The Pope has declared that if it’s not Catholic and reporting to him, it’s not a church. We’re glad that, in a world filled with daily stories of sectarian violence, Pope Ratz feels it’s a good idea to get his own digs in rather than encourage tolerance, understanding, and compassion. Way to go, Rome!

Former Bush surgeon general says he was muzzled:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

“Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation’s top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

“The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party,” Carmona added.

We keep saying this, but it bears repeating: if your political beliefs run afoul of facts, and you respond by suppressing facts, you are the worst sort of craven bastard. Bush’s administration has made a habit of this since 2000, and they and their party have made it abundantly clear that this is part of their platform. Voting for them means voting for ideology over science and facts whenever someone doesn’t like what the data shows. It has implications in virtually every sphere of life — public health, the environment, the military, you name it.

They recently gave air time to a kook who thinks Mr Rogers ruined a whole generation of children by telling them they were “special.”

Tom Tomrrow’s deconstruction of where, exactly, Dick Cheney’s office fits in our government is well worth your time today. Heh.

The domestic spying suit has been dismissed at the appeals court level on a party-line vote; the GOP judges agreed with the government that those who brought the suit had no standing to do so.

The decision “insulates the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance activities from judicial review and deprives Americans of any ability to challenge the illegal surveillance of their telephone calls and e-mails,” ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro said in a news release.

We’ve said it before, and we say it again: the damage this Administration has done to our country is tremendous, and it starts with Bush’s utter contempt for the rule of law.

Mr Olbermann gives them both barrels over the disgraceful commutation of Libby’s sentence. There’s video and a transcript at the link. Read, watch, or at least listen.

A bit:

We enveloped “our” President in 2001.

And those who did not believe he should have been elected — indeed, those who did not believe he had been elected — willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and sharpened it to a razor-sharp point, and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete…

Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice…

Did so despite what James Madison — at the Constitutional Convention — said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes “advised by” that president…

Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish — the President will keep you out of prison?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation’s citizens — the ones who did not cast votes for you.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President… of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.

And more:

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but instead to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of you becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

And more:

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy… these are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush — and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal — the average citizen understands that, sir.

It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one — and it stinks. And they know it.

Thank God for Keith. We just hope people are listening.

We’ll be busy boozing it up, but maybe you want to try this name the Presidents quiz. It gives you 10 minutes to name them; it helpfully puts them in order, and even gives hints by color-coding for “died in office,” “assassinated,” and “resigned.”

We got 33 of 43, but in so doing actually managed to include the most-forgotten Commander In Chief, which is worth something, we guess. Enjoy.

You’ve probably heard of the new, incredibly heinous and expensive speeding fines passed in Virginia. What you probably didn’t know is that the primary delegate behind this new bill is David Albo, who happens to make his living defending traffic tickets.

What a douchebag.

In addition to basically gutting attempts to desegregate schools, they’ve also just made price fixing legal again. Oh boy.

The Roberts court is likely to be the most reversed, and most quickly reversed, ever — but it’s going to take a while. In the meantime, they’re going to create some truly awful rulings.

Now, even Fox News push-polling doesn’t come out in the GOP’s favor:

If there is an all-out war between the United States and various radical Muslim groups worldwide, who would you rather have in charge — Democrats or Republicans?

The result: Dems 41%, GOP 38%.

Bush has signaled that he will not comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents related to the (clearly political) firings of the US Attorneys, citing executive privilege. More from Aunt Nel.

As noted above, there’s no surprise here. Bush has made it abundantly clear he feels his office is answerable to no one, notwithstanding the checks and balances we all learned about in civics. Sadly for him, he’s incorrect. Sadly for us, his stubbornness is actively damaging our republic.

The Drug Policy Alliance put this together:

Via Reason.

The Imperial Veep is now insisting that the Vice President’s office is not part of the Executive Branch, so as to better avoid playing by anybody else’s rules in re: classified data.

Um. Could someone please mail him a 9th grade civics book?

On the Colonel Jessups of the world:

“You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. … You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.”

The above is from the famous speech by Jack Nicholson’s character in Aaron Sorkin’s A Few Good Men. Nicholson’s Col. Jessep was a “tough” guy in the sense of “tough” conveyed by the current euphemism for torture: “tough interrogation techniques,” which is to say tough in the sense of “brutish, counterproductive and not too bright.”

It’s worth noting that “the wall” that Nicholson’s Col. Jessep was defending was Guantanamo Bay, which means the truth that Jessep can’t handle is this: Nobody needed him on that wall. Controlling that tiny slice of Cuba used to stand as the last line of defense between us and … well, between us and not controlling that tiny slice of Cuba. In any case, after decades of military service on “that wall,” we were ultimately unable to defend Guantanamo from lawlessness and tyranny because we put it there ourselves.

Emphasis added. Read the whole post.

Quite some time ago, we wrote to our Senators regarding the USA scandal.

Today, we got the following from Hutchison:

Dear Mr. Heathen:

Thank you for contacting me regarding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the dismissal of eight U.S. Attorneys in 2006. I welcome your thoughts and comments on this issue.

On December 7, 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice dismissed eight of the 93 U.S. Attorneys serving at that time. These federal prosecutors are political appointees, confirmed by the Senate, and serve at the behest of the president. There has been much discussion about the process and reasons behind these dismissals, but ultimately the decision is one of the president and his administration. Former President Bill Clinton demonstrated this decision-making power when he fired all 93 Attorneys in 1993. President Bush has expressed his confidence in Alberto Gonzales’ abilities, and continues to support his service as Attorney General.

I appreciate hearing from you and hope you will not hesitate to keep in touch on any issue of concern to you.

Sincerely Kay Bailey Hutchison

Wow. It’s like she’s not even been paying attention. Sure, Clinton, like nearly every other incoming president, dismissed all 93 upon taking office. What he didn’t do was fire some mid-term to replace them with unqualified party hacks who promised to pursue more political cases, and to chase more cases against Democrats. He certainly did not encourage a vote-suppression program via the USAs, which is precisely what Rove, et. al., have been attempting with there phantom Democratic voter fraud cases.

But keep on circling those wagons, Kay. I’m sure Texas has plenty enough wingnuts to keep you and Cornyn in office for a while. Fortunately, I think your days of being the majority are over; rallying to the most unpopular postwar president is surely going to help, too.

Once again, Bush puts his nutbird base ahead of scientific progress:

WASHINGTON – President Bush has chosen to use his veto pen three times — twice on the stem cell issue where politics, ethics and science collide. Pushing back against the Democratic-led Congress, Bush plans to veto a bill Wednesday that would have eased restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

Turns out, there are consequences of his illegal ‘signing statement’ bullshit: Federal agencies are following his statements, not the law passed by Congress and signed by the President, when the two conflict.

This is a very bad thing.

Mayor Mike officially changed his affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated today.

Speaking in Mountain View, CA, “Mayor Mike” gave the Republican establishment and the Administration in particular both barrels:

[W]hen [the interviewer] asked him about a hypothetical independent candidate deciding to enter the race, Bloomberg launched into a broad critique of the Bush administration and Congress — without naming names — and a lament on the empty theatrics of the presidential debates to date.

“I think the country is in trouble,” Bloomberg said, listing the war in Iraq and America’s declining standing globally as two principal examples.

“Our reputation has been hurt very badly in the last few years,” he said. “We’ve had a go-it-alone mentality in a world where because of communications and transportation, you should be going exactly in the other direction.”

He also faulted the U.S. government’s failure to halt genocide “and protect freedom elsewhere in the world.”

In a speech later in Los Angeles, Bloomberg revisted the theme, saying partisan gridock in Washington had paralyzed government and left “our future in jeopardy.” He said the nation’s “wrong-headed course” could be changed if there is a commitment to shared values and solving problems without regard to party label.

“It all begins with independence,” he said, opening a University of Southern California conference examining ways to build consensus in a divided government. Progress, he added, “means embracing pragmatism over partisanship, ideas over ideology.”

In Mountain View, Bloomberg seemed to side with President Bush when he decried “an anti-immigration policy that is a disgrace” and called for a more open migration policy. And he dismissed the notion of deporting illegal immigrants as part of immigration reform.

“We need to recognize we’re not going to deport 12 million people already here,” he said. “Let’s get serious, we don’t have an army big enough to do that, it would be devastating to our economy, it would be the biggest mass deportation of people in the world.”

The mayor said there had been too little discussion of health care and education on the campaign trail, and later blamed journalists for not asking hard enough questions of the candidates.

In one of his harshest comments, Bloomberg dismissed creationism — the theory that the universe was created by intelligent design — mistakenly calling it “creationalism.” The remark made plain that Bloomberg has no interest in running in the Republican presidential primary, where outreach to Christian conservatives is critical.

“It’s scary in this country, it’s probably because of our bad educational system, but the percentage of people that believe in Creationalism is really scary for a country that’s going to have to compete in the world where science and medicine require a better understanding,” he said.

This is an interesting example of the bit of political set theory we saw this morning at Tom Tomorrow’s blog: In the GOP, there are sincere conservatives, bright conservatives, and conservatives who support the Administration. It’s possible to find examples of each of these categories, and some persons may belong to any two of them, but there are no conservatives who belong to all three.

From yesterday’s briefing:

Helen Thomas: Are there any members of the Bush family or this administration in this war?

Tony Snow: Yes, the President. The President is in the war every day.

Thomas: Come on. That isn’t my question.

Snow: If you ask any President who is a Commander-in-Chief —

Thomas: On the front lines —

Snow: The President.

What a jackoff. Via TPM.

One who might have been considered an asshole at one time can now be fully seen as a dick. Hence the reason we have historians.

Via NPR: Top Ten Signs You Might Not Get A Fair Trial At Gitmo.

The JFK airport “terror plot”, like the London liquid plot, turns out to be bullshit:

When U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf described the alleged terror plot to blow up Kennedy Airport as “one of the most chilling plots imaginable,” which might have caused “unthinkable” devastation, one law enforcement official said he cringed.

The plot, he knew, was never operational. The public had never been at risk. And the notion of blowing up the airport, let alone the borough of Queens, by exploding a fuel tank was in all likelihood a technical impossibility.

And now, with a portrait emerging of alleged mastermind Russell Defreitas as hapless and episodically homeless, and of co-conspirator Abdel Nur as a drug addict, Mauskopf’s initial characterizations seem more questionable — some go so far as to say hyped.

We love that Bloomberg is so honest in his assessment:

There are lots of threats to you in the world. There’s the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can’t sit there and worry about everything. Get a life. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist.

From his Assault on Reason, forthcoming, and excerpted in Time recently:

The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.

A large and growing number of Americans are asking out loud: “What has happened to our country?” People are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fix it.

To take another example, for the first time in American history, the Executive Branch of our government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

It is too easy–and too partisan–to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America’s public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason–the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power–remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

American democracy is now in danger–not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half of the American public still believes Saddam was connected to the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess–an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and KFed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole.

While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness.

Then, later:

In order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum. We must create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public’s ability to discern the truth. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the rule of reason.

Word.

He’s given the Dems both barrels over their war capitulation. Thank God for Keith.

In last night’s debate, Tancredo and Giuliani were applauded when they endorsed waterboarding (Tancredo actually said he was “looking for Jack Bauer”); Romney went on-record seeking an even bigger gulag at Gitmo, apparently without regard for the actual population of Gitmo (i.e., predominately people no American ever saw commit any crime or act of aggression).

Did you notice how lame our press was during the run-up to the Iraq war? Yeah, us to. Fortunately, so did Bill Moyers. His documentary on the subject is viewable online. We don’t think “enjoy” is the right word, but it’s damned well something you all out to watch.

Here’s part of the problem:

Just consider that, as Moyers notes, there has been no examination by any television news network of the role played by the American media in enabling the Bush administration and its warmonger propagandists to disseminate pure falsehoods to the American public. People like Eric Boehlert have written books about it, and Moyers has now produced a comprehensive PBS program documenting it. But the national media outlets themselves have virtually ignored this entire story — arguably the most significant political story of the last decade — because they do not think there is any story here at all.

In an unsigned editorial, they opine that candidates like Ron Paul and Mike Gravel ought not be in the debates, because they’re just “clutter:”

If you tuned in to the recent Republican and Democratic presidential debates, you may have had the same reaction as many viewers looking at the crowded stages: Who’s that? The Democratic debate in South Carolina featured eight candidates, while 10 crammed into the GOP debate in California last Thursday. Voters trying to sort out their presidential choices aren’t helped by debates cluttered with the likes of Mike Gravel (hint: he’s a former senator from Alaska) on the Democratic side and Ron Paul (hint: he’s a libertarian House member from Texas) among the Republicans.

Of course, they’re also the only candidates on either side with substantial divergence from their respective party lines. Reason delivers a well-earned spanking to the Post for this absurd and anti-democratic position:

[T]here were plenty of candidates on those stages who really were clutter: They don’t have a chance to win and their messages are indistinguishable from the people who do have a shot. But it’s telling that the Post didn’t single out, say, Chris Dodd or Jim Gilmore. It singled out the two most anti-war and anti-establishment figures in the race, two men who clearly are alternatives to the frontrunners. Unlike the clutter candidates, Gravel and Paul said things at the debates that actually generated some buzz afterwards, on talk radio and online if not in the Post or with the Sunday-morning dinosaurs. I don’t know if they won any votes, but they did more than anyone else to add ideas to the conversation.

Word.

He’s now claiming “not to know” if condoms help prevent HIV, presumably in accordance with the sayings of Chairman W.

We’re pretty sure we’ve run off any actual Republicans, but, seriously, who’s running for the GOP nod who doesn’t suck? All we see are nutbird fundies, authoritarian fascists, or craven powermongers like McCain, and we’re pretty sure the electorate isn’t going to swallow any of them. Maybe the electable candidates are sitting out, on the theory that running for ’08 gives the winner an excellent chance of winning the Dole Award (also known as the Mondale Award on the left side of the aisle).

From remarks made by the former Mayor, as transcribed by the NYT here:

We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.

[ Interruption by someone in the audience. ]

You have free speech so I can be heard.

Um. (emph. added.)

The Bush administration is pushing for retroactive immnunity for all telcos in this whole illegal wiretapping thing. If you haven’t been keeping up, this means they’re saying (a) you can’t sue over this, because to do so will expose state secrets and now (b) and you can’t sue over this because the telcos are immune to such claims because they’re helping the government.

WTF?

Of the 10, only one (Rudy) doesn’t want Roe v. Wade overturned, none want to get out of Iraq, and three dismiss evolution.

The American public’s desires to keep Roe alive and to escape the quagmire in Iraq are well documented. Sadly, the candidates probably fared better than the general populace on the evolution question.

Bush maintains his contempt for laws in this backpedaling over FISA:

Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.

Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.

As a result of the January agreement, the administration said that the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program has been brought under the legal structure laid out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of American citizens and others inside the United States.

But on Tuesday, the senior officials, including Michael McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said they believed that the president still had the authority under Article II of the Constitution to once again order the N.S.A. to conduct surveillance inside the country without warrants.

Needless to say, every non-hack non-idiot lawyer and judge in the country disagrees with Bush’s interpretation here. In fact, Bush has admitted ON TELEVISION that he’s a multiple felon, since every act of wiretapping without a FISA warrant is a crime. For some reason, his craven party is untroubled by this, and the Dems lack the cohesion of message to make the case publicly. This doesn’t change the facts, though: Bush is an admitted criminal, still sitting in the Oval Office, and still insisting he need not submit to any checks on executive power even when black letter law says otherwise.

They make it clear that all kooks aren’t Southern:

Utah County Republicans ended their convention on Saturday by debating Satan’s influence on illegal immigrants.

The group was unable to take official action because not enough members stuck around long enough to vote, despite the pleadings of party officials. The convention was held at Canyon View Junior High School.

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan’s minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants “hate American people” and “are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won’t do.”

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to “destroy Christian America” and replace it with “a godless new world order — and that is not extremism, that is fact,” Larsen said.

At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. “by self invasion.”

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as “Joe,” said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because “they are not going to become Republicans and stop flying the flag upside down. … If they want to be Americans, they should learn to speak English and fly their flag like we do.”

There does, however, seem to be a definite Republican trend toward ‘batshit insane.’

(via Rob)

In an age in which we rightly fear being inaccurately quoted or misinterpreted, it would seem that Bill-O’s real anger and real fear rests in the dread that someone is quoting him correctly.

A Bush administration official in charge of AIDS policy — who’s been pushing the bullshit “abstinence and no condom” plan — has resigned for patronizing a DC brothel.

Take a look at this graph of the US Debt over the years, and note well who was driving during the most dramatic red-ink spending.

Prior to the Neo-Conservative take over of the Republican Party there was not much difference between the two parties debt philosophy, they both worked together to minimize it. However the debt has been on a steady incline ever since the Reagan Presidency. The only exception to the steep increase over the last 25 years was during the Clinton Presidency, where he brought spending under control and the debt growth down to almost zero.

Comparing the borrowing habits of the two parties since 1981, when the Neo-Conservative movement really took hold and government spending really has gone out of control, it is extremely obvious that the big spenders in Washington are Republican Presidents. Looking at the only Democratic President since 1981, Mr. Clinton, who raised the national debt an average of 4.3% per year; the Republican Presidents (Reagan, Bush, and Bush) raised the debt an average of 10.8% per year. That is, for every dollar a Democratic President has raised the national debt in the past 25 years Republican Presidents have raised the debt by $2.59. Any way you look at it Conservative Republican Presidents can not control government spending, yet as the graph above clearly shows, President Clinton did.

Josh Marshall’s analysis of why we’re still in Iraq is a must-read:

This is the key point: right near the beginning of this nightmare it was clear the sole remaining premise for the war was false: that is, the idea that the Iraqis would freely choose a government that would align itself with the US and its goals in the region. As the occupation continued, anti-American sentiment — both toward the occupation and America’s role in the world — has only grown.

I would submit that virtually everything we’ve done in Iraq since mid-late 2003 has been an effort to obscure this fact. And our policy has been one of continuing the occupation to create the illusion that this reality was not in fact reality. In short, it was a policy of denial.

It’s often been noted that we’ve had a difficult time explaining or figuring out just who we’re fighting in Iraq. Is it the Sunni irreconcilables? Or is it Iran and its Shi’a proxies? Or is it al Qaida? The confusion is not incidental but fundamental. We can’t explain who we’re fighting because this isn’t a war, like most, where the existence of a particular enemy or specific danger dictates your need to fight. We’re occupying Iraq because continuing to do so allows us to pretend that the initial plan wasn’t completely misguided and a mistake.

The WSJ is reporting Bush’s approval rating at 28%, an all-time low.

Slacktivist does.

TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): Well, it’s a, I think you’ll agree, this is a much bigger project than any that’s been talked about. Indeed, I understand that more money is expected to be spent on this than was spent on the entire Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe after World War II.

ANDREW NATSIOS: No, no. This doesn’t even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.

TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): The Marshall Plan was $97 billion.

ANDREW NATSIOS: This is $1.7 billion.

TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): All right, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?

ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it’s up and running and there’s a new government that’s been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They’re going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.

Since then, “the American taxpayers” have spent at least half a trillion dollars — at least five times the total cost of the Marshall Plan. Chunks of money several times greater than Natsios’ figure have simply gone missing and the monthly cost to the U.S. is more than $8 billion.

In 2006, President Bush appointed Andrew Natsios as the administration’s special envoy to Darfur.

This time, he tears Rudy a new one for his “vote GOP or die” bullshit. Thank God for Keith. Seriously.

This story is all over the web today, but it’s worth your time. Bush is on the way out, but the work we’ll need to do to repair the damage he and his ilk have done to our republic is just beginning.

The 10, for those too lazy to click:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens’ groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Stifle the free press
9. Insist dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

People think we’re safe because we’re the US, but in reality we’re only as safe as we make ourselves. This means holding our leaders accountable for their actions, and insisting that they follow the principles upon which our nation was founded. Bush fails by every measure, and much of our populace fails with him for going along for the ride.

Watch this case carefully:

In June, a case is slated to go to trial in Northern Virginia that will mark a first step in a plan to silence press coverage of essential national security issues. The plan was hatched by Alberto Gonzales and his deputy, Paul J. McNulty–the two figures at the center of a growing scandal over the politicization of the prosecutorial process. This may in fact be the most audacious act of political prosecution yet. But so far, it has gained little attention and is poorly understood.

In the summer of 2005, Alberto Gonzales paid a visit to British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith. A British civil servant who attended told me “it was quite amazing really. Gonzales was obsessed with the Official Secrets Act. In particular, he wanted to know exactly how it was used to block newspapers and broadcasters from running news stories derived from official secrets and how it could be used to criminalise persons who had no formal duty to maintain secrets. He saw it as a panacea for his problems: silence the press. Then you can torture and abuse prisoners and what you will–without fear of political repercussions. It was the easy route to dealing with the Guantanamo dilemma. Don’t close down Guantanamo. Close down the press. We were appalled by it.” Appalled, he added, “but not surprised.”

[…]

Rather than approach Congress with a proposal to enact the British Official Secrets Act–a proposal which would certainly be defeated even in the prior Republican-led Congress–Gonzales decided to spin it from whole cloth. He would reconstrue the Espionage Act of 1917 to include the essence of the Official Secrets Act, and he would try to get this interpretation ratified in the Bush Administration’s “vest pocket” judicial districts…

The object of this exercise has been broadly misunderstood by many who have followed it–and particularly by Iraq War critics who delight in a perceived slap-down of AIPAC. But this is tragically short-sighted. If the prosecution succeeds, the Bush Administration will have converted the Espionage Act of 1917 into something it was never intended to be: an American copy of the British Official Secrets Act. It is likely to lead quickly to efforts to criminalize journalists dealing with sensitive information in the national security sector, as well as their sources.

Apparently, Turdblossom doesn’t like to be questioned by citizens. As Josh said:

With apologies to my wife, I would not object if Sheryl Crow touched me.

Fuck You.

From here:

Lawyers for two men charged with illegally ejecting two people from a speech by President Bush in 2005 are arguing that the president’s staff can lawfully remove anyone who expresses points of view different from his.

Lawyers for the two, Michael Casper and Jay Klinkerman, said the men were working as organizers for a public presidential forum on Social Security at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver on March 21, 2005, when they were involved in ejecting two audience members, Alex Young and Leslie Weise.

Mr. Young and Ms. Weise filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court here, saying they were ejected shortly after they had arrived in a car that had an antiwar bumper sticker, although they had done nothing disruptive. The suit charged Mr. Casper and Mr. Klinkerman with violating Mr. Young’s and Ms. Weise’s First Amendment right to free speech.

Nice.

That abstinence-only education crap the Bushies keep pushing? Turns out it’s useless. (More here.)

According to this study, kids who went through the program were no more or less likely to do anything. Put another way, it would be impossible to tell, based on behavior, whether a student had been through this program or not.

Even more here, which includes this charming bit of spin:

On a call yesterday organized by the Abstinence Clearinghouse, abstinence-only proponents were clearly rocked by the potentially ruinous news in the report. High profile abstinence-only advocate, Robert Rector, led the preemptive damage-control planning. He outlined several strategies the abstinence-only movement could use to rationalize the findings in the report saying, “The other spin I think is very important is not [program] effectiveness, but rather the values that are being taught,” Rector said. Whether or not these programs work is a “bogus issue,” Rector continued.

Wow.

Bill Maher on the prevalence of the mediocre in Bush’s administration:

You know how whenever there’s a major Bush administration scandal it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment and you think to yourself, “Where are they getting these screw-ups from?” Well, now we know: from Pat Robertson. I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. Take Monica Goodling, who before she resigned last week because of the U.S. attorneys scandal, was the third most powerful official in the Justice Department of the United States. Thirty-three, and though she had never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 95 U.S. attorneys. How do you get to be such a top dog at 33? By acing Harvard, or winning scholarship prizes? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College — home of the “Fighting Christies,” who wait-listed me, the bastards — and then went on to attend Pat Robertson’s law school.

I’m not kidding, Pat Robertson, the man who said gay people at DisneyWorld would cause “earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor,” has a law school. It’s called Regent. Regent University School of Law, and it shares a campus with Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network studios. It’s the first time ever that a TV network spun off a law school. […] And what kid wouldn’t want to attend? It’s three years and you only have to read one book. The school says its mission is to create an army of evangelical lawyers, integrating the Bible and public policy, and producing graduates that provide “Christian leadership to change the world.” Presumably from round back to flat.

U.S. News and World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a tier-four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It’s not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook. This is for the people who couldn’t get into the University of Phoenix.

[…] Since 2001, 150 graduates of Regent University have been hired by the Bush administration. And people wonder why things are so screwed up. Hell, we probably invaded Iraq because one of these clowns read the map wrong. Forget religion for a second, we’re talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college founded by a TV host. […]

So there you have it: It turns out that the Justice Department is entirely staffed with Jesus freaks from a televangelist diploma mill in Virginia Beach. Most of them young women with very little knowledge of the law, but a very strong sense of doing what they’re told. Like the Manson family, but with cleaner hair. In 200 years we’ve gone from “We the people” to “Up with people.” From the best and brightest to dumb and dumber.

Check out his analysis of the GOP presidential hopefuls. Stay with it through the end.

American Mugabe, via the former Captain Telescope.

(How do you not love an article that includes, untranslated, Cave! Hic dragones!?)