Wil has a great post on the bullshit “be vewy vewy afwaid” warnings from Homeland Security head Chertoff; he quotes extensively from Radley Balko’s piece in Reason. Go read both. Here’s a taste:

Wil:

Yesterday, Michael Chertoff, the director of Homeland Security, told the nation that they should be scared out of their minds, because he has a “gut feeling” that Al-Qaeda will launch a terrorist attack within the United States sometime this summer, and a bunch of anonymous government sources are breathlessly leaking truly scary things to Mass Media.

Bull. Fucking. Shit. This is the same recycled crap that we’ve heard over and over again from this administration, and I’m really fed up with my government doing its best to terrify me and my fellow Americans.

Radley:

By definition, the aim of “terrorism” is not to topple the U.S. government, or even to rack up a massive body count […]. The aim of terrorism is to cause terror. It’s to scare us. Frighten us. Alter our way of life, and get our government to change its policies.

In this sense, the very people who are supposed to be protecting us from terrorists are playing right into the terrorists’ hands.

Wil brings it home:

This is part of a long-established pattern from this administration: when the public begins to see them for what they are, they scramble to issue a bunch of terrorist attack warnings, so we’ll be afraid and give them whatever they want, so they can “protect” us.

[…]

What’s going on right now? Ah, yes, Bush and Cheney have the highest disapproval ratings since Nixon, and Bush’s approval among Americans is in freefall. The opposition to Bush’s complete failure in Iraq is at an all-time high. The outrageous commutation of Scooter Libby’s jail conviction — well within federal guidelines — because Bush thought it was “excessive” has infuriated Americans across the political spectrum. The Attorney General is quite clearly a liar, acting not to uphold the Constitution, but in fealty to Bush and Bush alone. Cheney brazenly claimed to be his own branch of government. The US Attorney Firing scandal shows no sign of going away, as Congress finally brings some investigation and oversight to a criminal administration which has acted as if the laws don’t apply to it since the day the Supreme Court put them into power. Americans are waking up to all of this, and the reality is difficult to deny: Bush, Cheney, Rove, and everyone in their rotten administration are crooks.

So, in a transparent effort to distract us from the damage they’ve done to our country, all they have is fear. All they can do is terrify people into submission, and it’s disgusting. We’re better than this. We’re stronger than this. We’re smarter than this.

So, please, don’t be afraid this summer. Don’t be part of Bush and Cheney’s Culture of Fear. Don’t let the terrorists win.

True dat.

The President admitted yesterday that the leak of Plame’s name came from his administration, but said that his commutation of Libby was “fair and balanced,” and that he was now “moving on.”

It would be difficult for this to be more clear. Bush’s message is simple: commit a felony breach of national security in the pursuit of political retribution against his enemies, and you can expect to spend zero time in jail. Yet again, we point out that we have never had a president so hostile to the concept of “rule of law.”

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.