With Giuliani exhibiting all signs of running for president in 2008, do we really need another guy in our highest office with an innate ability to promote incompetents and crooks?

Just because conventional economic indicators may suggest that we should be very happy does not make it so in the land of actual living. This story may help to explain the current widespread discontent despite what other metrics may lead one to conclude.

As usual, Greg Sargent nails it:

Here's the situation in a nutshell. Those hurling these reckless charges of treason at the Times have a very specific agenda: First, they want to reunite the Republican base, which is fracturing because of the Iraq war, the GOP's betrayal of various conservative principles, and the fact that Bush's Presidency is so obviously a failure that all but the most diehard supporters can see it. And second, they want to convince great masses of people that there's a traitor in our midst that would weaken America -- an obvious ploy designed to divert attention from the catastrophic failures of the Bush administration, the Republican Party and, most important, the discredited ideas which drive them. At bottom this is all about salvaging a political movement that's in real trouble.

Years from now, we'll look back at this moment, when they demonized the Times, and realize it's when the GOP jumped the shark.

The LA Times recently ran a story ("Congress Faces Dilemma on Terror Trials") that states Congress is facing two choices regarding the Supreme Court's rebuke of Bush's Gitmo tribunals: run rough-shod over the court's decision and thus "run the risk that it too will be struck down by the high court. Or they can follow the path suggested by the court and devise a system embracing the procedural and other principles of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convention, but risk the possibility that few, if any, of the alleged terrorists will be convicted."

Catch that? If they follow the court's guidelines, i.e. that which is most lawful, they "risk the possibility that few, if any, of the alleged terrorists will be convicted." So what does that tell you about the entire Gitmo fiasco? That it's been ill-advised, poorly conceived, and unlawful all along.

The point is Gitmo has been unlawful for nearly five years. If Congress wants to suddenly act and make changes to satisfy legal constraints, that's a separate matter. It doesn't change the fact that Bush/Cheney have violated what the court finally ruled and that the administration should've better constructed a legal framework for Gitmo from the start, before being forced to do so via a SC bitch slap.

It's the same with so many other programs and proceedings by this regime, where care for existing laws and conventions have been completely ignored or at best given cursory consideration.

This story profiles a truly heinous side of the "family values" crowd, as they stand in the way of scientific progress that can save lives all due to unfounded fears of supposed sexual promiscuity.