Quid Pro Quo.

Exhibiting yet again the Dubya administration’s flair for hypocrisy, recent documents reveal that Dubya’s top three fundraisers in 2000 were made Ambassadors of Switzerland, the Slovak Republic, and France respectively. Well, as long as they didn’t take tea in the Lincoln bedroom, I’m sure everything checks out.

Palmetto Progressivism.

The first Democratic debate is set for tonight at 9pm (although you probably have a better chance of catching it on C-Span tomorrow.) And, if nothing else, the 90-minute forum will offer long-suffering South Carolina progressives (or, at least, those of us not in exile) a chance to influence the Democratic primary as never before. Should be fun.

Slider, you stink.

Apparently, Bush gave a campaign speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln yesterday, but I couldn’t hear it over all the saber-rattling. Something to do with Iraq being about September 11 or somesuch. At any rate, you have to wonder if any of the officers on the Lincoln wondered when they saw Dubya show up in aviator gear if he was coming to make up for the year he spent AWOL and on the lam from military drug tests. The election of 2004 will be won or lost on the Bush record, but nevertheless – push the Mr. Military campaign tack too far and people might just start taking a closer look at Dubya’s year-long holiday.

Hedging their Bets.

In the wake of Dubya’s embrace of preemption, historian Joyce Appleby wonders whatever happened to Congress as a center of foreign policy. As James Madison put it, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl. But the Doctrines lately advanced strike at the root of all these provisions, and will deposit the peace of the Country in that Department which the Constitution distrusts as most ready without cause to renounce it.” Looks like recent experience has proven him right.

Francophobia.

Utilizing a technique he learned in his fratboy hazing days, Dubya decides to freeze France out for her opposition to the war in Iraq. Along the same lines, Bushies are now trying to deride Kerry by saying he looks French. (Why not tell the American people he’s got cooties, while you’re at it?) Yes, folks, these people run the country.