Specter's Parting Shots

Just watch.

Cartoon of the Day

Taking The Country Back

Take the country back from whom? Take the country back to where? Seems as though the Republican Party was all set to declare yesterday's primary and special elections as a referendum to "take the country back" from whoever they think took it, nevermind the fact that those who presumably absconded with "their" country actually won elections. But it looks as though special elections are only critical if Republicans actually win them.

If this is the face of those that would take the country back, then bring it on. Let's look at some of yesterday's election results, shall we?

In the only Democratic vs. Republican race, the special general election to fill the seat of the late Jack Murtha in Pennsylvania's 12th district, former Democratic Murtha aide Mark Critz beat the GOP backed Tim Burns.

The more progressive Congressman Joe Sestak beat out 29 year Republican and one year Democrat Arlen Specter for the Democratic nomination despite the White House backing the party switching Specter (presumably because of some back room deal). Smells like Rahm Emanuel's been all over that.

Senate Blue Dog Blanche Lincoln couldn't score enough of an edge over her liberal challenger, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter and the two will have a runoff election on June 8th.  The White House also backed Lincoln, but truth be told, either candidate may have a rough go if it in November, so maybe they were thinking better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

And then there's Tea Party candidate Rand Paul who crushed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's pick, Trey Grayson for the Kentucky GOP Senate Primary. This despite Paul's stance on certain issues. Do they agree with Paul's stance on the unconstitutionality of the Patriot Act? How many Tea Party followers over 65 would support his abolishing Social Security? Or Medicare? How many of those in wheelchairs would agree with him doing away with the Americans With Disabilities Act? If they blindly pull the lever for anyone calling themselves a Tea Party "patriot" without knowing how the issues may affect them, they're going to have a few surprises in store.

In any case, it seems that yes, incumbents seem to be in trouble, but let's not forget that there are plenty of Republican incumbents as well, and they're probably in more danger from Tea Party challengers than are Democrats. I don't believe many discouraged Democratic voters are planning on voting for GOP or Tea Party candidates any time soon just for spite. That would be pretty stupid.  But then again, I've been surprised before.

ADDING... Some would argue that last night's results shows that the progressive cause is alive and well, despite the media focus on all things Teabagger. And I would have to agree.

But... The Founders... Also, Such As

Absolutely amazing. These are the kind of people making the loud noises at town hall meetings. People who would most likely benefit from health care reform, yet are scared out of their minds by disinformation and misinformation.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I have to say I feel sorry for people like Katy Abram, in a small business family who has a health insurance plan with a $5,000 deductible, with a sick son who needs surgery, and she doesn't realize that her family could probably get better a health insurance plan and be more financially sound with the passage of a public option.

But I have to say it also pisses me off after hearing this interview that this person is freaking out about something she self-admittedly knows nothing about. She was never interested in politics until now, she doesn't know what her family's yearly income is, she doesn't know that her parents will soon benefit from Medicare and Social Security, but doesn't like socialism and probably couldn't define it if asked. And yet she shows up to a town hall meeting to yell at a Senator with decades of experience when she doesn't even know what she's yelling about. Just another dittohead talking about the Founders and the Constitution.

Who's willing to take bets on whether she's ever read the Constitution?

Better Democrats

posted by Armadillo Joe

He may have changed the "R" to a "D" in front of his name, but Specter is still a douchebag and I will support this guy in any way I can to make sure he renders Specter unemployed after November 2010:





And I love that he used Open Left -- one of my favorite blogs -- as the online platform to announce his primary challenge of ol' Spooky.

Not just more Democrats, but better Democrats.

It starts here.

Today's News

In my continuing effort to get my apartment ready to put on the market, I've completely neglected the blog today. I managed to get a couple of Tweets in (follow me!) during the installation of a medicine cabinet, bathroom lighting fixture and a pantry door.

So here's my version of today's news:

Judge Sotomayor's hearing in finally underway. And along the way Senators Sessions and Kyl show how bitchy they are to the world. Senator Hatch also gave us his whiny, wimpy side (as if he has any other) during Hardball. It was nice to see Senator Al Franken in his first Committee hearing as was the last to speak being the most junior senator. Speaking of seniority, the penultimate speaker at the hearing? Alren Specter. ...Heh.

Dick Cheney, in his latest impression of Dr. Evil, is exposed for ordering the CIA to withhold information from Congress for eight years! That would be his whole time in office as Vice President. Hmm... would that mean that Nancy Pelosi wasn't entirely incorrect when she was vilified a few weeks ago for claiming that she was lied to by the CIA? Still waiting on one of those creeps, namely John Boehner to apologize to Pelosi.

The future ex son-in-law of Sarah Palin, Levi Johnston continues his media tour and suggests Palin quit because she couldn't hack it. She couldn't take the pressure. Take it with a grain of salt considering the source, but you have to wonder about someone who quits because, according to her, she was tired of the attacks. And yet, the GOP and 7 in 10 Republicans would vote for her in 2012.

Specter ♥s Sestak

Think Progress: Sen. Arlen Specter’s official Twitter page had a post up yesterday at 4:42pm ET using the heart symbol to express his affection for his Democratic primary challenger:

The Tweet was deleted after just a few minutes, but it can still be accessed via Tweleted. The next tweet from Sen. Specter simply noted that he, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), and Rep. Mike Doyle (R-PA) spoke at a labor rally in Pittsburgh.

I wonder if Arlen will vote for Joe?

Specter Stripped of Seniority... And BITCHES About It!

Let me get this straight. Arlen Specter switches parties for political expediency, tells President Obama that he is "a loyal Democrat," that he supports the President's agenda, and supposedly worked out a deal with Harry Reid to keep his seniority on the committee chairs he holds.

Apparently, Specter still thinks that the backstabbing GOP ways are the modus operandi of the Democratic Party because within the first week of having a 'D' after his name, Specter has voted against Obama's budget, voted against the rewriting of the bankruptcy bill, backtracked on his "loyal Democrat" statement on Meet The Stretch and what apparently broke the donkey's back, when questioned if he cared about the absence of any Jews in the Republican Senate, made this amazingly stupid statement:

I sure do. There's still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner.

Arlen, just because the Democratic Party's symbol is a donkey doesn't mean you have to act like a jackass. You switched parties because your "loyal" GOP brothers gave you shit about your stimulus vote after 29 years as a Republican in the Senate and told you they weren't supporting you, and yet you want the courts to overturn the legal results in the Minnesota Senate election in which Al Franken (who is Jewish, by the way!) narrowly won the popular vote? This isn't Florida in 2000 all over again, Arlen. And then you have the temerity to say you misspoke because of all the hoopla surrounding your party switch?

“In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates,” he said. “I’m ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I’ve made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke.”

New teammates? How fucking stupid do you think we are? Did you just wake up that morning and happened to forget that you were the focal point of one of the biggest political news stories of the year?; you forgot the waves you made by crossing to the other side what, like misplacing your keys when speaking of a Coleman win? You thought you were still a Republican? Let me rephrase that: You forgot to speak like a Democrat? Because we all know you are still a Republican at heart.

And it's that's last point that has caused the Senate to decide to strip you of your seniority. It only took you one week to blow it. You now have less seniority than Roland Burris for crissake! How does it feel, Arlen? Was it worth it? And still, you have the balls to bitch about it.

"It was understood that the issue of subcommittee chairmanships would not be decided until after the 2010 election. Some members of the caucus have raised concerns about my seniority, so the caucus will vote on my seniority at the same time subcommittee chairmanships are confirmed after the 2010 election. I am confident my seniority will be maintained under the arrangement I worked out with Sen. Reid."

Not so fast, many in the party said. Concerned with Specter's actions -- and possibly by his cocky insistence to David Gregory on "Meet the Press" that his seniority was an "entitlement" -- members decided to stash the 29-year veteran at the far end of the committee table.

There's still plenty of time to backtrack on you and support Joe Sestak in 2010, Arlen. If you fuck with the donkey, sometimes you get kicked in the head. Deal with it.

That Didn't Take Long

posted by Armadillo Joe

Arlen "Spooky" Specter hasn't even been a Democrat for a week and already he's found a way to adhere (against the better interests of his new party) to the Rules of Engagement in Washington D.C., which is to say that whatever happens is good for Republicans and bad for Democrats and bi-partisanship means kicking a Dirty Fucking Hippie and voting for what the GOP High Command wants.

Besides voting against the president's agenda twice out of two possible votes, he's also gone on national television and denied pledging to be a loyal Democrat (even though he did), has an oft-stated and well-established hostility to pro-union legislation (in a largely blue-collar state) is actually rooting for the guy from the other team to prevail in Minnesota and regrets keeping a racist thug (Jeff Sessions) off the federal bench 20 years ago just because he's now a fellow Senator.

With friends like Specter, who needs Republicans? Why exactly are we glad he's in our caucus?

Spooky's an opportunistic, scheming, vote-chasing fence-sitter who always makes noise like he's going to make the wise and moral choice on any given vote in the senate, then votes for the GOP line anyway. He made it loud and clear that he is switching parties so that he can continue to be a senator, it had nothing at all to do with principle. With him, it never does. His whole political existence is about electoral expediency. In the World's Most Exclusive Club™, it is all about protecting the membership and if Specter needs to switch parties to keep his job, the other 99 (or 98, in this case) will do whatever they can to help. Look at what the national Dems did for LIEber-douche in Connecticut when the state Democratic party rejected him.

If the Obama team had a lick of sense about how to handle this toad (or if Harry Reid had any cojones), they'll threaten him into shutting up, falling in line and being a reliable vote for the president's agenda or face a well-financed primary challenge... then finance a primary challenge anyway. He's served his purpose by embarrassing the Senate GOP caucus, now squeeze him and make him behave or dump him. We don't need Arlen Specter. That seat does not belong to him, it belongs to the good people of Pennsylvania who deserve to send whoever best looks after their interests. In his heart of hearts, that is why he wants Coleman to prevail in Minnesota, for the same reason all those other senators wanted LIEber-douche to prevail in 2006: because they are chummy-chummy in their comfy little club and any means necessary to protect each other (regardless of party) will be taken and exploited. He really thinks that seat belongs to him personally and if he has to wear a different colored tie or part his hair differently or switch political parties to keep it, fine. Arlen Specter will only look after the interests of Arlen Specter.

This all better be some kind of Obama Kung-Fu, because as much fun as it was seeing the GOP lose its collective freaking mind over the weekend, the blush has already worn off and Arlen Specter needs to become Progressive Enemy #1. Until he's gone from the Senate, I ain't giving a dime to the DNC. I'm sending money to whoever announces a primary challenge from Specter's left.

Arlen Specter is, as ever, an unfulfilled promise, a "dependable" vote, just not ever when it really matters, when all that is good and righteous and just and the very future of humanity hangs in the balance. Now, because he has a "D" next to his name, he won't change his essential nature. He's going to enjoy being feted and courted to top this made-up 60-vote threshold (what happened to 51%?) the Rethugli-goons successfully imposed on the Senate in the last eight years. He's a scorpion and we frogs should be wary.

This is exactly right

posted by Armadillo Joe

I knew I'd find something to post. David Sirota gets this exactly right:

When [Demomcrats] temporarily took back the Senate in 2001 after Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords' party switch, they said the Republican House would stymie their priorities -- a logical argument that came true. When they won both houses of Congress in 2006, they said George W. Bush would veto their agenda -- again, a fair assertion that proved correct. When they won both Congress and the White House in 2008, they insisted they still couldn't do very much because their 58 Senate votes couldn't overcome a filibuster -- a less believable claim considering Obama's bully pulpit, but nonetheless at least mathematically valid.

It has been like watching a 15-year version of an Indiana Jones film -- every time we think the quest to find the ark will be completed, there's been another twist, putting off the promised conclusion just a little bit more.

I think there was a little quid pro quo here with regards to the timing of the Souter and Specter announcements, though I can't say for certain. Tristero over at Digby's Hullbaloo certainly thinks there are more things in the Washingtonian heaven and earth than are contained the mass media's philosophy:

Any questions now why Democrats are paying good money to run Specter as a Democrat?

I didn't think so.

Special note: Of course, I don't like Specter. Of course, I'm disgusted that the Democratic party has moved so far to the right that a conservative pinhead like Specter would even consider joining. Of course, I'm appalled at the manipulation and cynicism involved in purchasing Specter's votes for Obama's Supreme Court nominations.

But that is exactly what is going down. To ignore it, or to deny it, is not merely silly. It's naive. Dangerously naive: after all, there is a vicious, malicious, extreme-right Republican party that, given half a chance, will rear its ugly head up again and create even more havoc than they already have.

Now, it's time to get Franken seated. And fast.

Bye-bye, Mayberry Machiavellis. Welcome to politics, Chicago-style

I think the changes in the years since the GOP's heights of victory in 2002 have been epochal. Remember that Al Gore and John Kerry both almost won. Had either of them, we wouldn't now know the name of Barack Obama as anyone other than a slightly left-of-center senator from Illinois who coulda-shoulda-woulda make a run at the White House at some future date, maybe 2016. As it is, Bush's Rethugli-goons were in a multi-generational downward prior to 9/11 and they only really got one and a half election's worth of juice out of that melon. Rove's doubling-down of Nixon's Southern Strategy only made the GOP's long-term prospects more bleak in the face of large-scale demographic trends which anyone could foresee, as long as this country continued to have a functioning democracy (arguably, we don't) which is why he and his minions could crow about a Permanent Republican Majority -- which lasted about as long (proportionately speaking) as Hitler's Thousand Year Reich.

Nevertheless, after Reagan and his goon squad took this country over an ethical cliff, we finally hit bottom during the four-year stretch from 2002 and 2006, bumping and scraping along the seething, blood-caked boneyard on the floor of hell. I read somewhere on the interwebs these last few years (probably on Billmon before he went off the air) that though the GOP had truly taken over all three branches of government, two were relatively easily reversible, because the long-term damage done by these goons in our four-year march through perdition was actually in the judiciary. We could band together and fight to get the president we wanted, if we fought hard enough. We could fight our smaller local battles and get the legislatures we wanted both state and federal. We could fight for city councils and school boards and mayors, but the lasting damage, the Reich-wing moles planted throughout our government, the ringing echo of the Nixonland waking nightmare we've lived in since the late 60's will quietly march on in the form of appointed judges with secret agendas.

Which is why the GOP will go to the mat for Souter's seat. They will use every ounce of strength they have left, pull every trick, use every parlimentary sleight-of-hand, tell any lie, clutch their pearls and faint on any couch, bribe any official, level any threat, throw any tantrum. They may be (as Mr. C sez in his return post) the 21st Century Whig Party -- bound for oblivion -- but they all know that, collectively, this will be their last stand as a cohesive political entity. We have not yet even begun to see them bring Teh Crazy, no matter who Obama nominates, because they are so disorganized right now and their porcine, drug-addled sex-tourist demagogue of a leader is so convinced of his own potency, that no coordinated effort to keep their powder dry and regroup so as to live to fight another day is in the offing for this scattered mob on the run. They will go berserk on any name put forth by our president, because loading the judiciary with lifetime appointments has been the real goal of their reign of terror all long.

So this fight for Souter's seat, I think, is the looming Cosmic, Epic Battle Royale for the Ages for which the GOP has been itching. I wish it wasn't so early in Obama's term, but I think he has with this appointment and Specter's defection the power now, right now, to destroy utterly the last dregs of political power of the disorganized remnants of that corportized, violent, racist hard-right we've battled since the days of Nixon. They will never disppear completely, but their ability to regroup will be smashed beyond repair for two generations.

Thus, the fight right now is to prevent them from doing any further harm and that fight starts with Souter's seat. Damage would include a compromise candidate, by the way, because they will demand such. Then our fight will be to undo the deep, deep harm they've inflicted over the last 25 years, from Clarence Thomas forward, at all levels of the federal judiciary. On that score, if Souter's seat is the first step, impeaching Jay Bybee is the second step in a long, long chain of dispatching all those wicked, morally compromised men and women who are appointed for life and bringing our scales of justice back into some kind of balance.

The fact that Alito and Roberts are young terrifies me for exactly the same reason.

I'm Back!... Wha'd I Miss?

So after some fun in the sun and 95%* completely tuned out to 24/7 cable chatter (which I highly recommend to anyone on a semi-regular basis), I come back to find that Arlen Specter has the Swine Flu?, Air Force One flew over New York City, President Obama completes his first 100 days in office and has a news conference (love it!), and the GOP is becoming the 21st Century Whig Party faster than Norm Coleman can file another suit. I should go away more often.

On Specter - when I first heard about this I thought it's obviously a huge blow to the GOP but I still have my reservations. Just because you can switch your party affilation on your voter registration card doesn't mean that you can switch your vote or your thought process overnight. Arlen Specter calling himself a Democrat might be more of a thorn in the side of the Democratic party rather than a help. That's a powerful 60th vote and he knows it. I don't think Harry Reid's "deal" that Specter can keep his seniority is going to be very helpful either. Reid steps in shit again. Thanks, Harry.

Swine Flu - Seriously? I mean, I know it's an important issue... but so was Avian Bird Flu. How many of us were affected by that again? Come on, people. Stop those Spring Break Cancun vacations and grinding on the dance floor with someone who is coughing in your face. Wash your hands and move on.

Air Force One Flyover Outrage - I get it... just enough for the people in the area to be concerned. I'm sure no one north of Canal Street knew anything about it until the outrage, the UNMITIGATED GALL, I TELL YOU!, to have an Air Force One photo-op and not tell anyone. Except local law enforcement. And certain public officials. But it almost seems comical that certain New York politicians who didn't know were using the opportunity for their own photo-op. Couldn't they just release a statement?

Besides the fact that we have three major airports in the area; JFK, LaGuardia and Newark. I have planes flying over my head all the time. I live 10 minutes away from LaGuardia and they land a couple of miles away. Everyone needs to take a breath and calm down. Did we all of a sudden stop taking our shoes off at the airport? Have we stopped the racial profiling at the TSA security gate?

President Obama's First 100 Days - The President had another news conference. (Did anyone else notice he didn't call on Fox for a question? Heh.) Isn't it nice to know what's going on on a regular basis and hearing it from the horse's mouth rather than the previous clown having what, like 10 news conferences in his 8 years? Obama's going after the Most Presidential News Conferences record like Tiger Woods is tracking down most PGA Majors won. 100 days down, 2,820 days to go. Suck it, Rove.

GOP Implosion - ...Huzzah!

*****************************************
*I caught about 10 minutes of the news conference.

Outstripped by Reality

posted by Armadillo Joe

I have been struggling to compose a post about the oncoming implosion of the Rethugli-twit Party and the self-induced death spiral they just can't seem to pull out of, but the Specter defection yesterday seems to me to be that threatened implosion made extant. James Wolcott at Vanity Fair quotes from a very glum David Frum:

The Specter defection is too severe a catastrophe to qualify as a “wake-up call.” His defection is the thing we needed the wake-up call to warn us against

About which Wolcott opines:

The iron-girder he-men of the conservative blogosphere have greeted former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Arlen Specter's defection to the Democrats with whiskery hoots of "good riddance/get lost/don't let the door hit your withered buttocks on the way out" and similar pleasantries. Many of them appear defiantly resigned to the Republican Party becoming a regional bastion of true believers, the Branch Davidian compound of the Confederate Jesus. To those, however, who still share the same sky as those in the real world and think that the best escape route out of minority status and possible extinction is to win elections (crazy, I know), the Specter defection is a disaster.

But Lance Mannion is pretty sure that Specter switching labels is something of a collapse (caused by the inhabitants) of the last pole holding up the GOP's decaying tent:

Everything the Republicans and their paid propagandists in the Media have been doing and saying since November 5 has had one goal.

Holding the Party together.

It's always fun to remind them who won the last election, but they really don't need the reminding. They know the results. And they know what the results suggest about what's in store for them. They can read the polls. Barack Obama is wildly popular. Independents have abandoned them. The demographic trends are against them. If things continue this way in less than a generation it will be easier to find a person under forty who identifies as Zoroastrian or philatelist than one who identifies as Republican.

Under these circumstances, the sensible thing to do is fall back and re-group. Gather the most loyal and reliable and determined troops together and do everything you can to keep up their morale and ready to fight back when the time to fight back arrives.

The smart thing to do, then, would seem to rally the base, keep them happy and energized, and donating, and get them out there working for the next election.

The trouble with this for the Republicans is that their base is their problem.

The base is insane.

And Maha sez that such a spin out of control and off into Kukoo-Land is too long a trip from which to walk back:

the Republican Party is acting like an apocalyptic cult — a small number of true believers waiting for some Big Cataclysmic Event that’s going to change everything, to their advantage. For that reason, present reality doesn’t interest them, because present reality is just a temporary aberration (which it may be, but not in the way they think). Thus, movement conservatives brush off opinion polls that show their positions to be wildly unpopular. They don’t need to worry about election losses, shrinking party membership, an aging political base, or senior senators who jump ship. They don’t need to change with the times. They’ll be vindicated when the Mother Ship arrives.

Frankly, I say it couldn't happen to a finer bunch of assholes. They and their fellow travellers have spent the better part of fifty years (to say nothing of kicking it into high gear over the last ten or so) calling me and all my friends traitors and ni**er-lovers and slutty wimmins and faggoty perverts and terrorist-pal-around-ers and otherwise generally spewing eliminationist rhetoric directed at us, yet only thinly disguised as "satire" to avoid being arrested for incitement. They have been inviting this circular feeding frenzy for decades.

But we need to be cautious. The end of the GOP as an effective political party is not the end of the fight. Not hardly.

The Rethugli-puke Party does not circumscribe The Reich Wing or conservatism in toto or the Ruling Class or any other group of those self-identified classes of toxic political actors who are collectively and as individuals all a deep, mortal and existenstial threat to the free and just America that those tending-toward-blueishness among us revere. The GOP has merely been the political wing of that movement since all those dirty fucking hippies and promiscuous wimmin-folk and uppity negroes scared the bejebus out of Ma and Pa Goober back in the 1960's and they decided that war-mongering plutocratic corporate overlords were better political allies than anything to be found in the ranks of LBJ's ni**er-lovin' party. Ever since, the GOP has been acting as the political expression of a particularly nasty, fearful, racist, violent, authoritarian strain of American nativism. The Rethugli-goon Party has been their political wing just as Sinn Fein acts as the political organ of the IRA.

No, the deranged GOP clown car of liars, degenerates and reprobates, with their socially corrosive tax codes and hostility to the public sphere, with their racism, sexism, authoritarianism and bigotry, with their love of War and Jesus as the Answer for Everything and their brittle, tinny jingoism, with their haughty sanctimony and sadistic, mean-spirited glee at the sight or even the thought of others suffering in pursuit of their petty aims have all been begging to be blasted into oblivion for decades. Any chance we have now to chase these cockroaches, to pursue these scurrying, slithering hordes as they disguise themselves in women's clothing and shove onto the lifeboats or change into civilian clothes, burn their uniforms and try to blend into the general population ahead of the advancing army, any chance we have at all to chase them relentlessly, to shine a light on their true identities and expose them as liars and thieves, to ruin their chances of making a living anywhere but anonymously shoveling manure out of a barn in southern Patagonia, we must take and take without mercy. Because we didn't clear decks after W's grand-pappy tried to overthrow FDR and we didn't clear the decks after McCarthy and we didn't clear the decks after Watergate and we didn't clear the decks after Iran-Contra, because we failed to track down and destroy the bad actors back then we are at war in Iraq today, cheerlead the whole way by survivors and descendants of all those previous scandals.

The time to end this cycle is now.

Even as Specter's departure marks the likely historical end of the 20th Century Republican Party, the American political landscape left in its wake remains ravaged by the war they've waged, as de-forested as an Agent Orange'd jungle, as pock-marked and cratered as a World War One no-man's land, a smoldering remnant of one political party's scorched-earth march to hegemony, littered with political landmines and unexploded human ordnance, hiding and poised to maim and bedevil our peace-loving descendants for generations, no matter how many swords Obama inspires us convert into plowshares in the coming decades.

Shoulda Been Nicer To Him

posted by Armadillo Joe

This is not a Breaking News blog, for the most part, but some news is just too big not to post up.

Arlen Specter has switched parties.

The long-tim GOP-er is now a Dem. If Franken holds on to the seat he rightfully won, that makes the magic 60.

Funny how this ties into a post I was already composing about the death spiral of the GOP. Remember when, in the summer of 2001, Senator Jim Jeffords became an independent, rather than sign on with the yahoos drafting in behind Chimpy McLies-a-lot and his Evil Uncle Dick(head)? If those planes hadn't done what they did on 9/11, we'd probably have seen the GOP slowly self-destruct over the next several election cycles in the wake of W's incompetence. Instead, we got to see them soar to unimaginable heights of power and then brilliantly, spectacularly "auger in."

I also think the announcement of this switch might have be timed to cover Specter's gutting of pandemic funding as the swine flu starts to look like Captain Trips. Either way, the GOP's job in 2010 just got a great deal harder.

heh-heh

Suck on that, haters.

Mukasey Rejects Senate

In his first major decision since his confirmation as Attorney General of the United States, Michael Mukasey waved his middle finger at the Senate today as he rejected Congress' demands for details into the Justice Department's inquiry regarding the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes.

"At my confirmation hearing, I testified that I would act independently, resist political pressure and ensure that politics plays no role in cases brought by the Department of Justice," Mukasey wrote. "Consistent with that testimony, the facts will be followed wherever they lead in this inquiry, and the relevant law applied."

Would that be the same confirmation hearing where you decided not to classify waterboarding as torture and actually tried to give the impression that you didn't even know what waterboarding was, Mr. Mukasey?

The three letters [in response to letters sent by Senators Patrick Leahy, Alren Specter and Dick Durbin] represent an attempt by Mukasey to push back against growing pressure from lawmakers, primarily Democrats, who have showered the Justice Department with demands for investigations or information on topics ranging from the baseball steroids scandal to allegations of rape by a former military contractor employee.

The letters also are an assertive move by the new attorney general, who was confirmed last month with the lowest level of Senate support in the past half century because of his refusal to say whether a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding amounts to torture under U.S. law.

Mukasey doesn't want to open an investigation into the destruction of the CIA torture tapes that Mukasey himself used in signing a warrant for the detainment of Jose Padilla based on the information gathered from the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah on those videos.

This is sickening.