A disturbing item in the NY Times:

They described Mr. Hadley as deeply concerned that the loss of Republicans could accelerate this week, a fear shared by Mr. Rove. But they also said that Mr. Rove had warned that if Mr. Bush went too far in announcing a redeployment, the result could include a further cascade of defections — and the passage of legislation that would force a withdrawal by a specific date, a step Mr. Bush has always said he would oppose.

Question: should non-military-expert Karl Rove be influencing if not establishing military policy? In this case, he advises minimizing redeployment so as to avoid the possibility of legislation the president has opposed. Once again, politics dictates policy. Meanwhile our soldiers fight on, sacrificing their limbs and lives.

It's especially disturbing since Rove recently stated in Aspen, Colorado that al-Qaida was responsible for "80 to 90 percent of the bombs that are killing U.S. soldiers" in Iraq. However, a much more astute expert on the military, Colin Powell, responded the figure was closer to 10%. The point being, Rove knows not what he's talking about and yet he apparently has much to say about our policy in Iraq. Likely explains more of the failure.

In March, I wrote about how independents were increasingly correlating with positions favored by Dems, something that obviously spelled doom for the GOP in 2008. In most elections, the key is to win over the swing voters and independents comprise a good portion of these prized votes.

The American Research Group recently surveyed adults about Bush's decision to commute Libby's sentence. Of those who approved of the decision: 13% of Democrats, 50% of Republicans, and 19% of Independents. Concerning the question of favoring or opposing an eventual pardon of Libby, in favor of a pardon were 7% of Democrats, 23% of Republicans, and 2% of Independents.

Notice how Independents continue to align much more so with Democrats than Republicans. The GOP presidential contenders have much to worry about, especially since they are stumbling over each other to please the far right faction of their party. Granted, they must suck up to the fringe to nail down the nomination, but good luck in making up all that ground to get back to the middle in time for November 2008 -- and to do so with at least some credibility.

Where Is The Common American's Outrage?

To get elected in 2000, Bush adeptly hid his Ivy League/affluent roots and instead played up a good-old-boy/Texan image to win over the average American. It was all a farce but it worked (thanks also to Florida and the Supreme Court).

But where are these same "average" citizens to protest this Libby commutation? Surely with this decision (never mind the hundreds of others he's made since 2000), Bush has made starkly evident his true colors, that he's all about serving the rich and protecting the well-connected. He cares not a bit about the typical American. Some proof? When governor of Texas, Bush rarely if ever granted clemency or leniency. Many such average Americans were allowed to die via the death penalty or face long sentences as decreed by the law, all because those particular guilty individuals were nobodies to Bush. The only concern he's ever had with regard to average Americans is to win their votes, anyway, anyhow, whether it be by hoodwinking or outright lying.

If after six years these same fools have not awoken to the fact that they've been manipulated this entire time, then this Libby commutation should finally do the sobering deed. Otherwise we're left with only one conclusion: the average American is utterly butt-stupid and this country is doomed.

It didn't take long for the wingnuts and the administration to resort to bashing Bill Clinton as a means to deflect from the Libby decision. Bush has offered no details as to why he chose to free a guilty man who was obstructing justice in a national security case that led back to the White House. The very weak the-sentence-was-"too harsh" excuse just doesn't cut it and has been explained away not just by Fitzgerald but by anyone who cares to dig a little to discover that the 30 month ruling was completely fair.

Dan Froomkin wrote:

Rather than address the most weighty criticism of President Bush's decision to commute former vice presidential chief of staff Scooter Libby's prison sentence -- that it was part and parcel of a longtime cover-up of White House misdeeds -- press secretary Tony Snow lashed out at former President Bill Clinton and his would-be president wife for actions that date back more than six years.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has been among the foremost critics accusing Bush of commuting Libby's sentence in order to avoid further inquiry into his own behavior. The commutation "was clearly an effort to protect the White House," she told the Associated Press earlier this week. "There isn't any doubt now, what we know is that Libby was carrying out the implicit or explicit wishes of the vice president, or maybe the president as well, in the further effort to stifle dissent."
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It's certainly hard to argue that President Clinton didn't abuse the pardon process. But Bush's pledge back in 2000 was to restore ethics to the White House -- not engage in he-did-it-too defense of his own misconduct.

And furthermore, there is an ethical chasm between Clinton's pardons -- unseemly as they were -- and Bush's decision to grant clemency to someone involved in an investigation of his own White House.

As it happens, the previous granting of clemency that is most analogous to what Bush did dates back neither to the Clinton or even the Nixon era, but to Bush's father's presidency.

In 1992, on the eve of his last Christmas in the White House, George H.W. Bush pardoned former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others for their conduct related to the Iran-Contra affair, in which he himself was also loosely implicated.

As David Johnston reported in the New York Times at the time, independent prosecutor Lawrence E. Walsh was livid. "Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President's action, charging that 'the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.'"

Added Walsh: "In light of President Bush's own misconduct, we are gravely concerned about his decision to pardon others who lied to Congress and obstructed official investigations."

Like father, like son. Oh, and it's worth repeating that Bush spent much of his 2000 campaign making the case that Bill Clinton was scum and Bush would return glistening ethics and respect for the law to Washington, and now the best the right-wingers can do is compare their man Bush to the guy he was supposed to tower above ethically -- truly pathetic. It went from Bush will put the ethical lapses of Clinton behind us to now whining about how Clinton did it too. Only in his two terms Bush has managed to make Clinton (and Nixon for that matter) look saintly.

Also, Keith Olbermann rattled off at least four reasons why Clinton's pardons differ from Bush's decision to free Libby:

Unlike Bush, Clinton was "consistently generous with clemency rather than reserving it exclusively for friends."

Clinton typically waited until after sentences were served.

Clinton did not use it to obtain cover in ongoing investigations.

Regarding Marc Rich, some prominent Republicans argued Rich was innocent and deserved the pardon, including one Scooter Libby, Rich's lawyer at the time.

Finally, Paul Krugman wrote:

Back when the investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity began, Mr. Bush insisted that if anyone in his administration had violated the law, “that person will be taken care of.” Now we know what he meant. Mr. Bush hasn’t challenged the verdict in the Libby case, and other people convicted of similar offenses have spent substantial periods of time in prison. But Mr. Libby goes free.
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Mr. Bush says that Mr. Libby’s punishment remains “harsh” because his reputation is “forever damaged.” Meanwhile, Mr. Bush employs, as a deputy national security adviser, none other than Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty to unlawfully withholding information from Congress in the Iran-contra affair. Mr. Abrams was one of six Iran-contra defendants pardoned by Mr. Bush’s father, who was himself a subject of the special prosecutor’s investigation of the scandal.

In other words, obstruction of justice when it gets too close to home is a family tradition.

It's what they do, and GW has learned quite well from daddy Bush. Thanks to this craven cabal, Washington has never been more of a sewer.

One could easily make the case that the past six years have been some trying times, given 9/11, terrorism, Iraq, etc. One would then also think that during such a time we'd have a president who was engaged and diligently hard at work.

Think again. Between Camp David and his Texas ranch, Bush has spent all or part of 805 days at either one. Considering Bush has resided in the White House for 2360 days, we are talking about a president who has vacationed for more than 1/3 of his time in office! Do you get 17 weeks of vacation time per year?

Then again, imagine how much worse of we'd be if this mental giant were in fact burning the midnight oil, attempting to come up with new ways to sink us into a deeper hole.

In the past, I've commented on the columns of David Brooks, in nearly each case concluding that Brooks is a moron. As with Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the gang, they are so ridiculously idiotic that to spend time writing about them is all too often a simple waste of time, thus reason why I nary write about Brooks. His columns are typically nonsensical and sophomoric.

That said his latest entry concerning the Libby commutation is, as Andrew Sullivan tagged it, an embarrassment. David Corn goes one step further and offers an almost line-by-line refutation of Brooks' column.

What's truly embarrassing is the NY Times continues to employ this guy. Can't they find anyone better to portray the right-wingers?

And even more about the Libby-eventual-pardon travesty.

From the Raleigh News & Observer: "Well, now we know what 'compassionate conservatism' means. It means that if you're Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, and you're convicted of lying to FBI agents and a federal grand jury, you don't have to go to prison -- even when many others have for similar offenses."

From the LA Times:

[R]ecords show that the Justice Department under the Bush administration frequently has sought sentences that are as long, or longer, in cases similar to Libby's. Three-fourths of the 198 defendants sentenced in federal court last year for obstruction of justice — one of four crimes Libby was found guilty of in March — got some prison time. According to federal data, the average sentence defendants received for that charge alone was 70 months.

Just last week, the Supreme Court upheld a 33-month prison sentence for a decorated Army veteran who was convicted of lying to a federal agent about buying a machine gun. The veteran had a record of public service — fighting in Vietnam and the Gulf War — and no criminal record. But Justice Department lawyers argued his prison term should stand because it fit within the federal sentencing guidelines.

That Bush chose to make an exception for a political ally is galling to many career Justice Department prosecutors and other legal experts. Federal prosecutors said Tuesday the action would make it harder for them to persuade judges to deliver appropriate sentences.
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Sentencing experts said Bush's action appeared to be without recent precedent. They could not recall another case in which someone sentenced to prison had received a presidential commutation without having served any part of that sentence. Presidents have customarily commuted sentences only when someone has served substantial time.

With his commutation, Bush has further weakened our legal system. Expect future "Libby exceptions" and pleas in courts across the country. And as for the last paragraph referring to "without recent precedent," what we have is a singularly horrible president making singularly unprecedented decisions. What don't people get? Bush's actions are always wrong, but at this point far from surprising.

The St.Louis Post-Dispatch wrote:

Anyone who is surprised that President George W. Bush commuted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence hasn't been paying enough attention to the way this administration does business:

It wages a pre-emptive war in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. It ignores the judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and wiretaps citizens without warrants. It holds prisoners for years without charges or trial, and uses secret prisons overseas where prisoners are tortured in everything but name. It nominates its own unqualified lawyer to the Supreme Court and fires career prosecutors to make room for its own stooges. It ravages the environment and calls it the Healthy Forests Act and Clear Skies Initiative. It walks away from international arms treaties and even claims the vice president isn't part of the executive branch.

Surely giving Libby a get-of-jail-free card is no big deal.

Finally, and this is the kicker, in his book, "A Charge To Keep," Bush stated, "I don't believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own," he said referring to why he signed death warrants for 152 inmates as governor of Texas.

Do *%^$#* hypocritical a-holes come any bigger?

On this Fourth of July, my head is still spinning from reading all of the commentary on Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence.

The always-astute Dick Polman summed things up nicely:

A show of hands: How many of you are surprised that President Bush has put his thumb on the scales of justice and decreed that a convicted perjurer in a national security case, a felon who was enmeshed in a White House campaign of deception to discredit a critic of the Iraq war, is somehow less deserving of jail time than Paris Hilton?

No, it’s hardly a surprise that the same guy who once promised to “restore honesty and integrity to the White House,” the same president who had previously denied more than 4000 commutation requests, has now opted to grant Scooter Libby his very own Independence Day.
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[J]ust 12 days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that makes it tougher for convicted felons to reduce their jail time (the high court upheld the 33-month sentence of Victor Rita, who had been convicted of making false statements in a weapons investigation; Rita, like Libby, had been punished in accordance with federal sentencing guidelines).

None of those little details matter a whit to those Republicans who are cheering Bush this morning (the same Republicans who, during the Bill Clinton era, routinely invoked the primacy of “the rule of law”).

That recent Supreme Court ruling cracking down on convicted felons and the Republicans cheering this decision vs. their jeers for Bill Clinton years ago -- these guys are always good for irony and outrageous hypocrisy.

Dan Froomkin poses several good questions:

Bush's decision yesterday to commute Libby's prison sentence isn't just a matter of unequal justice. It is also a potentially self-serving and corrupt act.

Was there a quid pro quo at work? Was Libby being repaid for falling on his sword and protecting his bosses from further scrutiny? Alternately, was he being repaid for his defense team's abrupt decision in mid-trial not to drag Cheney into court, where he would have faced cross-examination by Fitzgerald?
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It's true that the Constitution grants the president unlimited clemency and pardon power. But presidents have generally used that power to show mercy or, in rare cases, make political amends -- not to protect themselves from exposure.

Argue with Bill Clinton's pardons all you want, none were granted to someone within his administration who had the potential to implicate him in a crime if only he/she told the truth. In this respect, Marc Rich is a far cry from Libby.

More questions from Froomkin:

* Does the president approve of Libby's conduct?

* On whose behalf did Libby act?

* Did the White House make any sort of a deal with Libby or his defense team?

* What did Bush know and when did he know it?

* When did he find out that Karl Rove and Libby had both leaked Plame's identity? Before or after he vowed that any leakers would be fired? Did anyone lie to him about their role? Why didn't he fire them?

* How does the conduct of his aides comport with Bush's vow to restore ethics to the White House? How does the commutation?

* What factors did the president take into account in deciding to commute the sentence?

* What does the president consider an appropriate punishment for perjury and obstruction of justice?

* What was Cheney's role in the commutation?

Want to further compare the Clinton/Rich pardon with this eventual-pardon? Where appropriate, replace Libby's name above with Rich. See, no comparison.

Froomkin makes another good point concerning Bush's decision to commute instead of pardon: "For Bush to state he believed Libby to be innocent would at least have been defensible. Instead, what Bush is saying is that acknowledges the guilty verdict -- but, when it comes to his friends and colleagues, he just doesn't care what the justice system concluded was a fitting punishment."

So instead of having the guts to proclaim Libby innocent with a pardon, GW attempts a sleazy middle-ground move by agreeing with the jury's verdict (i.e. Libby is a 100% guilty man), but then decides to free him anyway because he's a close friend who saved his and Cheney's ass.

But if Bush felt the sentence was unreasonable, why didn't he just lessen it? Instead of 30 months in jail, why not 20 or even 10? (This from a guy who never, ever displayed anything close to such compassion while governor of Texas). Nope, Bush decided this guilty person deserved zero days in jail. As many have been saying, Paris Hilton served more prison time than Libby (and unlike Libby she also expressed remorse, a necessary condition for commutations/pardons).

Prosecutor Fitzgerald offered this statement in response to Bush's questioning the 30 months:

We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as 'excessive.' The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws.

It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.

In other words, Bush's stated reason for the commutation -- that the sentence was too harsh -- is complete bullshit.

It was also well-reported that Bush did not consult with lawyers at the Justice Department nor did he consult with the lead prosecutor (Fitzgerald) in the case, both routine procedures for commutations or pardons (yet Snow claims the steps taken were "routine"). But then again, when commuting a guilty friend out of sheer loyalty, Bush likely felt consulting with lawyers would be a waste of time. Why bother? For Bush, this matter has very little to do with laws or anything legal and everything to do with dodging accountability and covering up unlawful involvement.

Josh Marshall wrote:

The deeper offense is that the president has used his pardon power to shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was.

The president's power to pardon is full and unchecked, one of the few such powers given the president in the constitution. Yet here the president has used it to further obstruct justice. In a sense, perhaps we should thank the president for bringing the matter full circle. Began with criminality, ends with it.

Again, compare vs. Clinton's pardons. Bush's commutation prevents Libby from having to tell the truth about Bush/Cheney's involvement in the Plame leak. It's what the mafia does: commit wrongs in an effort to cover-up their prior committed wrongs, forming an endless domino-line of criminal offenses. Libby did it by lying, and then Bush did it by commuting him.

Interestingly, both John Dean and Jonathan Turley stated last night on Olbermann's Countdown that either Fitzgerald or congress could immunize Libby and force him to testify (again) about Bush and Cheney's involvement. Pressure should mount for this to happen. Perhaps justice still has a fighting chance of being achieved.

This commutation is the penultimate betrayal capping Bush's now-infamous 2000 campaign promise to return ethics to Washington. The presidency has not sunk this low in the craven, scum swamp in decades. Nixon is looking a bit saintly in comparison.

Wingnut blogger Glenn Reynolds wrote, "My prediction: Bush will rise in the polls as estranged conservatives warm to him in light of lefty indignation."

Oh, so free a thoroughly guilty man, one found guilty by "overwhelming" evidence by a Republican-appointed judge, and then unanimously confirmed by three other justices (two appointed by Republicans), and in the end conservatives will applaud the decision for no other reason than it's a win for their side. Partisan score-keeping trumps the rule of law. Perhaps the only saving grace? Never again will these hypocritical creeps be able to pull a Bill-Clinton-impeachment-like charade.

Finally, Sheryl Stolberg wrote in the NY Times, "President Bush’s decision to commute the sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr. was the act of a liberated man — a leader who knows that, with 18 months left in the Oval Office and only a dwindling band of conservatives still behind him, he might as well do what he wants."

I've written before about this frightening fact with detached Bush who "has much time left in office, a woefully awful president who listens to no one, realizes his legacy is shit, and yet still must confront many serious problems facing this country -- well, he's very capable of doing some go-for-broke things that could really be huge whoppers, even by his standards." Yes, a president as off his rocker as this one and who feels "liberated" enough to "do what he wants" is a hair-raising combination. Scary to think what he'll feel like doing next, just for the hell of it.

More proof Republicans will be increasing pressure on Bush regarding Iraq well before this September:

After the Fourth of July recess, “you'll be hearing a number of statements from other (Republican) colleagues,” predicted Sen. John Warner, R-Va., a longtime skeptic of the war strategy.

Perhaps that's why Gates is preemptively looking to cut a deal, withdrawal of most troops in exchange for a long-term presence there ala South Korea. But the fact remains the Republicans are helping to do some of the heavy lifting for the Democrats -- not out of goodwill but rather fear that they'll be voted out of office next year.

While it may seem that the whole idea of impeaching Bush or Cheney is still a bit far-fetched, Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran analyst for the CIA, makes a serious, convincing case.

Apparently mouthpiece for the GOP, Sean Hannity, has left the party and become an independent.

As I've written countless times before, it's difficult to recall when the Republican Party was as far to the right as it has been during the Bush/Cheney era. Yet I guess for many zealots in the party, the dramatic rightward shift still comes up short.

Hannity is not the only extreme believer with harsh words for his once beloved party and with any luck this trend will continue, splintering a lame-duck party that has long grown diseased, corrupt and bereft of any competence. With it, power will dissipate and many politicians will do anything but be associated with such a shameful organization. Quite a far cry from Karl Rove's dream for a permanent Republican majority in DC.

"Rule Of Law" My Ass!

With Bush commuting Libby's sentence, shouldn't we expect an outcry from the same crowd who was looking to lynch Bill Clinton for lying about blowjobs....? Recall the constant refrain "rule of law" as well as "what will the children think"? Well, what does Bush's action towards Libby say about this administration's respect for the law, and what does it say to our children? Kids, crime pays if you have very influential friends to cover for you.

This news is not shocking in the least, and in fact I wrote on June 10th that Bush would not pardon Libby but rather commute the sentence. What does this dead-duck president have to lose, with his polls numbers so low that at this point they reflect only the most extreme far right kooks in the nation -- exactly the minority Bush is playing to these days. Not that he was ever trying to appeal to the more moderate citizens of this country, but these days his partisan leanings are just so nakedly obvious.

Stories in the press remind us Libby is the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra scandal -- another debacle occurring under a Republican president. Oh, and if memory serves, there were loads of pardons and commutations to follow that affair.

Also as a reminder, Judge Walton, who ruled that evidence of guilt against Libby was "overwhelming," was a Bush appointee, and the two of the three judges on the appeals court that ruled Libby should go straight to jail were Republican appointees. Yet, Bush and the far right still felt these judges were wrong, with Bush concerned that they damaged Libby's reputation forever. Poor, poor Libby, the world is against him, he had nothing to do with his actions, our system of laws only seems to work when not against Republicans.

I'll remind what Dick Polman wrote a few weeks ago:

So here’s the Republican bible on selective morality: If a high official of a Republican administration lies under oath and obstructs justice in order to impede a national security investigation, and to prevent a prosecutor from even determining whether an “underlying crime” had been committed,” that’s perfectly fine. But if a Democratic president lies under oath to impede a sex investigation (even when there was no underlying crime, since the sex with Monica Lewinsky was consensual, no illegal), those are sufficient grounds for throwing the president out of office – because, after all, perjury for any reason is not only wrong, it is also a violation of “the rule of law.”

Lastly, Tim Dickinson writes:

[L]ook at the actual order Bush signed and it calls the presidential quasi-pardon by its real name: Clemency.

Clemency is an emotive word. It appeals to our sense of mercy. Clemency is something we should give to the Georgia teenager whose girlfriend gave him head at a party and now is in prison for aggravated child molestation. It’s reserved for those instances where following the letter of the law creates a greater injustice than the crime.

Scooter covered up illicit actions at the highest levels of our government. Libby lied. Intentionally. To the F-B-fucking-I.

If you or I did that we’d be flirting with Gitmo.

This cabal is and has always been above the law. They answer to no one and serve only themselves.

Interesting comments by George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley last Wednesday on Olbermann's Countdown.

Regarding Bush's stonewalling and refusal to cooperate with Congress, Turley states:

I mean, they could do a sort of Tai Chi of litigation and just move incredibly slowly. This president doesn‘t have long to go.

But there is one thing that might concern them about the court, and that is, you know, for many years, since we first found out about this program, some of us have said that this was clearly criminal act that the president called for, that under federal law, it‘s a federal crime to do what the president ordered hundreds of people to do.

Now, if we‘re right, not only did he order that crime, but it would be, in fact, an impeachable offense. Now, both sides, both Democrats, Republicans, have avoided this sort of pig in the parlor. They don‘t want to recognize that this president may have ordered criminal offenses. But they may now be on the road to do that, because the way Congress can get around the executive privilege in court is to say, We‘re investigating a potential crime. And if they do it here, that crime was ordered by no one other than George Bush.

Yes, conceivably Bush has ordered hundreds of federal crimes, yet not a peep from the "rule of law" crowd.

Concerning Cheney's ludicrous attempt to define his office as neither part of the executive or legislative branch, Turley said:

The position adopted by Mr. Addington and Mr. Cheney, to put it bluntly, was absurd. I mean, it was—I had—it was completely frivolous.

And what really is striking about this is the lack of coherence and control within the administration. The vice president‘s office is a true center of gravity unto itself. I mean, in past administrations, if someone like Mr. Addington made such a moronic argument as this one, they would be out of a job the next week. I mean, he started this huge controversy. Everyone that of any credibility said that it was a ridiculous argument.

And now they‘re trying to backpedal and say, Well, we‘re going to go with a different argument.

I think that what it really shows is the lack of sort of adult supervision within the administration of somebody to come up with a coherent and single position for the president.

In part, the absence of "adult supervision" over Bush is what Peter Baker wrote about yesterday in the Washington Post, with one senior House Republican quoted as saying, "There's nobody there who can stand up to him and tell him, 'Mr. President, you've got to do this. You're wrong on this.' There's no adult supervision. It's like he's oblivious."

Often times, the road to reason with a man as detached and nonsensical as this one is through his spouse. Has anyone appealed to Laura to speak frankly with him? I'm not saying she would or could work miracles but at this point, when most friends would be exasperated and willing to try any intervention option, all means to effect change are on the table.

However, with this guy in office, there's little chance for beneficial change. As Dan Froomkin wrote yesterday:

[T]o me, it sounds like Bush is looking not for answers -- but for rationalizations for his behavior. There is no sign of genuine introspection, no sign of acknowledgment of mistakes, no sign of any significant change of course. In a pattern familiar to anyone who has ever had a drinking problem, Bush appears to be engaged in a furious effort to persuade onlookers that he's fine -- even if he isn't.

At best, one could hope that many years from now GW will lament about his abysmal reign, finally realizing how wrong he was about everything and asking aloud "what was I thinking?" But alas, that's not likely to happen given Bush's massive ego and self-delusion, and worse yet it wouldn't matter since the U.S. will have already suffered terribly under his rule.

This country has enjoyed many highs (too numerous to mention) and some lows (Great Depression, slavery, McCarthy, Watergate, to name a few). In the latter group, we can now add GW's two terms in office. As with the other dark holes in our past, may we eventually recover from this one.

Yesterday the NY Times had an interesting article on just how far to the right the Supreme Court has shifted. It's clear that there are two four-person contingents on the court, on the one side being the Thomas/Scalia/Alito/Roberts bloc and on the other the Souter/Ginsburg/Breyer/Stevens bloc. Justice Kennedy has become the new Sandra O'Connor, the wildcard who often decides the majority with his vote. Steven Calabresi, a former law clerk to Justice Scalia and a founder of the Federalist Society, is quoted as saying, “Kennedy is very much the median justice now, as Justice O’Connor was, and he is to her right...Clearly the court has moved in a direction that leaves most conservatives pleased.”

While indeed Kennedy is no centrist, at least he's shown some independence to not always vote with the Scalia crew. However, the damage has been done. We face many more 5-4 decisions in the future that heavily favor the far right.

It's been several weeks since media whore Ann Coulter has been in the headlines so of course she felt the need to open her mouth and make another ingenious, reasoned comment: "If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

I wonder if the lunatic right will applaud this latest disgraceful salvo? Funny how Bush's poll numbers continue to head south, with many Republicans becoming "brave" and daring to criticize the administration, yet we nary hear a peep of condemnation directed at the pathetic Coulter. Yeah, those courageous souls on the right. What principles, what backbone.

It's easy to throw cream pies in Bush's face now -- him being lame duck and all, but he's been this bad for years and yet these same Republicans looked the other way or simply rubber-stamped anything he was doing then. Elizabeth Edwards has more courage in her pinky finger than most of these lap-dog politicians combined. Kudos to her for taking at least one minute out of her life to admonish the despicable Coulter -- but it should just be one minute, as Coulter's not worth much more than that.

After the Dems caved in late May regarding Iraq, I both wanted to condemn them but held back some, writing at the time:

In light of the intractable veto and the known hatchet artists for the GOP, the Dems could be playing the smart poker hand by letting the tide of the war play out. A formal timeline was dropped, but a comprehensive report is slated for September, Bush must give a status report by July 15th on Iraq's progress towards meeting benchmarks, and there are indications judgments will be made well before September rolls around -- in particular by more than a few Republicans.

Assuming no miraculous turnaround in Iraq, GW's popularity will remain in the toilet and the pressure to withdraw will only increase.

Is it, dare say, immoral for the Dems to back away from digging in and demanding a timeline? On principle, yes, but practically, not really. In this case, the practical could be the wiser, and more effective, choice.

It's been just about a month since then and Iraq has not improved, Bush's poll numbers continue to reach new lows, and more Republicans have thrown in the towel on the war, increasing pressure on lame duck GW:

Republican support for the Iraq war is slipping by the day. After four years of combat and more than 3,560 U.S. deaths, two Republican senators previously reluctant to challenge President Bush on the war announced they could no longer support the deployment of 157,000 troops and asked the president to begin bringing them home.
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Lugar and Voinovich are not the first GOP members to call for U.S. troops to leave Iraq. Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Gordon Smith of Oregon made similar remarks earlier this year. But their public break is significant because it raises the possibility that Senate Democrats could muster the 60 votes needed to pass legislation that would call for Bush to bring troops home.

Their remarks also are an early warning shot to a lame duck president that GOP support for the war is thinning. The administration is not expected until September to say whether a recent troop buildup in Iraq is working.

"Everyone should take note, especially the administration," said Snowe, R-Maine, noting Lugar's senior position within the GOP. "It certainly indicates the tide is turning."

It certainly looks like the Democratic leadership were not so dumb a month ago.... With time, Republicans will continue to help with achieving much of the heavy lifting, as they abandon this withering president to save themselves. After all, they are politicians.

In today's Washington Post: "The big question right now among Republicans is how to remove Vice President Cheney from office. Even before this week's blockbuster series in The Post, discontent in Republican ranks was rising. As the reputed architect of the war in Iraq, Cheney is viewed as toxic...."

Of all the evil, inept people to populate this administration through the years, the GOP has finally decided that Cheney is just too evil and inept, and gosh darn it he must go! After subjecting the country to this maniacal a-hole for 6+ years, Republicans decide now to shit-can him to save their political skins come an election year. Chain(ey) of fools.

For the past several months, many of we bloggers have been writing about the slow death of John McCain's campaign, but how long before Giuliani suffers the same fate? If there's any justice, he will.

Yesterday, Steven Benen wrote about the company Rudy keeps, with Time magazine asking, "How many alleged criminals can a law-and-order candidate be associated with before it starts to hurt?" Benen tallies up the infamous Bernard Kerik, Rudy's SC campaign chairman's recent indictment for cocaine distribution, but also Rudy employs an alleged child abuser(!) -- and he's supposedly America's Mayor?

Rolling Stone magazine appears to be on a roll with their political reports and Matt Taibbi's piece on Giuliani is a terrific read. Taibbi basically reiterates the case Rudy has been making for months on the campaign trail: if you want four more years of GW, vote Giuliani.

Just like Bush, Rudy appeals to the couch-bound bully in all of us, and part of the allure of his campaign is the promise to put the Pentagon and the power of the White House at that bully's disposal.
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To the extent that conservatism in the Bush years has morphed into a celebration of mindless patriotism and the paranoid witch-hunting of liberals and other dissenters, Rudy seems the most anxious of any Republican candidate to take up that mantle. Like Bush, Rudy has repeatedly shown that he has no problem lumping his enemies in with "the terrorists" if that's what it takes to get over.
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[T]here's no question that Giuliani has made the continuation of Swift-Boating politics a linchpin of his candidacy. His political hires speak deeply to that tendency. Chris Henick, formerly Karl Rove's most trusted deputy, is now a key aide at Giuliani Partners, the security firm set up by the mayor to cash in on his 9/11 image..."Rudy definitely got some of Bush's heavier hitters, including all the Swift Boater types," says Alex Cohen, a senior researcher at Public Citizen, who tracks the president's top donors.
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In his years as mayor -- and his subsequent career as a lobbyist -- Rudy jumped into bed with anyone who could afford a rubber. Saudi Arabia, Rupert Murdoch, tobacco interests, pharmaceutical companies, private prisons, Bechtel, ChevronTexaco -- Giuliani took money from them all. You could change Rudy's mind literally in the time it took to write a check. A former prosecutor, Giuliani used to call drug dealers "murderers." But as a lobbyist he agreed to represent Seisint, a security firm run by former cocaine smuggler Hank Asher. "I have a great admiration for what he's doing," Rudy gushed after taking $2 million of Asher's money.

That last paragraph depicting Rudy's greed and thirst for money was written long before the recent revelation concerning Rudy's choice for lucrative speaking fees over serving on the Iraq Study Panel. Self before country -- yeah, sounds like GW.

Another Bush/Rudy similarity: huge ego married with astonishing ignorance -- an immensely dangerous combination. Fred Kaplan of Slate recently wrote:

The fact is, Giuliani has no idea what he's talking about. On the campaign trail he says that the terrorist threat "is something I understand better than anyone else running for president." As the mayor of New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, he may have lived more intimately with the consequences of terrorism, but this has no bearing on his inexperience or his scant insight in the realm of foreign policy. He is, in fact, that most dangerous would-be world leader: a man who doesn't seem to know how much he doesn't know.

"Has no idea what he's talking about" could've easily been written about Bush in his 2000 run, but also at anytime since then. Both Rudy and GW are clueless, yet through bullying and sheer determined insistence they pull off the image that they at least appear to know what they're talking about. Many have since wised up to Bush being a know-nothing buffoon, and it will just take some time for the same to occur for Rudy.

As I've been complaining about since February, we have the wrong NYC mayor running for president. A month ago, Bruce Reed wrote:

Giuliani's never-ending stumbles over such an obvious hurdle as abortion suggest that he has approached his campaign with insufficient seriousness. By contrast, Bloomberg's calculated bids for attention on climate change, education, and guns give every indication that his unannounced campaign for the presidency is running on all cylinders.

As a shadow candidate, Bloomberg is running the campaign Giuliani should have run, as a pragmatist who helped a big city take on big problems. Earlier this month, Bloomberg launched a Web site that outlines his stands on the big issues in greater detail than Giuliani can provide after five months in the race.

Who knows, in a few months the picture could greatly change, with Rudy having finally imploded and Bloomberg making a surprise go of it. Stay tuned.

Yesterday, Dan Froomkin noticed something I wrote about on Thursday, that "Cheney's office was complying in 2001 and 2002 but decided to stop doing so in 2003. Smells like he didn't like doing it in those first two years, had David Addington et al working overtime to come up with some interpretation voiding this need to be accountable, and lo and behold in 2003 they apparently came up with some deranged view that they hoisted and have been hoisting ever since -- until we finally got a congress that would fight back."

Froomkin argues:

On March 25, 2003, just days after ordering U.S. troops into Iraq, Bush signed an executive order amending Executive Order 12958, which President Clinton had signed in 1995, and which laid out a host of rules about the classification and declassification of secret information.

Bush did not change the requirement that federal agencies report at least once a year on their implementation of those policies. Nor did he change the definition of who was covered by the reporting requirements. That continued to include any "entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information."

But Bush did make one major change: Giving the vice president all the same classification powers as the president. Clinton's order had assigned those powers only to the president, agency heads and their specifically designated subordinates. Bush's order added one more party: The vice president. Or, in the precise and possibly telling words of the order: "[I]n the performance of executive duties, the Vice President."

We've known for quite some time that this VP is by far the most powerful in history, and with this bit of news it quickly becomes evident how this was made possible: Bush has made him equal to himself, changing the equation to "VP = President". Just more pissing on our Constitution by the gang that oh-so favors strict constructionism. An absolute joke.

The mafia is often used as an appropriate analogy for this administration and it's perfectly conceivable that Bush decided in 2003 to officially designate Cheney as his henchman, the go-to guy for all needed dirty work, his Luca Brasi.

This mob must go!

The Big Bail Out

Senior personnel are beginning to leave all areas of government and the expectation is for this pace to quicken very soon:

At least 20 senior aides have left important posts in the White House, Pentagon or State Department over the past six months, as chaos has deepened in Iraq. “There’s a real sense of fatigue and very little sense of purpose,” said a senior official, who asked not to be named. “My guess is you’re going to see a lot more departures.”

It's one thing to be a lame duck, it's quite another to be a slowly rotting carcass attracting flies. Where does this leave we the people in terms of governance we deserve? Granted, that same question could be asked about the last six years, but will there be one person left of any remote sense of quality to help guide an administration that effectively has become the Exxon Valdez? Can we possibly petition to have the presidential election this November, for the sake of the country? Bush, for one, would surely not protest the idea.

Yet, in some demented way, Bush may have done some good by insuring through his wreck-of-a-reign that we never, ever elect someone like him again. He has been so bad on so many fronts that one can only hope this lesson has sunk in, deep.

Is Dick Cheney the King of America?

As the Democratic-led Congress digs deeper into this administration's wrong doings, we continue to find Cheney showing up as a force that had huge impact and yet desired zero accountability, believing he was beyond it both legally and conceptually.

Chairman of the Oversight Committee, Henry Waxman, has written a letter to Cheney stating, "Your office may have the worst record in the executive branch for safeguarding classified information...Given this record, serious questions can be raised about both the legality and the advisability of exempting your office from the rules that apply to all other executive branch officials."

Cheney argues that the VP office is not part of the executive branch of government and therefore does not have to comply with numerous laws and orders. Last time I looked, his office was listed under "Executive Branch" of government. Also, isn't it quite interesting that Cheney's office was complying in 2001 and 2002 but decided to stop doing so in 2003. Smells like he didn't like doing it in those first two years, had David Addington et al working overtime to come up with some interpretation voiding this need to be accountable, and lo and behold in 2003 they apparently came up with some deranged view that they hoisted and have been hoisting ever since -- until we finally got a congress that would fight back.

In addition, King Cheney looked to abolish the agency that was giving him such headaches.

As if the above wasn't bad enough, we also learn from Rolling Stone magazine:

It is no secret that industry-connected appointees within the White House have worked actively to distort the findings of federal climate scientists, playing down the threat of climate change. But a new investigation by Rolling Stone reveals that those distortions were sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, in a policy formulated by the vice president, implemented by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and enforced by none other than Karl Rove. An examination of thousands of pages of internal documents that the White House has been forced to relinquish under the Freedom of Information Act - as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration scientists and climate-policy officials - confirms that the White House has implemented an industry-formulated disinformation campaign designed to actively mislead the American public on global warming and to forestall limits on climate polluters.
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"It's a charade," says Jeremy Symons, who represented the EPA on Cheney's energy task force, the industry-studded group that met in secret to craft the administration's energy policy. "They have a single-minded determination to do nothing - while making it look like they are doing something."

A must-read article. Bush/Cheney/Rove basically organized and carried out a mafia-like hit on facts and science.

But deniers of climate change, who buy into all the orchestrated disinformation, will simply deny this investigation. After all, it's by the leftist, pinko Rolling Stone! Always easier to deny, deny, deny rather than get angry and demand accountability and retribution.

But one thing is certain: Cheney is one scary, scary entity (in his case, saying "person" just doesn't seem to fit).

On his radio show today, Hugh Hewitt interviewed the director of The Nixon Presidential Library, John Taylor. Hewitt mentioned to Taylor that Andrew Sullivan recently quipped that Hillary Clinton is "Nixon in a pant suit." Somewhat interestingly, Taylor responded that the one thing they certainly have in common is they're polarizing, but he added if people think this attribute could hurt Clinton to just consider that Nixon won two elections, the second one by a huge margin.

I accept his point, but remain doubtful whether the comparison is truly valid. Yes, a public figure is not doomed for being liked and disliked at extremes. However, it's difficult to see where it helps come election time, especially since the reality for Hillary will come down to X number of folks will never vote for her and X number will because they'll never vote for the GOP alternative. Also, if for the sake of argument we continue to assume she gets the Dem nod for next November, it's still too early to tell if she'll face off against as weak a candidate as McGovern turned out to be vs. Nixon.

My fear is a bigger hurdle for her will be closet sexism. Telling a pollster over the phone that you like Hillary and will vote for her is one thing, but unfortunately many could do quite the opposite when they get behind the curtain and have to pull the lever. During that moment of truth, deep-seeded feelings have a way of bubbling up -- no matter how ugly or wrong those feeling may be. The same could be said for Gore when he chose Lieberman, with closet antisemitism likely costing the ticket valuable votes, and closet racism could potentially cost Obama votes.

Yes, a horrible topic to consider and think about, but in this country -- where many still hold on to such backward, heinous beliefs -- it's a sad reality.

The Dem-controlled Congress continues to bring accountability back to DC. Their latest finding? Karl Rove and several of his colleagues used RNC email accounts for official business.

In short, they broke the law, period. Forget the fact they then deleted many if not most of those emails. The fact remains what they did was illegal -- THEY BROKE THE LAW.

Where is the condemnation from the sanctimonious "rule of law" crowd that so desperately wanted to hoist Bill Clinton from office? Hell, where is the outrage from the so-called liberal press? (crickets)

Of course, all of the above occurred with AG Gonzo well aware and yet he did nothing to stop it.

Sometimes you just run out of words....

Regarding progress with the surge, the recent U.S. News & World Report offers, "early indications are far from encouraging." In addition, "the Pentagon reports that overall violence levels nationwide remain as high as ever. Indeed, even as U.S. troops boost their presence in some Baghdad neighborhoods, many insurgents appear to have simply moved to outlying provinces that now have a much thinner security presence."

It's like the arcade game whack-a-mole. They just reappear somewhere else, only to then move back from whence they came. An exercise in futility with the end result being U.S. soldier fatalities. Madness.

Sometimes you just have to ask "why?"

The administration and the military have been hard at work trying to postpone this September as the month of reckoning for the Iraq surge. Hopefully, the Democrats will maintain spines and hold them to this deadline.

But in addition to Dems, count on many Republicans to also stand pat on September. Sen. GOP leader Mitch McConnell has recently stated, "I think everybody anticipates that there's going to be a new strategy in the fall...The time to properly evaluate that, it strikes me, is in September."

Look, it comes down to two realities: the political fate of more than a few Republicans heading into 2008 versus attempts to preserve the legacy of a failed, lame duck president. Which do you think will win out? My money is on the vote-thirsty former.

The following quote pretty much sums up Iraq: "The same policymakers who assumed that Iraq would be a cakewalk now assume that the hard-to-predict consequences of leaving will be vastly worse than the demonstrated costs of hanging on."

But are we to grant them a mulligan for getting Iraq completely wrong, assuming no one is perfect and they deserve another chance? Don't think so, for one because this war was not all about a single, huge decision but instead has been comprised of many decisions. So these guys are not 0-1 but rather more like 0-58. They've been wrong, repeatedly. It's called incompetence.

After 9/11, did GW's craziness blackmail Tony Blair?

The religious right is working to make America more secular:

In a paper in the American Sociological Review, Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer announced the startling fact that the percentage of Americans who said they had “no religious preference” had doubled in less than 10 years, rising from 7 percent to 14 percent of the population. This unexpected spike wasn’t the result of growing atheism, Hout and Fischer argued; rather, more Americans were distancing themselves from organized religion as “a symbolic statement” against the religious right.

Many Americans are choosing to exchange freedom from eternal damnation for a blatant expression against conservative organized religion. I wonder to what extent the reasoning is something along the lines of if God endorses and condones the likes of Dobson, Falwell, or Robertson, I'd rather be an atheist. Oh, the irony.

Also, there's proof that Democrats should give up their attempts to court the votes of the deeply religious (meaning don't wear religion on one's sleeve while campaigning):

Liberals have spent much of the past six years straining to cut into the GOP’s advantage among religious voters. But when the Democrats finally shattered the Republican majority in the 2006 midterms, it was their consolidation of the secular vote that helped put them over the top. Despite all their efforts to close the God gap, the Democrats managed barely any gains among frequent churchgoers last November—but their share of the vote among Americans who never attend church at all leaped to 67 percent, from 55 percent in 2002.

Democrats should stick to the issues and ease up on the religion talk. The growth is apparently away from religion anyway thanks to the intolerant, hateful Dobson/Falwell/Robertson sect.

It's not surprising that Judge Walton would receive several threatening letters "wishing bad things on me and my family.” What is surprising is that no one in this administration, namely Bush, would take just a minute to publicly denounce those who sent such letters. But then again I'm not surprised.

Yeah, it sucks only when Bush criticizes his own (wasn't a problem when directed at Dems). And according to Trent Lott, it sucks only when the conservative talk radio dumbo machine is "pounding" their own (but apparently it's OK when they spread lies and distortions about everything else).

Dan Froomkin (facetiously?) wonders why Bush isn't being more forthcoming about exactly why the nine federal prosecutors were fired.

Instead, the White House's carefully parsed and entirely unforthcoming statements on this matter are reminiscent of the response four years ago to allegations that White House aides had leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to reporters.

Back then, Bush could well have demanded an answer from his staffers and then shared it with the American people. He chose not to. Whether he chose not to because he knew that two of his top aides were involved in the leaking is still, to this day, not entirely clear. By stonewalling, Bush was able to postpone that revelation until after getting reelected.

The obvious reason must be that because of the severity of the wrong committed, Bush would rather opt for the slower-moving course of action tied to subpoenas and court rulings than the much more expedient alternative of him willfully coming clean. Such stonewalling proved beneficial in the 2004 election with the Plame scandal, and as with Iraq, Bush is just desperately trying to run out the accountability clock. January 2009 cannot come fast enough for this failed lame duck.

It's up to the Democrats to push hard and remain in hot pursuit of the truth for this "mystery" to come to an appropriate end.

Libby must go directly to jail. The pardon clock starts now.

On Monday morning the Sopranos final episode overshadowed news that U.S. forces in Iraq are collaborating with Sunni insurgents, arming those who have recently fought us. There is a big problem:

Americans officers acknowledge that providing weapons to breakaway rebel groups is not new in counterinsurgency warfare, and that in places where it has been tried before, including the French colonial war in Algeria, the British-led fight against insurgents in Malaya in the early 1950s, and in Vietnam, the effort often backfired, with weapons given to the rebels being turned against the forces providing them.

Despite this less-than-sparkling track record, the fact that we're willing to gamble on this arrangement -- potentially jeopardizing the lives of many U.S. soldiers -- is an indication of just how bad things have devolved in Iraq. Now we are just rolling the dice and keeping our fingers crossed.

Things continue to remain bleak in Iraq:

Iraq’s political leaders have failed to reach agreements on nearly every law that the Americans have demanded as benchmarks, despite heavy pressure from Congress, the White House and top military commanders. With only three months until progress reports are due in Washington, the deadlock has reached a point where many Iraqi and American officials now question whether any substantive laws will pass before the end of the year.

Our soldiers stay there, fighting and dying, so that these lawmakers can stall and agree to disagree. Enough.

History dictates if Republicans can't easily take the rural vote, they're in trouble. Big trouble.

Video about the outbreak of amnesia in this administration. Funny, but not really.

A federal appeals court has ruled against Bush's enemy combatant policy.

"The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention," the panel found.

Judge Motz wrote, "To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the president calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country. We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our republic.”

What's amazing is that it took an appeal to recognize the obvious: what this administration has been trying to get away with -- and thus far succeeded -- was all along fundamentally un-American and unconstitutional. The fact that our judicial system finally worked to admonish this wrong is a relief, albeit long overdue.

Regarding the outcry by the right for a Libby pardon, Dick Polman sums things up nicely:

So here’s the Republican bible on selective morality: If a high official of a Republican administration lies under oath and obstructs justice in order to impede a national security investigation, and to prevent a prosecutor from even determining whether an “underlying crime” had been committed,” that’s perfectly fine. But if a Democratic president lies under oath to impede a sex investigation (even when there was no underlying crime, since the sex with Monica Lewinsky was consensual, no illegal), those are sufficient grounds for throwing the president out of office – because, after all, perjury for any reason is not only wrong, it is also a violation of “the rule of law.”

Or as Glenn Greenwald succinctly puts it, "It is hardly surprising that the right-wing movement of which he [Libby] is a part operates from the premise that their comrades ought to be exempt from criminal prosecution even when they commit felonies."

Did anyone really think the Bill Clinton witch hunt was really about the GOP's sanctimonious concern for the rule of law? Laughable.

Regarding the no-confidence in Gonzo resolution, Steve Benen wrote about the words of longtime DoJ employee Dan Metcalfe, who stated, “I think the way in which the firings themselves were handled was abominable, the way in which the ensuing controversy was handled was abysmal, and the way in which Gonzales has handled himself is absolutely appalling. As a long-term Justice Department official, I am embarrassed and increasingly incensed that he is still in there.”

Benen wrote, "Everyone in the Senate chamber, regardless of party or intellect, knows that Metcalfe’s perspective is a) accurate; b) frightening; and c) common among career officials at the DoJ. To vote against the no-confidence resolution is to endorse the indefensible status quo."

Well, 38 voted for the indefensible. Click here to see the names and how they voted. Print it out and save. If you are in a state that has a senator who voted "No" to this resolution, please seriously consider not voting for this person when up for re-election. In all honesty, how could you?

Oh, and notice Lieberman voted "No". It's one thing for him to claim he is with Bush and the Republicans when it comes to Iraq, but the sheer incompetence and likely law-breaking ways of Gonzales are a bit removed from anything directly involved with Iraq. How can Lieberman possibly defend this vote? Even seven Republicans had enough sense to vote the other way.

One of those Republicans being Sen. Arlen Specter. However, Specter first came out saying he hoped this resolution was not some partisan attempt to embarrass Bush, but went on to say, "If you ask Arlen Specter, do I have confidence in Attorney General Gonzales, the answer is a resounding no. I'm going to vote that I have no confidence in Attorney General Gonzales."

OK, so Specter qualifies as "I didn't like the resolution before I voted for it."

Meanwhile, on Olbermann's Countdown tonight, Howard Fineman said this resolution was a "largely inside the beltway issue that is...too abstract for most people to be following." Fineman then said, "But it is significant enough for those senators who are up for re-election, those Republicans in those swing states, to be cautious."

What the hell is Fineman saying exactly? That the public at large is just too dumb to follow this issue, much less care about it, but for some reason the citizens in purple-ish states are smart enough and care enough to make the issue matter? Just nonsensical, downright stupid reasoning.

Bravo to the final Sopranos episode. I won't say much for now given many may still not have seen it, but Chase is brilliant -- and remains so when taking poignant shots at GW and his supporters. Note that Carm and T are Bushies, and yet when their son says he wants to join the Army to go fight in Afghanistan, suddenly the war over there sucks and is too dangerous for their boy. The yellow ribbon and bravery talk is all well and good as long as it's someone else's child doing the actual fighting. Suddenly out of the blue, AJ's parents back up the truck with all kinds of amazing offers (movie exec, club owner) to entice him away from a life in the military. Also, notice that these job offers could've been offered to AJ many episodes ago, perhaps alleviating some of his depression and grief, but Carm and T only decide to dump this mother load of future jobs when he expresses interest in fighting Bush's war over there (so they won't come here). Made in America. Yup, Chase is brilliant.

Dick Polman (and Paul Krugman) explains how Romney either blatantly lied last Tuesday night or he's woefully misinformed. Whichever the case, this occurrence alone should preclude Romney from becoming president.

Thanks to the newly awoken independents, we may not have to worry:

The big challenge for Romney would come later, if he wins the GOP nomination. Uttering falsehoods about why we went to war – particularly in an autumn debate - probably wouldn’t fly with swing-voting independents, most of whom now believe that the invasion was a mistake and that the ruling Republicans misled the nation. In 2008, no Republican can win if he leaves the impression that he will be as averse to factual reality as the man he seeks to replace.

Matt Cooper feels there's a very good chance Bush will not pardon Libby. He sums things up by writing, "Unfortunately for Libby, Bush's not a pardon kind of guy."

We'll see. Bush may dislike pardons, but Libby is a "special" friend candidate. Given his fall-guy status, look for an exception to be made. Loyalty is the golden rule with GW and easily trumps anything having to do with appearances much less the rule of law. Just consider the lengths he's going through for Gonzo.

Bush will likely take the heat and commute the sentence.

In this week's NY Observer, just on pages 16-17, we find Mayor Mike Bloomberg taking on the "gun nuts," as well as looking to increase recycling levels, and there's an appropriate mention by Joe Conason of Giuliani's gift to Bloomberg: "When he [Rudy] departed City Hall, he left on his desk a gaping deficit of nearly $4 billion—and Mayor Michael Bloomberg had no choice but to raise taxes."

He's not the first Republican to cut taxes while in office only to hand the deficit bag over to the incoming person to fix. But it's crystal clear that this country would be much better off if they had the current NYC mayor as a real choice for the White House, as opposed to his smoke-and-mirrors, GW-for-four-more-years predecessor.

From The Progress Report:

Last month's dramatic testimony by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey has prompted renewed attention and focus on the administration's warrantless domestic spying efforts. Describing the shocking lengths that the White House went to in order to gain legal sanction for its surveillance program, Comey revealed that President Bush called then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's wife to seek permission for former chief of staff Andrew Card and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to visit a debilitated and hospitalized Ashcroft at his bedside. The White House orchestrated the hospital visit in March 2004, one day after a meeting between Vice President Dick Cheney and Comey in which Justice Department officials announced their staunch opposition to certifying the program. Cheney tried to skirt Comey's authority by seeking Ashcroft's approval, but Ashcroft demurred as well. The White House then reauthorized the spying program "without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality," prompting at least eight top Justice officials to threaten their resignation. Bush finally backed down, altering the program in order to get the Justice Department's sign-off. The saga over the White House's trevails to get legal approval underscores the serious questions that surround the program -- questions that remain largely unresolved to this day.

The more we learn about the Ashcroft/hospital saga, as well as the domestic spying program in general, the more outrageous it all becomes. We now know that it was Bush who phoned Ashcroft's wife for permission to visit her ailing husband, who at the time was no longer the man in charge, but no matter. So we now know it was Bush who initiated the attempt to circumvent the JD by swooping in on Ashcroft. We also know wiretapping / eavesdropping activity went on for several months without the JD's approval, meaning crimes were repeatedly and systematically committed at that time. We also now know Cheney blocked the promotion of a JD official who dared to raise questions about the legality of the surveillance program -- that combined with the threat of massive resignations within the JD and yet we're to believe there were no major disagreement's in the department about this program?

These guys are beyond running a sham government. Yes, they operate as if in a banana republic, but in such a country there would've likely been a coup by now.

The good news just keeps on coming:

Bush visits with the Pope amidst thousands of anti-American protesters. Over 10,000 police will attempt to keep the peace, but they're warning all U.S. tourists to not become easy marks. Yeah, I know, it's not Bush's fault one iota, this global anti-American sentiment, just a bunch of lefty, commie lunatics. F*ck'em, right?

Gen. Peter Pace is out. Gates blatantly admitted he didn't want Pace to have to answer the tough questions regarding the Iraq war. Better to duck accountability altogether. Keep running from it and hopefully it will become someone else's problem. I suppose it didn't help that Pace seemed to be quite the dunce, writing a letter in support of Libby (unheard of for military officer) and expressing his views concerning the "right" kind of sexuality.

Reports are that Turkey has been shelling northern Iraq and have crossed the border at least once to conduct fighting. Is this just one more thing to worry about, Turkey getting drawn into invading Iraq? Just when the U.S. is trying to calm Iraq down, we now have this news, which would certainly ramp up the chaos. Is this a new tact of the insurgency, to incite and suck in other countries? The situation just continues to worsen.

So Fitzgerald wanted a 30-37 month sentence, Libby's defense wanted probation, the Reagan/GW appointed Judge Reggie Walton went with Fitzgerald, and the judge stated evidence of guilt was "overwhelming." If the judge decides Libby should go to prison, it just further drives home the degree of Libby's guilt.

And yet Bush will still pardon a very, very guilty Libby? Also ignoring the Justice Department's pardon regulations that 1) require a period of at least five years after conviction, and 2) the person must show genuine remorse. Libby clearly does not qualify under either one.

If Bush pardons Libby, freeing him of jail time, it should haunt Bush at every turn, not just in his remaining 18 months in office but even after in private life. Also, if a pardon doesn't sink his poll numbers below 20%, nothing will.

But one can make the case that Bush might be potentially willing to let Libby rot in jail (I don't believe it, but let's just assume). Bush recently said, "it wouldn't be appropriate for me to discuss the case until after the legal remedies have run its course." And when Perino was asked when is the legal process considered over, she said, "when those appeals are exhausted."

So the president will not speak about the case until the appeals process has "run its course." Wow, sounds like GW is (finally) going to respect our legal system -- so much so that he's not going to say a word about the Libby case. Let's see if this new-found sanctity for the law stance holds up if Libby gets sent to the pokey next week. Will Bush then continue to let the judicial process run its course? Will he patiently wait for the appeals to exhaust themselves?

Or will he instead go from seeming respectful with silence on the matter to the opposite extreme and grant a pardon? How will he then explain the abrupt shift from no-comment silence out of respect for forthcoming appeals to a pardon?

It screams just one thing: bullsh*t followed by more bullsh*t.

In Bob Herbert's latest column, he writes about a familiar topic these days: prospects for Gore running in 2008.

I find myself speculating on what might have been if the man who got the most votes in 2000 had actually become president. It’s like imagining an alternate universe.

The war in Iraq would never have occurred. Support and respect for the U.S. around the globe would not have plummeted to levels that are both embarrassing and dangerous. The surpluses of the Clinton years would not have been squandered like casino chips in the hands of a compulsive gambler on a monumental losing streak.

Not to diminish Herbert's words, but it's hard to imagine that anyone would've screwed things up worse than GW in his two terms.

Herbert has this nugget from Gore, "You know, I don’t really think I’m that good at politics, to tell you the truth. Some people find out important things about themselves early in life. Others take a long time.”

Sounds like he's simply playing down expectations, which is typical behavior for anyone running or planning to run for president. We especially observed this with Rove's handling of Bush, set the bar low and it makes it that much easier to excel and appear winning.

If anything, Gore appears to be getting better at politics.

Concerning Iraq, Gore says the objective should be "to get our troops out of there as soon as possible while simultaneously observing the moral duty that all of us share — including those of us who opposed this war in the first instance — to remove our troops in a way that doesn’t do further avoidable damage to the people who live there."

A near perfect answer, especially for a presidential contender. Note he made sure to remind that he "opposed this war in the first instance."

Yeah, I think the door's still wide open.

Regarding immigration, Bush has been criticizing his own and Peggy Noonan for one is not pleased. Dick Polman writes:

Noonan is particularly incensed about President Bush’s shoddy treatment of his conservative critics. Many members of the increasingly fragile GOP coalition have strongly attacked Bush’s path-to-citizenship immigration bill, and, in response, he has impugned their patriotism. Last week, Bush said that opponents of his immigration bill “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” Bush surrogates have intimated the same thing.

Noonan is nonplused: “Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens? And often, though not exclusively, (of) concerned conservatives?” My response to that is: Welcome to the club, Peggy. For years, Bush and his surrogates have suggested that they alone have a monopoly on the national interest, and that those who disagree with them are ipso facto threats to the national interest. (Bush, referring to his Senate Democratic critics in 2002, said that they were “not interested in the security of the American people.”) It’s only now, apparently, that Noonan and other mainstream Republicans have fully come to appreciate the Bush team’s signature arrogance.

Hmm, it's not fun when shoe is on the other foot, huh Peggy? I suppose it's also unpleasant to see your guy for what he truly is: a superficial, callow coward who relies on name calling and inflammatory, false accusations as a pathetic means to get his way.

Bush has been doing this for years to the Dems, and it was acceptable then by the likes of Noonan. However, apparently it's insulting and hostile only when such treatment is directed at oneself. The height of ignorance.

Before the far right goes ballistic over the Libby decision, likely blaming everyone but Libby himself, let it be known that the judge (Walton) was first appointed by Reagan in 1981 and then appointed to the federal bench in 2001 by GW. It would appear that he ain't no liberal.

More evidence that Cheney is the most powerful (and crazed-maniacal) VP in history:

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the president is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the president if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.
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The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.

According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the president's hands.

Regarding Bush's latest global warming announcement, the conservative Wall Street Journal wrote, it "effectively removes the U.S. as the last doubter among big developed nations." Well let's give GW a medal!

But the fact remains, thanks to Bush the U.S. is far, far from the first real mover on the issue. This latest proposal is just more nothing dressed up as something.

Dan Froomkin wrote, "Bush's proposal calls for a new round of international meetings that would nearly outlast his presidency. The purpose of the meetings would not be to set caps on emissions, but to establish what the White House -- uncorking a bold new euphemism -- calls 'aspirational goals.' But a change in rhetoric was enough to generate some headlines about the administration's attention to the issue."

It was just more (black) smoke and mirrors, more kicking the can down the road to run out the clock, and yet look good doing it via duping the always-gullible "liberal" media that he actually intends to do something of substance and with teeth.

To get translations of what Bush really meant, click here.

On this subject of global warming, in the debut issue of Portfolio magazine, John Cassidy glibly writes, "I did a quick cost-benefit analysis of this presumed product of climate change...What about the costs? The only one I could think of was that a few people might have decided they no longer needed a winter vacation, which would hurt the airlines and the Florida tourism industry."

Why is it when I read about climate change, often the only item of concern referred to is the actual warming of the atmosphere, and then at times you do read about how this could be a good thing. Are these people insane? What do they think is causing the warming? It's not just CO2 (which I'm fairly certain we humans do not breathe in and benefit from), but pollution, toxins, harmful emissions -- all leading to health problems frequently resulting in death.

So next time you read or hear of this sort of pro/con debate regarding global warming, remember the issue involves much more than just about needing fewer sweaters in the winter.

Harold Meyerson recently wrote:

Of all the absurdities attending our unending war in Iraq, the greatest is this: We are fighting to defend that which is not there.

We are fighting for a national government that is not national but sectarian, and has shown no capacity to govern. We are training Iraq's security forces to combat sectarian violence though those forces are thoroughly sectarian and have themselves engaged in large-scale sectarian violence. We are fighting for a nonsectarian, pluralistic Iraq, though whatever nonsectarian and pluralistic institutions existed before our invasion have long since been blasted out of existence. In the December 2005 parliamentary elections, the one nonsectarian party, which ran both Shiite and Sunni candidates, won just 8 percent of the vote.

Every day, George W. Bush asks young Americans to die in defense of an Iraq that has ceased to exist (if it ever did) in the hearts and minds of Iraqis.

In contrast to the notion held in Bush's juvenile imagination, the only unified Iraq known to have ever existed was an artificial one, held together by the brute force of Saddam.

The evil tyrant is long gone but GW continues to believe in the possibility of a structure that was only possible with Saddam alive.

Something the Dems could have been strongly banking on when reluctantly deciding to fold regarding their demands for a timetable. In due time, Republicans will look to save their own political skins versus siding with a lame duck, increasingly unpopular president.

Could Gonzo be facing disbarment? And if it occurs, would GW continue to fight to keep him as AG? Like Homer Simpson said about that delectable pig, "It's still good! It's still good!"

So many of our soldiers are now getting killed in Iraq, individual ceremonies are becoming impossible, necessitating one ceremony for all. Posted with no comment.

More proof that Ronald Reagan was a liberal compared to today's far right:

And yet, it [the immigration bill] faces a barrage of criticism on the right from those who seem to reject any solution to immigration that does not deport 12 million people. Anything else they call amnesty. The term amnesty comes from the 1986 immigration bill, supported and signed by Ronald Reagan, which gave many illegal immigrants in the United States immediate permanent residency—green cards—with few requirements, a tiny fee and a fast-tracked application process. The current proposal would allow illegal immigrants to apply for a green card after a minimum of eight years, the payment of large fines and fees and proof of clean records and good employment history.

The right loves to cloak themselves in Reagan nostalgia -- as long as it's cleansed from much of what represents actual reality. They didn't waste any time in revising history.

Yesterday, Michael Kinsley wrote:

There was a time, circa 1999, when Republicans considered it the height of naivete, irresponsibility and indifference to the fate of American soldiers to commit any troops to action in a foreign country without what used to be called an "exit strategy." That was when the president was a Democrat. Now it is considered the height of naivete, irresponsibility and indifference to the fate of American soldiers to suggest the possibility of any exit strategy short of triumph. If you do, you are betraying the troops. And no one sees actual triumph in the cards, so there is no exit strategy.

Just more partisan hypocrisy. If Bill Clinton = wrong, if GW = A-OK.

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Yes, it's time for a smart U.S. president.

As Eugene Robinson writes:

I want a president who reads newspapers...I want a president who looks forward to policy meetings...I want a president who believes in empirical fact...I want a president smart enough to know a good deal about science...I want the next president to be intellectually curious -- and also intellectually honest...I don't want the candidates to pretend to be average people, because why would we choose an ordinary person for such an extraordinary job?

100% agreed. And guess who Robinson favors? (Hint: he's not running -- yet).

We have more truth coming from an ex-president than the current one (the quote is more than a year old, but even more relevant today):

JIMMY CARTER: What I believe is that there are people in Washington now, some of our top leaders, who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they're looking for ten, 20, 50 years in the future...because that was the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that ten years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq.

More of the typical Orwellian double-speak:

Later, Snow said it was impossible to say if U.S. troops would remain in Iraq for some 50 years, as they have in South Korea. "I don't know," he said. "It is an unanswerable question. But I'm not making that suggestion. ... The war on terror is a long war."

In the same breath, two opposing notions: Snow is not making the suggestion that our troops will remain in Iraq for long, but the war is a long one -- huh? And he makes the insinuation that war is an infinite continuum, an eternal quest. It's lunacy.