Category: The Dish

Here’s a good sample. Here’s more. And more. If this new poll is accurate, it looks to me as if more Americans now want to impeach Bush than ever wanted to impeach Clinton.

I do not believe, as Jamie Kirchick asserts, that the commutation of Libby’s sentence for perjury is a sign of creeping authoritarianism. I’ve said it’s constitutional, but indefensible. My concern with authoritarianism is related to the Bush administration’s claims that it has the right to detain any American or non-American anywhere in the world, detain them indefinitely without charges and torture them, if deemed necessary to national security; it is related to the use of signing statements that exempt the president from enforcing the laws; to wire-tapping Americans with no court oversight; and to the suspension of habeas corpus. I know Jamie seems utterly unconcerned by any of these things – and for good reason. We now know that neocons need not fear the justice system. They have a president who will exempt his ideological supporters from the rule of law. Maybe if a president Clinton assumes these Cheney-crafted powers, they will become less complacent.

This belongs to the category of Things We Love About Britain. The Pet Shop Boys have dissed Live Earth, but they are often sharp political commentators in their music, and have a strong liberty-loving bent. Here’s a YouTube of their anthem against the national security state ushered in by Bush and Blair, set to scenes from a recent Doctor Who episode featuring the Cybermen. It’s the song Integral from their recent album, Fundamental. Think of the Cybermen as tools of Alberto Gonzales and you get the picture. And the threat:

If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear,
If you’ve something to hide you shouldn’t even be here,
You’ve had your chance
Now we’ve got the mandate
If you’ve changed your mind,
I’m afraid it’s too late."

Over to Chris and Neil:

According to FNC’s best-rated star, there are hundreds of lesbian gangs rampaging across Washington DC, carrying pink pistols, forcing children to go gay, taking down Christmas decorations, confiscating loofahs, and setting child molesters free. Or something like that. We’re so lucky O’Reilly is on the case:

Confronted by the Intelligence Report, Wheeler was unable, in several phone and E-mail exchanges over a two-day period, to specify a single law enforcement agency or officer, police report, media account or any other source he relied upon for his D.C. area lesbian gangs claim. But he insisted that his report was accurate and that any law enforcement officer who disagrees is "out of touch." "For some reason or other, these organizations don’t lay it on the line because they don’t know what is going on on the streets," said Wheeler. "This is a serious crisis and the so-called experts are missing it."

According to Wheeler’s personal website, he is a member of Jericho City of Praise, a conservative Christian megachurch in Landover, Md., whose leadership publicly advocates against equal rights for gays and lesbians. The website details Wheeler’s 500-plus appearances on MSNBC, Court TV and Fox News Channel shows including "The O’Reilly Factor," "On the Record With Greta Van Sustern," and "Hannity & Colmes."

Fox News officials and Bill O’Reilly did not return E-mails seeking comment for this story. O’Reilly is quoted on Wheeler’s website heralding Wheeler as "America’s most recognized and trusted authority on crime analysis and law enforcement."

They’ve been firebombing creches as well. And illegal aliens with leprosy were helping.

A clear majority of Americans now favor impeaching the vice-president; and they’re evenly split on the president. I wonder what the numbers were for Clinton ten years ago.

Matt lays them out:

The bottom line is that on one theory — Libby broke the law to spare his superiors embarrassing revelations of their lawbreaking, and is being pardoned by those same superiors to help perpetuate the cover-up of their embarrassing lawbreaking — Libby deserves to go to jail and Bush has seriously abused his power by pardoning Libby. On Nyhan’s alternative theory — Libby broke the law to spare his superiors embarrassing revelations of their embarrassing non-criminal conduct, and is being pardoned by those same superiors to help perpetuate the cover-up of their embarrassing non-criminal conduct — Libby also deserves to go to jail and Bush has also seriously abused his power by pardoning Libby.

Yeah, that’s about it. Still no clue here how Fitzgerald was "politically motivated."

A reader writes:

Your pitiful excuse of a blog just got worse. While everyone else is writing about the jihad offensive in Britain and the consequences of jihadi doctors infiltrating the NHS, you are stuck in Libby heaven.

Fine. But once again, you fail to take the pulse of the American people, that is, the ones outside of the liberal cocoon on the east and west coasts. We don’t give a rat’s rear end about Scooter. The war and its mismanagement, is all the rage. If you want to hit Bush on that, that is legitimate. As is his total suicidal tendencies on immigration.

However, unleashing Buchanan, a Republican no more, as well as other disgruntled pathetic life forms on your blog almost hourly to condemn Libby is entirely humorous and pathetic.

You are no better, and in some ways, worse than any Daily Kos member, Democratic Underground, or even "legitimate" leftists on the scene like Eleanor Clift (Democratic operative masquerading as a journalist) or E.J. Dionne (ditto).

The only logical conclusion one can infer is that you suffer from Bush derangement syndrome. There is different causes for the mania. For some, it was Iraq.  For others, it is his simple existence, his religiosity, his Texan ways.  For others, it is the election of 2000.

For you, it started with gay marriage, and simply went on from there. You are like the drug addict that starts with Marijuana and then moves on to heroin, then cocaine, then crack. Each step of the way progresses downward toward oblivion. Alas, there goes Andrew Sullivan. Once, a brilliant Tory conservative and editor and academic. Now, a pathetic simple leftist sympathizer, a shrill voice of insanity in a room full of them, just another member of a group to be pandered to, and finally, a putrid excuse of a blog used as a runaway truck to hit anyone he doesn’t agree with politically.

San Bernardino, California, 4 pm.

In Iowa, it’s all about her being Mid-Western.