Typical. While the term “WMD” gets more and more broadly defined by Dubya, Fleischer et al, the GOP issues a lockdown on joint and open hearings into the Bushies’ use of CIA intelligence, since “criticism of the intelligence agencies has been divisive and could hurt national security.” Um…wouldn’t misuse of intelligence agency information to start a war compromise national security too?
Category: GOP
Rogue Exterminator.
Interesting…Tom De Lay has refused Dubya’s call to pass the child tax credit. “Ain’t going to happen,” replied the Exterminator. “The last time I checked, he doesn’t have a vote.” While De Lay’s recalcitrance probably helps Dubya/Rove achieve “triangulation,” I wonder if the White House will make De Lay pay…perhaps by allowing Dems to look into his abuse of Homeland Security mentioned the other day.
The Smoking Gun.
Speaking of the Exterminator, his successor as Majority Whip – Roy Blunt – has recently illustrated De Lay-levels of corruption with his attempt to protect Phillip Morris from terrorism in the Homeland Security Act. “Blunt’s attempt became known only to a small circle of House and White House officials. They kept it quiet, preferring no publicity on a matter involving favors for the nation’s biggest tobacco company and possible claims of conflicts of interest.” Strange how the GOP always seems to promote its sketchiest members to the whip.
Know thy enemy.
The Boston Globe sheds a little light into the dark corridors of oppo research. Of course we already know Dubya was a alcoholic cokehead who went AWOL for a year to escape a drug test and had so little sense that he’d drive around drunk…and we still elected him for four years. So skeletons in the closet just ain’t what they used to be.
When you give a banquet, invite the poor (Luke 14:13)
“I have to ask though, why do Republicans hate the word of God?,” queries Mega of Triptych Cryptic as he points the way to some biblical passages apparently not included in Dubya’s daily bible study. Not on this list but equally valid in appraising the Bushies’ selective Christianity: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25) Now there’s one you don’t hear very often from the likes of The 700 Club.
Assuming a False Mantle.
Robert Kennedy? I knew Robert Kennedy, Robert Kennedy was my father, and Attorney General Ashcroft, you are no Robert Kennedy.
The Ministry of Information at Work.
In related news, how are your federal anti-terrorist tax dollars being spent? Thanks to Ashcroft and Tom DeLay, to interdict Texas Democrats, not terrorists. Apparently, DeLay and his Texas cronies brought the Feds in to spy on their political enemies (during their redistricting sojourn to Oklahoma), and then engaged in a shredding-fest the day federal involvement came to light. I suppose with Ashcroft at the helm it was only a matter of time before our terrorist defense shield started operating this way.
What did the President not know, and when did he not know it?
Whether or not WMDs are ever found in Iraq at this point, it has become increasingly clear that the Bushies were contradicting their own intelligence last September and overstating the WMD capabilities of Iraq to the UN, the international community, and the American people. Lying to America? Falsifying intelligence? As John Dean points out for CNN, we’re now entering Nixon territory. (Second two links via Pigs and Fishes and Medley.)
When the Sun Never Sets.
“The Rove-Bush goal is to return government to its size before the New Deal, leaving the individual more exposed to corporate power than at any other time since the 1920s.” Jack Beatty of The Atlantic Monthly examines Rove’s long-term strategy for the Dubya tax cut, and how it’s cleverly designed to help the GOP in 2004 and 2008. Grim stuff. In a related story, Michael Kinsley offers his take on the dividend debacle: “The recently enacted tax bill is such a shocking and brazen gift for the wealthy that it is hard to describe in anything short of…cartoon-Marxist terms.”
More! More!
Like a junkie looking for another fix, Ashcroft takes time away from putting down gay pride events to beg Congress for increased powers in fighting terrorism. If the death penalty doesn’t even work as a deterrent in “normal” crime, why would it stop terrorists?