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.