The Senate Intelligence Committee moves toward subpoenaing Bush for various documents regarding the lead-up to war, documents which the administration has tried to withhold on the grounds of executive privilege. Hmm, I wonder…will the shrill echoes of Dubya’s gay-baiting be enough to mask the whirring of the shredders? Somehow, I doubt it.
Category: The Senate
Lock up the Kittens.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist begins paving the way for a 2008 presidential bid. I can see it already…Vote Frist, it’s cheaper than neutering.
Shadiness, Inc.
Tom De Lay’s homegrown PAC, Texans for a Republican Majority, comes under scrutiny for misusing corporate donations. I never would have guessed. In semi-related news, the Senate GOP feels the heat from the soon-to-be-concluded investigation into stolen Dem documents. Lie, cheat, steal…all in a day’s work for today’s Republican Party.
Zellfire and brimstone.
“The Culture of Far Left America was displayed in a startling way during the Super Bowl’s now infamous half-time show. A show brought to us courtesy of Value-Les Moonves and the pagan temple of Viacom-Babylon…Does any responsible adult ever listen to the words of this rap-crap?” Um, say what? Off the reservation yet again, Zell Miller embarrasses the Democrats with this ridiculous “deficit of decency” speech on the Senate floor. And I didn’t even quote the “Christocrat” stuff. Let’s lose this guy, already.
State of Fear.
In case you missed the State of the Union address last night, this cartoon anticipated the upshot: terror, terror, terror, 9/11, 9/11, fear, fear, fear, steroids, thank you, good night, and God bless the USA. It’s wonder they didn’t pass out little bloody shirts for the Congressional GOP to wave in unison. Well, while this New York Times news analysis of the speech sounds like it was written by the Bush campaign (he “quickly turned” to domestic issues? What is Todd Purdum talking about? Dubya was blathering on about scary, scary terrorists for at least 40 minutes), I gotta think that this speech might’ve played badly to any voters out there concerned about the economy, and this year as always, it’s still the economy, stupid.
Bad Judge of Character.
Going over the heads of the Democrats in Congress, President Uniter-not-a-Divider gives segregationist Judge Charles Pickering a recess appointment (which he can hold until January 2005, after the seating of the next Congress.) In case you missed it, Pickering’s segregationist backstory was ably fleshed out by historian Sean Wilentz eight months ago.
Lies in, Lies out.
Building on the recent revelation by Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that the administration started planning a war in Iraq immediately upon taking office — a revelation that dovetailed all-too-well with the recent Carnegie Endowment report on the administration’s WMD deceptions — Senator Ted Kennedy puts the war in perspective. “President Bush said it all when a television reporter asked him whether Saddam actually had weapons of mass destruction, or whether there was only the possibility that he might acquire them. President Bush answered, ‘So what’s the difference?’ The difference, Mr. President, is whether you go to war or not. No President of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war. In doing so, the President broke the basic bond of trust between government and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war.” Quite a good speech and worth a read, if nothing else than because no less a right-wing freak show than Tom DeLay found it “sad” and “disgusting.”
In related news, Rick Perlstein examines Dubya’s electoral exit strategy: “George Bush is selling out Iraq. Gone are his hard-liners’ dreams of setting up a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic republic, a light unto the Middle Eastern nations. The decision makers in the administration now realize these goals are unreachable. So they’ve set a new goal: to end the occupation by July 1, whether that occupation has accomplished anything valuable and lasting or not. Just declare victory and go home…Such is the mess this president seems willing to leave behind in order to save his campaign.“
War on the Floor.
“Many Democrats figured they had hit bottom last year when Republicans captured control of the Senate, completing their federal government takeover. Then the bottom dropped out, too.” The Post surveys the dismal days for Dems in Congress.
If it ain’t Breaux…
The Dems lose another Senate Southerner with the impending retirement of John Breaux (D-LA). (He joins Edwards, Graham, Hollings, and Zell on the way out.) Dems have done decently well in Louisiana of late, but you have to think that this is ripe territory for a GOP pickup. And that’s just trouble.
The Limits of Segregation.
“All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches,” decried Strom Thurmond in 1948 as he led the Dixiecrat segregationists out of the Democratic Party. Of course, as always in the Souths Old and New, the bedroom was another matter. To no one in South Carolina’s real surprise, 78-year-old Essie Mae Washington-Williams announces she is Thurmond’s mixed-race daughter. True to the character and hypocrisy of the Jim Crow South, here is a man who broke the Democratic Party and the filibuster record of the United States Congress trying to deny basic civil rights to his own child. How’s that for “family values?” Unbelievable. Update: Surprise, surprise. The Thurmond family confirms it.