to hold a series of votes on a tax bill, many of which never even took place.

   Thanks, Bill.
  

   Cowardice.

   This is what we have from the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rank, stinking, traitorous cowardice.

   Yesterday the Senate Intelligence Committee deflected Sen. Rockefeller’s attempt to even start an investigation along the usual party-line vote, with senators Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel caving into White House pressure.

   Gone are the calls for an investigation. Now, instead, the Senate Intelligence Committee will be “briefed” on the nature of the program.

   Please. You need to subpoena documents and put witnesses under oath, not be “briefed” by the most deceptive administration ever to occupy the White House. This is absurd.

   As if, offensive as it is, this NSA program isn’t transparently illegal, the Senate isn’t even going to look into the possibility that it might be illegal.

   Adding insult to injury, we have Pat Roberts reminding us that “The details of this agreement will take some time to work out.”

   In the immortal words of Macenroe, you have got to be kidding me. Was Roberts smiling nastily when he said those words? Pat Roberts is asking for more time?

   Start the carnival music now. This has passed into surreality.

   In other news, the House Intelligence Committee will conduct a review of the program in closed hearings over the next few months. Of course, what kind of accountability will there be when a republican gang member is chairing the investigation behind closed doors?

   The only truly good news is that a federal judge ruled recently that the administration must turn over its NSA program-related documents within 20 days—or explain why not. I see a loooong game of stalling ahead of us here. No administration has been as secretive as this one, as Senator Byrd said recently, and as John Dean has written about recently. This White House wouldn’t even release its energy policy sources, for God’s sake.

   Chairhack of the Partisan Apologetics Committee Roberts also is in on the Hagel “fix the law around the actions of the president” policy writing workshop.

   As an aside, we got robbed. American Evan Lysacek ripped off the best long program I have ever seen in men’s figure skating and was still surpassed by a Russian jumping android and a Swiss and a Canadian who both skated on their asses for a time in their long program. Me no understan skating scoring.

   As Tom Cruise said in a certain film twenty years ago, we are in a target-rich environment.

   To be a progressive nowadays is to live in a country that is alternately infuriating and rich with possibilities for really nasty commentary. With few exceptions I actually don’t need to go searching for inspiration on what to write about on a daily basis, which is an amazing feeling for someone who has been writing for years.

   Normally writing is like chipping away at stone: long, tedious work that nevertheless shows the time and effort you have spent on it, work that shows steady progress. When it comes to writing about politics in this day and age the inspiration veritably stands up, slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and stands over you screaming, red-faced, demanding to be written about.

   I mean with such low-lying fruit like this you would really have to belly crawl not to get a black eye from this thing hitting you in the face as you walk by. This is like Dick Cheney grinding puppies into a soup that he drinks for his morning breakfast: you can’t ignore this story. It won’t go away. It can’t be ignored.

   To the long list of shame that comprises virtually the entire Republican Party add the names Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb).

   Never before have I seen such a craven, cowed congress. I will not hesitate to compare this to Germany in 1933 or Argentina in the days of Peron. I never thought this could happen in America. I was wrong.

   I recall Olympia Snowe calling Clinton’s affair “shameless” and “sordid,” voting to censure him for debasing the presidency. Hagel was not so forgiving: he voted to convict the president on both articles of impeachment. Let us never forget that this was about a president perjuring himself to cover up a consensual affair he had with an intern.

   I recall Hagel’s statements as particularly apt: “The issue is abuse of power. Did the President abuse his power and therefore violate the Nation's trust in him?”

   I laugh, nowadays, remembering Hagel trying to hang Bill Clinton from a gibbet over lying about an affair, sanctimoniously preaching about a president abusing his power.

   I think we all know now that Hagel has never really been concerned with a president abusing his power. If this doesn’t strike you as hypocrisy please don’t vote or get near small children, because you are a dangerously delusional human being. Hypocrisy doesn’t get any more clear cut than this, ever, anywhere, anytime.

   Need I remind us of DeWine’s concern, when a democrat was in office, of the powers of the presidency? How about this:

But while I have found specific violations of law, it is not insignificant, in my final decision, that these specific criminal acts were committed within a larger context, a larger context of a documented pattern of indefensible behavior--behavior that shows a reckless disregard for the law and for the rights of others.

   LOL! He was writing this about Bill Clinton. I remember the time when even a hint that the president might be suborning perjury in a sexual harassment case caused a breakout mob of Republicans to virtually storm the White House. Read all the senators’ comments here.

   DeWine no longer has any such concerns about the president. Apparently simply ignoring FISA and eavesdropping without warrants on Americans’ international communication doesn’t count as “a reckless disregard for the law and the rights of others.” In fact, the possibility that it might is so remote he doesn’t even think it justifies an investigation.

   As Driftglass has said, I’m not angry about the Clinton impeachment. I’m happy about it. The Clinton Impeachment is the scrim against which all this hypocrisy is so clearly illuminated. These gangsters kept an independent investigator going for seven years with an unlimited budget to look into anything that might be shady about Bill Clinton, even if it was buried in his past or had nothing to do with his policies as president. They searched for years into Whitewater, “Travelgate,” and other assorted “scandals” and got nothing. Now they don’t even want to launch an investigation into the NSA, much less push for and independent investigation.

   This kind of complicity is criminal, and it is also indicative of the moral fiber and commitment to a “conservative” philosophy these thugs have. As I wrote yesterday, republican leaders don’t have a  commitment to conservativism, they have a commitment to grabbing power hand-over-fist and holding onto it like Nixon. They are all about big governmet, big deficits, and Big Brother. They are out of control.

   Dick Cheney took republican congresspeople aside. “They noted that Cheney conducted a Republicans-only meeting on intelligence matters in the Capitol yesterday,” the article noted. WTF?

   What I find especially craven is these “moderates” call for new legislation on the matter. Check out Snowe’s comments on the matter. DeWine is even less ambiguous in what I can only charcterize as blatant criminality: “He said he is drafting legislation that would "specifically authorize this program" by excluding it from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to consider government requests for wiretap warrants in anti-terrorist investigations.

   What?!? DeWine is saying, on one hand, that the NSA program is legal, and on the other hand drafting legislation to make it legal. Hey! DeWine! You can’t make something legal after the fact!

   This is just open, public banditry. This is not a matter of opinion. This is The Theater of the Absurd.

   But Hagel is on board, of course: “Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who also signed the Dec. 20 letter seeking an inquiry, said yesterday that the FISA law should be amended to include the NSA program and to provide for congressional oversight.”

   Hagel descended further into the moral abyss: “As for Rockefeller's bid, Hagel said: "If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I'm not so sure that I would support that."

   Hey! Hagel! If someone breaks the law then punitive action is exactly the kind that is called for!

   Joining the call from moderates to ask the president if there was any way that congress could change legislation to legalize what he has already done was Sen. Brownback (R-Ka). The senators from Kansas are really on a roll, man. Have I mentioned recently how much I hate the plains states?

   Alright, I’m exhausting myself. Dick Cheney decided to go public with a one-on-one interview with a member of the press. I’ll give you one guess as to which news outlet got that interview.

   This is really getting incredible. Whenever Cheney goes on any interview there should be carnival music playing in the background.

   Oh, and, BTW, where is Phase II of the intelligence investigation again? It’s been a couple years now.


  

   So it took all of six hours or so for the news to change with the Dick Cheney story.

   Apparently the victim, Harry Whittington, has had a shotgun pellet get into his bloodstream and get lodged near his heart, giving him a mild heart attack. Whittington is still OK, though.

   Before we wander on I want to mention something that struck me the second I heard about this story yesterday: Cheney was being given a pass by the media. I kept hearing mention of the accident and then “the other guy came up behind Cheney,” like it was Whittington’s fault.
   Not that it’s a big deal, but it isn’t unimportant, either. Cheney shot another man accidentally and Whittington didn’t exactly jump in front of the gun. As AOL News reported, “Several hunting safety experts agreed in interviews that it would have been a good idea for Whittington to announce himself. But every expert stressed that the shooter is responsible for avoiding other people.”
   This is common sense to me. I’m sure there was no malice involved, and Whittington is receiving the finest medical care, but how about a little responsibility here? How about a public statement with an apology, Cheney? Whittington is going to have bird shot lodged in his ass for the rest of his life. It’s the least you could do.
   In case you hadn’t noticed, Big Time isn’t big on apologies, or even keeping the press apprised of anything, for that matter. I hope the apology and public statement isn’t a week in coming, and I hope it isn’t leaked to the public via a private citizen, as the V.P. is wont to do nowadays.
   I am always willing to give a tip o’ the hat to other bloggers who rock out with a particular posting, and that time has come today. Glenn Greenwald posted a great one recently that is probably the best blog post I’ve read in months. No other post so accurately skewers the worst of conservative blogging. That means you, Little Green Footballs.
   I’m glad Glenn is getting so much attention, because he is a truly intelligent and vibrant blogger. He has repeatedly highlighted a great point: there is a dangerous difference between conservativism and cultism, and while I don’t like the former the latter is dangerous to the very fabric of our nation. From war to indefinite detention to torture to warrantless spying, what scares me is that these cultists have yet to find a limit to the power they are willing to cede to the president. I wonder exactly how far Bush would have to go before they said “stop,” or even “better him than a democrat,” which seemed to be the prevailing opinion of conservatives in 2004.
   As long as the RNC transmits talking points to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity on a regular basis these people will never crawl out of the Platonic cave they labor in. I think the problem has less to do with political philosophy and more to do with bias: if Clinton were doing this do you think they would be so fanatically supportive? Do you honestly think they would be so eager to defend executive authority if the executive was a democrat? Need I resurrect the quotes of prominent republicans from the brief air war over Kosovo eight years ago? Remember the howling about “jackbooted thugs” when the ATF stormed the Koresh compound or when Elian Gonzales was taken from his home?
   No, my friend. These people are all about Big Government when it suits their purposes and small government when democrats are in charge. Conservative governments don’t run up record deficits and conservative governments don’t start pre-emptive wars based on lies, republicans do. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice do, and Pat Roberts trails behind to stonewall congressional investigations and beat down witnesses. Ditto for the other powerbrokers in the Republican Party like DeLay, Frist, and Hastert.
   And spare me the “bad apple” theory. Every single one of the most prominent republican politicians in Washington is complicit in this.  This isn’t a bad president we’re talking about: this is an entire political party that has simply gone AWOL. This is Karl Rove or “Scooter” Libby leaking Valeria Plame’s identity at Cheney’s behest and Pat Roberts publicly parroting the GOP spin and doubting she was ever undercover. This is Rick Santorum teaming up with Tom DeLay to run the “K” Street Project and then voting for every initiative and power that Bush asks for. This is Bill Frist lying about diagnosing Terri Schiavo and ramming an insane bill through congress and Bush flying back from vacation to sign it within 24 hours. This is Ken Mehlman simply existing. This is every rapacious thing Bush has done defended rabidly by republican congresspeople. This is an ugly political machine that is destroying our nation.

   So V.P. Cheney shot a man, as the world knows by now.

   This is one of those big, meaningless stories that cover the airwaves at first glance, like what Paris Hilton wore to the latest celebrity party. But there are a couple of little nuggets in this that actually are enlightening.

   First off, Cheney didn’t tell anyone about this. Or, more precisely, he waited a while and then whispered it in the ear of someone to make a discreet phone call long after it happened. Scott McClellan was peppered with critical questions about this fact (incidentally, isn’t McClellan’s name eerily reminiscent of a certain union general in the Civil War that was famed for his conservative and slow-moving command? McClellan must be some kind of cosmic karmic reincarnation, a conservative, stonewalling kind of political version of the old general.). McClellan refused to elaborate on whether or not he was completely aware of the Vice President’s Office’s decision to delay and then not issue a press release.

   This is vintage Cheney: secretive to the point of obsessive. From the man who refused to say who he met with to form our nation’s energy policy comes this reluctance even to issue a press release about an apparently banal hunting accident. The man was quickly treated and released from the hospital. It was not, altogether at least, Cheney’s fault. No big deal.

   Until we get information that the man had been sleeping with Cheney’s wife, or they had been drinking, I won’t revisit this story. Thinkprogress.org has information on Cheney’s hunting trip that might raise eyebrows, including the fact that Cheney was hunting illegally, if that matters to you.

   In more important news today, the U.N.  released a report saying that U.S. practices at Guantanamo Bay amount to torture. The administration, of course, dismissed such charges, as it has done in the past. The Don and Roma show on my local WLS was quick to mention that the U.N. people never visited Gitmo, omitting the fact that U.S. officials refused to let them meet and interview prisoners, thus making the potential visit useless. This is typical tendentious reporting from conservative news outlets, the Pravda Press that keeps at least 40% of the electorate completely blind about what is going on in their own country.

   The U.N. did what any ethical committee should do, ruling against a party in an investigation when the party essentially refuses to defend itself, based on the corroborated testimony of witnesses they did interview. The United States will never be a voice in the world of human rights until it stops flouting international norms. Even worse, as I have written before, it will serve as an example and an encouragement to other nations to flout international standards of human rights. This has been and will be a legacy of the Bush Administration.

   In miscellaneous news, David Brooks, the resident conservative apologist at the New York Times, said to Chris Matthews that democrats have more nuts in their party than Republicans, and that dems insist on a “Stalinist line of discipline.” The amazing hypocrisy here is too large to address right now, but suffice it to say that Ann Coulter disagrees. She mentioned recently that "There is more dissent on a slave plantation then amongst moderates in the Republican party," a sentiment with which I agree, sadly enough.

   That’s right, moderates: you are Ann Coulter’s bitch. We’ve been saying it one the left for years now. Now you can hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

   For all you conservatives out there who loooove your ad populum arguments, more bad news: Bush is at 39%. But I’m sure, as you have maintained for a year, the turn around is right around the corner! Any day now!

   There’s a great story over at Crookslandliars.com about the silence of righty bloggers concerning Ann Coulter’s repugnant remarks at CPAC recently. Though Michelle Malkin, among some others, did condemn them.

   While I’m happy Michelle found a conscience, I must take note of the commentator. Malkin is an Asian-American and prominent conservative blogger who has defended the internment of Japanses-Americans in WWII. I can’t help but think that Malkin, an Asian and a woman, is suffering from a rare variation on Stockholm Syndrome and really repressing some things, belonging to a party that has been hostile to women and minorities for generations. Like Andrew Sullivan and some prominent African-American conservatives, I don’t think she understands that her party wants to destroy her. Liberals shed blood, sweat, and tears in the fifties and sixties and seventies (and continue to do so) so women and minorities like her could have a voice and an opportunity in this country, and she repays them with a kick in the ass and books written slandering liberals. There is a special place in Hell reserved for people like her: in Dante’s Inferno, Caina, in the ninth circle of Hell, was reserved for those treacherous to kin.

   So Michelle, I have news: no matter how loudly you mouth their politics, the bigoted white men still want to destroy you. I know it’s scary, but you are just hurting others with what you are doing right now. If this was 1940’s America and we went to war with the Philippines you would be put in a concentration camp where you might find it difficult to blog how you agree with your internment.

  

   I have come to realize why I was so poorly misinformed in my life before: I read The Chicago Tribune.

   Jesus Christ. Several articles were published in The New York Times over the past few days about Alberto Gonzales before the Judiciary Committee, including an op-ed. Was there an op-ed in the Tribune? Nope. But they did write an op-ed about Britney Spears.

   Thank you, Chicago Tribune. Few mainstream papers pedal so furiously after The Wall Street Journal down the path to depravity than The Chicago Tribune. This is S.O.P. for the right-wing media: pound the United Nations and other favored conservative targets at any opportunity and simply ignore the raging headlines when they are about something embarrassing to your side.

   The Chicago Tribune finally published a piece on the wiretapping scandal yesterday, and it is as bad as I had hoped. I am officially writing off The Chicago Tribune. You hear me, Tribune? You are dead to me!

   You haven’t endorsed a democrat for president in a century. You were isolationist right before WWI. You were hostile to the New Deal. You said Dewey won. You idolized Joe McCarthy.

   You were WRONG. You were always, always, wrong. You were an ugly reminder of the Chicago that inspired The Jungle, a Chicago of a wealthy few and a downtrodden mass.

   Newspapers are for-profit businesses, and you remind us of that every day. You are not Chicago, Tribune: you are just another snake oil salesman pimping his poison to an ignorant public. You are a reminder that while people need news to function they can’t get it from companies with a profit motive and a president who inherited his job from his dad.

   Your McCormick family dynasty left the president’s office in the fifties and the Tribune Company went public in 1983 but you were still conservative to the core. You still endorsed Reagan for president. You still endorsed George H.W. Bush for president, then Bob Dole, then George W. Bush twice.

   And you’re still wrong. So now you defend illegal wiretaps because what the fuck? Why stop now?

   The country has changed, Tribune, but you haven’t. You don’t represent Midwestern conservativism anymore. Your home state and your home city have been blue for years now. We came to love the New Deal you despised. We decided Joe McCarthy was a fucking alcoholic loser of a politician who destroyed people’s careers because he had no fucking political philosophy beyond red baiting and baseless slander. We decided Nixon was a crook long before you fucking figured it out, dragged kicking and screaming to the dinner table for a fresh helping of crow. We decided we didn’t want either Bush to be president of our country and we were right there too.

   But you never stopped. You kept right on pumping lies and conservative apologias into the public discourse like a broken New Orleans sewage main spouting 1000 gallons a minute of soupy shit right into the streets of our city. You ran further to the right than any paper but The Wall Street Journal, a disservice to a city that you supposedly represented. You touted supply-side economics and other voodoo bullshit whenever your conservative masters ordered. You apologized for their worst excesses and ignored anything you could, even when all of this was hurting the people who bought your papers, ran your presses, and mopped your floors.

   You are a pedophile living next to a school. You are the violently alcoholic uncle the family is ashamed of. You are hurting your community and your family and preying on their ignorance and trust.

   I’m not going to respond to your editorials anymore. You’ve had a century to refute yourself and you’ve done nicely.

So let’s see what’s in the headlines that the trib doesn’t want to talk about, shall we?

   Hmmm…cool article in the New York Times about how Preznit Stumbly has officially sunk our nation in more debt than Reagan ever did. Seriously, is this guy not the worst president ever? Are we not living in an age that will be forever remembered as the long, dark dominion of the bat shit crazy republicans?

   Another New York Times article about how the reconstruction is an unmitigated disaster. I’ve said enough on this subject. I just don’t want to talk about it anymore.

   More evidence the tide is turning against the W administration: republican congresspeople are fleeing the W agenda like rats off a sinking ship. I guess Rove’s threats aren’t too convincing, coming as they are from an administration that hasn’t seen the sunny side of a 50% JAR since 2004.

   I love this story. Just read this stuff. We’ve got it ALL here: Libby admitting that the Vice President authorized him to leak classified information to journalists, piecemeal, to justify the administration’s claims; a rehash of the Iran-Contra Affair; a reminder that many of the central claims against Oliver North couldn’t be proved because Reagan wouldn’t declassify the necessary documents to help prosecute his former thrall and the darling of the neocon right.

   Yes…it always comes back to Reagan, doesn’t it? Make that BitterHarvest’s Rule #1 when analyzing the malevolent and murderous plans of the new republicans: it always comes back to Reagan.

   Tom DeLay is back! He may be politically radioactive, but why would that stop an entire party of criminals from putting him in a position of power? Tom is now the new Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. DeLay also received a seat on the subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department and the ongoing investigation of Jack Abramoff, an investigation in which he is a target.

   Wheeee! It’s amazing the things you’ll do when you have no conscience!

   Seriously, I have not seen so many comments posted on this story in my life. This story is so stunning I have no words. Aside from the wiretapping story I can’t remember one that so clearly demonstrates how degenerate the Republican Party has become.

   Thinkprogress is, and always has been, an invaluable resource. Check out Cheney going off the reservation again. No comment here. Not even Reagan was like this. Cheney doesn’t ignore the truth: he simply has no idea what it is.

   I can’t get off Thinkprogress today. Check out this story. Gonzales unambiguously lied under oath to Russ Feingold. Prosecution, anyone? Anyone? Law and order, anyone? Anyone want to enforce the law? No?

   Although I already wrote about Coretta Scott King’s funeral, I was trying to be diplomatic about the whole politics-at-a-funeral thing. Check out this post over at Gilliard. Sweet, sweet Steve.

   I have written before about the Bush presidency resurrecting John Poindexter from his political grave to run the Big Brother program Total Information Awareness, which congress rightly quashed (BTW, Republicans were supposed to be about small government, right? You might want to choose a name in the future that doesn’t sound like you are trying to spy on everyone all the time). Not only did Poindexter rise from his grave, but Total Information Awareness did, too. Bush just went around congress again. He moved the program and reconstituted it.

   Few republicans are as vile as Bill Bennet. I get his lies piped, fresh and steaming, into my car every morning on my way to work. Bill got lambasted recently for pointing out that blacks have a higher crime rate than whites, a criticism that was especially sweet because he didn’t really deserve it. It’s kinda like busting Al Capone for tax evasion for twenty years. But today he just skipped the whole indirect prejudice of his past and jump ass-over-teakettle into blatant, blind bigotry.

   The sad thing is this isn’t even remotely the worst thing Bill’s ever said. This guy defends torture, warrantless wiretapping, Voodoo Economics, and every other horrifying right-wing idea with bald-faced lies and more subtle mischaracterizations.

   I have a new nickname. Bill Bennet will forever be known on this blog as Apartheid.

   Which eliminates a prime nickname for Ann Coulter, who went all bat shit crazy bigot at the CPAC two days ago. A quote from our handy spies at Campus Progress:

These riots of Muslims remind us why we have to take seriously the threat that Iran has nukes. Maybe they do, maybe they don't--but they're certainly acting like they do. What if they start having one of these bipolar episodes with nuclear weapons? If you don't want to get shot by the police, don't point a gun at them--or as I think our motto should be, post-9/11, raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences

   Hah! I love that bitch! Every time CNN or FOX has that bitch on they are providing a platform for an unapologetic racist and sexist, which is a wicked two-fer. Of course, every bigot on earth was at the CPAC and cheered her loudly. Some timid Muslim tried to object and they shut his shit up. Take that Raghead!

   I’ve heard a lot of crap in the last week from the Sean Hannity idiots about how the democrats can’t get elected when they are so hateful and have “no agenda other than nay saying the republicans.”

   In the bizarre political calculus of the Republican Party, not only can they loot the treasury, kick the poor to the curb, burn scientists as witches, and slander war heroes, but they can also, they think, use some kind of Jedi mind trick to convince the demos that they can’t win by criticizing republicans.

   Wow. Good luck with that one. While democrats are angling for just the right tone to take in the upcoming elections they are seeking to strike a balance between criticism and optimism.

   I, and people in the media, have no obligation to kiss babies and woo every last voter come November. I, if I may say this without sounding pompous (impossible), have a personal commitment to truth, not popularity, and there is a difference.

   So let me say personally that I wouldn’t take political advice from Sean Hannity if you waterboarded me for a week. And the media has no commitment to anything other than the truth.

   I am heartened by reading The New York Times. The Bush Administration has been beaten like red-headed stepchild in the Times for a while now. Rightists may rail about bias, but their puling cries can’t change the fact that The Newspaper of Record is roasting them on a daily basis.

   We get no such probity from the Chicago newspapers, unfortunately. The Tribune downplays and ignores the failures of the administration. Though I have mentioned it before it deserves repeating: the editorial board of the Tribune hasn’t endorsed a democrat for president in a century. The Sun Times is owned by conservative Canadian mogul Conrad Black, and their coverage of the administration has been similarly weak.

   As our nation sinks further into debt and dishonor I have noticed many conservatives mentioning that they think the GOP has screwed up the governance of the nation. Of course, this usually comes as an aside in the middle of a diatribe against democrats, but it’s worth noting.

   I don’t want to see a conservative whitewashing of the GOP. I don’t want to see conservatives say, “Yeah, these guys looked good when we voted but they screwed things up.” Wrong. These guys were crooks from the get-go and this was apparent to every person who gets their news from a balance of sources. You are personally responsible for voting these felons into office. When W got the republican nomination for president in 2000 I said he was the least qualified republican nominee for the presidency in history, and the record has borne me out.

   You will never be an intelligent voter if you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. You will never know if your conservative candidate is a crook or not by getting your news from right-wing media outlets. These guys have been caught in more lies and one-sided arguments than Baghdad Bob.

   I have a special dislike for conservative bloggers. The internet is right in front of them, the Information Superhighway, and the truth is literally at their fingertips. To completely ignore the entire MSM as biased and to only get news from Powerline is like closing your eyes at the sight of a robbery and claiming that you didn’t know a crime was taking place because you couldn’t see it. You are responsible for your words and votes. Brainwashing yourself makes you responsible for brainwashing yourself on top of that.  

   The truth has an ugly habit of being heard, something conservatives who believe in the righteousness of our free-market country have to acknowledge. It must be hard to advocate, on one hand, that the providential invisible hand works with infinite justice, and on other the other hand to maintain that the MSM and the bulk of the country is just biased and unfair. I thought this was the best of all possible worlds, conservatives?

   While they focus on riots in the Middle East as symbols of the oppression of Islam their own country is sinking into the abyss. David Brooks wrote an amusing op-ed column to this effect in yesterday’s New York Times. Remove the mote in your eye, as the Bible says, conservatives.

   Drinky maintained that while the West has freedom of speech, that freedom must be used responsibly. WTF, W? Whatever happened to our cowboy president? “Wanted dead or alive?” “You’re either with us or against us?” “Bring ‘em on?” How about a little bluster to defend something other than oil reserves?

   Free speech has never been a prerogative of our “irresponsible debate” president, of our “free speech zone” president. I’ve come to expect nothing less.

Corruption

   Welcome to Watergate II. Using the CIA to dig up dirt on political enemies? No problem.

   As I mentioned before, I am not opposed to crying foul when I see it. I don’t even see a need to propose an alternative to the administration’s policies other than just obey the law.

   I think democrats can win in November by just making a stance opposite the lawbreaking of current republican incumbents. The perennial liberal agenda might work, too: higher minumum wages, preserving medicare and social security, expanding government programs for the poor, and promising incentives for small business, student loans, and cutting taxes for the working poor while letting the tax cuts for the upper class lapse.

   But at this point in the sad history of our nation any responsible voter should be scrambling blindly to vote for anyone who isn’t a republican. I would take a Green Party candidate over a conservative. I would take an unnamed democrat over a conservative.

   Want an alternative to this trade policy? Don’t vote for a republican. Want congresspeople who don’t make bills like this? Don’t vote for someone who will fall in line with Hastert or Frist. Don’t want your caucus to put Tom DeLay back in charge like this? Don’t vote for a republican. It’s that easy.

   Orifice clones like to say that the democrats are in a crisis, but I beg to differ, my friend. I have never seen a political party in such an ethical freefall as the Republican Party right now. I wouldn’t touch that party with a ten-foot pole. I wouldn’t trade places with those guys if they rigged every election machine in Ohio and Florida.

   Record deficits, illegal war, international opprobrium, domestic disaster: this is the legacy of five years of complete republican control. These guys have absolutely nothing to run on. They are busily lying their asses off and denying they know Jack Abramoff and nervously looking at their poll numbers plummet and calling their lawyers in a panic, telling him to shred all records of their meetings. They are calling their aides and telling them to draft speeches that criticize the administration’s wiretapping program and ignoring the threats being bellowed by Karl Rove. Run, guys, run!

   Mouthing the mantras of tax cuts and Voodoo Economics will no longer save you, gentle conservatives. Your crimes are so numerous, so public, that even imbeciles can reach the low-hanging fruit now. You are getting roasted in every mainstream and lefty news outlet in the country. The indictments are piling up. It doesn’t take Einstein to connect the dots between Michael Brown, “Scooter” Libby, and Tom DeLay. What we are looking at is the Republican Party pitching forward in a nosedive, with no wings and the tail on fire, screaming that democrats can’t get elected by just criticizing them.

   Whatever you say, guys. I’ll roll the dice in the other plane. Happy landings.

   Recently I’ve heard a lot of crying from conservatives about the politicization of Koretta Scott King’s funeral. I originally was going to talk about this because I didn’t consider it significant enough, but recently I’ve realized that we can all draw some important lessons from this.

   I consider it a good point some of my conservative colleagues have. Funerals are times for mourning, I’ve always been taught. I guess I’m just not Irish.

   So it might be considered to be in poor taste to politicize a funeral. The something remotely similar happened at Paul Wellstone’s funeral in 2002. I considered that, however, to be conservative whining. The political polemics at Wellstone’s funeral were far more mild, and Wellstone was a politician who devoted his life to a cause. I don’t think many liberals would be offended if, at Bush 41’s funeral, some of his friends stood up and talked about continuing the noble cause of conservative politics, etc. I would just hope the speakers would pull up short of the whitewash that attended Nixon’s funeral, when Bob Dole called Nixon a great president and others lies “so shameful he made himself cry,” as Hunter Thompson so memorably said.

   So Jimmy Carter and others taking this moment to skewer the president was inappropriate, though deep in my liberal heart I cheered the public excoriation of a president seated behind the speakers. W doesn’t get to see much public resentment of his unpopular policies due to the draconian efforts of his aides, staffers, political hangers-on, and security detail. It’s a dose of medicine he badly needs.

   Clinton, who gave an amusing and non-political speech, was roundly praised by conservatives and liberals for giving a good speech. It never ceases to amuse me to hear conservatives praise Clinton as their current president looks increasingly pale by comparison. They still hate his politics, of course, but they don’t deny his public charisma, something that is made obvious when he speaks at the same event as the current president or his wife.

   Which brings me to the first (or is it second) lesson of the funeral: even Mrs. Clinton’s supporters said her speech was colorless next to that of her husband’s. That pretty much sums up her whole political character: Bill Clinton-lite. All the triangulation with none of the charisma. Hillary, though she is regarded by many as the democratic front-runner for president in 2008, is not a winner. John Kerry would make a better candidate for president than her in 2008 even though he already lost once.

   The conservative resentment of the funeral, however, is so great that an additional factor must be adduced to account for their incessant coverage of it. This is more than a concern for comportment and dignity at a funeral. I can’t help but think this is also resentment against the fact that Mrs. King was an icon of a movement that is hostile to their political philosophy and a race that is hostile to their party. African-Americans, who comprised the vast majority of the audience, don’t vote republican. Their approval rating of the president is incredibly low, even in the single digits in some polls. Mr. King was a civil rights leader who, while having bridged the gap between political radical and mainstream hero in his death, is still viewed with hostility in much of the modern home of the GOP, the South and the West. Bob Grant, famous conservative radio talker, has frequently voiced his hatred for Mr. King over the years. Sean Hannity, the #2 radio host in the country, has frequently cited Bob Grant as one of his greatest inspirations in radio talk.

   I don’t think I need to argue that if MLK were alive today he wouldn’t be a republican, so forgive me if you think I’m begging the question. 90% of African-Americans and all of the great African-American civil rights leaders from his day vote democrat, including Jesse Jackson and others. Conservatives have had the unenviable job for years of paying lip service to MLK’s legacy while simultaneously championing candidates like Strom Thurmond. It’s an amazing resolution to cognitive dissonance that is necessary for the survival of their party.

   Despite what Ken Mehlman says they don’t want to lose the racist vote in the South, but they won’t be admitted to polite company shitting on the legacy of Martin Luther King. They want to lock up the dittohead angry white male vote but they don’t want to wander so publicly into the realm of bigotry. So they developed subtleties. The Southern Strategy. “States Rights” when used as a shield for efforts to undermine federal civil rights legislation. Exhortations to let people compete in a “fair” marketplace when they know this marketplace has never been fair. African-Americans make up 13% of the population but just 1% of the senate. We still have a long way to go before racial equality is achieved in this country. Nearly forty years has passed since MLK but our “fair” market of commerce and ideas has not righted itself to where African-Americans are fairly represented in the boardrooms or the government.

   Conservatives can cry about the politicization of the funeral or how democrats have “duped” African-Americans into voting “D” every election but they aren’t fooling African-Americans. Working ardently to systematically undermine civil rights processes and then pointing to Condi Rice as proof the president gives a fair place to African-Americans isn’t selling in the African-American community. They will have to do better. Unfortunately, this means abandoning the largest part of their base that doesn’t want to see anything resembling affirmative action as a Republican Party platform. I don’t see the republicans doing this anytime soon. Until then they can expect to see many more African-American civil rights leaders’ funerals turn into impromptu democratic rallies.

   My man Driftglass brought this article to my attention today, and a grim little article it is.

   As Alberto Gonzales sits in front on the Judiciary Committee, not under oath (per the wishes of the republican majority vote), and wheels out the flimsy excuse of the “authorization to use force,” Karl Rove takes the republican committee members aside and threatens to wage war on them if they don’t rule the right way.

   I love it. This is pure, sweet, undiluted Rove: a distillation of all the criminal things that we hate about the Republican Party. Yes, I said WE. 59% of respondents in an ABC News poll from last November think Rove should resign. From South Carolina in 2000 to Plamegate, there’s just something about the guy…a vague, sickening stench….

   So go ahead, Drinky! Keep turdblossom in there! You know, the guy you said you’d fire way back when…we haven’t forgotten, have we? Rove is a big, fat, balding, leprous lodestone around the neck of this administration and the more they exercise his fat ass the more we’re reminded of just how riddled with criminals they are.

   This is what the administration has become: they’re no longer concerned with image anymore. At this point they are nakedly breaking the knees of the jurists and screaming, red faced, at everyone within earshot that they will destroy anyone who crosses them, spittle flying from their mouths as they speak. This is like the ultimate scene in Scarface, when Tony Montana, manic from a Herculean cocaine binge, storms out of his office with an M-16 and a grenade launcher and just unloads, roaring challenges to an army of attackers.

    I heard some encouraging criticism from republicans on the judiciary committee, but I fear what they may see as a solution. This is not the time for a slap on the wrist. I have already quoted many congressmen’s pious declarations about the sanctity of the law and the high moral standard to which they must hold the president when they voted to impeach Bill Clinton.

   What angers me about this isn’t the intrusion into the privacy of many people, though that is galling. What angers me is the blatant disregard for the law this administration has evinced. When Bill Clinton was up for impeachment I was ambivalent: I didn’t consider the president’s personal life and lies about his personal life to be very important, but perjury is perjury. This wiretapping scandal is far worse, and has far more dangerous implications if the president is not reined in.

   The right wing media is far more concerned about Muslim riots in Lebanon and Syria than they are about this wiretapping scandal, from what’s I’ve heard. The talking points must say something like “focus on the Middle East.” Many courageous bigots have even cited this as proof that Islam is a fundamentally violent religion, a belief they have had for years.

   I won’t defend Muslim fanatics, and I especially won’t defend Syria’s government, who have suppressed freedom in that country for decades but were somehow unable to protect the Danish and Norwegian consulates from being torched. Syria has been a gangster-run dictatorship for longer than I’ve been alive, and the despotisms in the Middle East have always been eager to let their people vent about anything except the state of their government in a desperate attempt to siphon off some of the anger of their oppressed people at a target other then themselves. I think some monetary reparations are in order, to say the least.

   Another thing I won’t do is use this opportunity to generalize about hundreds of millions of people scattered across the globe and slander their religion. I also won’t use this as an opportunity to focus the debate on anything but the wiretapping scandal.

   We saw this before. The riots in France led Victor Davis Hansen and other conservatives to somehow equate the violence there with the inferior social system of socialist France. Please.

   So back to the wiretapping. Gonzales wheeled out the rusty national security shield and scare tactic of “the terrorists are listening.” So we can’t talk about it.

   Jesus Christ. Wrong in so many ways. First: that’s what closed hearings are for. Second: terrorists have known for decades that the western countries of the world can listen in on phone conversations. The 9/11 Commission Report detailed how Al Qaeda, in the years before 9/11, flew couriers from Pakistan to Germany and back because they didn’t even trust the mail. Third: anything we reveal about this program doesn’t mean there aren’t other programs gathering information in other ways that the terrorists have to be wary of.

   Listening to Gonzales weave back and forth was painful: FISA is a “wonderful tool.” FISA is “cumbersome and burdensome.” Then Gonzales wouldn’t speculate on hypotheticals. Then he demanded a closed session to discuss the details.

   Slate has a great article here. So far we have learned nothing, and the committee isn’t exactly going after this issue aggressively. As Emily Bazelon noted: “No witnesses other than Gonzales. No new details of the National Security Agency spying program that the committee was supposed to be inquiring about. No request for the Justice Department's internal legal memorandums about the legality of the NSA program.”

   People concerned with truth can only hope that the spying program is so egregious a breach of the law that it will drop, like overripe fruit, into the lap of the meek and self-effacing senators. Their opponent, the Bush Administration, is not so dispassionate, equable, or gentle.