So far, I’ve been silent on the recess appointment of my cousin Charles Pickering (his father and my great-grandmother were siblings) to the 5th Circuit. I’ve said before he was getting a bad rap, and that Bush’s other right-winger judicial nominees (some openly hostile to the idea of Constitutional Privacy altogether, which is to say hostile to not just Roe but also Griswold) were a much greater cause for concern. Judge Pickering is a Republican, of course, but we can hardly expect progressive judicial nominations from a neocon-dominated administration. I do believe he is a fair jurist, and that he’s been treated very poorly by the political process — though I understand why, too; it’s a bed the GOP made for eight years.

In any case, I think, perhaps, I can say all I need to say on the subject of the recess appointment with this quote:

“Any appointment of a federal judge during a recess should be opposed.” Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) opposing the appointment of an African American judge, December 2000

I agree, Trent. It does seems wrong, doesn’t it?

It’s well documented at this point that CBS has refused to carry an anti-Bush ad by the progressive group MoveOn.org during the Super Bowl on the grounds that they don’t run “issue ads.”

Er, right. Of course, they do plan to run one of those hamhanded, ridiculous, Office of National Drug Control Policy ads, which I’m pretty sure counts as an “issue ad.”

Lessig points out why we ought to be concerned about this.

In the current New Yorker, George Bush is quoted as saying “No President has ever done more for human rights than I have.” Billmon points out why this might be just a bit off base.

They’re challenging a WHO report on reducing obesity on the grounds that reducing fats and sugars in favor of more fruits and vegetables is “faulty science.” It couldn’t have anything to do with the beef industry or the sugar lobby, could it?

Josh Marshall points out today that it took Justice 74 days after Novak outed Valerie Plame’s name to start an investigation into who leaked the name of a secret CIA operative, but only ONE day for them to draw knives on Paul O’Neill for allegedly taking secret Treasury documents with him. Of course, their real grievance is that he’s criticizing the adminstration, but that’s not illegal.

Yet.

An Army War College report presents a scathing critique of the scope of the “Global War On Terrorism” and the distraction of the Iraqi invasion.

It seems certain that we’ll see a news item noting that its author has been dismissed within a fortnight.

In the last week or so, some interesting bits have come to light regarding Saddam, Iraq, and the alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction — those selfsame weapons that Tony Blair said could be launched with 45 minutes’ notice.

First, an exhaustive report appeared in the Washington Post firmly establishing that any WMD arsenal in Iraq was on paper only. Previous announcements by Bush that we had located “mobile weapons labs” have been termed “premature,” “embarrassing,” and “a fiasco” by David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group. Those trailers, it seems, were actually used for the production of helium for use in weather balloons (which the Iraqis used as artillary spotters).

Now, this week, we get former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s statement that Bush had planned to oust Saddam long before 9/11, and that the terror attacks and claims of WMD were simply means to that end. According to O’Neill, the administration’s position was “find me a way to do this.” Oddly, this story isn’t getting much play, which is bewildering to me and to the proprietor over at Whiskey Bar, who says:

Personally, I think it’s kind of a big deal when a president deliberately sets the wheels in motion to invade another country, before the events later used to justify the war have even taken place. To me that seems like a story worth pursuing.

So: No weapons exist, or are likely to be found; and a former cabinet official has publically stated that the search for such weapons was at best a pretext for a preimptive war in the works since Bush took office, long before the 9/11 attacks.

Make of this what you will.

American Conservative Magazine is running an excellent article the Bush Administration’s use of bogus “protest zoning,” arrest, and intimidation to stifle protest and dissent at Presidential appearances, presumably to keep the protesters out of campaign photos and footage.

Read it, and remember that this is a perspective from the Right. Salon.com covered this back in October.

The National Park service has caved to right-wingers who have been complaining for years that the video at the Lincoln Memorial included footage from gay-rights and pro-choice rallies held there. Said footage has been removed, and replaced with shots of Promise Keeper rallies and pro-Gulf War demonstrations held elsewhere.

Sigh.

Robert Cringely has another great piece on the problems of electronic voting — which are really those of expecting technology to just fix the problem instead of realizing how it introduces a whole new set of issues.

Don’t miss his description of how simply, efficiently, reliably, and cheaply Canada handles voting.